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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.
Boston’s Chris Sale, out for the season following Tommy John surgery, thought about the prospect of his teammates sequestered in the Phoenix area for an extended period if Major League Baseball and its players adopt an all-Arizona start to the season.
“I don’t know if I could look at my kids just through a screen for four or five months. Same thing goes with my wife,” the pitcher said Tuesday. “That’s a long time. But people have done it in harsh scenarios, I guess. I think there’s a lot of figuring out to do.”
Putting all 30 teams in the Phoenix area this season and playing in empty ballparks was among the ideas discussed Monday during a call among five top officials from MLB and the players’ association that was led by Commissioner Rob Manfred, people familiar with the discussion told The Associated Press. They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because no details were announced.
With its season delayed due to the new coronavirus, both sides are searching for ways to get under way. Kansas City manager Mike Matheny would feel privileged to help the country return to a semblance of normalcy and provide an escape for fans.
“Just jump in and trust that we may not know when we’ll reconnect with our families, and trust that when health officials decide it’s OK we’ll be able to do that,” Matheny said. “But in the meantime, do something that would really help the healing process.”Baseball officials intend to study which options may be viable economically and would gain necessary approvals.
The league said it has not yet sought approval of any plan from federal, state and local officials, or from the players’ association.
“MLB has been actively considering numerous contingency plans that would allow play to commence once the public health situation has improved to the point that it is safe to do so,” the commissioner’s office said in a statement. “While we have discussed the idea of staging games at one location as one potential option, we have not settled on that option or developed a detailed plan.”
Arizona has 10 spring training ballparks plus the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chase Field all within about 50 miles. Phoenix Municipal Stadium — Oakland’s old spring training base and now Arizona State’s stadium — is an option along with Grand Canyon’s Brazell Field.
Chase Field could host several games each day following its switch to an artificial surface ahead of the 2019 season.
“We would not have been able to do it with grass, but now with the synthetic grass, absolutely,” Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall said.
Baseball’s look would be different in empty ballparks. Players from the Orioles and the Chicago White Sox still recall playing in a deserted Camden Yards in 2015 when civil unrest caused a closed-doors game. The game sped along in 2 hours, 3 minutes.
“It was a weird feeling having nobody in the stands,” said Sale, a member of those White Sox. “But sometimes you got to adapt. Sometimes you got to do some things for the greater good of what’s going on around you.”
That was a one-off. This would be every day, pretty much 15 games a day.
“My sense is that it divorces the game from the fans except via television, and that’s a mistake,” former Commissioner Fay Vincent said. “I don’t think a televised game without an audience and without fan reaction is a great idea. I think it’s born in desperation. I’m a traditionalist and a bit of a romantic. I think we ought to wait until we can present the game in its best light.”
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego maintained player and public health would be the top priorities.
“There is not a person on the planet who doesn’t want to get back to a time and place marked by familiarity, and there is nothing more familiar than sports, especially the great American pastime of baseball,” she said in a statement.
“All of our lives post-COVID-19 will look different. At the city we value flexibility and innovation and are willing to work with the many different sports franchises that call Phoenix home, but only if public health leads every single discussion.”
Former manager Jim Leyland thinks the game will return to the field at some point this year.
“I do applaud people that are trying to be creative and come up with different ideas,” he said. “At the end of the day, they’ll come up with some type of a wonderful package. It’s just a matter of when that’s going to be allowed.”
Starting the season in Arizona presents plenty of complications:
SOME LIKE IT HOT
Temperatures average a high of 105 in Phoenix in June and the thermometer has just started to dip at 5 p.m., when presumably many games would start in order to be in prime time on the East Coast. Chase Field’s retractable roof and air conditioning could make it a site of doubleheaders and even tripleheaders.
EXPANDED ROSTERS
Given the heat and the compacted schedule, active rosters could be expanded from 26. With teams isolated and the status of minor leagues uncertain, extra players also could be kept in the group.
MONEY MATTERS
How much would it cost to put teams and the personnel that travel with them in hotels for double the usual time (no true home games, except for the D-Backs)? There presumably would be savings with not needing charter flights for road trips, but what percentage of that cost was committed in advance? In addition, the absence of ticket revenue would be damaging for many teams. Would player salaries be cut? Who gets to sell stadium signage?
HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE
Would the 15 spring training tenant teams in Arizona always get the home clubhouses? Would they have an advantage from playing in the ballparks during the exhibition season?
THE TUBE
Playing in empty ballparks would keep the money flowing from regional sports networks and the national television contracts with Fox, ESPN and Turner. There might even be expanded national broadcasts.
TESTING
Players, team staff and ballpark, transportation and hotel personnel would have to be tested frequently for coronavirus.
ISOLATION
What is the rule if a player’s wife is giving birth, or if he has a sick parent, spouse or child? Would he be allowed to leave? And if so, would he be quarantined upon his return?
ROBOTS
Would the automatic ball/strike system being tested in the minors replace home plate umpires calling pitches, allowing them to keep social distance from batters and catchers?
REPLAY
Spring training ballparks are not wired for video review. Would it be worth the cost or would MLB go back to the pre-2008 human eye standard?
SCHEDULES
With teams in the same area, would three- and four-game series be standard or would MLB mix it up? During spring training, teams usually switch opponents on a daily basis.
Blum reported from New York, Brandt from Phoenix.
AP Sports Writers Kyle Hightower and Dave Skretta contributed to this report.
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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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