Imagine having done the same thing for something like 30 years, being better at it than just about anyone who has ever lived, and then one day, it’s all completely new. 

And so it is for Rafael Nadal in this through-the-looking-glass spring. For years, no place felt more like home than a red clay court. He could lose matches sometimes. Everyone does. But he almost never played poorly.

He could leave his guts on the court with an effort that would leave most of the population unable to walk for weeks. Then he would wake up in the morning and, within a few hours, be able to start preparing to do it all over again. And then, sometimes, he really would do it all over again.

Those days are done, perhaps never to return. Nearly a year and a half since a debilitating hip injury, nearly a year since major surgery to try to fix it, nearly two years since he was a mainstay of the professional tour, each match, each day, has become an experiment and a riddle for Nadal. 

How much can he push? How long can he go? How does his body feel when he opens his eyes for the first time each morning, when he rolls out of bed, when he leans over to pick up his 18-month-old son, Rafa, when he walks onto the court for a warm-up session and strokes the ball for the first time? 

The latest test came Tuesday night against Jiri Lehecka, the talented young Czech with the limber physique and easy power that Nadal, always the brutalist, never had. But nothing about the match really had anything to do with the contrasts he and Nadal presented, or really even the score. 

This was all about the latest of Nadal’s experiments.

A little more than 24 hours before he and Lehecka took the court, Nadal had gone three sets and more than three hours against Pedro Cachin of Argentina. In both matches, the most important numbers on the scoreboard were counting the elapsed time. How many rolling backhands and bullwhip forehands could Nadal endure, or even want to endure, with his lodestar, the French Open, starting in 26 days.

Nadal is balancing fitness and pride in his final season (Mateo Villalba/Getty Images)

The first set went 57 minutes, with Lehecka surviving three tight service holds and capitalizing on a cluster of Nadal errors in the 11th game to break, before serving out the set. Lehecka then broke Nadal’s serve in the first game of the second set. Nadal’s balls started to fly long and into the net without it bothering him all that much, and it was hard not to think of how he had described his game plan moving forward the night before, after his three-hour fist-fight with Cachin. 

“Trying without doing crazy things, but trying,” he said, which is what Lehecka’s 7-5, 6-4 win that lasted a little over two hours ultimately looked like.

A third set and another hour might have qualified as a crazy thing under the circumstances.

Cachin, a 29-year-old journeyman who knows his way around a clay court, had given Nadal as much as he could handle and more than anyone had expected, digging in for long fights for points, forcing him to scramble across the baseline. A few years ago, this would have been another day of certainty for Nadal: the clay, the winning, the looking ahead to the next match knowing — within a very small margin — what version of himself would take the court. 

Instead, he walked the corridors of the Caja Magica Monday night, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, and telling everyone who would listen that he had no idea what the future held. 

“I never recovered too bad after tough matches, I think even at 36 years old or 35,” said Nadal, who is now nearly 38. “Today is a completely different story. It’s not only about injuries. First thing is injuries. Second thing is about… I never spent almost two years without playing tennis tournaments.”

Everyone knows what this is all about for Nadal — figuring out whether it’s going to be worth his while to put his name in the draw at the French Open, the tournament he has won 14 times, where his record at Roland Garros is a ridiculous 112-3. He’s not going to go merely for an ovation and a bouquet, or to gaze at the nine-foot statue of him outside Court Philippe Chatrier.

GO DEEPER

Ghosts of clay courts past: Rafael Nadal’s comeback is really about his legacy

He knows his tennis is there, but he will only go if he believes his body will be there, too. This is best-of-five-set tennis, on clay, and matches are affairs that generally last close to three hours, maybe longer. His serve in its current iteration, slowed by injuries to his midsection, isn’t allowing him to grab many quick and easy points. Nearly everything he gets, he has to earn the hard way. Late in the second set on Tuesday night, 40 per cent of Lehecka’s serves had gone unreturned, allowing him to speed through holds of serve already rendered tricky by the booms of “Rafa, Rafa, Rafa” about his ears every time he stood up to the line. Asked about how he dealt with them, the Czech world No 31 could only puff out his cheeks and say, “I don’t know.”

Nadal’s figure was six per cent.

Nadal was ultimately unable to impose himself on Lehecka (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

He will have a day off between matches at the French Open, unlike the 24-hour turnaround from Cachin to Lehecka, but still, the past days in Madrid have brought his first experience in what feels like forever of the grind-recover-grind routine the sport demands. 

Ten days ago in Barcelona, he couldn’t do it, winning a match then essentially folding after losing the first set of a second. Had he pushed for more in that moment, he might have been back where he was in January, in a tuneup tournament in Brisbane ahead of the Australian Open. There, in his third match, he pushed too soon. He went to sleep with a tweak. In the morning, an MRI revealed it was a tear. Three months of recovery and many more moments of doubt ensued.

Maybe this was it? He could swing a racket, but anything close to trying to replicate the intensity of top-level competition was out of the question. Same with an intense three-hour training session. He just wasn’t strong enough. 

Madrid has been different. His strength is back, but it’s not chartable: he still doesn’t have any idea what will happen from one day to the next. 

“It’s unpredictable, that’s it, and you need to accept the unpredictable things today,” he said earlier this week. “I need to accept that.”

GO DEEPER

Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray and the hunt for a graceful and glorious exit

In a sense, Nadal has been preparing for this moment for more than 20 years, ever since doctors detected a congenital defect in his foot that nearly derailed his career before it ever got started. He had to accept then an extremely uncertain future. Anything that followed was a kind of gift. 

The experience begat ‘Zen-Rafa,’ the player who years ago compared an opponent’s aces to the rain, something he had no control over and simply accepted. Now he was back where it all started and not just because he said Madrid is where he felt for the first time, back in 2003, that he could compete at the highest level.

Sure, Nadal would have preferred to win once again in this packed metal bandbox in front of 12,000 people who love him as they love little else. He is as big a sports hero as this country has ever produced, which Raul Gonzalez Blanco, the legendary Real Madrid and Spain striker, knows well. He was there watching against Cachin.

But Nadal knew he had already won by being able to answer the bell against Lehecka, something he could only hope he would be able to do when he closed his eyes the night before. Picking up some easy points on his serve marked another win. Those classic, loop-one-ball-then-crush-the-next-one combinations, the quick bends for the short-hop winners, the perfect slice volley when he followed his serve into the net midway through the second set — win, win, win. 

The moment when he sprinted to the baseline from his chair, one game from defeat, and 12,000 people stood and roared, and the noise rattled all around the metal building — that may have been the biggest win of all. They did it again on match point, then chanted his name when he sprayed a final backhand wide on what is likely his final match in the city.

Madrid’s tribute to Nadal after his defeat (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

He described the night as “very positive in many senses, not only sporting but also emotionally.”

“It’s been a gift to spend 21 years here,” Nadal told the crowd during a celebration on the court after the match. “The emotions, of playing in Madrid, playing on this court, are going to stay with me forever.”

Still, as much as Nadal has accepted the uncertainty of the future and soaking up the love, he is also making plans. He is playing himself into form now, trying to pass tests with every match so he can dream of magic, not just at the French Open but after, too. 

The Olympic Games are at Roland Garros. He wants to at least play doubles there with Carlos Alcaraz, who is well on his way to taking over from Nadal in the Spanish tennis imagination. Last week he committed to play the Laver Cup, the Team Europe vs Team World competition that his friend and rival Roger Federer created. That’s in September. 

Madrid brought four matches in six days. Assuming his body comes through all this, he will head to Rome for the Italian Open next week for another series of tests. Then comes the decision about the French Open.

That’s both imminent and a ways away. Nadal, who, in all his greatness has still somehow always managed to come off as a normalish guy, is day to day, as the saying goes — just as we all are.

(Top photo: Manuel Queimadelos/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)

Chase Sowell walked into Colorado’s football facility on the Sunday after the 2023 spring game and saw more than a dozen teammates lined up against a wall.

As each player entered the head coach’s office and emerged within minutes enraged or in tears, the second-year receiver nervously pondered his fate.

“We knew it was going to happen, but we didn’t know it was going to happen that soon,” Sowell said.

Deion Sanders, given his Power 5 head coaching shot in December 2022 after three successful years at Jackson State, had promised to clean house. He vowed talented transfers were on the way to replace anyone unprepared to play for him. And less than 24 hours after the Buffaloes’ ballyhooed ESPN-televised spring showcase, Sanders informed 20 scholarship players they were moving on.

“He didn’t sugarcoat it,” Sowell said. “He was telling me, ‘You’re coming off injury. I don’t think you will be one of the guys we need to start this year. We need guys that are going to be ready to play now.’”

Sanders didn’t need to use the word “cut.” Sowell understood it was time to pack his bags, enter the transfer portal and find a new home.

First-year coaches running off underperforming players are commonplace in college football. Dumping 20 in one day is not. By the end of the spring, 53 scholarship players transferred out of the program.

Colorado’s extreme roster makeover, unprecedented in modern college football history, yielded 87 newcomers and far more fascination about what Sanders could bring to Boulder. The Buffaloes were a downright phenomenon when they stunned TCU and started 3-0. They backslid hard, losing eight of nine Pac-12 games. Win or lose, Sanders got everyone watching – including his former players.

Where did they go?

Colorado’s castoffs went off on new journeys across college football. Fifteen matriculated to Power 5 programs. Twenty-two ended up on Group of 5 rosters, 11 went FCS or Division II, and two attended junior colleges. Three ex-Buffs went unsigned out of the portal and haven’t played since. And several had to fight the NCAA for the opportunity to keep playing.

Quarterback Owen McCown arrived at Colorado in 2022 with a freshman class desperate to turn around a program that had eight losing seasons over the past decade. The son of Minnesota Vikings assistant Josh McCown started three games as a freshman during the brutal 2022 season. Coach Karl Dorrell was fired after an 0-5 start. The Buffs got blown out almost weekly.

“Going through that rough season made us all close,” McCown said of his class. “And then, obviously, it all went away.”

Sanders walked into his first Colorado team meeting on Dec. 4, Tupac’s “All Eyez on Me” on the speakers, and delivered his first warning.

“I’m coming to restore, to replace, to re-energize some of y’all that are salvageable,” Sanders said. “I’m not going to lie. Everybody that’s sitting their butt in a seat ain’t going to have a seat when we get back.”

Sowell, a redshirt freshman from Houston, was unfazed.

“I don’t think he was being a d— about it,” Sowell said. “I think he was just being straight up: Prove to me that you can play.”

McCown skipped the team meeting. He was the third Colorado player to enter the transfer portal, going to UTSA, where he could start this fall. Sowell stayed to battle it out, but after season-ending surgery for a torn labrum, it was a tough time to be at his best. He was cleared to practice a week into spring ball.

Every day felt like a tryout. Sowell thought he had to be perfect to gain approval. He wasn’t himself. More stressed, more withdrawn. New coaching staffs can be disorienting for players, because they don’t know whom to trust. Sowell’s father grew up in Florida and revered Sanders, and Sowell didn’t want to disappoint his family by failing.

There was nowhere to hide. Cameras followed the team around constantly for Sanders’ Amazon documentary series and his son’s Well Off Media YouTube channel.

“It kinda felt like a reality TV show,” Sowell said.

It didn’t take long for returning Colorado players to figure out the narrative. Quarterback Shedeur Sanders, wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter and 19 more transfers were brought in for spring practice. They were the stars of the show.

“We felt like it was us vs. them instead of all of us together,” Sowell said. “That’s the best way I can put it. The new guys were going against the players that had already been there. It wasn’t a good environment to be in. It wasn’t a team environment.”

His freshman class was an inseparable group. The players lived on campus together, dined together and played pickup basketball together. They would return to the dorms at night that spring and talk openly about their predicament: What do we do?

On the morning of April 23, their group text blew up. Players were called into exit meetings with Sanders and told they couldn’t play at CU. One described the experience as going to see the Grim Reaper. Sowell’s meeting was his first one-on-one conversation with the head coach.

The following morning, Sowell said, players were locked out of Colorado’s football facility. They couldn’t grab their things from the locker room. They couldn’t grab a meal at the training table.

“When you’re gone, you’re gone,” Sowell said.

Sowell wanted to go where he could play as many snaps as possible. He picked ECU. It was a big move across the country for a Texas kid who knew hardly anything about the school. But he connected with receivers coach Dyrell Roberts and felt welcomed in his first team meeting with the Pirates.

They needed him, too. Sowell emerged as ECU’s No. 1 wide receiver, leading the team with 47 receptions for 622 yards and a touchdown.

Sowell says he’s happier than ever. His mom says he’s back to being his “true self” at ECU. A year later, he remains in touch with his freshman class in the group text.

Jordyn Tyson picked Arizona State. Dylan Dixson chose Missouri State. Grant Page and Simeon Harris are at Utah State. Anthony Hankerson and Van Wells left Colorado this offseason and are now at Oregon State.

Not one member of their 31-man signing class is still playing for Colorado.

Xavier Smith’s sitdown with Sanders was later Sunday. By then, the redshirt freshman safety knew what to expect. His father encouraged him to hope for the best. But he didn’t even get a one-on-one. Defensive coordinator Charles Kelly brought Smith and safety Oakie Salave’a into the office together.

“We sat on the sofa, and he’s talking to us, but he’s not even looking at us,” Smith said. “I’m looking Coach Kelly dead in his eyes. (Sanders) said he felt like I should hit the portal. He didn’t want me to waste a year thinking I could earn a spot.

“I was actually getting mad, like tears coming to my eyes. Because, bro, you never even tried to get to know me.”

Smith wasn’t shocked he was cut, given his injury history. He’d broken his right leg during his senior season in high school and again in the spring while rehabbing. He played in one game in 2022 but missed the rest of the season with a hamstring injury. Now Smith was finally healthy and, as a young defensive back from Atlanta, eager to learn from his Hall of Fame coach.

Smith assumed Sanders would dump older players and embrace the young talent he inherited. During the team meeting, he told himself: He’s not talking about me. I ain’t leaving.

During the spring, Smith felt more like an extra in the background of the reality show. He tried to make the most of second-team reps and made plays in the spring game but struggled to get Sanders’ attention. So as he sat on that couch and listened to Kelly encourage him to leave, sure, there was frustration.

“He was destroying guys’ confidence and belief in themselves,” Smith said. “The way he did it, it could’ve been done with a little more compassion.”

For Smith and many of the inexperienced players cut by Colorado, the spring transfer window was unnerving. Schools have limited scholarships available entering the summer, and it’s tougher to earn offers with limited game and practice tape. Among the 30 scholarship players who left the program after the spring game, 20 continued playing at the FBS level but only nine joined Power 5 programs.

Smith regained his confidence at Austin Peay. The FCS program in Clarksville, Tenn., provided an opportunity to play right away, and coach Scottie Walden won him over with his relentless enthusiasm. Smith caught up quickly to earn a starting role and Freshman All-America recognition on a 9-3 team that won its conference.

At the end of the season, Walden landed the head job at UTEP. Smith re-entered the transfer portal and followed him to El Paso.

“It’s rare you meet a head coach who genuinely wants to see every player on his roster succeed,” Smith said.

Jake Wiley did not get cut. But he wasn’t looking to stay.

The offensive tackle from Aurora, Colo., spent four years with the Buffaloes and saw it all. He committed to Mike MacIntyre in 2018, redshirted during Mel Tucker’s lone season, became a two-year starter under Dorrell and had five different offensive line coaches.

“That’s not a normal number,” Wiley said.

He stayed for the spring to finish his degree and to see if he fit with the new staff. On cut day, Wiley received an ominous text.

“In our O-line group chat, one of the offensive line coaches texted the group and said, ‘Good luck fellas,’” Wiley said, “and then he just removed all of them. It said these five people were removed from the chat. We were like, ‘Huh? What happened?’”

Two days after they entered the portal, Wiley joined them. He said players who survived the cut still felt unwanted and expendable. He was one of seven returning starters who departed that spring along with running back Deion Smith (BYU), receiver Montana Lemonious-Craig (Arizona), defensive linemen Jalen Sami (Michigan State) and Na’im Rodman (Washington State), cornerback Nikko Reed (Oregon) and safety Tyrin Taylor (Memphis).

“Let me tell you this, because this is something you may not know,” Sanders said last November on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “Maybe 20 kids we may have sat down with and said, ‘We may head in a different direction; I don’t know if this is gonna work out.’ Everybody else quit. They quit. You can’t hold me responsible.”

Wiley was overwhelmed by the number of calls he received upon entering the portal and narrowed his list to UCLA, Duke and Purdue. He flew to Los Angeles to watch a spring practice and was told the Bruins needed a tackle. Wiley loved the campus and liked staying in the Pac-12. It was an easy decision.

He didn’t learn he was moving to guard until the day before preseason camp. That’s a lot of new technique to learn in addition to a new offensive scheme. Wiley rotated in at right guard in UCLA’s first four games but then saw his playing time drop off considerably.

For many of his fellow ex-Buffs, this was a common issue. Among the 37 transfers who departed after Sanders was hired and landed at FBS schools, 23 did not start a game last season. Three former teammates – running back Jayle Stacks, receiver Maurice Bell and cornerback Nigel Bethel Jr. – went unsigned and didn’t play last season. Bell is now a trainer and working in real estate back home in California.

Going from playing to watching wasn’t fun, and Wiley admits he might’ve handled the letdown poorly if he were younger. He tried to respond with maturity.

“I wasn’t going to be that guy that was really complaining a lot or pouting and being negative,” he said. “If I wasn’t going to play, I wasn’t going to sit there and be a drain on the team.”

Wiley re-entered the portal in late November and relocated to Houston, where he’s once again playing tackle and helping a new coaching staff set a standard.

Wiley says he’ll always be a Colorado alum and fan, and he couldn’t help but marvel at the spectacle Sanders created.

“I never would’ve ever thought that Lil Wayne would be running the CU Buffs out of the tunnel,” Wiley said.

While his new Miami (Ohio) teammates enjoyed a day at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., Maddox Kopp testified via Zoom in a U.S. District Court hearing in West Virginia.

At the conclusion of the Dec. 13 hearing, District Judge John P. Bailey issued a 14-day temporary restraining order against the NCAA, granting immediate eligibility to college athletes who’ve transferred multiple times. The TRO halted the organization’s attempts to enforce a one-time transfer rule. And it was a former Colorado quarterback who helped make history.

Kopp was required to sit out the 2023 season as a two-time transfer. So were defensive back Tayvion Beasley (San Diego State), tight end Seydou Traore (Mississippi State) and offensive linemen Yousef Mugharbil (NC State) and Noah Fenske (Southern Illinois). Beasley, Traore and Mugharbil came to Colorado as transfers with Sanders and were gone by the end of the spring.

Kopp was sitting in the front row when Sanders arrived. He’d trained with Shedeur Sanders and knew what came next. In his first visit with the QBs, Sanders told them Shedeur was on the way and their job was to make him better.

“I was just sitting there thinking, it is what it is,” Kopp said. “I need to find a new home and a place that wants me.”

Kopp was starting over again after one year at Houston and one at Colorado. He transferred to Miami (Ohio) and built his case for an eligibility waiver.

The NCAA significantly altered its waiver criteria in January 2023. Getting run off by a school was no longer a valid justification. Kopp needed to provide a documented medical or safety-related reason for leaving. His attorney argued Colorado did not make accommodations for learning disabilities Kopp has dealt with since elementary school. The NCAA denied his waiver and then denied his appeal in August.

Fenske went through the same ordeal. The offensive lineman left Iowa in 2021 for mental health reasons and was a backup with the Buffaloes for two seasons. He didn’t like what he heard in Sanders’ team meeting.

Fenske rode back from the meeting with lineman Alex Harkey and said he was entering the portal. Harkey told him he was overreacting. Harkey was cut after the spring game and is now at Texas State.

“There’s not one person that watches that video – even the people who love him – and says he’s not gonna sh–can everybody,” Fenske said.

Fenske transferred to FCS Southern Illinois and was set to be the Salukis’ starting left tackle last fall. He submitted his waiver request in July and waited 70 days for a rejection in September, three games into the season. He kept preparing to play, believing he’d win on appeal. The final denial from the NCAA came Oct. 17, days before Southern Illinois faced No. 1 South Dakota State. Fenske broke down in tears in coach Nick Hill’s office upon learning the news.

“It didn’t matter if we had letters of recommendation from (Colorado athletic director) Rick George and (Colorado interim coach) Mike Sanford,” he said. “It didn’t matter if we had proof that I was seeking counseling and wasn’t getting it. They decided that my mental health was not dangerous enough to myself that I needed to leave there.”

The eligibility cases of North Carolina’s Tez Walker and several men’s basketball players generated national attention and political pressure. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost led a seven-state antitrust suit filed in December.

Though Kopp was eligible to play in the Cure Bowl against Appalachian State since the school semester had ended, he was eager to push for reform and help athletes avoid the NCAA’s complicated waiver process. Xavier Smith was able to transfer to UTEP after the TRO and said he’s thankful Kopp went the extra mile.

“It takes the power out of their hands,” Kopp said of the NCAA. “If they’re gonna make these rules, I just want them to be consistent.”

You know you’re married to the game when you get a restraining order against the NCAA to play in the Avocados From Mexico Cure Bowl. 🫡 pic.twitter.com/gYGOk8CEHC

— The Walmart Wolverine (@TheWalMartWolv) December 16, 2023

Empowered by the court ruling and the NCAA’s subsequent adoptions of new rules permitting unlimited transfers, more college football players are entering the portal than ever before. At Colorado, more than 30 Buffs are moving on, including 18 transfers Sanders brought in to replace those he cut.

Their exits have not brought the same shock-and-awe fanfare of last spring’s purge, but the motivations are similar: Sanders retooling with eyes on dramatic improvement while his departing players seek better situations. The head coach joked on a podcast this month that the portal is akin to room service.

“I can order what I want,” Sanders said.

For the Colorado players he didn’t want, those 53 transfers whose locations and lives changed over the past 12 months, the bitterness is beginning to wear off.

“My experience with Deion wasn’t one where I’m going to go bash him,” Sowell said. “There were things I agreed with that he did and things I didn’t agree with that he did. But that’s like any head coach. When he came in and made his decisions, I trusted God and I said everything happens for a reason.

“And I got to meet Deion Sanders, so I can’t really complain. I got to meet one of the best to ever do it.”

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: Ryan King / Getty Images)

After months of complaints from fans and players, Nike is expected to change several elements of its new Major League Baseball uniforms by the start of the 2025 season, according to a memo obtained Sunday.

The memo from the MLB Players Association to players states that after weeks of conversations with the league and its official uniform supplier, Nike, the union has “receive[d] indications” the following changes will be made: Returning to the larger lettering on the jersey tops, and on the pants bringing back the previous tailoring options, seam stitch count and higher-quality zipper that were in place in 2023.

In addition, as Nike previously told The Athletic, the memo said Nike is working toward solutions for teams’ mismatching gray uniforms and for the sweat stains showing through jerseys.

“This has been entirely a Nike issue,” the memo said. “At its core, what has happened here is that Nike was innovating something that didn’t need to be innovated.”

It’s worth pointing out what the memo is and isn’t. It is, first and foremost, not a commitment directly from Nike. (Nike did not respond to a request for comment.) It is the union updating players on perceived progress to that end. It also is not a promise to return to the uniforms from previous seasons. The Nike Vapor Premier is here to stay, as far as fabric and general jersey design are concerned.

Nike rolled out the Vapor Premier this spring, after first introducing it at the 2023 All-Star Game, and was met by immediate blowback. Fans ripped certain designs, most notably the strangely small name-on-back lettering. Players blasted the pants fitting process and the cheap feel of the fabric.

Once the season started, sweat stains appeared, road grays were identified as having different tones and pants began blowing out along the seam — apparently due to a change in stitch count. (One issue not mentioned in the memo is the pants’ see-through nature, because, as previously reported, well-placed sources say the pants fabric did not change this year, though some smaller details like the zipper and belt loops did.)

“We cautioned Nike against various changes when they previewed them in 2022, particularly regarding pants,” the memo said. “MLB had been, and has been, aware of our concerns as well. Unfortunately, until recently, Nike’s position has essentially boiled down to — ’nothing to see here, Players will need to adjust.’”

MLB and MLBPA declined comment.

In leveling blame at Nike, the MLBPA continued to back Fanatics, the manufacturer of the uniforms. For months, as more and more issues arose with the new uniforms, Fanatics drew much of the public ire for the mess. MLBPA has on multiple occasions publicly absolved Fanatics, which it did again in Sunday’s memo: “Fanatics has been, and continues to be, a great partner with the Players and has been making the uniforms for the last eight years without issue.” Apart from its partnership with MLB and Nike, Fanatics also has a lucrative licensing deal with the players union, and the MLBPA has invested in Fanatics.

Fanatics declined comment.

“Fanatics recognizes the vital importance of soliciting Player feedback, obtaining Player buy-in, and not being afraid to have difficult conversations about jerseys or trading cards,” the memo said.

“Our hope is that, moving forward, Nike will take a similar approach.”

Required reading

(Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)