I saw some of these in person. Which means I’d like to see them again. The others, I’d like to watch for the first time.

What prompted this line of thinking was hearing from the Dave Brett guy (davebrett.com) who has the huge library of U.S.-related soccer tapes/DVDs.

I was looking at his list … and it brought back memories. Of games I covered, and some I did not but wish I had.

The 10 national-team matches I would most like to see:

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This barking hound, the first outfielder I took in our fantasy league draft … with the 54th (!) pick overall … probably will suddenly find his stroke now?

Why?

Because I just dumped Andruw Jones off my team.

So he can continue to screw with my mind … by going on a homer binge.

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Maybe soccer wonks already know about this guy and his site. I found out just the other day, when he introduced himself via e-mail, and I’m actually quite excited about it.

This guy Dave Brett (find his site here) has collected hundreds (thousands?) of recordings from matches pertaining, in the main, to U.S. soccer. Both national and professional, including the long-gone North American Soccer League.

I just now counted nearly 300 offerings of U.S national team games, with the oldest going back to 1979 — a 6-0 loss to France.

If you just have to own (or see one more time) that Match from Back in the Day, this is the guy to contact. He will trade one of his videos/DVDs for one of yours, if you have something he needs … but otherwise I think you need to pay him.

I already know the match I want to see.

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Not just name-dropping here. Trying to establish something vaguely resembling tennis credentials.

A lifetime ago, back when Gannett News Service, and its sports boss, Jerry Langdon, were ambitious and had money to spend … I got help with expenses for the 1985 tournament, and even more help in 1986.

I had a local-local reason for going, too. Stephanie Rehe, the best tennis player to come out of the Inland Empire, was an outside contender on the women’s side. And while there, I could write hometowners for all sorts of Yanks with connections to the various Gannett properties. And did.

Some of my basic Wimbledon memories:

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Rafael Nadal just defeated Roger Federer in the longest championship match in Wimbledon history, and it had the feel of a torch being passed.

From the former tennis king to the new one.

Nadal has been whittling away at Federer’s supremacy, beating him now and then … to beating him regularly on clay … and now he has gone into Federer’s house — the All-England Club — and defeated him on his favorite surface, grass.

At Centre Court, where Federer had won the previous five championships.

Odd thing about tennis: It reminds me quite a bit of boxing, at times like these.

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What’s the over-under here for Nomar Garciaparra’s body exploding?

I say three games.

Sunday, that is, if he starts all three in San Francisco. I don’t think he gets through Sunday without tearing/ripping/breaking/snapping something in one of his legs.

The poor guy, who is 34 going on 54, has been going on the DL every time he coughs hard the past three years. And now the Dodgers have run him out at shortstop? Does Joe Torre hate the guy?

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Outfielder Andruw Jones returned to the Dodgers lineup Friday following minor knee surgery … and he picked right up where he had left off:

As the biggest free-agent bust in Dodgers history. Aside, perhaps, from Jason Schmidt.

Andruw went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts in the Dodgers’ 10-7 victory. Which is hard to do. Making five outs in the middle of a 10 run game, that is … or a team scoring 10 despite your 6 hole hitter going 0-for-5 and putting the ball in play only once (a weak tapper to third).

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You always hear it, around sports.

The legs go first.

Uh, no.

The belly goes first.

And I’m not talking about abs here. I’m talking about the stomach. The ability to eat massive amounts of food and … not die.

There was a time when the idea of “competitive eating” might have intrigued me. This whole “Nathan’s Famous International Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest” thing.

But I was maybe 17 at the time. Maybe 21. By the time I was 30 … no way. Now, as an old guy, I watch Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi … and wonder why they don’t keel over maybe 10 hot dogs into their “competition.”

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This is starting to annoy me.

The NBA franchise leaving Seattle for Oklahoma City is being treated by various and sundry observers as an injustice that borders on the criminal.

OK, it’s not a nice thing. Leaving a city after 41 seasons.

But do any of you recall any sort of nationwide condemnation and gnashing of teeth when Los Angeles lost both of its NFL teams in a matter of months, after the 1994 season? One of which, the Rams, had been in town for 49 (!) seasons?

Why the double standard? Why is Seattle poor and downtrodden and abused by the NBA? While the Rams and Raiders bolting … is “just something that happened” to Los Angeles?

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I take no pleasure in the cuts at the Los Angeles Times. Even though the Times was the main competition for most of my journalism career, and it’s a test to avoid the instinctive “what’s bad for them is good for me!” mind-set of days gone by.

This was the newspaper derisively known as “The Whale” by the scrappy Herald-Examiner (which LAT drove into extinction nearly 20 years ago) and sometimes as “The Velvet Coffin” inside its own building (for its soft and cushy torpor and till-death employment). But it was the gold standard for the SoCal market, if not the entire state of California. If not the U.S. this side of the Rockies.

Those of us who competed against it, in our own small, regional way, never lost sight of that. We couldn’t be the Times, and we may not have wanted to be (preferring to have a more direct and personal impact on a smaller market) … but knowing it was out there was a comfort. “Hey, look, there’s somebody that pays big salaries and spends money like mad … and they’re truckin’ right along!”

Well, they no longer are truckin’. They are withering. The plan is to go from 850-plus employees in the newsroom to 700 and change.

And it is alarming for every other print journalist in the region. Because if LAT is in such dire straits that it feels compelled to lose 17 percent of its workforce … well, what hope is there for the (barely) surviving suburbans in the region, where cutbacks are met with a shrug?

Still, and all, I keep coming back to this thought:

A newsroom with 700 full-time staffers in it?

I think I could run a pretty good newspaper with 700. I would take my chances, with 700.

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