I no longer recall what made me mull this topic. Maybe I was thinking of the new facilities in the Big Three sports in the U.S., and how many of them I have not seen.

Which in a roundabout way led me to consider how many stadiums and arena I have been in that 1) no longer exist or 2) no longer are used for major-league sports.

Because I’m sure I won’t remember all of them right off … a working list:

—The Spectrum, Philadelphia.  It’s gone, right? I saw one event there, but it was a doozy — Lakers-Sixers in Game 6 of the 1980 NBA Finals. Magic Johnson’s 42-point eruption as the Lakers clinched without Kareem, back in L.A. with a bad ankle. Apparently still standing, but due to be torn down.

—Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia. Across the street from the Spectrum, as I recall. I saw the Rams and Eagles play there around about 1978. Frank Corral of the Rams kicked a game-winning field goal.

—County Stadium, Milwaukee. Saw a football game there. Rams over the Packers. That place was blown up, right? Yes, it was. No great loss.

—Metropolitan Stadium, Bloomington, Minn. Where the Vikings and Twins played. Saw the Rams play a regular-season game there. Another one that’s gone? Didn’t they put up a mall there? Yes. They did.

—Municipal Stadium, Cleveland. Was it the Mistake by the Lake? Or was the mistake the whole city of Cleveland?  I saw the Rams and Browns there, perhaps twice? But the one I remember, for sure, was a game the Rams won in November … maybe 1977? Fred Dryer played in short sleeves, but it was cold. Very.

—Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands, in New Jersey. Again, the Rams got me there on a cold Sunday in the late 1970s. The Rams won. They usually did back then. A cold, dreary, gray and ugly place. It felt diseased because, I decided, of all the chemical plants nearby.

I have more. I’m just getting started. I will come back to this.

Update, November, 2012.

—The Kingdome, Seattle. I don’t know how I missed this one, when I wrote the first part of this, two years ago. I saw at least two events there. The Rams played the Seahawks there in 1979 in a game that was notable for two developments. The first was the Rams defense holding Seattle to minus-7 yards of offense. A record then. Might still be. Should be. The second development is, now, more memorable: Pat Haden suffered a broken pinkie finger when it got stuck in one of the gaps in the horrible Astro-turf carpet. That meants the Rams played the rest of the season with Vince Ferragamo at quarterback, and even though Vince had a better arm and was sturdier than Pat Haden, I still think Haden would have given the Rams a better chance to win in Super Bowl XIV, two months later. And they almost won anyway. So, the Kingdome: A big ugly warehouse. I was there three years after it opened, and it looked ready to fall down. Awful acoustics. Looked like it was made of sheet metal. The other event I saw there was the Angels-Mariners one-game AL West tiebreaker game at the end of the 1995 season. Seattle threw Randy Johnson. And won 9-1. The Kingdome came tumbling down in 2000.

I might come up with more. Or more stadiums/arenas will come down.