Welcome to Trophy Town

The Tampa Bay Lightning started the Bay Area's dominating run of professional sports on September 28, 2020 after defeating the Dallas Stars in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final to win the series 4-2 and capture the franchise's second ever championship.
A little over four months later, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers routed the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium on February 7, 2021, the Buccaneers second Super Bowl victory.
And in between the Tampa Bay Rays came within a whisker of completing the trifecta of pro sports championships in Tampa Bay, the Rays winning the American League pennant and advancing to the World Series before falling to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games.

During a pair of Tampa-style boat parades celebrating the world titles with thousands of fans lining the banks of the Hillsborough River, Bay Area fans saw Lightning forward Alex Killorn, wearing a Rays jersey, swoop up Bolts captain Steven Stamkos and the Stanley Cup on his jet ski and zip around the water with Stamkos holding the cup aloft.
Quarterback Tom Brady, the MVP of Super Bowl LV, delivered another accurate pass during the Buccaneers' boat parade, tossing the Vince Lombardi Trophy from his boat over the water to a shirtless Rob Gronkowski in another boat.
Luckily, none of the championship trophies needed to be fished out of the water.
More: #TrophyTown Illustration
There's a lot of new hardware floating around the Tampa Bay area these days. And there are even more cool stories surrounding the trio of trophies - the Stanley Cup (NHL), the Vince Lombardi Trophy (NFL) and the William Harridge Award (MLB) -- won by Tampa Bay pro sports teams.
Here's a brief history, fun facts and other oddities behind the three trophies.

THE HARDEST TROPHY TO WIN IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS
The Stanley Cup was commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup and is named after Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, who donated it as an award to Canada's top-ranking amateur ice hockey club.
The trophy consists of a bowl about 11.5 inches in diameter and 7.25 inches high atop a collar, shoulder, barrel and base. The full Stanley Cup is nearly three feet in height and weighs about 37 pounds.
The 1906-07 Montreal Wanderers are the first team on the Stanley Cup, their names engraved inside the bowl.
Louise St. Jacques has been the Stanley Cup's engraver for 38 years and is the Cup's fourth official engraver since engraving rosters became an annual tradition.
Working from her studio at Boffey Promotions on Rue Saint-Francois-Xavier in the Ville-Marie section of Montreal, St. Jacques takes ownership of the Stanley Cup for about 10 days every offseason to add the names of the newest champions.
St. Jacques receives a list of names - 52 is the maximum allowed, although the 1997-98 Detroit Red Wings have 55 names on the Cup, the most of any team -- submitted by the championship team and approved by the NHL. She then gets to work calculating how to stamp several hundred letters, arranged correctly, in a pre-defined space.
Once St. Jacques takes possession of the Stanley Cup, she disassembles it, taking all five rings off. The current bottom ring is placed on a shaped steel form ready for stamping (while engraving is the verb most often used, the process for adding names to the Stanley Cup is by stamping). Her tools are a weighted hammer and three different sets of metal letter punches, including upper and lower case letters.
It requires around 10 hours to stamp all the names. St. Jacques works in 90-minute intervals. Each name takes about 30 minutes. It's tedious, meticulous work. Each letter is struck with the weighted hammer by hand.
Every 13 years, the bottom band of the Stanley Cup is filled and a new blank band is added, the top band coming off the Cup to be retired to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto and all the other bands moving up a rung. The last new band was added in 2018 when the Washington Capitals won their first Stanley Cup. The 2020 Tampa Bay Lightning are the third team on the new band.
There are three removed bands currently on display at the Hall of Fame. The last band to come off features 12 championship teams from the 1953-54 Detroit Red Wings through the 1964-65 Montreal Canadiens.
The Tampa Bay Lightning have 52 names from their 2020 Stanley Cup championship team stamped on the Cup. The 2004 team also has 52 names on the Stanley Cup.
There are 2,394 individuals engraved on the Stanley Cup currently. Including the retired bands, 3,385 names in all have been engraved.
The Montreal Canadiens' Henri Richard appears 11 times on the Stanley Cup, most of any player, coach or staff member.
The Stanley Cup is almost as well know for its mistakes as its legendary stories of players and coaches' days with the cup.
The 1980-81 New York Islanders are misspelled Ilanders. The 1971-72 Boston Bruins have Qs instead of Os. Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington slipped his father Basil into the list of players, coaches and staff to be engraved. Once the League found out, after it had already been engraved, they put Xs over Basil Pocklington's name so it wouldn't be visible.
In 1996, the Colorado Avalanche's Adam Deadmarsh had his name misspelled Adam Deadmarch. It was later corrected, the first time a name had been corrected on the Cup. It has since seen four more corrections.

'WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TROPHY' WAS JUST TOO WORDY
The Lombardi Trophy began as a sketch on a cocktail napkin by Tiffany & Co. vice president Oscar Riedener for NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in 1966.
The image, and the symbol of footballing excellence, has endured ever since.
Tiffany & Co. has been making the Lombardi Trophy since its inception. The trophy, which originally was known as the World Championship Game Trophy, was awarded for the first time to the Green Bay Packers in 1967, inscribed with the words "World Professional Football Championship", following their defeat of the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, later renamed the Super Bowl.
Green Bay won the first two World Championship Game Trophies. In 1970, after legendary head coach Vince Lombardi lost his battle with cancer, the trophy was named in his honor. It was presented for the first time as the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the Baltimore Colts following their 16-13 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl V.
The Lombardi Trophy is made every year - it takes four months to create in a Cumberland, Rhode Island workshop - so the championship team gets to keep it.
The Lombardi Trophy measures 22 inches high, weighs seven pounds and is entirely sterling silver, heated to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit before molded into shape. It consists of a regulation-size football mounted in a kicking position on a pyramid-like stand of three concave sides. Engraved on one side is the trophy's name "Vince Lombardi Trophy" above the NFL Shield. Following the trophy's on-field presentation to the Super Bowl champion, it's sent back to the Tiffany & Co.'s Rhode Island workshop where the Super Bowl number, the teams, date, location and the final score are engraved.
Fifty five Lombardi Trophies have been made, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers winning No. 55 following their 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV on February 7 at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium, the Buccaneers the first NFL team to win a Super Bowl in their home stadium. Each player on the winning team gets a small replica trophy to keep.

AN AWARD WITH TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS
The William Harridge Award the Tampa Bay Rays captured in 2020 is different from the one they earned in 2008 as the winner of the American League pennant.
The earlier version of the trophy featured a golden eagle atop a silver baseball with the eagle appearing to hold the American League banner from its mouth. The words "William Harridge Award 2008 American League Champions" are stamped onto a nameplate on the front of the trophy.
The newest version of the award, which was introduced in 2017, is all silver with a flapping pennant, frozen in motion, framing a baseball atop a pedestal. This is the trophy handed to the Rays following their win over the Houston Astros in seven games in the 2020 American League Championship Series.
A new William Harridge Award is presented to the AL champions each season.
The trophy is named for Will Harridge, who was president of the American League from 1931 to 1958. Harridge was one of the architects of the annual All-Star Game. He successfully lobbied American League owners to approve the interleague contest at Chicago's Comiskey Park. The game was originally scheduled as a one-time event but was so successful it's become a yearly staple on the MLB calendar.
Harridge, though, may best be known for voiding the contract of Eddie Gaedel.
In 1951, St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck signed Gaedel, a little person standing 3-foot-7. Gaedel was inserted into the second game of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers as a pinch hitter to lead off the contest.
With a miniscule strike zone and the number 1/8 on his back, Gaedel stood in the box and didn't take a swing, drawing a four-pitch walk. It would be his only plate appearance. He was lifted for a pinch-runner once reaching first base. After the game, his contract was voided by Harridge and MLB.
Gaedel remains the shortest player to appear in a Major League Baseball game. His career ended with a perfect 1.000 on-base percentage.