Culture
Babe Ruth's 'called shot' jersey could break auction records. Experts are mixed on its attribution
One day in March 2019, John Robinson, the owner of Resolution Photomatching, received a request from a private sports memorabilia collector in New Jersey. The man hoped that Robinson’s company — one of the leaders in the nascent field of using photographs to authenticate memorabilia — could confirm one of the most precious items in his collection.
The piece in question was a road Yankees jersey said to be worn by Babe Ruth in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, the day of the Bambino’s “called shot” against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
According to Robinson, the company conducted its standard three-round research process and came away with a verdict: Per their standards, it was not a match.
The story of Ruth’s “called shot” — and the decades of debate it inspired — remains one of the most famous moments in baseball history. But the tale of the jersey he may have been wearing that day is almost as fascinating. It has also been a subject of discussion for years, researched by jersey experts and amateur historians, and analyzed using cutting-edge methods. On Saturday, the jersey is expected to become the most expensive piece of game-worn sports memorabilia in history, fetching close to $20 million or more at a Heritage Auction. The previous record was held by a Michael Jordan 1998 NBA Finals jersey that sold for nearly $10.1 million in 2022.
But the decision by Resolution Photomatching — one of the leaders in the industry — has offered a sliver of doubt, creating a stir in collector’s circles and offering a window into the world of photomatching, where private companies play referee in the high-stakes world of memorabilia auctions, increasing an item’s value with a simple yes. In an interview last week, Chris Ivy, the director of sports auctions at Heritage, said it was “unfortunate that a company like Resolution would want to come out and say something like that.”
“We’re 100 percent confident that this jersey is an authentic 1932 Babe Ruth game-worn jersey,” he said, “and we’re 100 percent confident that it’s the jersey he was wearing in game three of the 1932 World Series for his ‘called shot.’”
Robinson, who founded Resolution in 2016, sees his company’s ruling as “upholding the standards of photomatching in general.” But multiple other photomatching companies — including MeiGray, an industry rival — have declared the jersey a match. The evidence — the photos, details and conclusions — is readily available at the item’s Heritage Auction listing. But for many in the industry, it raised questions about how much uncertainty is acceptable. How much doubt can be tolerated when the price tag might reach $30 million?
In the years after the 1932 World Series, the jersey Ruth wore during Game 3 disappeared. The era of instant authentication was decades away. The National Baseball Hall of Fame did not yet exist. The jersey — made with heavy gray flannel that weighed around seven ounces and featuring midnight navy felt that spelled out “New York” — was not an iconic piece of American history. It was just laundry.
Until one day in 1990, when a road Yankees jersey was found in Florida.
One thing that is not in dispute: Babe Ruth hit two home runs in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. The first came against Cubs starter Charlie Root in the first inning with two runners on. The second is perhaps the most famous in baseball history. It came in the top of the fifth with nobody on and the score tied 4-4. Root, who won 15 games that year, was still on the mound.
It had been a heated series. New York players were furious that Cubs infielder Mark Koenig — a former member of the Yankees’ “Murderer’s Row” — was voted to receive only a half-share of the World Series bonus. “We were givin’ them (the Cubs) hell about how cheap they were,” Ruth later told The Chicago Daily News.
What happened next is still a matter of some debate. When the count reached 2-2, the United Press wrote that “Ruth motioned to the Cubs’ dugout that he was going to hit one out of the park.” The New York Daily News, meanwhile, said that Ruth “merely held up two fingers to the Cubs’ dugout to show that there was still another pitch coming to him.”
In the only surviving footage from the game, Ruth can be seen motioning toward the Cubs’ dugout along the third-base line. “I didn’t point to any spot,” Ruth would say later, according to the Chicago Daily News. “But as long as I’d called the first two strikes on myself, I had to go through with it.”
Ruth, of course, understood the power of myth, and once the story had legs, he spent years repeating all manner of versions. The embellishments often came from teammates.
The Babe Ruth jersey up for auction. (Courtesy of Heritage Auctions)
“All of us players could see it was a helluva good story,” Bill Dickey, the Yankees catcher, told The Washington Post’s Shirley Povich, according to the columnist’s memoir, “All These Mornings.” “So we just made an agreement not to bother straightening out the facts.”
Ruth did hit a towering home run. The Yankees won the World Series in four games. What happened to his jersey, however, was an even bigger mystery. That is, until a well-known collector named Andy Imperato purchased an old road Yankees jersey from a woman in Florida around 1990. According to the official story, the woman’s father had received the jersey from Ruth after a round of golf. Imperato turned around and sold the jersey to another private collector for $150,000. (Imperato did not respond to multiple requests from The Athletic.)
In 1999, the jersey was consigned back to Grey Flannel Auctions — where Imperato was a co-founder — and advertised for auction as a 1930 Ruth road uniform. It sold for $284,000 and was eventually loaned to the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore. When the jersey returned to Grey Flannel again in 2005 the company elected to do additional research, which is how it became touted as the uniform Ruth was wearing on Oct. 1, 1932, the day of the “called shot.”
The change led to questions in the baseball community. Marc Okkonen, an amateur uniform maven turned author, studied the evidence around the jersey and concluded that it “had to have been worn by the Bambino when he connected with his famous ‘called shot.’” Others, including Michael Heffner, the president of Lelands, expressed measured skepticism. It was just as difficult to prove it wasn’t the jersey as to confirm it was. (“This memorabilia business is a racket,” Bob Feller, the famously crusty Cleveland ace, told The New York Daily News.) Nevertheless, the price soared. It sold for $940,000 to Richard C. Angrist, an ophthalmologist from New Jersey, who later loaned the jersey to the Yankees for a public display at the team’s museum.
Angrist had grown up a devoted Mets fan but diversified his interests when, in the 1980s, he started collecting baseballs signed by Hall of Famers. The Mets delivered nostalgia; the Yankees provided terrific ROI. By 2019, he had spent more than a decade trying to further corroborate the authenticity of the road Ruth jersey through various means. In the only public interview he has done on his collection — given to an ophthalmologist professional society — Angrist said he used “the services of a two-time Emmy award-winning producer, editor, director, and videographer” to help authenticate his items. (Angrist could not be reached for comment, and Heritage would not confirm the seller of the Ruth jersey.)
In 2008, Angrist paid to have Dave Grob, the policy director at Memorabilia Evaluation and Research Services, re-evaluate the jersey. After studying the evidence, Grob believed it was “most likely the one and the same.”
But the rise of photomatching — the practice of side-by-side analysis by experts — as an industry standard left him with another avenue for authentication. So he submitted the jersey to Resolution for the first time in 2019. Resolution had been founded by Robinson, who grew up in the Seattle area collecting game-used bats by Mariners players like Mark McLemore and Bret Boone. He had come across the concept of photomatching on internet message boards that concerned memorabilia, and when he graduated from the University of Washington in 2016, he saw a void in the emerging market.
The Resolution method consists of a three-round process that incorporates an 11-person team, more than 35 image databases and what Robinson calls a “comparison analysis process.” The approach relies on identifying characteristics on the item and the photos that are, in Robinson’s words, “definitively identical and definitively unique” — such as pinstripes, stitching patterns or stains. If the lettering alignment on a jersey is the same for each player on a team, then that cannot be deemed a “unique characteristic” and cannot be used to determine a match. The method eschews what Robinson terms a “process of elimination” analysis, where experts rule out jerseys.
Resolution has matched items going back to the early 20th century, including a Ruth bat and two Ty Cobb items. It scored one of its biggest marketing victories when it matched an aviator helmet that once belonged to Amelia Earhart. (It sold for $825,000 at a Heritage Auction.) The company charges one fee for its process and an additional premium if it finds a match, a point that Robinson emphasizes. When Resolution returned a “no match” verdict on the Ruth jersey in 2019, it was sacrificing additional revenue. And when Angrist submitted the item to Resolution again in 2021 and 2022, the company came back with the same ruling.
“We came to the same conclusion each time it was submitted after re-analyzing all of the characteristics each time,” Robinson said.
Ruth shakes hands with Lou Gehrig after hitting a home run in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. (Bettman/Getty Images)
It’s not uncommon for high-end collectors to receive a “no match” from the leading photomatch companies. In the case of the Ruth jersey, the decision would have remained an industry secret, but Angrist took the jersey to End-to-End, a new photomatching company started by Blake Panarisi, a 2017 graduate of San Diego State who had worked in data research and analytics. Panarisi sees the art as “a variation of image classification,” which he utilized in the business world. The company returned a match on the jersey, and eventually, so did MeiGray, a firm with a longer track record. (Earlier this year, Panarisi moved to Professional Sports Authenticator, which started a photomatching department and also matched the jersey.)
In an April letter to Angrist from Jim Montague, vice president of MeiGray Authenticated, and Stu Oxenhorn, the company’s director of vintage, the company said the “jersey was photo-matched to two Getty Images (photos) and a photo from The Chicago Daily News showing Ruth standing at the dugout with Lou Gehrig and Joe McCarthy. The photos were taken both prior and during Game 3 of the World Series on October 1, 1932, at Wrigley Field in Chicago.”
The discrepancy between the rulings stemmed from characteristics — in this case, the alignment of letters on the front in relation to buttons — that MeiGray and others used to make their calls. Resolution found that those characteristics were identical to those on other Yankee jerseys from that year, which meant that they were not “definitively unique.” Upon prompting from Heritage, Resolution said it provided “a brief Letter of Opinion detailing the characteristics in player images that showed some level of promise,” which is included on the listing page. Robinson said it was not the first time that another company came to a different conclusion after Resolution failed to match an item.
“We have often felt heavy pressure from some of our most powerful clients to stay silent in these situations,” Robinson said in a press release in late July. “But in this situation, we felt like we had to be open.”
Resolution’s history with the Ruth jersey first became public after reporter Darren Rovell inquired earlier this year. But Robinson said the company had planned to issue a statement about its earlier rulings, citing the importance of the item. The ensuing conversation over the jersey has underscored a larger argument about the standards of photomatching, which are determined by the companies themselves.
“It’s part of the process of photomatching,” Panarisi said. “It’s really an opinion-based service, when you look at it. But there are hard facts to back that opinion.”
Major League Baseball, which operates an authenticator program, does not use photomatching, a league official told The Athletic. It relies solely on on-site employees, who issue stickers to game-used balls, bats and jerseys. Robinson remains hopeful that the questions over the Ruth jersey will benefit the photomatching industry in the long run. As of Wednesday afternoon, the highest bid was at $18.12 million, including a buyer’s premium.
“We’ve heard from a lot of our top auction house clients and individual clients in the last couple weeks,” Robinson said. “They’ve been really supportive of our standards and openness, which has been very encouraging.”
Heritage Auctions has kept relying on Resolution, too. Another item for sale this month is a 1954 game-worn Hank Aaron jersey from his rookie season. The item was photomatched by Resolution and the Heritage listing includes the following disclaimer: “The most ironclad assurance of authenticity is delivered by the good folks at Resolution Photomatching.”
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(Top photo of Babe Ruth with Ping Bodie: Bettmann via Getty Images)
FAU football, which rose to national relevance under Lane Kiffin, has backslid over the last five seasons under Willie Taggart and the recently fired Tom Herman. The Owls’ new coaching search, though, might be the most interesting one of this year’s coaching carousel.
And it got a little more interesting this week, as Miami great Ray Lewis has made it known that he really wants to be the Owls’ next coach, a source briefed on Lewis’ thinking said Wednesday.
The 49-year-old Lewis, a 13-time Pro Bowl linebacker, has observed the model of what Deion Sanders has done transforming Colorado football in the past two years and is expected to present a plan to the Owls’ leadership in the next week for how he’d do something similar at FAU.
Lewis’ old buddy, fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Cris Carter, is the Owls’ executive director of player engagement and is expected to be a good resource for Lewis. A big hurdle for Lewis is, unlike Sanders, he doesn’t have any previous college coaching experience.
“Ray wants it bad,” the source briefed on Lewis’ thinking said. Lewis lives five minutes from the FAU campus. “He really wants it.”
Lewis, however, is not considered a serious candidate at this point, according to a source involved in the coaching search.
The frontrunner for the FAU vacancy, according to multiple sources involved in the search, is Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. The 31-year-old son of former Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis, who lives a half-hour from Boca Raton, is the play caller at a hot Rebels program and runs the nation’s No. 2 offense, putting up 7.58 yards per play.
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The younger Weis was Kiffin’s former offensive coordinator at FAU and knows the program well. He has a lot of support from some key FAU people, according to sources involved in the search. Kiffin has strong influence back at FAU and will push Weis for the job, those sources said. Financially, Weis — who makes $1.65 million at Ole Miss — might have to take a pay cut to go back to FAU but a source briefed on the matter said he doubted that would stop Weis from wanting this job.
Other expected candidates for the FAU job
Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner might make more sense for the Owls. The 43-year-old helped turn Tech from the ACC’s No. 11 offense to No. 3 last year. In 2022, the year before he was hired in Atlanta, Georgia Tech ranked last in the ACC in red zone offense. His offense is No. 2 in the ACC in red zone TD percentage.
Penn State assistant head coach/co-OC Ja’Juan Seider is a well-regarded coach with deep local ties and is expected to get some consideration. The 47-year-old Belle Glade, Fla., product was a star quarterback at Florida A&M and is well-connected around South Florida. Players really respond to him. He also has been a key assistant in Happy Valley, at Marshall and West Virginia.
UCF offensive coordinator Tim Harris Jr. has spent his whole coaching career in the state. He was a four-time NCAA All-American in track at Miami and then spent five years as a successful high school coach in South Florida at Miami’s Booker T. Washington High before spending seven seasons at FIU. Since then, he’s coached at Miami and UCF, where he has produced the Big 12’s most prolific offense at 6.76 yards per play.
UNLV offensive coordinator Brennan Marion, a former Miami Dolphins wideout who lived in Boynton Beach, not far from the Owls’ campus, might be an intriguing option. He has proven to be a terrific offensive coordinator in two stops at the FCS level before an excellent two-season run of transforming the Rebels into a winning program. Last year he led the Rebels to No. 6 in the country in third down offense and No. 8 in red zone offense despite his starting QB going down early and having to turn to an unproven freshman in Jayden Maiava, who went on to win Mountain West Freshman of the Year honors. This year, the Rebels, with Maiava having left for USC, are No. 6 in the nation in scoring at 39.9 points per game.
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FSU defensive backs coach Pat Surtain could be in play at his alma mater Southern Miss, but he also has strong ties here. He played a decade in the NFL before becoming a top high school coach in South Florida. The 48-year-old spent one season with the Miami Dolphins as an NFL assistant before joining FSU’s staff in 2023.
Georgia assistant head coach Todd Hartley, 39, spent three years coaching in South Florida on the Canes’ staff. He is someone Kirby Smart has leaned on in elevating the program since Hartley’s return to Athens in 2019. Southern Miss also has a lot of interest in Hartley for its head coaching vacancy.
Duke defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke, a Manny Diaz protege who was on the staff at Miami, is a rising star at defensive coordinator. He’s had a strong debut season in Durham and also could be in play.
Miami defensive ends coach Jason Taylor. The Pro Football Hall of Famer, who had been a high school assistant for five seasons at powerhouse St. Thomas Aquinas, is a legendary figure around South Florida. In 2007, Taylor won the NFL’s prestigious Walter Payton Man of the Year honors and has been an excellent addition to the Canes staff the past two seasons.
— Chris Vannini contributed to this report
Required reading
(Photo: Rob Carr / Getty Images)
SEATTLE — When the SuperSonics left here in 2008, Brent Barry felt it in his gut. There was an emptiness, a sadness so pronounced that he was moved to put pen to paper.
At the time, Barry was preparing for training camp with the San Antonio Spurs, but part of his heart was still in Seattle, a bond forged through his five seasons as a wing with the Sonics. Now the team was no more thanks to an abrupt transaction that uprooted the franchise to Oklahoma City.
Barry’s mind was numbed with a blur of memories he captured in his poem, “When It Rains.”
“… and here I sit in my office space and think of my career
And what to say to my two sons, did the team just disappear?
I played in KeyArena, I live on Queen Anne Hill
I played pinball at Shorty’s after games, and ate burgers at both Red Mills
I would have some chowder down at Dukes, and watch Sea Planes take their flight
And find myself in Fremont if I needed a beer that night
I saw Star Wars at Cinerama, tossed a pitch at Safeco Field,
Drove all the way to Bellingham to see Pearl Jam and Yield …”
Sixteen years later, a collection of Sonics jerseys extends wall-to-wall inside the Simply Seattle store downtown. From Detlef Schrempf to Gary Payton to Ray Allen to Kevin Durant, the jerseys of Sonics legends are still a hot commodity.
“We get people from New Zealand, London, from all over,” store manager Kate Wansley said. “The Sonics are a big thing, and now everyone is excited about what could happen.”
What could happen has many in this Northwest metropolis tense with anticipation. In September, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league would address NBA expansion at some point this season, which prompted an already simmering movement in Seattle to bubble over.
Since 2008, Seattle has been waiting, expecting a franchise to return. And now, with overtures of the NBA’s first expansion since 2004, there is an overriding sentiment that Seattle is due.
“There’s just too much karma that says put a team back in Seattle,” says George Karl, who coached the Sonics from 1992-98, leading them to an NBA Finals appearance in 1996. “I don’t know more than anybody else, but my feeling is … that it can happen. It should happen.”
Karl is sipping iced tea and soaking in a picturesque view of Seattle’s Elliott Bay on a sun-splashed Thursday. He lives in Denver but is in town to help promote, support and encourage Seattle’s candidacy should Silver and the NBA Board of Governors decide to proceed with expansion.
As the Seahawks played host to the San Francisco 49ers at Lumen Field, Karl and former Sonics players Dale Ellis and Rashard Lewis attended a social event on the 75th floor of the Columbia Tower that included Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell, Seattle Sports Commission president and CEO Beth Knox and several business leaders.
“It’s a lot of anticipation; I feel like we are hanging on the edge of our seats, waiting,” Knox said. “We are ready.”
The event was important enough for Harrell that he postponed plans for his 66th birthday (he was quick to note he shared his birthday with Sonics legend Gus Williams) so he could spread what he calls “the buzz” about Seattle’s viability for expansion.
“We need to make sure the decision-makers — the NBA commissioner, the administration and co-owners — realize this is a very attractive market, and we have the fan base,” Harrell said. “They sort of know it, but this was 2008 when we lost the team, and we have a whole new generation of people in town, so we need to assure them we have that kind of spirit.”
Climate Pledge Arena has hosted NBA exhibition games each of the last two seasons. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
In September, Silver tempered expectations when he said the league “is not quite ready” to discuss expansion before adding that eventually it will be broached. “What we’ve told interested parties is: ‘Thank you for your interest, we will get back to you,’ ” Silver said. “That’s certainly the case in Seattle.”
Still, hopes haven’t been this high here since 2013, when a bid to relocate the Sacramento Kings to Seattle reached a vote of NBA governors but was turned down 22-8 after Sacramento came up with new ownership.
Ellis, who played for seven NBA teams, said the city’s diversity, food and fan base kept him in Seattle for 20 years after his career ended. The 41-year history of the franchise, which includes the 1979 NBA title, is why he believes so passionately that the league should return. It’s why he flew to Seattle to support Thursday’s movement, a movement that he says stands more than a chance of landing a return of the Sonics.
“Chance? No, it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen,” Ellis said. “They just haven’t made the announcement yet. There will be two franchises, one here in Seattle, and one in Las Vegas.”
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Like so many former Sonics players and coaches, Barry felt he didn’t just play in Seattle, he felt he was part of Seattle. So losing the Sonics felt like losing part of himself.
It is that player-community connection that has made this movement to revive the Sonics unique. Other cities have lost NBA franchises — Vancouver, San Diego, Kansas City — but none have had former players and coaches campaigning for a return like Seattle.
Lewis, who played his first nine NBA seasons with the Sonics, flew into Seattle from Houston motivated by two factors: the history and the fans.
“Seattle has a part of me; I became a man here,” Lewis said. “And the fans … I still remember Big Lo (super fan Lorin Sandretzky), and fans pulling up to the airport when we arrived. There’s history, so much history here, and that’s why they have to have a team here.”
The 1990s in particular were a magical time for Seattle. Microsoft was booming. Bands from Seattle — Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden — were leading the grunge explosion. “Singles” and “Sleepless in Seattle” hit movie screens. Ken Griffey Jr. was a superstar. And Payton, Kemp and the fiery Karl were headlining SportsCenter highlights.
“It all had this mystical essence to it,” Barry said. “Because nobody wanted to go to the Pacific Northwest. It was so far away, the weather was bad … but there was a lot of cool stuff happening in and around that place. So it had this mystical quality to it.”
Added Karl: “The city was blossoming, the music was blossoming, the city was growing, the Mariners were good … everything was just in rhythm. There was a rhythm that Seattle was cool. Pearl Jam, Starbucks, (Microsoft’s Steve) Ballmer … and (the Sonics) were good.
“Unfortunately, Michael (Jordan) was in the league.”
The electricity between the Sonics and the Seattle scene made for lasting bonds. For fans and the players.
“Spilling out from KeyArena after a game meant that you were in the bloodstream of the city,” said Barry, now an assistant coach with Phoenix. “You got out of the arena and you could walk across the street to Lazy J’s (Jalisco’s) and do karaoke with a bunch of fans who were just at the game. You could go to First Street and hop into a steakhouse and have a meal with fans who just left the game.
“To lose all that … it was a gut punch to a city that loved basketball, loved its team and had a relationship with the team that was unique.”
Portland Trail Blazers play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro, who announced Sonics games for 22 years, said fans still ask him regularly if and when the Sonics will return, which is attributed to the connection formed during those memorable years in the 1990s.
“You had this great amalgam of cutting-edge technology with the internet coming to life and this great music scene and the Sonics bursting at the seams,” Calabro said. “And it all came together on winter nights at The Barn, as we used to call KeyArena. Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam bassist) was down in the baseline seats all the time, Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam singer) was around, Screaming Trees … all these bands would show up.
“And when George Karl took over, it just lit a fire. There were so many great characters … and they were all involved with the community. You could feel them, touch them, see them at the clubs, hang with them. It was special.”
Wansley, the store manager who hangs the Sonics jerseys from wall to wall, is a lifelong Seattle resident. She said her deepest bonds are with the Sonics because she experienced them in everyday life. She saw Nate McMillan and Sam Perkins at Bellevue Square, Kemp and Gary in the store, Dana Barros here, Schrempf there.
“It was something that just connects you to them,” Wansley said. “You would go to the game, then see them out … and I don’t know how it is in other cities, but they were just out in the community so much. It would be like, ‘Hey, I just saw you play …’ ”
Seattle has been down this road of anticipation before. The 2013 bid to relocate the Kings to Seattle was so close to happening — and so ugly in its particulars — that its downfall left some scars.
But the overall sentiment today is that Seattle is well positioned, if not a leader when expansion becomes a reality. Much of the optimism stems from Climate Pledge Arena, the refurbished KeyArena, which now houses the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.
“There literally hasn’t been a week where I haven’t been asked about the Sonics or the NBA or how we got screwed,” said Bob Whitsitt, who was president and general manager of the Sonics from 1986-94. “And for years, I said to them — right or wrong — that Seattle was not in a position to even be considered for a team until they have an NBA-ready facility.
“And that giant hurdle has now been cleared with Climate Pledge Arena. As a city, we know we have a facility that works. That doesn’t guarantee you a team, but you can be guaranteed not to get a team by not having a facility. So, the biggest thing has been taken off the board.”
Whitsitt still lives in Seattle and said he is encouraged by a potential ownership group led by Kraken owners David Bonderman and his daughter, Samantha Holloway. Bonderman also is a minority owner of the Boston Celtics.
“My support is behind them,” Whitsitt said. “They are the right ones. They are the perfect people to lead the thing. And the Seattle market is not only great, it is ready.”
Last month, more than 18,000 sold out the LA Clippers and Trail Blazers exhibition game at Climate Pledge Arena, which more than caught the eye of coaches Chauncey Billups of the Blazers and Tyronn Lue of the Clippers.
“I mean, everybody talks about it,” Billups said. “This is obviously a desired city, a market that people love … it makes the most sense. It’s already been very successful, the market has, so it makes a lot of sense. We just have to wait on it.”
Added Lue: “It’s a great environment, a great place to play … they’ve done a great job with this arena.”
Brian Robinson, a Seattle real estate investor, heads Seattle NBA Fans, the group that hosted the event with Karl, Lewis, Ellis and the mayor. He has 250 community leaders and 50 CEOs behind his movement. He also headed a 2010 group that tried to find an arena solution to lure the Sonics back. He said then, it was difficult to get business leaders and companies behind him.
“Now, no one ever says no,” said Robinson, 51. “People see the change in tone from the commissioner and they see a path. Everyone wants to be a part of it. I just feel like the people of Seattle are over the negativity and they are ready to have this journey be something meaningful.”
Mayor Harrell and Knox, the CEO of the Seattle Sports Commission, are envisioning a future where Sonics players become role models and inspire youth to not only participate in basketball, but dream. Seattle has a long history of producing NBA talent, including Brandon Roy, Jason Terry, Jamal Crawford, Paolo Banchero and Dejounte Murray. Barry thinks the Sonics can help inspire others.
“How do you dream bigger if you don’t see it in front of you?” Barry asked. “I was thinking if I never went to Golden State games as a kid to watch Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond, how much of my devotion and love of the game would have been depleted by not having the touch, the autograph, the memories? The impact can’t be overstated.
“There’s almost 20 years of kids in Seattle who never saw one game in their city of LeBron James, one of the greatest players who ever played. Twenty years of kids, and parents for that matter, who haven’t had that community, that environment, that experience. It hurts.”
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Last month, Barry thought back to the day when he penned the “When It Rains” poem. He rifled through his files and found it.
“Even reading it again, I was like, ‘Man, I still feel this way. It sucks,” Barry said. “I was sad. Legitimately sad. But right now, I don’t think there has ever been more sentiment or momentum than right now. And I hope it’s not another carrot in front of the rabbit situation. I hope this momentum is true and honest and there is potential for the green and gold to be back there.”
It was the same thought he had 16 years ago, in San Antonio as he closed his poem.
“… A chapter left unwritten, a generation with a gap,
Forty-one years of NBA action and now no one can clap
But here is a silver lining … above every cloud’s a sun
And the possibility is something we hold on to even if slim to none
For faith and hope and love are tenants
Of the days as one grows old
And for all at stake, those clouds will break
And we will see the green and gold.”
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Steph Chambers, Tim DeFrisco, Otto Greule Jr, Andy Hayt, Jeff Reinking, Terrence Vaccaro / Getty Images)
There doesn’t have to be a milestone moment or viral play for an NHL player’s phone to be flooded with notifications in the wake of a game. Maybe there’s a text from a parent, a reminder from a partner, a few messages of congratulations or condolences. Not to mention the usual spate of emails and push alerts that inevitably pile up when you’ve been away from your phone for a few hours.
But these days, as sports betting becomes more and more prevalent in the hockey world, there’s a new app jockeying for space atop players’ home screens.
“I’ve been sent Venmo requests before,” one NHL player surveyed in The Athletic’s player poll said. “Like, ‘Hey, I bet on you guys to win and you blew it. So give me back my 50 bucks.’”
That player said he found it “comical.”
“I think I paid one guy back once,” he said with a laugh. “Sent him like 20 bucks.”
Of course, the Internet being what it is, it’s not always terribly funny. Almost one-third of the 161 players polled said they’ve been getting more harassing messages from fans since sports betting has become legal in more states.
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“Oh, almost every day,” one goaltender said. “Honestly, I’d say 75 percent of them are them being mad about something. ‘How did you let in that late goal? I had the under. Thanks a lot. You f—ing suck.’ Things like that constantly. I feel like, as a goalie, we’re a little bit more exposed to it, too.”
“Together with a couple death threats and a few other things,” another player added.
Perhaps the biggest revelation from The Athletic’s anonymous player poll was how common the Venmo requests are.
“They’re demands, not requests,” one player clarified. “’You owe me $200 because you were on the ice when …’ and it’s insane. It’s really bad when you play against Toronto because it seems like everybody is betting on Leafs games. But that’s Toronto for you.”
Apparently, NHL players need to do a better job of masking their identities on cash apps.
“Yeah, that’s real,” another player said. “When you ruin a guy’s parlay or something? Hundred percent, that’s real. I got one last game where some guy bet on my number of shots or something and then he’s DM’ing me: ‘You f—ed my parlay!’ Pardon my language, but that’s what he said.”
“Yeah, 100 percent,” said another player. “I’ve gotten plenty of them show up in my inbox before. Like I kept them from hitting some parlay or something or, ‘Here’s my Venmo. Send me $100.’”
“Oh, yeah,” one player said. “People on social media are way crazier now because they have more skin in the game. I think that’s for all sports.”
“I get messages all the time, and these are people probably betting $1.50,” said another.
Some such requests are obvious gags. But other messages carry a more sinister tone.
“Not here, but to be honest, mostly in Russia,” one player said. “Like it’s getting crazy. You’re up 2-0 and lose, you get messages, like, ‘You f—ing asshole, I’m gonna f—ing kill you.’”
One player said he gets at least one or two such messages every day from gamblers. But two-thirds of the players who responded said they don’t get any. It could depend on how high-profile a player is. Not a lot of fans are betting on fourth-liners and third-pairing defensemen. As one player joked, “I don’t think I’m the betting favorite.”
Unsurprisingly, many players have done their best to unplug entirely. That also could explain the two-thirds who said they don’t get such messages.
“I used to know that I got harassing messages,” one player said. “Now I don’t know. Who would read these f—ing idiots? I don’t anymore.”
“That’s why I turned everything off,” another said. “You get some scary messages out there.”
Another: “Good thing I’m not on social media.”
Another: “No one can find me, so I don’t know.”
Death threats and profanity-laced tirades aside, sometimes the players feel the bettors’ pain.
“Sometimes they bet on me to score and I don’t and they want me to give them money,” one player said. “I’m like, ‘I want to score, too!’”
(Graphic: Meech Robinson / The Athletic, with photos from Gary A. Vasquez, Katherine Gawlik and Andre Ringuette / Getty Images)
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