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They say everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when you’re a member of the media and you share a truly awful take, you’re going to get called out for it.
Julian Merryweather had to get used to fans in the stands, having debuted last summer in an empty ballpark. He was surprised the 10th inning started with a runner on second.
No matter. The Toronto Blue Jays turned Yankee Stadium as silent as it was during a 2020 season played without fans.
Randal Grichuk led off the 10th with an RBI double, Merryweather struck out the side on 11 pitches in the bottom half, and the Blue Jays took advantage of the second year of COVID-era rule starting starting extra innings with a runner on to beat New York 3-2 Thursday in the major league opener.
Merryweather felt energy from the fans. But he didn’t realize the runner on second in extras rule returned until bullpen coach Matt Buschmann told him.
“I forgot,” Merryweather recalled. “Oh God, there’s going to be a runner on second.”
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He fanned Aaron Hicks and Giancarlo Stanton on three pitches each, started Gleyber Torres with two strikes, then threw a ball and got a foul before getting him to swing past a 99 mph offering.
“I’m definitely calling my mom,” the 29-year-old right-hander said. “She’s probably called me five times freaking out.”
Merryweather was acquired in the 2018 trade that sent star third baseman Josh Donaldson to Cleveland. Now with Minnesota, Donaldson left the Twins’ season opener with hamstring tightness on Thursday.
Teoscar Hernandez tied the score in the sixth inning with a 437-foot homer on a hanging slider from Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, whose parents were in the crowd to watch him in person in at Yankee Stadium for the first time with New York.
“I just want that slider back,” said Cole, who slapped his glove against the bench four times after he came out.
Fans had not been at Yankee Stadium for 532 days since the loss to Houston in Game 5 of the AL Championship Series on Oct. 18, 2019. They had to show proof of complete vaccination at least two weeks earlier or a recent negative COVID-19 test. Masks were required, and groups were separated by empty seats into pods.
“Obviously it didn’t end the way you want to where you’re shaking hands, but it definitely was special having a crowd back,”‘ Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Even though we’re 20 per cent capacity, you could feel their energy and feel them waiting to erupt.”
Attendance was announced as 10,850. Before its first homestand at its spring training ballpark in Dunedin, Florida — the Canadian government won’t allow the Blue Jays to play at home due to coronavirus restrictions — Toronto plays Monday in the home opener of Texas, the only big league ballpark allowed 100 per cent capacity at the season’s start.
“That’s going to be exciting because we all are going to feel normal playing the game that we love,” Hernandez said. “Getting fans back on the field as it was three, four years ago, it makes us really good because the game is going back to normal.”
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Cole, starting the second season of his $324 million US, nine-year deal, allowed two runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings with eight strikeouts and two starts. He fell behind on Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s RBI single in the second.
Toronto’s Hyun Jin Ryu gave up four hits in 5 1/3 innings, including Gary Sanchez’s two-run homer in the second.
David Phelps escaped a bases-loaded jam in the seventh by getting Aaron Judge to ground into an inning-ending double play.
Nick Nelson (0-1) relieved to begin the 10th and with pinch-runner Jonathan Davis on second, allowed Grichuk’s double.
On an afternoon with a game time temperature of 43 degrees, the Yankees played their first extra-innings opener since 1987.
A reduced group of Bleacher Creatures shouted the Roll Call from the right-field seats in the top of the first, and first baseman Jay Bruce raised his right arm in a spirited response. Cole turned to the bleachers to survey the scene when Biggio’s foul ball provided a momentary break.
“Having that buzz, having the energy back in the Stadium was something special,” Judge said. “I was talking with a couple guys, talking with the umpires, everybody missed it. Those fans, that energy, that makes the game.”
A fan tried to grab the ball from Judge’s glove when he caught Rowdy Tellez’s foul fly for the final out of the ninth.
“It’s their first game back at the Stadium, in a long time,” Judge said. “So I’ll give them that one.”
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LOS ANGELES –
Only a week has passed since the Los Angeles Dodgers abruptly fired Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter and constant companion of their new $700 million slugger, Shohei Ohtani.
But the biggest story of baseball’s spring is still murky — and shocking — as the regular season begins in earnest Thursday.
The scandal encompasses gambling, alleged theft, extensive deceit and the breakup of an enduring partnership between the majors’ biggest star and his right-hand man. Investigations are underway by the IRS and Major League Baseball, and Ohtani publicly laid out a version of events Monday that placed the responsibility entirely on Mizuhara.
Here are the basics as Ohtani and the Dodgers prepare for their home opener against St. Louis on Thursday:
Ohtani claims his close friend repeatedly took money from his accounts to fund his illegal sports gambling habit. Ohtani also says he was completely unaware of the “massive theft,” as his lawyers termed it, until Mizuhara confessed to him and the Dodgers last week in South Korea, where the team opened its regular season against the San Diego Padres.
Mizuhara has given more than one version of his path to this trouble, which was catalyzed by the IRS’ investigation of Mathew Bowyer, an alleged illegal bookmaker. Mizuhara has consistently said he has a gambling addiction, and he abused his close friendship with the Dodgers superstar to feed it.
That’s the biggest question to be answered in Major League Baseball’s investigation, and the two-time AL MVP emphatically says he has never gambled on sports or asked anybody to bet on sports for him.
Further, Ohtani said Monday he has never knowingly paid a bookie to cover somebody else’s bets. Mizuhara also said Ohtani does not bet, and Bowyer’s attorney said the same.
Mizuhara told ESPN on March 19 that Ohtani paid his gambling debts at the interpreter’s request, saying the bets were on international soccer, the NBA, the NFL and college football. If that were true, Ohtani could face trouble even if he didn’t make the bets himself — but ESPN said Mizuhara dramatically changed his story the following day, claiming Ohtani had no knowledge of the gambling debts and had not transferred any money to bookmakers.
MLB rules prohibit players and team employees from wagering — even legally — on baseball. They also ban betting on other sports with illegal or offshore bookmakers.
Ohtani has played in every Dodgers game since the story broke, and he is expected to be their designated hitter in most regular-season games this season while baseball’s investigation continues.
Ohtani says his legal team has alerted authorities to the theft by Mizuhara, although his team has repeatedly declined to say which authorities have been told, according to ESPN.
Ohtani’s new interpreter is Will Ireton, a longtime Dodgers employee and fluent Japanese speaker who has filled several jobs with the team in everything from game preparation and analytics to recruiting free-agent pitches. But Ireton won’t be Ohtani’s constant companion, and manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday he’s optimistic that Ohtani will become closer to his teammates without the “buffer” provided for years by Mizuhara.
MLB’s investigation of Ohtani’s role in the events could last weeks or months, and it’s unlikely to be publicized until it’s complete. No one outside of Ohtani’s inner circle knows what it will find or how serious any repercussions could be, and nobody outside the circle is making informed speculation about the process.
One major question looms: How did Mizuhara have enough access to Ohtani’s bank accounts to get the alleged millions without Ohtani knowing? Is the slugger overly trusting, or is he wildly negligent in managing his vast fortune, which includes years of lavish endorsement deals in addition to his baseball salaries? Why didn’t the team around him, including his agent, do more to prevent the possibility of the theft he claims?
Finally, where is Mizuhara? Anybody who knows isn’t saying. He was fired in South Korea and apparently didn’t travel home with the Dodgers. Japanese media have visited his home in Southern California to look for him. Although he was born in Japan, Mizuhara’s life is in the U.S. — but his life will never be the same.
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They say everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when you’re a member of the media and you share a truly awful take, you’re going to get called out for it.
That’s what happened when NHL analyst/podcast host Andrew Berkshire decided to post a video on X (formerly known as Twitter) mainly attributing Zach Hyman’s success to the fact that he grew up “insanely rich.”
The post came on the heels of the Oilers winger reaching the 50-goal milestone for the season and was rightly ripped apart by several notable colleagues, former players and fans in general.
In the video, which has been viewed more than 5.4 million times as of Wednesday morning, begins by stating that he has been in the sports media industry professionally since 2012 and that the industry “has to do a better job of telling truthful stories,” before discounting Hyman’s accomplishment.
“The story that’s being sold right now … is that, you know, if you work hard, if you stick to it, you can get there too, 31-year-old guy finally hits the 50-goal mark, harder worker, all that,” Berkshire said.
“Yeah, great, except you’re missing the part of the story where Zach Hyman grew up insanely rich.”
Berkshire, who works as an analyst and host with the Steve Dangle Podcast Network, then details how Hyman’s parents bought a league to “guarantee him playing time,” and that he did “exclusive training that only a rich person … could afford.”
“This is a person that has had every single possible advantage to get where they are today,” Berkshire continued, before also bringing up the fact that Hyman has been fortunate enough to play on teams and lines with Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid most of his career.
While Berkshire does state that Hyman is a hard worker and brings grit when he plays, he also discounts it almost immediately.
“Working hard, everybody works hard. You think every NHLer didn’t get there by working hard?” he asks. “Let’s not build this stupid narrative of ‘work hard, you’ll succeed.’ It’s just not true.
“There are people who’ve worked as hard as Zach Hyman their entire lives and never got a sniff of the American Hockey League, let alone the NHL because they didn’t have the advantages he had.”
Former Leafs defenceman turned NHL analyst Carlo Colaiacovo thought the whole take was ridiculous, posting the following: “Let me tell you something Andrew. You can’t buy your way to the NHL. You definitely can’t buy your way to having the career Hyman has had which includes scoring 50. Pretty ridiculous thing to say.”
Retired NHLer Bobby Ryan was one of the first to weigh in, calling the opinion “purely false.”
“As someone who has maybe lived on both ends of the ‘financial edge’ I can say this is just purely false. Who cares, he accomplished a feat not many do and to downplay the way it’s reported is just wrong. You show up, do the work, good things happen,” Ryan posted on X.
Jonathan Goodman, who claims he was Hyman’s personal trainer and tasked with getting the budding pro ready for the combine, had a glowing review of his former pupil’s work ethic.
“Yes, he had advantages. His family was wealthy and father obsessed with his success,” he said. “But the dude worked hard. Harder than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
But, perhaps another former NHLer, Jason Strudwick said it best, replying to the video by asking: “Did Hyman not sign an autograph for you one time?”
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