Finding connections between the Super Bowl and baseball

This is the NFL's Super Bowl week. It is the 50th Super Bowl. It should be Super Bowl L, in keeping with the sport's Roman numeral tradition, but this year, the NFL decided to go with "50" instead of the capital L.

So while the Super Bowl is grabbing all the headlines, let's see how many baseball angles we can find to the Carolina-Denver game that's going to be played Sunday in Santa Clara, Calif.:

* Levi's Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, was supposed to be built in San Francisco, but an agreement couldn't be reached with the city on financing. So the 49ers moved south. The stadium site of the Super Bowl is 42 miles from the Giants' downtown ballpark, AT&T Park.

* Good thing the Broncos are winning because baseball fans in Denver don't have much to cheer about. The Rockies were last in the World Series in 2007 when they were swept by Boston. The Rockies have made the playoffs two others times, losing in the first round twice. The Rockies haven't had a winning season since 2010, when they won 83 games.

* Growing up in Atlanta, Carolina quarterback Cam Newton wanted to be a baseball player. He was a center fielder and third baseman, and his favorite players were Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones. But Newton said he quit baseball at age 14 because he was fearful of getting hit with the ball.

* North Carolina doesn't have Major League Baseball, but the state does have 12 minor league teams, including the Greensboro Grasshoppers, Asheville Tourists and of course, the Durham Bulls, the team made famous by the movie "Bull Durham.''

* The Panthers play in Charlotte, a hotbed city for minor league baseball. The Knights, a Triple-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, averaged 9,428 fans a game for 75 dates in 2015, the second consecutive year the Knights have led Minor League Baseball in average attendance per game. The Knights moved into a downtown ballpark in 2014.

* The Green Bay Packers, behind Most Valuable Player quarterback Bart Starr's two touchdown passes, beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in Super Bowl I at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1967. The Boston Americans beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series in 1903, winning the nine-game series in eight games. Boston was led by two pitchers, Bill Dinneen (three wins) and Cy Young (two). They combined for seven complete games. When it comes to handling pitching, do you think times have changed?

* The 50th World Series was in 1953 when the Yankees won their fifth consecutive series, which is still a record. The Yankees, managed by Casey Stengel, beat Brooklyn in six games. The Yankees won the first two games in Yankee Stadium, won two of three in Ebbets Field and then won Game 6 4-2 in Yankee Stadium. Yogi Berra hit .429 for the Yankees in the series.

* Sunday's Super Bowl marks the 12th time the state of California has been host to the Super Bowl. The World Series has been in California 18 times since 1958, the year the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers left New York and Brooklyn for California. The first World Series held in California was 1962, when the Yankees beat the San Francisco Giants, who had Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. The Giants' home was Candlestick Park.

* In addition to the big league Padres, Dodgers, Angels, Athletics and Giants, California has 12 minor league teams, including the Modesto Nuts, representing the crop grown in the area. The Nuts have three mascots: Al the Almond, Wally the Walnut and Shelley the Pistachio.

* Ironically, the Santa Clara University baseball team is nicknamed the Broncos. The Division I school has had 46 players make it to the big leagues, including former St. Louis pitcher Nelson Briles, Kansas City catcher Mike Macfarlane and Tampa Bay outfielder Randy Winn. But the Broncos' most interesting baseball story, light-hitting infielder Tim Cullen, has a Washington Senators angle. The Senators traded Cullen to the White Sox in February of 1968 for shortstop Ron Hansen. Then in August, the Senators sent Hansen back to the White Sox, making Cullen and Hansen the only two players to be traded for each other twice in the same season. Cullen was an infielder for the World Series champion Oakland Athletics in 1972.

* Quarterback Peyton Manning's No. 18 is legendary in the NFL world, but in baseball, No. 18 doesn't have that much sparkle. Two players - the Reds' Ted Kluszewski and the Indians' Mel Harder - have had their No. 18 retired. And according to Baseball Almanac, only two Hall of Famers - Eppa Rixey and Red Faber - wore No. 18. The Rockies' best-known baseball number is 17, retired in honor of first baseman Todd Helton.

* Newton's No. 1 has had success in baseball's World Series. The most famous Nos. 1 in the World Series: Brooklyn's Pee Wee Reese, who played in seven World Series, winning one; St. Louis' Ozzie Smith, who won one of three World Series for the Cardinals; and the Yankees' Billy Martin, who hit .333 in fives World Series for the Yankees, winning four.

* As a kid, third baseman Carney Lansford played for the Santa Clara Briarwood Little League team and made it to the Little League World Series, losing to Taiwan in the title game. Lansford went on to play for the Angels, Red Sox and Athletics.

* Santa Clara is where a catcher named Joe Maddon, now the manager of the Chicago Cubs, played his final season in the minors. At 25, he was a catcher with a .250 average in 25 games for the Single-A Santa Clara Padres.

* In 2017, Super Bowl LI - yes, an NFL executive has stated the league will want to go back to the Roman numeral tradition next year - will be in Houston's NRG Stadium, home of the Texans. Wonder if Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, a Texas cattle rancher, will attend the game? Given that he threw seven no-hitters, played for the Rangers and Astros, and is the all-time strikeout leader (5,714), Ryan should at least do the ceremonial coin flip.