Sports
Total Eclipse of the Park: The Guardians' home opener coincides with a rare solar eclipse
CLEVELAND — Befuddled birds will start chirping. Drivers trapped in a boundless traffic snarl will halt their honking. The temperature will plunge. Sluggers swatting batting practice tosses at Progressive Field will pause for a cosmic intermission.
At 3:13 p.m. ET on April 8, the springtime sky above downtown Cleveland will host a total solar eclipse, as the moon’s shadow sweeps across the middle of the country and eclipse chasers scramble to locate the perfect spot to witness the spectacle.
The orbits of the sun, the Earth and the moon will align so that the moon blocks out the full disc of the sun, casting darkness along a path that will extend from Mexico to Dallas to Little Rock to Indianapolis to Cleveland to Buffalo to Caribou, Maine. The phenomenon occurs every 18-24 months, but usually over vast oceans or uninhabited regions like Antarctica.
This one is headed for the spotlight, and it’s also on a collision course with the Cleveland Guardians’ home opener.
For two years, Cleveland officials have planned for an event in which the ensemble carries out its performance millions of miles from the front-row seats on Lake Erie’s shore. The showcase is expected to attract visitors to Cleveland from Canada, France, Ireland and Zimbabwe, plus states near and far. The city won’t land in the path of totality again until 2444.
To grant the Guardians an extension for their ongoing ballpark renovations, the league booked them a three-city, 11-day trip through Oakland, Seattle and Minneapolis to start the regular season. They’re one of three teams, along with the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays, following that sequence, but they’re the only one with celestial complications.
The Guardians are now faced with a decision: Do they host their home opener that day, or that night, or shortly after the three-minute, 49-second phase of totality when day masquerades as night?
“Everybody talks about where they were when the Cavs won the championship,” said Chris Hartenstine, an education coordinator at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. “Everybody can say, ‘I was in the arena,’ ‘I was at the watch party,’ ‘I was watching with friends.’ This is one of those moments. It’s in science, not necessarily sports. The cool thing about the Guardians is you can get a little bit of both. ‘I was there on Opening Day when the eclipse happened.’”
The preparation for April 8, 2024, for many, began on Aug. 21, 2017, the date of the last total solar eclipse visible from the U.S. That’s when Cleveland restaurant owner Sam McNulty first entered a reminder on his phone’s calendar. Now, he’s fast-tracking the completion of a rooftop bar at Market Garden Brewery to accommodate the out-of-towners who have reserved tables for April 8.
For some, it started a bit earlier.
“I’ve been thinking about 2024 since I was a kid,” said Mike Kentrianakis, who has witnessed 14 total solar eclipses since 1979 from Indonesia, Chile, Gabon, Australia, China, Russia, Greece, Aruba, Canada, and — while over the Scotia Sea — north of the Antarctic Peninsula.
He watched the 2017 eclipse from Carbondale, Ill., and at the end of March, he’ll hop in a rental car in Queens, N.Y., and start his 15-hour trek to the same site, the rare city to fall in the path of totality in both 2017 and 2024.
“I’ll do anything for an eclipse,” Kentrianakis said.
Hartenstine anchored NASA’s public presentation from the path of totality seven years ago in a tent on the grassy area in front of the state capitol building in Jefferson City, Mo. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Hartenstine went from sweating buckets in Jefferson City’s 90-degree summer heat to needing a sweatshirt. As darkness descended in the middle of the day, crickets and cicadas and birds chirped in confusion. Shadows sharpened to what Hartenstine described as “video game” levels as the moon impeded the sun’s effect, before it all returned to normal with disappointing speed.
“Four minutes is a song on the radio,” Hartenstine said. “You can totally miss the experience. You have to know ahead of time to know what you’re looking for and then you can really embrace it.”
While some embrace it, others have to plan around it. The eclipse coincides with the NCAA Women’s Final Four at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and the Cleveland International Film Festival at Playhouse Square. And, of course, the Guardians’ home opener – which, in at least some capacity, will have to surrender to the quirks of science for a once-in-a-lifetime total eclipse at the park.
Over the past few months, the Guardians have consulted with everyone from local authorities to NASA scientists as they tried to determine the best Opening Day approach. The Guardians have slated seven of their last eight home openers (in which fans were permitted) for 4:10 p.m. ET, but that time will fall in the partial eclipse window, and trying to barrel a 90 mph slider while sporting solar-filtered glasses is a tall order. If they choose a late-afternoon start time, fans could potentially view the eclipse from ballpark seats that have a view of the midday sun. Even if they opt for a night game, there will still be traffic-related challenges to sort through.
Few baseball teams have had to consider such questions before, but there is at least one example — and they leaned hard into the eclipse festivities.
In 2017, the Bowling Green Hot Rods, the Low A affiliate of the Rays, faced a similar quandary. Bowling Green, Ky., resided in the path of totality, and when an astronomy professor at nearby Western Kentucky University placed it on their radar a year in advance, the Hot Rods started their planning.
They settled on a brunch-timed first pitch, officially 10:34 a.m., as league rules prohibited them from starting much earlier. The teams, clad in black “moon” and white “sun” jerseys, breezed through the first eight innings, but just as the Hot Rods’ broadcaster expressed relief about the pace of play, the West Michigan Whitecaps pieced together a five-run ninth and the sunlight started to dim.
In 2017, the Bowling Green Hot Rods made an eclipse into a fully themed event, with special uniforms and a viewing party. (Steve Roberts / Bowling Green Hot Rods)
Had the game dragged on any longer than the two hours, 38 minutes it took, the teams would have paused the action. Instead, moments after the final out, players and fans sprawled out on the outfield grass as professors explained the science unfolding overhead.
The Hot Rods attracted a crowd of 6,006, one of the largest in the ballpark’s history, and certainly the largest for a Monday morning first pitch.
The Guardians have sold out every home opener since 1994, and it’s fair to expect that Progressive Field will again sell out its roughly 35,000 seats, eclipse or not. In a normal year, that might qualify as a major event downtown; this year, it’s got a lot of competition.
This is the first total solar eclipse over Cleveland since 1809, nearly a century before the city’s baseball outfit became a charter member of the American League. Destination Cleveland, an organization charged with bringing tourism to the city, estimates that 200,000 visitors will trek downtown that day. Most hotels in the city are already sold out.
“People are going to descend on Cleveland like we’ve never seen,” said Scott Vollmer, VP of education and exhibits for the Great Lakes Science Center.
NASA will broadcast the day’s events from outside the Great Lakes Science Center, where an expected crowd of 50,000 will gather for the grand finale of a three-day festival at the North Coast Harbor.
“It’s literally once-in-a-lifetime,” Vollmer said, “and all you have to do is look up to see it.”
Downtown Cleveland isn’t the only place expecting to be overrun with eclipse tourists. The suburb of Avon Lake, Ohio, about a half-hour west of downtown Cleveland, sits directly on the center line of totality, hence the town’s new slogan, “Totality’s best seat.”
Erin Fach, Avon Lake’s director of parks and recreation, has studied Hopkinsville, a small town in southwest Kentucky that welcomed visitors from 48 states for the 2017 eclipse. Fach and his team even dined at Ferrell’s, a Hopkinsville burger joint with one stove and a dozen barstools that, five years after the landmark event, still featured on its menu an eclipse burger — a double cheeseburger with bacon and a sunny-side-up egg.
Fach expects the town’s population of 30,000 to double or triple on April 8. He has prepared the city’s planners by describing the day as their annual July 4 fireworks show coinciding with the biggest high school football game they’ve ever hosted while another milestone event unfolds at the primary community park.
Now organizers and eclipse tourists alike are simply hoping the weather holds up and everyone can see the show. Cloud cover is a concern in Cleveland, but Hartenstine relayed cautious optimism that the temperature of Lake Erie will create a barrier of cold air that pushes a stagnant, overcast sky away from the waterfront. Colleagues at the Johnson Space Center in Houston have asked Hartenstine why eclipse chasers would venture to Cleveland on April 8 instead of Dallas or another city with a more accommodating spring forecast. Hartenstine pointed out that Cleveland has had clear skies on that date the last two years.
“The pinnacle (is) the totality,” Hartenstine said. “The last little glimmer of sunlight disappears behind the moon and then you have to take your eclipse glasses off or you won’t see anything. When you take those glasses off, you can see the corona of the sun radiating across the sky.
“That was the moment for me in 2017. I still didn’t get it. But once you take the glasses off and see the show, it becomes however long you have in that path of totality, whether it’s 20 seconds, or 3 minutes, 50 seconds, like Cleveland has. You have to take it in.
“That’s four minutes of visual phenomenon, amazement — and then it’s gone.”
The Guardians are expected to decide on their start time in the next few weeks. Whether they build the eclipse into the home opener or try to work around it, it will be a baseball experience with little precedent.
Kentrianakis plans to wait until 18-24 hours before the climax of the event to determine whether he’ll stay in Carbondale or hightail it to Cleveland. The city with the clearer forecast will win out. It’s the last total solar eclipse that will be visible in the contiguous U.S. until August 2044.
“It’s an indescribable experience,” he said. “It’s unlike anything you could imagine.
“Everyone’s gonna say, ‘That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’”
(Top image: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photos: Bill Ingalls courtesy of NASA; Tim Clayton / Corbis via Getty Images)
Sports
Florida AG launches civil rights investigation into MLB’s warning to Christian pitchers over Pride Night caps
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The attorneys general from Missouri and Florida have reacted strongly to the controversy stirred when Major League Baseball warned three San Francisco Giants players about inscribing a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps, and that reaction includes MLB being served with a subpoena that signals the launch of an official investigation.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier launched his investigation on Friday by serving MLB with a subpoena to investigate whether it is violating the civil rights of players based on their religious beliefs.
The general purpose and scope of Florida’s investigation “extend(s) to possible civil rights and deceptive and unfair trade practices violations in matters of employment concerning the business practices, policies, and procedures of Major League Baseball,” per the subpoena obtained by Fox News Digital.
In a letter from Uthmeier to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred, the AG warns that “a pattern or practice of selectively enforcing its rules to benefit favored secular beliefs over disfavored religious beliefs would not only potentially violate Florida civil rights law, but it would also violate the League’s own policies.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL FACES BACKLASH FOR ITS STANCE ON CHRISTIANS WRITING BIBLE VERSES ON PRIDE CAPS
“And a practice of claiming not to discriminate based on religion while discriminating based on religion could further amount to an unfair or deceptive trade practice in violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier speaks at a news conference in Orlando on July 15, 2025, where he said U.S. Masters Swimming should not allow transgender athletes to compete against women swimmers or face legal action. Advocates Cassidy Carlisle and Lainey Armistead also attended. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service)
Uthmeier is particularly troubled by the fact MLB said its warning had nothing to do with the players’ religious beliefs but rather was strictly because of a violation of the league’s uniform code.
It should be noted MLB said in a follow-up statement to its initial warning to the players that it was merely enforcing its uniform codes and the warning had nothing to do with Giants pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker writing a Bible verse on the team’s Pride Night Cap most of the other players wore.
MLB ACCUSED OF ‘DOUBLE STANDARD’ AFTER CALLING OUT PLAYERS’ BIBLE MESSAGES DESPITE BACKING BLM IN 2020
Uthmeier noted that doesn’t ring true and presented in his letter a handful of examples where MLB has been absolutely fine with players adding to their uniform.
“In 2019, for example, a Cincinnati Reds player wrote on his cap in tribute to a nearby mass shooting,” Uthmeier wrote to Manfred. “And in 2020, MLB evidently added new, sweeping exceptions to its uniform rules by allowing players to ‘support social justice and diversity and inclusion.’ These policy changes included permitting players to add Black Lives Matter patches to their sleeves.
“MLB therefore appears to applaud — even change its rules for — the ideological beliefs it prefers, but targets players who express religious views the League doesn’t like.”
Commissioner of Major League Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr. speaks at the 2024 MLB Draft presented by Nike at Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 14, 2024. (Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The Florida subpoena, issued under the Florida Civil Rights Act, demands action from MLB on July 23, 2026, at 9 a.m.. At that time, MLB must deliver to the AG’s office documents including:
- All documents concerning how MLB characterized or classified the June 2026 cap writing, including, for example, whether MLB treated it as religious expression, political messaging, protest, or a violation unrelated to its content.
- All documents concerning what prompted MLB’s review of and warning regarding the June 2026 cap writing, including any complaint, media inquiry, internal escalation, or third-party communication received before the warning issued, and the timing of each relative to the warning.
- All documents concerning the actual June 2026 warnings issued by the MLB to any club.
- All documents, including drafts and internal deliberations, concerning MLB’s decision to issue and publicly announce the June 2026 warnings, and any analysis of whether doing so adhered to the Code or with MLB’s treatment of comparable non-religious expression.
San Francisco Giants pitcher Landen Roupp wrote “Genesis 9:12-16” on his Pride-Night themed hat. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Uthmeier is thus joining Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, who recently wrote a letter to Manfred asking the commissioner to confirm that no player who has chosen to refrain from “wearing Pride Month paraphernalia or included Bible verses on Pride Month hats” will not be disciplined in any way.
Hanaway’s letter states that if Manfred fails to answer by June 25 or does not confirm that no discipline will be levied, she too will open an investigation of MLB.
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The two attorneys general have authority over their individual states. But it affects four MLB teams.
Florida is home to two MLB teams — the Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins — while Missouri is home to the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals.
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Sports
Commentary: Why MLB’s Pride Night cap condemnation isn’t the anti-Christian crackdown conservatives claim
Amid the first days of grief after Alex Vesia and his wife lost their newborn daughter last fall, Vesia noticed something as he watched the World Series on television. He paused the broadcast, then checked the video, then texted another player to make sure.
51.
Dodgers teammates wore his number on their caps. So did players from the Toronto Blue Jays.
“It was awesome,” Vesia said. “It was a very heartwarming moment.”
Moving.
Touching.
And, under baseball’s rules, illegal.
Who knew, really, until this week? Three pitchers from the San Francisco Giants wrote the name of a Bible verse on their Pride Night caps and, amid an uproar, Major League Baseball said it had warned the players that “writing of any kind, with any message” on any playing apparel is not permitted. The issue, the league said in a statement, was not what they wrote on their caps but simply that they wrote on them at all.
Said MLB in the statement: “We have given the same warning numerous times in the past to players for messages such as ‘Dad’, ‘Happy Mother’s Day, I Love Mom’ and names of family members.”
To its credit, the league did not enforce the rule when Vesia’s number started appearing on caps in the World Series. But, if you’re going to draw a line on enforcement, where should you draw it?
In San Francisco, the actions of the Giants’ pitchers were widely condemned.
“They were in for a rude awakening with the response, and it wasn’t just from the gay community,” Giants broadcaster and former pitcher Mike Krukow told KNBR, the team’s flagship radio station. “It was from the Northern California community that supports the gay community.”
In response to media inquiries, and as first reported by Outsports, MLB confirmed it had warned the three players. I asked the league whether warnings had been issued in two other instances in which players had written on their caps, including Clayton Kershaw last year writing the same Bible verse on his Pride Night cap that the Giants’ pitchers wrote this year. MLB declined to comment.
“I got chastised by the league when I put Charlie [Kirk]’s name on my hat last year, because a man was murdered in cold blood,” Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen told me, “and now these gentlemen who are relievers in San Francisco are getting chastised by the league for putting a Bible verse on their hat. It’s crazy to me.”
Treinen said league officials had told him the rule is strictly enforced.
“I straight up asked Clayton last year, ‘Did they call you when you put that on your hat?’” Treinen said. “He said, ‘No.’”
The Pride caps feature team logos decorated in the colors of the rainbow, a symbol long associated with the gay community. In the Bible verse cited by the pitchers (Genesis 9:12-16), the rainbow represents “the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures.”
That the league would warn players against writing a Bible verse on their caps ignited a wave of conservative outrage, from Vice President JD Vance to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley fired off a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, alleging apparent discrimination “against baseball players who profess their Christian faith” and threatening the league’s antitrust exemption. Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon said on national television that players might be able to file a claim for employment discrimination.
That is complete nonsense. This is what you want: When employees raise an issue to their employer, the employer listens and addresses their concerns.
In 2023, the year after five Tampa Bay Rays players declined to wear rainbow logos for Pride Night, Manfred said the league would no longer compel players to do so.
“We have told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases that we don’t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players: not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views,” Manfred said then.
Teammates congratulate Freddie Freeman after his walk-off home run gave the Dodgers a 1-0 win on June 5, when the Dodgers held their annual Pride Night. Blake Treinen, the winning pitcher that night, elected to wear his regular Dodgers cap instead of the Pride version.
(Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
Manfred said the Pride Night celebrations could go on, however a team wished to stage them — or not, in the case of the Texas Rangers, the only one of the 30 MLB teams that declines to hold a Pride Night. And the league still sells Pride gear on its website for all teams, including the Rangers.
In the cases of the Giants and Dodgers, MLB grandfathered each team’s long-running use of a rainbow logo on the cap, with this accommodation to players: If you don’t feel comfortable wearing the Pride cap, just wear your regular cap.
That is what Treinen and outfielder Alex Call did when the Dodgers celebrated Pride Night. That is also what a fourth Giants pitcher did.
“My job is to abide by the rules,” Treinen said. “Ultimately, the only rule we have is to wear our team-issued uniform. So that’s what I chose to do.”
To Treinen, the decision over whether to wear a Pride cap is not about passing judgment on anyone else but about what he sees as the push “to force something on people that you know that is controversial to their faith — and, in fact, straight up against their faith.”
He expressed his support for the Giants pitchers.
“Kudos to those men over there who are standing strong in their faith,” he said. “It’s a sad thing to corner someone and try to make them feel bad about their convictions.”
I respect Treinen for explaining his viewpoint. To me, wearing a Pride cap for one night does not diminish your faith at all. It might sharpen your convictions. More important, it signals a welcome to everyone in the community that buys the tickets and broadcast subscriptions that help pay your salary.
“I think a few people made it about themselves and not about the community,” San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie told the Bay Area Reporter.
We always proclaim the life lessons of sports. One of them: Sometimes you have to put the team’s interests ahead of your own.
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After its massive 1-0 win over South Korea on Thursday night, Mexico has won Group A and officially clinched a spot in the knockout round.
El Tri will play its Round of 32 game in Mexico City, and will face the third-place finisher in either Group C/E/F/H/I.
This is the fourth time that Mexico has topped the group stage of a World Cup, with the other three coming in 1986, 1994 and 2002.
With the win, Mexico remains unbeaten in World Cup group games at home, going a combined 6-2-0 (W-D-L), with two wins and a draw in 1970 and 1986, and now two wins in 2026.
Before the tournament began, Mexico was listed at +6500 to win the World Cup. Now, after winning its first two games of the tournament, Mexico has surged up the oddsboard to +5000.
Can Mexico build off its first two matches and make a deep run in this tournament? Let’s check out the updated odds for El Tri as of June 19.
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Team Mexico — Stage of Elimination
Last 32: +125 (bet $10 to win $22.50 total)
Last 16: +135 (bet $10 to win $23.50 total)
Quarterfinals: +600 (bet $10 to win $70 total)
Semifinals: +1600 (bet $10 to win $170 total)
Runner-up: +3000 (bet $10 to win $310 total)
Outright winner: +5000 (bet $10 to win $510 total)
Mexico is currently +5000 to win the 2026 FIFA World Cup after winning Group A (Getty Images).
Mexico’s Past World Cup Results:
1930: Group stage
1934: Did not qualify
1938: Withdrew
1950: Group stage
1954: Group stage
1958: Group stage
1962: Group stage
1966: Group stage
1970: Quarterfinals
1974: Did not qualify
1978: Group stage
1982: Did not qualify
1986: Quarterfinals
1990: Banned
1994: Round of 16
1998: Round of 16
2002: Round of 16
2006: Round of 16
2010: Round of 16
2014: Round of 16
2018: Round of 16
2022: Group stage
2026: TBD
What to know: Mexico has made a habit of being in the running, but never really being in the running. Make sense? Consider this: El Tri made it out of the group stage in seven consecutive World Cups (1994-2018), but never made it past the Round of 16 in any of those years. In 2022, Mexico failed to make it out of the group stage, and it will look to get back to its winning ways in 2026 after a great start to the tournament. With its win Thursday night, Mexico has now advanced to the knockout stage in eight of the last nine World Cups. It is important to note, however, that Mexico has never made it past the quarterfinals at a FIFA men’s World Cup.
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