Messi at Arrowhead is milestone moment in KC sports history. Here are some others

Kansas City knows something about major sports stars and events.

Does any American sports figure currently own a higher Q-rating than Patrick Mahomes? (Unless perhaps it’s Chiefs teammate Travis Kelce.)

Chiefs Super Bowl championships by the bundle and multiple Royals World Series games over the past decade have cast a sports spotlight on Kansas City, to be sure.

But occasionally a sports luminary or event arrives from elsewhere to turn us into shameless gawkers.

One such event awaits on the calendar Saturday: Lionel Messi.

The most popular player in the world’s most popular sport is expected to wear the pink of Inter Miami FC this weekend as Sporting Kansas City plays host to a big-time happening at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

Messi started for Miami on Wednesday in a Champion’s Cup loss in Monterrey, Mexico. Hopes are high that he will play Saturday, too.

Soon after the Major League Soccer schedule for this season was announced, the Sporting KC-Inter Miami game was relocated from Children’s Mercy Park — which has fewer than 20,000 seats — to Arrowhead, where more than 70,000 can and, according to the team, will be accommodated.

When else has Kansas City gone gaga over a visiting sports celebrity or occasion?

Here are three exhibition events, starting with one that became historic:

June 12, 1939: The Yanks are coming

For the first time, the mighty New York Yankees played in Kansas City against their top farm club, the Blues of the American Association.

A crowd of 23,864 packed the now-long gone Ruppert (also known through the years as Municipal) Stadium for the exhibition. It was the largest turnout for a baseball game in Kansas City in a decade.

“It was one of the big days in Kansas City baseball history,” reported the Kansas City Journal. “Neither king nor cobbler could afford to stay away.”

They came to see a Yankees team of stars like Joe DiMaggio — whose brother Vince played for the Blues — that went on to win its fourth straight World Series title.

They didn’t expect to see Lou Gehrig, who a month earlier had removed himself from the lineup after appearing in a record 2,130 straight games and hadn’t played since. But Gehrig didn’t want to let down the fans.

He started at first base, logged three innings and weakly grounded out in his only plate appearance during the Yankees’ 4-1 victory. The next day, Gehrig was off to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Gehrig’s retirement was announced a week after he played his final game ... right here in Kansas City.

June 18, 2002: Mercy, what a lineup

For 25 years, Tom Watson invited friends and fellow competitors to Kansas City, where he staged a exhibition to raise funds for Children’s Mercy Hospital.

Perhaps the greatest lineup in golf history joined Watson at Blue Hills County Club for the 23rd such classic in 2002.

Watson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Lee Trevino — a combined 48 major championships among them — delighted the sold-out gallery of 4,200 with their mastery of the game and banter throughout the round.

“People came to Blue Hills Country Club to see Mount Rushmore,” then-Star sports columnist Joe Posnanski wrote at the time. “To see living history ... So people came to regard them, to admire them, to cherish them, pretty much the way people cherish the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.”

July 25, 2010: Soccer interest in KC soars

Kansas City had plenty riding on an exhibition match between the hometown Wizards and Manchester United at Arrowhead Stadium.

Peter Vermes was in his first year as Sporting’s full-time head coach, and the team would have a new identity the following year when their new stadium opened in Kansas City, Kan.

The United States was bidding for a future World Cup and Kansas City wanted in. But it needed to prove itself as the genuine article.

A crowd of 52,342, the largest for a soccer match in Kansas City history (and one Sporting KC will looks to topple on Saturday), saw the Wizards’ unexpected 2-1 triumph.

That win helped put KC soccer on a fast track. This was also the first event staged at Arrowhead after the completion of a $375 million upgrade.

“It was,” Manchester United Manager Alex Ferguson said at the time, “a good atmosphere here today.”