Go figure, when it’s talk of titles

The answer is an obvious one, but the website AskMen.com asks it anyway: Which city has produced the most professional championships in the four major team sports?

Everybody who said New York knows that the Yankees play there. With their 26 World Series titles, the Yankees alone equal the total number of championships won by the third-ranked city, Montreal.

New York -- benefiting from its association with the New Jersey Devils -- is the easy front-runner with 51 championships. Boston, riding the long-ago success of the Celtics, is No. 2 with 31.

Los Angeles is listed fourth, credited with 20 titles -- although that’s a result of AskMen.com’s editors being mathematically challenged. While based in Los Angeles, the Lakers won nine titles, the Dodgers five, the Rams one, the Raiders one and the Angels one. That’s a total of 17 championships.

Evidently, it’s best not to ask men to do the addition.

Trivia time

The AskMen.com list includes athletes who won the most championships for their respective cities. Name the leader.

We import championships

Which city leads the all-important category of Most Championships Poached?

That would be Los Angeles, in a landslide.

The Lakers, Dodgers, Rams and Raiders combined for 16 championships after leaving their respective roots of Minneapolis, Brooklyn, Cleveland and Oakland.

The only franchise born in Los Angeles to win it all was the Angels in 2002 -- although, technically, that triumph was secured within Orange County limits.

They export championships

Minneapolis-St. Paul leads in championships lost -- lost to other cities post-relocation.

The Twin Cities lost 10 potential titles when the Lakers moved west and the North Stars left for Dallas.

Special citation goes to Cleveland, which lost three championships to three other cities. The former Cleveland Rams won titles in Los Angeles in 1951 and St. Louis in 1999. The original Cleveland Browns won it all as the Baltimore Ravens in 2000.

The replacement Browns haven’t moved anywhere close to the Super Bowl since their 1999 inception.

Shortcut discovered

Derek Jeter’s new Topps baseball card has attracted a lot of interest on EBay -- and, no, Jeter is not pictured tying Alex Rodriguez’s shoelaces together.

A prankster in Topps’ art department added a couple of famous faces to the background of Jeter’s card. A uniformed Mickey Mantle can be seen handling a bat in the dugout and President Bush is pictured walking through the lower box seats.

“Someone was having a little fun between the final proofing and the printing process,” Topps spokesman Clay Luraschi told SportsCollectorsDaily.com. “We first saw the card only after it was printed and, honestly, could not do anything but laugh.”

New York has discovered a new way to boost that championship total. Photoshop the Yankees into the World Series, and save millions in the process.

Trivia answer

Henri Richard of the Montreal Canadiens and Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, both with 11.

And finally

Taking his job a little too seriously -- or, maybe not seriously enough -- Randy Baker, vice president of security at Legends Field in Tampa, Fla., asked a couple watching a Yankees workout Friday to leave their seats in a new special section near the Yankees’ dugout.

E-Baker. The couple was John and Nancy Cashman, parents of Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman. After discovering this, Baker offered to return them to the seats, but, according to the New York Post, “John Cashman refused.”

mike.penner@latimes.com