Frank's Place: How did sports champs wind up with parades, rings and White House visits?

Even before the Cavaliers' chartered jet departed San Francisco Monday, the morning after that franchise's first NBA title, a massive parade was planned for downtown Cleveland, mock-ups of their championship rings were all over the internet, and their mandatory White House visit was being hastily arranged.

Those three rewards - the procession, the precious stone, and the president's personal praise - have become the official booty of champions, the trifecta of triumph, the sine qua non of sports.

A trophy? Nice but impersonal and destined for an existence encased in glass.

A pennant? It's hard to imagine athletes were ever so prosaic that they'd give their all for a triangular strip of felt.

A banquet? Rubber chicken won't do for those used to Cristal and caviar.

The 1967 Sixers, like the 2016 Cavaliers, also flew home from San Francisco with an NBA title. About 500 fans met them at the airport. That was their celebration. Though they eventually got rings, there were no downtown parades, no Rose Garden photos.

So how did we move from there to the point where no champion is fulfilled until his hand is decorated with bling, shaken by the president, waved at an enormous crowd?

The answer is complicated, a mishmash of ego, brand awareness, political astuteness, marketing savvy, civic pride, and tradition.

It's not surprising that the origins trace to baseball, which for more than a century was the nation's dominant sport.

First came the processions. With few other mass entertainment options, Americans in the 19th and early-20th centuries loved a parade.

One of the first and most spectacular to honor a sports championship - though oddly not an ultimate title - took place in Philadelphia.

On Oct. 23, 1905, a torch-lit, nighttime march through Center City was held for the American League-champion A's, even though Connie Mack's team had just been thumped by the Giants in a five-game World Series.

An estimated 500,000 Philadelphians - out of a population of 1.3 million - clogged Broad, Chestnut, and Market Streets to cheer the team. Newspapers called it "the largest spectacle in the city's history." Riding in early automobiles, the baseball players were joined by 10,000 marchers, 100 bands, dozens of elephants, flag-toting children on roller skates, firemen and police divisions, civic clubs, and countless floats.

Delayed until 8 p.m., the huge procession didn't conclude until after midnight.

"No pageant in ancient Rome ever welcomed laurel-crowned gladiators with more genuine enthusiasm," gushed the next day's Philadelphia Record. "Philadelphia never before witnessed such a parade."

Five years later, when the A's won their first World Series, another celebratory parade took place, though it was tepid by comparison.

Other baseball champions, such as the 1906 White Sox and 1926 Cardinals, would stage parades of their own.

New York, which perfected and popularized ticker-tape celebrations, honored a few pennant-winners through the years and occasionally feted a Series champ when the following season began. But the city wouldn't conduct a postseason parade for a baseball champion until 1969, when the Amazin' Mets got one.

By then, the game's champs could also expect commemorative rings, a custom born out of spite decades earlier in New York.

World Series and pennant winners often were awarded jewelry, usually at the grand civic banquets eventually replaced by parades. The baubles tended to be tiepins, stick-pins, watches, or watch fobs.

But in 1922, feeling especially heady and irascible after defeating the rival Yankees in the World Series, Giants manager John McGraw decided to step it up, ordering expensive rings for his players.

Smallish and simple by today's standards, those gold bands' distinguishing characteristic was a baseball-shaped diamond in a setting the shape of an infield. Recently, the ring presented that year to Giants outfielder Ross Youngs sold for $58,750 at auction.

The following year, the '23 Yanks got pocket watches. But when they won another Series in 1927, they received rings. The champion A's also got rings in 1929 and 1930 despite a depression. And since 1932, every Series winner has been awarded one.

Politicians quickly learned to capitalize on baseball's popularity. Before he was impeached, President Andrew Johnson invited two top amateur clubs - the Brooklyn Atlantics and Washington Nationals - for a White House visit in 1865. Four years later, Ulysses S. Grant welcomed the first professional team, the Cincinnati Reds.

In 1924, in what was as much a municipal gesture as a national one, the champion Washington Senators met with President Calvin Coolidge after winning the World Series.

The public ritual soon spread to other sports.

The first visit by NBA champs came in 1963, when Massachusetts native John F. Kennedy hosted the Boston Celtics. In an indication of pro football's burgeoning popularity, President Jimmy Carter brought the NFL into the fold in 1980, welcoming the 1979 champion Steelers - along with the '79 Pirates - in a rare White House two-for-one.

During the 1970s, presidents sometimes phoned clubhouses to personally - and publicly - congratulate triumphant players and managers. But those unscripted calls were fraught with peril for politicians, and the line soon went dead.

It wasn't until a former sports announcer, Ronald Reagan, arrived in the 1980s that the Rose Garden visits became a regular ritual for champions.

Soon, collegiate champs joined the pros there. A famous 1984 Sports Illustrated cover photo, taken in the White House map room during Georgetown's visit, featured Reagan flanked by a pair of Hoya giants, coach John Thompson and center Patrick Ewing.

Not surprisingly, the NHL was the last professional league invited to the party, the Stanley Cup champion Penguins joining George H.W. Bush there in 1991.

On Wednesday, the Cavaliers' parade drew one million to downtown Cleveland. Their rings promise to be no less enormous. And their White House visit, when presumably all will wear shirts, should be memorable, perhaps the last presided over by basketball junkie Barack Obama.

Not bad. It's the kind of spectacular three-pointer we used to think only Steph Curry could manage.

ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com

@philafitz