Buffalo isn’t alone on this bill

Buffalo was described by Sports Illustrated recently as the “losingest city in sports.” That makes for quite a snappy headline.

But is it accurate?

The claim that Buffalo has never won a major professional team championship is hazy at best. The Bills won consecutive American Football League titles in 1964 and 1965. Bills’ statistics from those seasons are considered major enough to be included in the NFL record book.

If you start counting championships in 1970, the year of the NFL-AFL merger, yes, Buffalo is 0-for-the-Bills, 0-for-the-Sabres and 0-for-the-Braves before that franchise moved west and remained blissfully championship-free as the Clippers.

Worth noting, however: The Bills reached four consecutive Super Bowls in the 1990s and the Sabres made the 1999 Stanley Cup finals. That’s five championship-game appearances.

Cleveland also has no titles since 1970 -- with two championship-game appearances, by the Indians in the 1995 and 1997 World Series.

So, Buffalo or Cleveland -- which city is the bigger loser?

Overtime tiebreaker: To which city would you rather not return after a spirit-crushing title-game defeat?

OK. Now we’re going to penalty kicks....

Trivia time

Name the only professional football player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame who never played a down in the NFL.

Six degrees of LeBron

Buffalo and Cleveland share the misfortune of winning their last pro football championships at the end of the pre-Super Bowl era.

Had the Super Bowl been in place two years earlier, the 1964 Bills and Browns would have met in the big game.

Cleveland also has a link to another contender for losingest city in sports -- Atlanta.

In the 41 years since the Braves first brought major-league sports to Atlanta, the city’s pro teams have combined for exactly one championship.

That would be the Braves’ 1995 World Series triumph.

Losing city in that Series: Cleveland.

Same concept, different colors

The sight of David Beckham wearing a Cincinnati Reds cap in public was evidently big news in England, where the Sun ran a photo of the fashion faux pas along with the headline: “Now Beckham hits Cin city.”

“This fashion blunder must be really difficult for hard-core L.A. Galaxy fans to swallow,” Victoria Newton wrote in her “Bizarre” column.

“David Beckham has agreed [to] a megabucks deal to sign for the Major League Soccer club in the summer -- but is seen here in a Cincinnati Reds cap.

“OK, so the Ohio-based Reds play baseball not soccer -- but it’s like a Liverpool fan wearing a rugby shirt from a Manchester team.”

Not really. Lots of Galaxy fans wear Dodgers caps, which is not all that far from wearing a Reds cap.

Here in the States, it all falls under the heading of “Support Your Local Baseball Team That Hasn’t Won a Thing in Years.”

Just in case he forgets

Still, it is curious.

Why exactly was Beckham wearing a Cincinnati Reds cap?

A few theories:

* He was given the cap at a Metrosexuals Anonymous meeting by Pete Rose.

* Red accessorizes with so many things.

* Red is potential Galaxy teammate Zinedine Zidane’s favorite color.

* The “C” on the cap reminds Beckham of why he is playing for the Galaxy this year. Cash.

Trivia answer

Billy Shaw, who played offensive guard for the Bills from 1961 to 1969.

And finally

Reds first baseman Scott Hatteberg, who seldom wears a Galaxy cap, recently suggested to the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News changes he would like to see in NASCAR.

“I’d like to see the drivers jump out of their cars and change their tires right where they go flat and pump their own gas into the tank,” he said. “Now that would be exciting.”

mike.penner@latimes.com