Culture

Does lightning-rod umpire Angel Hernandez deserve his villainous reputation?

Published

2 months ago

May 25, 2024

Standing at second base, Adam Rosales knew. So did the fans watching on TV and the ticket holders in the left-field bleachers. They knew what crew chief umpire Angel Hernandez should have known.

This was May 8, 2013, the game in which Hernandez became baseball’s most notorious umpire. He’d made many notable calls before this, and he’s certainly had plenty since. But this particular miss did more than any other to establish the current prevailing narrative: That he’s simply bad at his job.

Rosales, a light-hitting journeyman infielder for the A’s, did the improbable, crushing a game-tying solo homer with two outs in the ninth in Cleveland. The ball clearly ricocheted off a barrier above the yellow line. But it was ruled in play. The homer was obvious to anyone who watched a replay.

“All of my teammates were saying, ‘Homer, homer!’” Rosales recently recalled. “And then (manager) Bob Melvin’s reaction was pretty telling. The call was made. Obviously it was big.”

Back in 2013, there was no calling a crew in a downtown New York bunker for an official ruling. The umpires, led by Hernandez, huddled, and then exited the field to look for themselves.

After a few minutes, Hernandez emerged. He pointed toward second base. Rosales, befuddled, stayed where he was. The A’s never scored the tying run.

That moment illustrates the two viewpoints out there about Angel Hernandez, the game’s most polarizing and controversial umpire.

If you ask Hernandez, or those close to him, they’ll point to the cheap and small replay screens that rendered reviews nearly worthless. Plus, there were other umpires in the review — why didn’t they correct it? In this scenario, it was just another chapter in this misunderstood man’s career.

Then there’s the other perspective: This was obviously a home run, critical to the game, and as crew chief, he should have seen it. Hernandez, even in 2013, had a history of controversy. He had earned no benefit of the doubt. MLB itself said in a court filing years later, during Hernandez’s racial discrimination lawsuit against the league, that this incident, and Hernandez’s inability to move past it, prevented him from getting World Series assignments.

In this scenario, Hernandez only reinforced the negative perception of him held by many around the sport.

He has brought much of it on himself over his long career. Like the time he threw the hat of then-Dodgers first base coach Mariano Duncan into the stands following an argument in 2006. Or, in 2001, when he stared down ex-Chicago Bears football player Steve McMichael at a Cubs game after McMichael used the seventh-inning stretch pulpit to criticize Hernandez.

On their own, these avoidable incidents would be forgotten like the thousands of other ejections or calls that have come and gone. But together, they paint a portrait of an umpire who’s played a major role in establishing his own villainous reputation.

“I think he’s stuck in, like, a time warp, you know,” Mets broadcaster and former pitcher Ron Darling told The New York Times last year. “He’s stuck being authoritarian in a game that rarely demands it anymore.”

“Angel is bad,” said then-Rangers manager Ron Washington in 2011. “That’s all there is to it. … I’m gonna get fined for what I told Angel. And they might add to it because of what I said about Angel. But, hey, the truth is the truth.”

“I don’t understand why he’s doing these games,” former Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia said in 2018 after Hernandez had three calls overturned in one postseason game “…He’s always bad. He’s a bad umpire.”

“He needs to find another job,” four-time All-Star Ian Kinsler said in August of 2017, “he really does.”

Those who know Hernandez, and have worked with him, tend to love him. They say he’s genuine, that he checks up on his friends and sends some of them daily religious verses. That he cares about calling the game right, and wishes the vitriolic criticism would dissipate. They point to data that indicates Hernandez is not as bad as his reputation suggests.

Or at the very least, they view him in a more nuanced light than the meme that he’s become.

“Managers and umpires are alike,” said soon-to-be Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland. “You can get out of character a bit when you have a tough situation on the field. I think we all get out of character a little bit. But I’ve always gotten along fine with Angel.”

But those who only know his calls see an ump with a large and inconsistent strike zone. Someone who makes the game about him. Someone who simply gets calls wrong at far too high a clip.

With Hernandez, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Major League Baseball declined an interview request for Hernandez, and declined to comment for this article.

“Anybody that says he’s the worst umpire in baseball doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” said Joe West, who has umpired more games than anyone ever, and has himself drawn plenty of criticism over the years.

“He does his job the right way. Does he make mistakes? Yes. But we all do. We’re not perfect. You’re judging him on every pitch. And the scrutiny on him is not fair.”

Of course, even West understands that he might not be the best person to make Hernandez’s case. “As soon as you write that Joe West says he’s a good umpire,” he said, “you’re going to get all kinds of heat.”

Angel Hernandez is perhaps the best-known umpire in Major League Baseball — and the most criticized. (Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins/Getty Images)

Hernandez’s family moved from Cuba to Florida when he was 14 months old in the early 1960s. His late father, Angel Hernandez Sr., ran a Little League in Hialeah. At 14 years old, the younger Hernandez played baseball in the Hialeah Koury League, and umpired others when his games finished. At his father’s urging, Hernandez went on to the Bill Kinnamon Umpiring School, where he was the youngest of 134 students. He finished first in the class.

When he was 20 years old, Hernandez was living out of a suitcase, making $900 a month as he traveled up and down the Florida State League. It was a grind. Each night, he’d ump another game alongside his partner, Joe Loughran.

The two drove in Loughran’s ’79 Datsun. They shared modest meals and rooms at Ramada Inns. They’d sit by the pool together.

“There was a real camaraderie there, which was a lucky thing because that’s not always the case,” Loughran said. “Maybe you have a partner who isn’t as friendly or compatible, but that was not an issue.”

Hernandez did this for more than a decade. He drove up to 30,000 miles each season. He worked winter jobs in construction and security and even had a stint as a disc jockey. He didn’t come from money and didn’t have many fallback options.

“He was very genuine through and through,” said Loughran, who soon left the profession. “(He) knew how to conduct himself, which is half of what it takes.”

But even then, Hernandez umpired with a flair that invited blowback. Rex Hudler, now a Royals broadcaster, has told a story about Hernandez ejecting nearly half his team. Players had been chirping at Hernandez, and after he issued a warning to the dugout, they put athletic tape over their mouths to mock him. Hernandez tossed the whole group.

By the time Hernandez was calling Double-A games across the Deep South, he was accustomed to vitriol from fans, including for reasons that had nothing to do with baseball.

“I remember my name over the public address, and the shots fans would take. ‘Green card.’ ‘Banana Boat,” Hernandez said in a Miami Herald article. “Those were small hick towns. North Carolina. Alabama. These were not good places to be an umpire named Angel Hernandez.”

In 1991, he finally got an MLB opportunity. This was his dream, and as Loughran said, he achieved it on “blood and guts.” But once he got to the majors, it didn’t take long for controversy to follow.

Take the July 1998 game when a red-faced Bobby Valentine, then the Mets manager, ran out of the dugout to scream at Hernandez.

Valentine claims he knew before the game even started on this July 1998 afternoon that Hernandez would have a big zone. He said he had been told that Hernandez had to catch a flight later that day — the final game before the All-Star break. Valentine’s message to his team that day was to swing, because Hernandez would look for any reason to call you out.

“He sure as heck doesn’t want to miss the plane,” Valentine recalled recently. “I’m kind of feeling for him in the dugout. You miss the flight, and have to spend a night in Atlanta. Probably miss a vacation.”

As luck would have it, the game went extras, the Mets battling the division-rival Braves in the 11th inning. Michael Tucker tagged up on a fly ball to left. The ball went to Mike Piazza at the plate, and Tucker was very clearly out.

That is, to everyone except Hernandez, who called him safe to end the game.

Valentine acknowledges now that he likes Hernandez as a person. Most of their interactions have been friendly. On that day, Valentine let Hernandez hear it.

“He didn’t mind telling you, ‘take a f—ing hike. Get out of my face,’ that type of thing,” Valentine said. “Where other guys might stand there and take it until you’re out of breath. He didn’t mind adding color to the situation.”

It’s not a coincidence that Hernandez often finds himself at the center of it all. He seems to invite it.

He infamously had a back-and-forth with Bryce Harper last season after Hernandez said the MVP went around on what was clearly a check swing.

Harper was incensed. But Hernandez appeared to respond by telling him, “You’ll see” — a cocky retort when the video would later show that it was, in fact, Hernandez who was wrong.

“It’s just bad. Just all around,” Harper later told the local media. “Angel in the middle of something again. Every year. It’s the same story. Same thing.”

In 2020, there was a similar check swing controversy. Hernandez ruled that Yankees first baseman Mike Ford went around. Then he called him out on strikes on a pitch inside.

Even in the messiest arguments with umpires, the tone and tenor rarely get personal. But Hernandez seems to engender a different type of fight.

“That’s f—ing bull—-,” then-Yankees third-base coach Phil Nevin yelled. “We all know you don’t want to be here anyway.”

Plenty of fans might understand why Nevin would feel that way. When Hernandez is behind the plate, it can seem that anything might be a strike.

Early this season, Wyatt Langford watched three consecutive J.P. France pitches land well off the outside corner — deep into the lefty batter’s box. None of the pitches to the Rangers rookie resembled a strike.

“You have got to be kidding me,” said Dave Raymond, the incensed Texas broadcaster. “What in the world?”

When it comes to egregious calls, it feels as though Hernandez is the biggest culprit. But is he the game’s worst umpire? The answer to that, statistically, is no.

According to Dylan Yep, who founded and runs Umpire Auditor since 2014, he’s ranked as the 60th to 70th best umpire, out of 85-to-90, in any given season.

“It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and there’s also a lot of confirmation bias,” Yep said. “When he does make a mistake, everyone is immediately tweeting about it. Everybody is tagging me. If I’m not tweeting something about it, there are a dozen other baseball accounts that will.

“Every single thing he does is scrutinized and then spread across the internet in a matter of 30 seconds.”

Even on April 12, the night he called Langford out on strikes, two other umpires had less accurate games behind the plate. Only Hernandez became a laughingstock on social media.

Yep finds Hernandez’s performances to be almost inexplicable. He’ll call a mostly normal game, Yep said, with the exception of one or two notably odd decisions — which inevitably draw attention his way.

“He consistently ends up in incredibly odd scenarios,” Yep said, “and he seems to make incorrect calls in bizarre scenarios.”

Umpire Angel Hernandez also called strikes on 7 pitches that missed by 3+ inches.
This was the most in a game since 2020. https://t.co/2LvDoJaLio pic.twitter.com/jSJqkpYIbH
Advertisement

— Umpire Auditor (@UmpireAuditor) April 13, 2024

Many of his colleagues have come to his defense over the years. After Kinsler made those aforementioned comments in 2017, umpires across the game wore white wristbands as a show of solidarity against the league’s decision not to suspend him.

Longtime umpire Ted Barrett recently posted a heartfelt defense of Hernandez on Facebook.

“He is one of the kindest men I have ever known,” Barrett wrote. “His love for his friends is immense, his love for his family is even greater. … His mistakes are magnified and sent out to the world, but his kind deeds are done in private.”

A confluence of factors have put umpires in a greater spotlight. Replay reviews overturning calls. Strike zone graphics on every broadcast. Independent umpire scorecards on social media, which Hernandez’s defenders contend are not fully accurate.

It’s all contributed, they argue, to Hernandez being the face of bad umpiring, even if it’s not deserved.

“He’s very passionate about the job, and very passionate about doing what’s right, frankly,” longtime umpire Dale Scott said. “That’s not true — the perception that he doesn’t care. That just doesn’t resonate with me.”

Still, Hernandez generally does not interact well in arguments. And his actions, including quick or haphazard ejections, don’t de-escalate those situations.

These interactions were likely a significant reason Hernandez lost the lawsuit that he filed against MLB in 2017. He alleged that he was passed over for a crew chief position and desirable postseason assignments because of his race.

The basis for the suit was a belief that MLB’s executive VP for baseball operations Joe Torre had a vendetta against Hernandez. The suit also pointed to a lack of diversity in crew chief positions, and attorneys cited damaging deposition testimony from MLB director of umpiring Randy Marsh, who spoke about recruiting minority umpires to the profession. “The problem is, yeah, they want the job,” Marsh said, “but they want to be in the big leagues tomorrow, and they don’t want to go through all of that.”

MLB contended in its response that “Hernandez has been quick to eject managers, which inflames on-field tensions, rather than issue warnings that potentially could defuse those situations. Hernandez has also failed to communicate with other umpires on his crew, which has resulted in confusion on the field and unnecessary game delays.”

The league also said his internal evaluations consistently said he was “attempting to put himself in the spotlight.”

Essentially, MLB contended that Hernandez wasn’t equipped to handle a promotion — and because of that, and only that, he wasn’t promoted. A United States district judge agreed and granted a summary judgment in MLB’s favor.

Hernandez’s lawyer, Kevin Murphy, says the lawsuit still led to positive developments in the commissioner’s office. “That’s another thing that Angel can keep in his heart,” Murphy said. “The changes, not only with getting more opportunities for minority umpires. But he changed the commissioner’s office. Nobody’s going to give him credit for that.”

Despite its criticism of Hernandez, the league has almost no recourse to fire him, or any other umpire it feels is underperforming. The union is powerful. There are mechanisms in place, such as improvement courses, which can be required to help address deficiencies.

Even Hernandez’s performance reviews, though, paint a conflicting portrait. From 2002 to 2010, according to court documents, Hernandez received “meets standard” or “exceeds standard” ratings in all components of his performance evaluations from the league. From 2011-16, Hernandez received only one “does not meet” rating.

His 2016 year-end evaluation, however, did hint at the oddities that can accompany Hernandez’s umpiring. “You seem to miss calls in bunches,” the league advised Hernandez.

But for better or worse, the league and its fans are stuck with Hernandez for as long as he wants the job.

Criticism comes with the job, but players haven been particular vocal in expressing their issues with Hernandez (right, with the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber in 2022). (Bill Streicher / USA Today Sports)

Hernandez isn’t on social media. By all accounts, he doesn’t pay much attention to the perpetual flow of frustration directed his way.

But, according to his lawyer, there are people close to Hernandez who feel the impact.

“What hurts him the most,” Murphy said, “is the pain that his two daughters and his wife go through when they know it’s so unbelievably undeserved.”

“I think it bothers him that his family has to put up with it,” West said. “He’s such a strong-character person; he doesn’t let the media affect him.”

It’s not only other umpires who have defended him. Take Homer Bailey, the former Reds pitcher who threw a no-hitter in 2012. Hernandez, the third-base umpire that night, asked for some signed baseballs following Bailey’s achievement. Bailey agreed, without issue. Hernandez would receive his one “does not meet” rating on his year-end evaluation because of it. But Bailey said the entire thing was innocuous.

“He didn’t ask for more than any of the other umpires,” Bailey said. “…Maybe there are some things he could do on his end to kind of tamp it down. But there’s also some things that get blown out of proportion.”

Hernandez is a public figure in a major professional sport, and criticism is baked into officiating. But how much of it is justified?

Leyland will turn 80 years old this year — just a few months after his formal Hall of Fame induction. His interactions with Hernandez are long in the past.

With that age, and those 22 years as a skipper, has come some perspective.

“A manager, half the games, he has the home crowd behind him. Normally, you’ve got a home base,” Leyland said. “The umpire doesn’t have a home base. He’s a stranger. He’s on the road every night. He doesn’t have a hometown.

“We all know they miss calls. But we also all know that when you look at all the calls that are made in a baseball season by the umpires, they’re goddamn good. They’re really good at what they do.”

Leyland has found what so few others have been able to: A nuanced perspective on Hernandez.

For almost everyone else, that seems to be impossible.

The Athletic’s Chad Jennings contributed to this story

(Top image: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; Photos: Jamie Squire / Getty Images; Jason O. Watson / Getty Images; Tom Szczerbowski / Getty Images)

Culture

Mets shouldn't be buyers. They should be aggressive buyers at the deadline

Published

1 hour ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

Mets shouldn't be buyers. They should be aggressive buyers at the deadline

NEW YORK — On Wednesday, in discussing how his bullpen plans shift moment to moment over a nine-inning game, Carlos Mendoza chuckled at the idea of forming a pregame plan and sticking to it.

“I don’t know that there’s ever a time you come up with a game plan and stick to it,” the Mets manager said. “Every time you make an adjustment because the game unfolds. … You have an idea, but then you have to make adjustments.”

Perhaps Mendoza’s boss, David Stearns, should take that advice when it comes to this season.

The Mets entered 2024 with a clear, consistent plan from ownership down to the clubhouse. While they did not possess the high expectations of previous spring trainings, they thought they could be legitimate contenders for the postseason while preserving a sustained window of contention in the future. And here they are, days ahead of the trade deadline, as legitimate contenders for the postseason who have preserved a sustained window of contention in the future.

But after another memorable win Thursday night, a walk-off 3-2 victory over Atlanta that felt like the inverse of so many nightmarish nights at Turner Field, maybe it’s time for Stearns and the New York front office to get a little greedy about 2024. Yes, the Mets are going to be buyers at the trade deadline. But let’s make a case for the Mets to do more than add a reliever in the next week, a case for the Mets to be aggressive buyers like they last were en route to an unexpected pennant in 2015.

The Mets are good enough

Let’s do some blind resumes for teams on the morning of July 26 over the years.

Blind resumes

Team	W Advertisement	L	Pct. Advertisement	RD	NL Rank	GB of Playoffs Advertisement
A	56	46	0.549 Advertisement	85	5	—
B	55 Advertisement	47	0.539	9	T5	— Advertisement
C	55	47	0.539	49 Advertisement	T3	—
D	54	48 Advertisement	0.529	23	5	—
E Advertisement	50	46	0.521	46	7 Advertisement	0.5
F	48	51	0.485 Advertisement	36	10	6

OK, blindfolds off! What do those pretty similar teams all have in common? They all won the pennant.

NL pennant-winners (plus the Mets)

W	L Advertisement	Pct.	RD Advertisement	NL Rank	GB of Playoffs
56 Advertisement	46	0.549	85	5	— Advertisement
55	47	0.539	9	T5 Advertisement	—
55	47	0.539	49 Advertisement	T3	—
54	48	0.529 Advertisement	23	5	—
50	46 Advertisement	0.521	46	7	0.5
48 Advertisement	51	0.485	36	10	6 Advertisement

They were also pretty aggressive at the trade deadline. I classified the 2018 Dodgers (Manny Machado) and 2022 Phillies (David Robertson, Brandon Marsh and Noah Syndergaard) as All-in Buyers — teams that surrendered significant prospect capital for the present. The 2019 Nationals added three relievers, including the guy who would record the final out of the World Series. In 2021, Atlanta brought in four outfielders, including the NLCS and World Series MVPs. In 2023, Arizona dealt for a closer to better position itself for the postseason.

(For what it’s worth, the 2015 Mets, another All-in Buyer, were 50-48 with a negative-seven run differential on July 26.)

No, the Mets lack the kind of rotation and bullpen you generally rely on to carry you in October. However, New York possesses an offense that appears built for the postseason. As evidenced by its bashing of Gerrit Cole twice in the last month, the Mets’ lineup can go deep with the best of them. Only Baltimore has hit more homers since the Mets’ hot streak started May 30, and they’re tied for fourth in the majors in homers on the season — ahead of everyone but the Dodgers in the National League. On Thursday, New York was in the game against a dominant Chris Sale because Francisco Lindor turned one Sale mistake into two Mets runs.

Homers carry offenses come October. The similarly productive but differently constituted offense in 2022 tied for 15th in the league in home runs, then watched Atlanta and San Diego outhomer it in the biggest games of the season. This Mets offense can swing a short series with its power.

The National League is open

Here’s an important caveat: If I covered the Pirates or the Reds or the Padres or the Diamondbacks, I’d probably be making the exact same case. Because the National League is as open as it’s been in years.

Los Angeles and Atlanta have been the two best teams in the senior circuit for the last several seasons. Both are enduring more turbulent regular seasons than they’re accustomed to. The Dodgers continue to have health questions about their rotation, a dynamic that doomed them last October. Atlanta’s best hitter and best pitcher are out for the season. Its lineup looks like a shell of what the Mets are used to confronting.

While the Phillies have taken the mantle of the NL’s team to beat, they’re a team the Mets are pretty good at beating. They memorably went 14-5 against Philadelphia in 2022, and even during a down 2023 went 6-7 against it. This year, the Mets are 2-4 against the Phillies. And remarkably, since the start of the 2022 season, New York is 10-3 when facing either Aaron Nola or Zack Wheeler.

The timing actually clicks

It’s really tempting for teams to try manipulating their window of contention — to be cautious this year to put more eggs in a basket down the line. In doing so, however, they often miss the year to win.

The 2015 Mets could have been more cautious: Syndergaard and Steven Matz were rookies, Wheeler was hurt, the NL had several very good teams — surely the Mets’ best chance to advance in October would be down the road? As it turns out, that young rotation was never as healthy or as dominant as it was right then and there, and the Mets’ aggressiveness paid off in a pennant.

(Contrast that with the 2013-2015 Pirates, who never made the big move to push a very good team over the top. They still haven’t won a postseason series since 1979.)

For the Mets, it’s also fair to ask: What year, specifically, are they waiting for? Injuries to some key prospects this year mean New York won’t head into spring training 2025 planning to give an everyday spot to a talented rookie. The full incorporation of guys like Jett Williams, Drew Gilbert, Luisangel Acuña and Ryan Clifford won’t happen until 2026 — by which point Lindor will be 32 and Brandon Nimmo 33, on the outskirts of their primes.

The goal is to open a sustained window of contention and pounce on legitimate opportunities to win divisions, pennants and championships. The Mets are there. The two players they have signed long-term are having career-best years. Their cornerstone first baseman might not be here next year.

The window of contention is already open.

What does this mean?

Let’s be honest: This is where most columns like this end. There’s all that reasoning for going for it, now it’s Stearns’ job to turn that into something.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the current shape of the deadline market makes it difficult to go for it. Teams like the Pirates and Reds and Padres and Diamondbacks are all still in it in the National League, and the number of sellers is tinier than usual. The best starter likely to be traded may not be able to start much more this season. The best reliever likely to be traded has a walk rate you wouldn’t comfortably hit on in blackjack.

It’s harder to provide the kind of blueprint for the deadline that I do for the offseason because acquisition costs in trades are so much more difficult to project than open-market salaries. So I’ll settle for suggestions that would fit more of an all-in approach.

1. Engage the White Sox on Garrett Crochet with the understanding you’d be acquiring him to pitch out of the bullpen in 2024. The Athletic reported Thursday that Crochet would prefer to stay on a starter’s schedule (albeit with limited innings) down the stretch of this season unless an acquiring team signs him to a contract extension.

As I outlined Thursday morning, the Mets could use a long-term ace. Here’s a 25-year-old left-handed All-Star who leads the league in strikeouts and is interested in a long-term extension. Those all feel like good things. (Like Wheeler, Crochet’s likely arbitration salaries for the next two seasons will be suppressed by his lack of availability up to this point in his career. Thus, a long-term extension would cost less against the luxury tax than it might otherwise.)

Trade for Crochet, extend him and make him a multi-inning reliever with scheduled appearances the rest of the way. Imagine him coming in behind your right-handed starters in the postseason and serving as a one-man bridge to Edwin Díaz. Put him back in the rotation in 2025 and beyond. That might be worth the significant package of prospects it would require, as it would mean the Mets wouldn’t have to dive into the deep end of the starting pitching market this winter for a free agent already in his 30s.

2. If Crochet proves too much, combine a rotation upgrade — chiefly, a pitcher who misses more bats than the current starters — with two additions in the pen and one to the bench.

In the rotation, Detroit’s Jack Flaherty and Toronto’s Yusei Kikuchi come to mind. Flaherty will cost a good amount, but he too could become a viable option to re-sign.

For the bullpen, one high-leverage lefty should be the priority. Scroll past Tanner Scott to his teammate Andrew Nardi or to The Athletic’s years-long target Andrew Chafin of the Tigers. Another multi-inning arm could help keep the group fresh, as well. Cincinnati’s Buck Farmer or Detroit’s Alex Faedo could work there.

The final piece would be a versatile bench contributor who could protect the Mets against regression or injury at a few different positions. Detroit’s Andy Ibañez, Tampa Bay’s Amed Rosario, Toronto’s Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Oakland’s Abraham Toro could fit that role.

(Photo of José Buttó: Adam Hunger / Getty Images)

Culture

A history of spying in football: Drones, interns at training and kit men in ceilings

Published

8 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

A history of spying in football: Drones, interns at training and kit men in ceilings

Are not even the Olympic Games sacrosanct?

Yeah, you’re right. Probably not, given their long history of judging corruption, state boycotts and widespread doping.

But the news which broke on Tuesday, three days before the opening ceremony and hours before the first action in the 2024 Games’ football tournament, meant that the cherished Olympic values of fair play stood in tatters even before organisers emblazoned that message across the Parisien sky and the River Seine.

That it was Canada who performed such an egregious breach of the rules — by all stereotypes a country known for its people being polite, respectful, laidback and just terribly nice — only adds to the ironic drama.

There are five rings in the Olympic logo — take just two of them intertwined, and they resemble a pair of binoculars.

So this is what happened…

On Tuesday, at a training session ahead of their opening match of the group stage in Saint-Etienne on Thursday, staff members from the New Zealand women’s football team noticed a drone hovering above them.

Bev Priestman, the Canada coach, watching her team in action earlier this year (Jason Mowry/Getty Images)

They called the on-site police, who detained the device’s operator, who was later revealed to be a staff member from the Canadian team, the reigning Olympic women’s champions, and their opponents in that opener today.

In an initial statement, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) apologised — but more was to come.

The following day, it became clear that there had been two drone incidents, with the other taking place five days earlier, on July 19. Now facing severe sanctions, the COC needed to act.

Joseph Lombardi, an “unaccredited analyst”, and Jasmine Mander, a member of the coaching staff who oversees Lombardi, have been removed from the team and sent home and Canada’s English head coach Beverly Priestman has voluntarily stepped down from being on the touchline for the New Zealand game.

“On behalf of our entire team, I first and foremost want to apologize to the players and staff at New Zealand Football and to the players on Team Canada,” Priestman said. “This does not represent the values that our team stand for.”

That final sentence is a little difficult to justify, given that spying on another team’s training is hardly an accidental action — nobody finds themselves flying a $2,000 piece of tech over their next opponents — twice — by mistake. Rather, it comes as a product of culture and command.

“I am ultimately responsible for conduct in our program,” Priestman added. “Accordingly, to emphasize our team’s commitment to integrity, I have decided to voluntarily withdraw from coaching the match on Thursday. In the spirit of accountability, I do this with the interests of both teams in mind and to ensure everyone feels that the sportsmanship of this game is upheld.”

This may be new to the Olympics — but spying in football is old business.

Teams sending scouts to watch the next side they are going to play at training probably predates the invention of the offside rule. In fairness, though, we do not know if ancient Olympian Theagenes of Thasos sent emissaries to watch Arrichion of Phigalia working on his moves.

Didier Deschamps, the France head coach, spotted a drone over training at the 2014 World Cup (Martin Rose/Getty Images)

In international football, France men’s manager Didier Deschamps noticed a drone above his players as they trained at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil — it was never discovered which, if any, of their group-stage rivals Ecuador, Honduras and Switzerland it belonged to.

Go back two more decades and ahead of a vital away World Cup qualifier against Norway in 1993, England manager Graham Taylor was so convinced his team were being watched that he moved their training base to a military facility. The issue? That new location was near the house of the chief sportswriter of one of Norway’s leading newspapers, who subsequently published their tactics the next morning. England lost, 2-0, in Oslo, ended up missing out on the 1994 World Cup, and Taylor got sacked.

Similarly, in a case of paranoia outweighing perspective, the Chilean football federation once sent up their own device to destroy a drone hovering over their session before a match against Argentina. It was perhaps football’s first case of aerial warfare since Roy Keane’s infamous tackle on Alfie Haaland. In this case, it turned out the questionable drone was a surveying tool being used by a Chilean telecommunications company.

But there is one example of spying which did emanate from South America — when, in early 2019, Leeds United’s Argentine head coach Marcelo Bielsa admitted sending an intern to watch the following weekend’s opponents Derby County work on their formation, set pieces and so on. It was not the first time.

“We watched training sessions of all the opponents before we played them,” Bielsa, now Uruguay’s head coach said. In Argentina, this practice was common apparently, and one he had continued after coming to work in Europe.

Officers have just attended the Training Ground for @dcfcofficial After a suspicious male was seen at the perimeter fence. Excellent searching conducted & male was located. All checks above board!
Keeping the team safe to bring home a win against #LUFC on 11th! #SpyingIsCheating pic.twitter.com/a12Zj8gISX
— Derby Response – This account is closing (@DerbyResponse) January 10, 2019

Derby and Frank Lampard, their manager at the time, were furious. When Bielsa rang the former Chelsea and England midfielder to explain himself, there was no apology — but instead, in broken English, he attempted to remove any ambiguity around the circumstances.

Leeds won the ensuing match, 2-0 — and the following week, Bielsa held an unprecedented press conference for local journalists, 66 minutes long, in which he used a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate the full extent of the analysis he carried out on opposition clubs.

For Bielsa, who held open training sessions throughout his time at Athletic Bilbao in Spain, watching teams going through their tactical preparations like this was not spying, but simply gathering information.

Leeds’ Bielsa, centre, admitted spying on Lampard, right, and Derby (Alex Dodd – CameraSport via Getty Images)

It was later pointed out by Leeds fans that, as a player, Lampard has been part of a Chelsea side which profited from similar, um, info-gathering missions.

In an interview with UK newspaper the Telegraph, former Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas admitted that, in his time as an assistant at the London club under Jose Mourinho, he would “travel to training grounds, often incognito, and look at our opponents’ mental and physical state before drawing my conclusions”. Chelsea won the Premier League title twice with Mourinho and Villas-Boas in situ.

Given the amount of information that rival clubs can draw on, some coaches are simply not too bothered by allegations of spying. In 2018, German Bundesliga side Werder Bremen used a drone to spy on Hoffenheim — but Hoffenheim’s coach Julian Nagelsmann, now manager of Germany’s national team, brushed off its impact.

“I’m not really angry at the analyst doing his job,” Nagelsmann said, before adding it was “commendable” that Bremen were going to such lengths to try to win.

Similarly, in the aftermath of the Leeds incident, former striker Gary Taylor-Fletcher recalled an incident from his Lincoln City side’s 2003-04 League Two play-off semi-final second leg away to Huddersfield Town.

While the Lincoln players were receiving their half-time team talk, Taylor-Fletcher tweeted, a polystyrene ceiling tile broke and then fell down — revealing the sizable heft of longtime Huddersfield kit man Andy Brook listening from the cavity above. Lincoln went on to lose the tie, while their opponents lost their dignity — but did end up getting promoted. And Taylor-Fletcher can’t have been too annoyed because, a year later, he left Lincoln for… Huddersfield.

Football is not alone in this sort of espionage — and other sports can be much more high-tech.

The McLaren Formula 1 team were given the largest fine in sporting history — $100million — and thrown out of the sport’s 2007 Constructors’ Championship after senior engineer Mike Coughlan received technical design documents which had been leaked from rivals Ferrari.

There have also been several high-profile incidents in American football.

Also in 2007, the New England Patriots, the most successful NFL team of recent years with six Super Bowl wins since the turn of the century, were punished for recording the defensive signals given to players during a game by coaches of the New York Jets. New England’s legendary head coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 — the maximum allowed by the league, and the most in NFL history — while the team were denied their first-round pick in the following year’s player draft.

Belichick in 2007, when his team were caught recording the New York Jets’ defensive signals (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

Does cheating prosper? Well, New England won all 16 games in the 2007 regular season — but were surprisingly beaten in the Super Bowl by the New York Giants.

And it’s not just the professionals in the gridiron game. Last October, the University of Michigan’s head coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended over a similar sign-stealing scandal which quickly escalated to involve allegations also levelled at several other college teams. Harbaugh was banned for several games, but Michigan went on to win the U.S. college national championship on his return. Harbaugh has since moved on to become head coach of the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers.

So this is the bottom line: teams cheat.

In a multimillion (or even billion) dollar/pound/euro industry, marginal gains like those detailed here are worth the risk of detection. For every Canada, Leeds and Michigan caught, there are clubs and sides whose operatives get away with it.

Widespread but not necessarily endemic, it is both serious and not serious, funny and infuriating, the natural by-product of a game being taken as lifeblood.

Back in the ancient Olympics, contemporary accounts reveal athletes being bribed to say they were from certain city-states rather than others — facing a potential punishment of public flogging if they were caught.

Things have not really changed — and the punishment, at least to the guilty party’s public reputation, is not so different either.

Teams are willing to run that risk.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

Culture

Esteban Ocon joins Haas F1 for 2025 season

Published

15 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Press Room

Esteban Ocon joins Haas F1 for 2025 season

Esteban Ocon will race for Haas in Formula One from 2025 after signing a multi-year deal with the American team.

Haas announced on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix that Ocon, 27, would complete its line-up for next year alongside British rookie Oliver Bearman, who will graduate from Formula Two.

The Frenchman will become the first grand prix winner to race for Haas, and the move sees him reunite with Ayao Komatsu, Haas’s team principal, who served as his engineer for his maiden F1 test with Lotus back in 2014.

Ocon said in a statement that he and Haas had enjoyed “honest and fruitful discussions these last few months” about the future, and that he would be “joining a very ambitious racing team, whose spirit, work ethic, and undeniable upward trajectory has really impressed me.”

The move means Haas will run an all-new F1 line-up for 2025 as Ocon and Bearman replace Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen, both of whom were already confirmed to be leaving the team.

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“The experience he brings, not just from his own talent base but also from working for a manufacturer team, will be advantageous to us in our growth as an organization,” Komatsu said of Ocon.

“It was vital we had a driver with experience in beside Oliver Bearman next year, but Esteban’s only 27 — he’s still young with a lot to prove as well. I think we have a hungry, dynamic driver pairing.”

What led Ocon to Haas?

Since Ocon announced in June that he would be leaving Alpine upon the expiration of his contract at the end of the season, Haas has always looked like his most likely destination.

Ocon was always going to be part of what is proving to be a very fluid F1 driver market for 2025, offering race-winning experience to any interested teams after his shock victory for Alpine at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix.

There were talks with a number of teams over a potential drive for next year, with Williams previously holding an interest in him as an alternative to its top target — Carlos Sainz.

Ocon is currently racing with Alpine (Bryn Lennon – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

But it became clear in recent weeks that a deal with Haas was close to being finalized, particularly after the team confirmed Magnussen’s departure in Hungary.

Ocon said last week it was “very clear what our intentions are for the future,” with the hope of getting a deal announced before the summer break, which starts next week.

He will join a Haas team currently enjoying an upswing in performance under Komatsu. It lies seventh in the constructors standings, and has already scored more than double its points tally from the entirety of last year.

A fresh start for Ocon

The move will serve as a new beginning to Ocon, whose final season with Alpine has proven to be a frustrating one.

Between the team’s lack of performance and tension with teammate Pierre Gasly that flared after their collision on the opening lap in Monaco, there was always the feeling a chapter was ending, even prior to news of Ocon’s departure.

This move will end Ocon’s long-standing relationship with the Enstone-based team, known previously as Renault and Lotus, which began more than 10 years ago. He joined their junior academy at 14, but their financial issues led Mercedes to take him under its wing.

Mercedes helped Ocon get onto the F1 grid in 2016 and quickly win praise for his performances and consistency while driving for Force India, leading to him even being a consideration for a Mercedes F1 seat in 2020 as teammate to Lewis Hamilton.

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But he was never seriously on Mercedes’ radar this time around as they look to replace Hamilton, with the vacant seat likely to go to its 17-year-old protege, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who is racing in F2.

With Haas, Ocon will get long-term stability and, for the first time in his career, have the chance to help build a team up by serving as the experienced head alongside a much younger teammate in Bearman.

(Andrea Diodato/NurPhoto via Getty Images)