Sports
Op-Ed: Baseball’s back, but it was never really gone
The headlines inform us that baseball is again, that heat summer time nights, mustard-slathered scorching canine and life threats towards umpires are with us once more.
The factor is, there was by no means an opportunity they wouldn’t be.
Baseball strikes, lockouts, labor actions — no matter you wish to name them — are the phoniest issues in sports activities subsequent to soccer accidents. They have been by no means not going to play. April was looming. Cash was in escrow in followers’ pockets and tv networks’ financial institution accounts. House owners may pretend anger and gamers may plead poverty, however neither deserved our critical consideration.
The perfect line written about these disputes — at all times written as a result of each time there’s this type of baseball dispute the identical issues are at all times written — is that it’s a “dispute between millionaires and billionaires.”
That line ought to encourage us to not take sides, as a result of each are inconceivable to narrate to. The perfect response is to nod knowingly and ignore the shouting. When it’s time for the video games to start, they are going to. There can be some changes, some even value being attentive to, corresponding to this 12 months’s enhance in playoff groups from 10 to 12 and the addition of the designated hitter to the Nationwide League.
New stuff, principally great things. Play ball.
Possibly the media may take a brand new tack the subsequent time the gamers and house owners fake to spar: Simply ask them to holler when it’s over after which write the headline. The media is within the information enterprise. “Baseball labor disputes” are much less information and extra group sulking by overstuffed businessmen and over-pampered athletes. That is, in spite of everything, the game the place loads of second basemen hit .240 and make $5 million.
For the reason that first baseball labor cleaning soap opera in 1972, eight such disputes have ensued. In six of the 9, together with this 12 months’s, no video games have been canceled. The one actual injury was in 1994, when 938 video games and the postseason have been worn out.
Baseball labor conditions have tended to create a cottage trade for the media. Since reporters’ assured days of leisurely spring-training hanging round in Florida or Arizona are infringed upon, together with some nice expense-account dinners, the temptation to put in writing and broadcast indignity is difficult to withstand. Seldom is a lot made from so little.
A favourite subject is the potential impact on baseball attendance. Headlines scream: Will this labor motion kill baseball? Can a sport as soon as thought-about America’s pastime survive? Will the followers revolt, leaving multimillion-dollar stadiums stuffed with empty seats?
Ah, no.
If multimillion-dollar stadiums sit empty, it will likely be as a result of the groups are awful, not as a result of some attorneys in a baseball labor dispute made one another indignant.
Then there are the assertions that action-packed NFL video games are stealing the thunder from boring, slow-moving baseball. These tales, after all, fail to take into accounts that a part of the attraction of baseball is its gradual rhythm, its intriguing moments of almosts and what-might-have-beens. Gradual doesn’t routinely translate to boring.
On op-ed pages and mournful Fb posts we hear from lifelong followers who wax poetic about going to their first sport as 10-year-olds with their now-deceased fathers, falling in love with the game however deciding in 2022 by no means to look at it once more due to greed within the sport. Oh please. Greed will not be singular to baseball.
After all the NFL is thrilling and fast-paced and hard-to-beat leisure. However possibly we want a summer time of baseball to calm ourselves down and catch our breath. Not like a lot that’s written, the success of 1 doesn’t routinely carry the failure of the opposite. There’s room for followers who love the crack of the bat and for followers who just like the crack of the cranium.
Baseball’s foolish labor disputes at all times appear to be a shortly seized likelihood to kick one thing when it’s down. Besides baseball isn’t down, it’s simply, as typical, awakening grumpy from a protracted winter’s sleep and recalibrating itself.
A minimum of Buster Olney, pretty much as good and well-known a baseball commentator as there’s at the moment, took a take a look at the latest proceedings and the issues left on the negotiation desk and proclaimed that he may see “storm clouds gathering” over the sport.
Not in the intervening time. Most likely not ever. Scorching canine are being ordered, beer refrigerated and seats cleaned, identical to yearly. As Vin Scully used to say, “It’s time for Dodger baseball.”
Let’s make it all-encompassing and simply take out his fourth phrase.
Invoice Dwyre is a former sports activities editor of The Occasions.
Boxer Cindy Ngamba clinched the first medal of any kind for the Olympic refugee team Sunday at North Paris Arena, guaranteeing herself at least a bronze with a win against France’s Davina Michel in the women’s 75-kilogram quarterfinals.
The Olympics do not hold bronze medal bouts in boxing, so Ngamba will receive a medal win or lose in the semifinals. She fights Panama’s Atheyna Bibeichi Bylon next on Thursday, when boxing moves to Roland Garros.
“It means the world to me to be the first refugee team member to win a medal,” Ngamba said. “I’m just human, like any other refugee. There are refugees all around the world.”
Ngamba, 25, was born in Cameroon and moved to the United Kingdom when she was 11. Ngamba, who is gay, cannot return home because homosexuality is outlawed in Cameroon. She now lives in Bolton, a town in Greater Manchester, England, and trains with Great Britain boxing.
With her win over Davina Michel (FRA), boxer @CindyNgamba (EOR) has just made history by guaranteeing a first-ever Olympic medal for the IOC @RefugeesOlympic Team! #Paris2024 #OlympicGames pic.twitter.com/lmN0fhdqA5
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) August 4, 2024
Ngamba served as the flag bearer for the refugee team, which was created in 2015 and debuted at the 2016 Rio Games, at the opening ceremony along with taekwondo athlete Yahya Al Ghotany.
GO DEEPER
Refugee boxer Cindy Ngamba wins Olympic medal – ‘She’s an inspiration to us all’
Ngamba is part of the 37-athlete refugee team in Paris after being introduced to the International Olympic Committee’s refugee program during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has repeatedly been denied British citizenship despite claiming three national titles in separate weight classes and receiving support from GB Boxing, the sport’s governing body, in her applications to the Home Office.
“I want to say to all the refugees all around the world and refugees that are not athletes and mainly humans around the world that you have to keep on working hard, keep on believing in yourself,” Ngamba said. “You can achieve whatever you put your mind to.”
China’s Qian Li and Australia’s Caitlin Parker will fight in the other semifinal bout.
Required reading
(Photo: Richard Pelham / Getty Images)
Sports
Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore could face suspension as sign-stealing scandal looms, NOA says: reports
There is a chance that the reigning college football champions could begin the season without their head coach for the second year in a row.
According to reports, a notice of allegations (NOA) says Michigan’s new head coach, Sherrone Moore, violated NCAA rules related to the investigation into the football program’s sign-stealing scandal.
Moore, who replaced Jim Harbaugh after he went to the Los Angeles Chargers, is reportedly accused of deleting more than 50 text messages with Connor Stalions – the former low-level recruiting staffer who coordinated an off-campus, advanced-scouting operation – around the time the investigation was opened.
Sherrone Moore (Jamie Schwaberow/Getty Images/File)
The reported NOA says Moore is accused of committing a Level 2 violation; Level 1 is the most serious.
“Our athletic department and university continue to cooperate with the NCAA regarding our ongoing investigation,” Michigan said in a statement to the Associated Press. “We do not have an update to share regarding its status at this time.”
Moore, 38, was promoted from offensive coordinator to head coach when Harbaugh left Michigan for Los Angeles to become coach of the Chargers shortly after leading the Wolverines to their first national title since 1997.
Moore filled in as acting head coach four times last season while Harbaugh served suspensions, winning all four games, including the season finale against rival Ohio State.
Harbaugh has denied any knowledge of impermissible scouting while he was with the program, though he could face Level 1 violations.
Jim Harbaugh (Justin Casterline/Getty Images/File)
NCAA RELEASES DETAILS OF PROPOSED $2.78 BILLION SETTLEMENT WITH FORMER ATHLETES
Stalions resigned from his role in November, roughly a month after the investigation opened. He was initially suspended with pay by the school. He was an off-field analyst with the football team, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Despite the suspensions and ordeals, Michigan won the College Football Playoff over Washington, 34-13.
Shortly after scoring two touchdowns in the title game, running back Blake Corum (now with the Los Angeles Rams) fought against those who say the title is illegitimate.
“At the end of the day, what else do you want us to prove, man? Whatever came out in the beginning of the season, after that, you say we stole signals,” he said in an interview with Fox News Digital at the time. “We went on the road and beat Penn State, beat Ohio State, beat Iowa, beat Alabama, beat Washington. All of these teams are top 10 in each category, offense and defense. We handled business.”
Blake Corum of the Michigan Wolverines scores a touchdown in the fourth quarter against the Washington Huskies during the CFP National Championship at NRG Stadium in Houston on Jan. 8, 2024. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Michigan begins its title defense on Aug. 31 against Fresno State; they visit Washington in a title game rematch on Oct. 5, as the two are now Big Ten rivals after the dismantling of the Pac-12.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Noah Lyles has made no secret of what he wants out of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Medals. Gold medals. Three of them.
2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games
The American sprint star took the first step toward that goal on Sunday night, winning the men’s 100 meters at Stade de France by the slimmest of margins. It required video review to confirm Lyles won by five-thousandths of a second over Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.
Lyles’ time was 9.784 and Thompson had 9.789 to take silver. The photo finish was decided based on when Lyle’s torso crossed the finish, not the sprinters’ feet. American Fred Kerley finished third with a time of 9.81.
This was the closest 100-meter race since at least Moscow in 1980 — or maybe even ever. Back then, Britain’s Allan Wells narrowly beat Silvio Leonard in an era when timing didn’t go down into the thousandths of a second.
Lyles is the first American to win the celebrated race since Justin Gatlin in 2004.
After a disappointing performance three years ago at the Tokyo Games, where he struggled with depression and finished third in his specialty, the 200 meters, Lyles arrived in Paris with a bigger goal — the coveted 100, 200 and 4×100-relay sprint triple — in mind.
“Now, here I am, stronger than before,” he said. “And when Noah Lyles is being Noah Lyles, there is nobody else.”
He will have his next chance to prove it in the 200 on Thursday. The relay is scheduled for Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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