With the North American sports industry pulling in more than $60 billion annually, the personal-

With the North American sports industry pulling in more than $60 billion annually, the personal-finance website WalletHub took an in-depth look at 2016’s Best Sports Cities. It compared 423 cities across more than 50 key metrics, ranging from “performance level of the city’s team(s)” to “average ticket price per game.”

v New York: Ranks No. 1 as the Best City for Baseball Fans.

v Boston: As a hockey hotbed, it’s second only to Detroit.

v Pittsburgh: Finished third as Best City for football and hockey fans. And ranked first in “most engaged hockey fans.”

v Los Angeles: Best city for basketball fans, and second-best for soccer fans.

v Chicago: The Cubs finally broke the curse and won the World Series.

“A Pentatonix Christmas” (8 p.m., NBC): This special has the popular vocal group spreading some holiday cheer and belting out some seasonal favorites. Joining it are Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson,

“Star” (9 p.m., Fox): This new music-infused drama from “Empire” creator Lee Daniels follows a girl group (Jude Demorest, Brittany O’Grady and Ryan Destiny) trying to make it big in Atlanta. The cast also includes Queen Latifah.

TV listings, C3

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

‘To Sir, With Love’ author dies at 104

NEW YORK

E.R. Braithwaite, the Guyanese author, educator and diplomat whose years teaching in the slums of London’s East End inspired the international best-seller “To Sir, With Love” and the popular Sidney Poitier movie of the same name, died Monday at age 104 at a hospital in Rockville, Md.

Schooled in Guyana, the U.S. and Britain, Braithwaite wrote several fiction and nonfiction books, often focusing on racism and class and the contrast between first world and colonial cultures. He also served in the 1960s as the newly independent Guyana’s first representative at the United Nations and later was ambassador to Venezuela.

“To Sir, With Love,” his first and most famous book, was published in 1959. The autobiographical tale about how a West Indian of patrician manner scolded, encouraged and befriended a rowdy, mostly white class of East End teens, who in turn softened him, was an immediate success and a natural for film. Poitier played Braithwaite (renamed Thackeray) in the 1967 release.

‘Jersey Boys’ closing

NEW YORK

The guy who gave us the song “Big Girls Don’t Cry” isn’t tearing up over the imminent closing of the Broadway show about his life, “Jersey Boys.”

“I’m not sad,” Frankie Valli said by phone. “I never dreamed it would last 11 years. The beauty about this whole situation is it’s not over. It is now beginning to happen in other parts of the world.”

The Tony Award-winning musical based on the Four Seasons’ career and harmonies will hold its final performance Jan. 15 after 4,642 shows at the August Wilson Theatre. It’s the 12th-longest running show in Broadway history. The musical, which opened in 2005, tells the story of Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi and features 20 Four Seasons songs.