“If you know what happened in the Mets game don’t tell me, I taped it. Hello?”

Seinfeld, they said, was a show about nothing. However, it covered everything – the minutae of life, from bakery line etiquette to favourite t-shirts to soup. But one thread that ran right through its nine seasons was sport.

Jerry Seinfeld himself is a sports fan, of course, a New Yorker whose allegiance is firmly with the Mets while co-creator and executive producer Larry David is a Yankees man. So is George Costanza, of course, who is more or less based on the Curb Your Enthusiasm star.

They say there’s a Superman reference in every episode – either verbal or visual – but there’s twice as many sports allusions.

Joe Sports Guy has vowed to chronicle every sporting reference in the show, starting with baseball. And because I like making lists as much as the next man, here’s my top three.

3. Kramer, becomes the Tour’s Oldest Tennis Ball Boy
The Lip Reader, Season Five
Boy: Hey pops, isn’t there a better way to spend your twilight years?
Kramer: I may be old, but I’m spry.
Boy: The try-out lasts three-and-a-half to four hours; are you up for it?
Kramer: Oh, I’ll be up for it, punk.

Kramer lands a ball-boy job at the US Open through Jerry’s new deaf girlfriend who is a linesperson at Flushing Meadow. Predictably, Kramer’s new career is short-lived, as he steams into Monica Seles during warm-ups and costs her a shot at the title.

George gets a job with the Yankees
The Opposite, Season 5
Jerry: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle … Costanza?!

This, like so many plot-lines is born in the coffee shop; there George realized that every instinct he’d ever had was ultimately proved wrong. “Goodbye, tuna on toast. Hello, chicken salad on rye … UNTOASTED!”

He eventually finds himself interviewing for a job in the House That Babe Built – though a beautiful woman he managed to pull. He admits to a litany of previous failings in the workplace (being fired for having sex in his office with the cleaning woman, etc). He gets the job.

1. Keith Hernandez and ‘The Second Spitter’
The Boyfriend, Season 3
Newman.: Wow, it was McDowell.
Jerry: But why? Why McDowell?
Kramer: Well, maybe because we were sitting in the right field stands cursing at him in the bullpen all game.
Newman: He must have caught a glimpse of us when I poured that beer on his head.

This programme – shown on this side of the Atlantic as a two-parter – is one of the most memorable episodes, and an inspired send-up of Oliver Stone’s JFK film. Jerry debunks the theory that baseball star Hernandez once spit on both Kramer and Newman (played by Wayne Knight who also starred in JFK, and Basic Instinct incidentally.

I reserve the right to change and add to that list; there’s so many to go through. Anyone else have some favourites?