Sports
Why Gaelic footballers have the NFL's attention: 'These lads can kick balls'
TAMPA, Fla. — A tall lad with tousled brown hair and ruddy cheeks flipped through the pages of his light green leather notebook, looking at “wee reminders” to get his head right.
Killer mindset
YOU ABSOLUTELY DESERVE THIS
Teams are watching me. Brilliant!
The kicking workout was the grand finale of the NFL’s International Player Pathway pro day this Wednesday afternoon at the University of South Florida. The event featured the first kickers and punters in the IPP program, which since 2017 has sought to provide players outside of North America with opportunities to play in the league.
Three of the kickers were plucked straight from Gaelic football, Ireland’s most popular sport. Charlie Smyth, 22, of Down, Mark Jackson, 25, of Wicklow, and Rory Beggan, 31, of Monaghan, each left their posts as goalkeepers for their county teams this winter to give NFL kickin’ a fair go.
The lads started kicking NFL footballs this past fall, so Smyth’s wee written reminders were necessary. He stretched outside in the Florida sun before his workout, then took out his phone and watched a cutup of himself making 50-plus-yard field goals at this same indoor field.
“I know I can do it here,” he said.
Smyth has been illegally streaming NFL games since he was 16. When he was 18, he sent an email to [email protected] pitching himself as an NFL kicker. He never heard back.
This past August, during his off-time from his county team, he finally went to an American football kicking session in Dublin, “just for the craic,” he said. (For the uninitiated, “craic,” pronounced “crack,” means fun in Irish.)
The craic turned serious and led Smyth to the scouting combine, where he caught the eye of several NFL special teams coaches, then to Tampa for this second NFL audience.
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The Gaelic kickers were inconsistent past 50 yards in their first appearance in front of NFL teams — “I was kicking myself a bit after the combine,” Beggan said, no pun intended — so this time they wanted to prove they had the distance. When Beggan lined up from 50 yards, he banged it through. Then again from 55 and again from 60. Jackson was perfect through 45 yards and narrowly missed from 50-plus. Smyth drilled his 50-yard attempt, missed from 55, then was good from 60.
After Smyth knocked in his last long attempt, a senior NFL executive who’d been on the field said he expected at least one of the Irish guys to sign with an NFL team, a feat that once seemed outlandish.
“I have to be very honest, I didn’t expect it,” said Ravens assistant special teams coach Randy Brown.
“They were further ahead than everybody expected,” said Saints special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi. “There’s the expression, an ‘NFL leg.’ All of them have an NFL leg.”
These “Irish Gaelic” guys, as special teams coaches call them, seemed to come out of nowhere. So how the feck did they go from kicking 45s and frees to kicking field goals for NFL personnel?
The lad behind the lads is Tadhg Leader. Fair-skinned and ginger-haired and -bearded, Leader is a former professional rugby player from Galway on the west coast of Ireland. He wound up stateside with Major League Rugby in 2018, and when the pandemic hit he started kicking NFL footballs just for the craic.
Soon he started training with John Carney, the former NFL All-Pro who is fifth on the all-time scoring list. Carney encouraged Leader, then 28, to make a career out of kicking, so Leader called the IPP.
The program didn’t carry kickers and punters, so he sent his tape to NFL teams. He was told he needed more game experience, so he played in the Spring League, then European League Football before finally signing with the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2022. In his only preseason appearance, he kicked a walk-off 35-yard game-winner.
“Life was great,” Leader said. “I thought I was going to be there for the season.”
But then Hamilton’s general manager called him in and told him he was too raw. Leader was 30 years old, and despite getting more tape, he kept hearing the same feedback.
“Well, like, where else do I get experience?” Leader said.
He tried to kick in the XFL but had issues getting a visa, so he decided to move on. “It’s looking like it’s too late for me,” he said, explaining his mindset. “Let me go home to Ireland to start a pathway that everyone else can walk.”
Last February, Leader started a business to discover Irish kicking talent and help them land college scholarships. He wanted to create a program where cost wouldn’t be a barrier, so he spent his own money at the start, including at least a thousand dollars on footballs. His family thought he’d gone mad.
“It was extremely raw,” Leader said. But in a few months, he’d helped two Irish kickers earn college scholarships and arranged a sponsorship with Delta Airlines.
While Leader was training his first class of soon-to-be collegiate kickers, NFL special teams coordinators convened with the league office to discuss an idea they’d been talking about for years: taking the specialists out of the scouting combine and creating a separate event so they could invite more players and do more kicking.
Brown, the Ravens coach, said that when they presented their vision to NFL EVP of Football operations Troy Vincent, Vincent told them he’d like to see an international component. Last April, James Cook, who runs the IPP and knew of Leader’s quick work with Irish kickers, scheduled a meeting with him at the NFL’s London office.
Leader happened to be in town on business for his day job at J.P. Morgan and snuck away to meet with Cook, who told him they were considering adding kickers and punters to the IPP. Nothing was finalized, but did he think the guys were out there? And if so, could he get them ready in time?
“The biggest barrier that exists is not the capability, but it’s the access,” Leader told Cook. “And if you guys can give access, I can get the kicking talent.”
Monaghan’s Rory Beggan kicks a free during a match against Cavan on Sunday, April 7. (Ramsey Cardy / Sportsfile via Getty Images)
There are only two sports in the world where athletes kick a ball off the grass and send it high through uprights. And the width of the posts in Gaelic football is only about three feet wider than NFL and college football goal posts.
“Kicking the ball is part of our DNA growing up here in Ireland,” Leader said. “Americans throw baseballs, basketballs, footballs. We don’t do that. We pass those balls with our feet, so now we’ve just been given a new ball to use our feet with …
“It’s the most perfect of synergies, just no one’s ever connected the dots.”
His girlfriend and parents urged him to iron out more details with the NFL, but Leader couldn’t wait. Driving around the country, he started training a group of 12 Gaelic football players whenever they could make time.
Leader didn’t want to get on the bad side of any coaches, so he got the word out through mutual friends and encouraged players to reach out for information. He wound up with a group of the country’s most talented Gaelic goalkeepers, the most prolific off-the-ground kickers of any position in the sport.
Beggan is the equivalent of an All-Star. Jackson is the youngest goalkeeper in Gaelic Athletic Association history to score 100 career points. Beggan tried to mix in the odd kicking session during the fall while his focus was with his club team.
Gaelic players aren’t paid — Beggan runs his own sportswear business — so it was tough to balance it all. He made it work for his “favorite skill in Gaelic football,” which also requires players to run, carry, pass and bounce the ball.
“I love kickin’ out of hands,” Beggan said. “I love kickin’ off the ground.”
Clutch. Rory Beggan last kick of game to win for Scotstown v Kilcoo.
Legend. 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/896LGVK2ns— GAA Keeper Coaching – Dr. Donal Hughes (@GAAKeeperCoach) November 12, 2023
Smyth, a graduate student in physical education, arrived frazzled and late to his first session in August because he’d confused the location. “My head was gone and my laces weren’t even tied,” he said. He didn’t know how to set up the holder and had to kick four field goals in a row to catch up to everyone else.
He made them all.
By October, Leader whittled his group of 12 down to his four best — the Gaelic trio plus Leader’s younger brother, Darragh, a rugby player turned punter, and they were evaluated by NFL UK personnel in London.
Leader says there are only two indoor fields in Ireland, so that often meant training through rough weather. On one cold and rainy day in Dublin, Jackson, who also punts, said he could barely get an attempt off in the gale-force winds.
“Every time you dropped the ball, the ball moved around six yards,” he said.
They’d get stares from onlookers, “especially when we’re in a public park and a ma and a dog was walking around the field,” says Leader. “We looked like these weird fellas that were kicking weird-shaped balls. No one really knew what was going on.”
In December, the four Irish players found out they’d earned spots in the IPP along with Harry Mallinder, a British rugby player turned punter.
Smyth finally told his Gaelic manager that he’d been kicking American footballs in his spare time, and that he’d be stepping away for now — maybe forever, depending on how the NFL received him. Jackson said his Wicklow teammates and boss were shocked, but supportive. He’d been playing in goal for the club since he was 18. “No one expected me to be leaving at 25,” he said.
The lads took up kicking full-time with Leader, whose volunteer work became a paid role with the NFL in January. Leader took them to Boston to get acclimatized to America before joining the other players in the IPP program in Florida in early February.
In Boston, they saw a field marked up with hashes and numbers for the first time, as well as yellow uprights (in Gaelic football, the posts are white with a black spot in the center of the crossbar). They’ve been playing “Madden” and reviewing game film to master the intricacies of situational football and spent time learning about the business side of NFL clubs and the value of each roster spot.
“We’re quick learners, in fairness to us,” Beggan said.
Beggan said the hardest adjustment has been wearing all the gear. “Funny, we were doing all this stuff in Ireland with no helmet or pads on us. So we thought this is quite easy, then,” he said. They took to wearing their helmets for five or ten minutes at a time to get used to the weight while sitting around in their villas at IMG Academy about an hour’s drive south of Tampa.
In February, Brown visited IMG to get them ready for the combine. While some of the guys were punting, he told Smyth to “Go down there and shag.” Smyth looked at him like he was crazy. The rest cracked up laughing.
“Tadgh looked at me and he says, ‘You know, shag means something different,’” Brown said. “And I said, Oh, yeah I watched ‘Austin Powers.’”
When the lads took the field at Lucas Oil Stadium to participate in the first-ever specialist showcase, there was at least one long snapper who scoffed at their presence.
“He thought we played Gaelic football in kilts,” Jackson said. “I stepped up for my first kick and banged it through the posts, and I think he started to take note then that yeah, these lads can kick balls.”
Brown, who coaches the NFL’s best kicker in Justin Tucker, started to believe when he saw the way the balls traveled end-over-end — and when he closed his eyes and heard a deep thud, like a fist pounding a chest, the distinct sound of an NFL kick.
“It brought a smile to your face,” Brown said. “God, they did it.”
“I was blown away by how good they are in a short amount of time,” said Cowboys special teams coordinator John Fassel.
When they interviewed in Indianapolis, the Irish trio had to explain Gaelic football to the coaches, who had no idea that although it is an amateur sport, athletes train like professionals and play in front of crowds of 80,000 people in the All-Ireland tournament.
“When you tell the teams that you’ve played at an elite level for eight years, it kind of perks their ears up a bit,” Jackson said.
“These guys are like household names in their counties in Ireland, and they dropped everything to pursue this dream,” Rizzi said.
Beggan’s Monaghan team went 1-6 in his absence and was relegated out of the first division after ten years in the big league. He is back playing for the club while he awaits an NFL opportunity. Jackson is training with Wicklow, which also went 1-6, but doesn’t want to risk injury.
Last year, Monaghan made it to the semi-final of the All-Ireland tournament, in which every county team plays for the Sam Maguire Cup. This year’s tournament started on April 6 and runs through July. Beggan isn’t sure how long he’ll be with the team if the NFL comes calling.
“They don’t know how it’s gonna go,” Beggan said. “And I suppose over the last few weeks, we’re in the unknown.”
Charlie Smyth signs an American football for a young Irish fan. (Courtesy of Brendan Monaghan)
When the Gaelic kickers first walked into the interview rooms at the combine, NFL coaches were struck by their size (average height: 6-3, average weight: 215 pounds). Beggan is built like a rhinoceros. Jackson’s quads compare favorably with Saquon Barkley’s. Smyth is a lanky 6-4.
The new NFL kickoff will increase returns, and a kicker who can run and make a tackle downfield could prove useful. “We played a tough sport where you have to give hits and take hits as well,” Jackson said. “We’re not just some wee fragile kickers.”
“Some special teams coaches were calling them ‘brick sh–houses’, I think that’s the phrase,” Leader said.
They were rooting for the new kickoff to pass because it will emphasize directional kicking, away from the returners in a landing zone — exactly where they’d be placing the ball on kick-outs in Gaelic football. “We feel we have a bigger strength to maybe what the Americans have,” Beggan said.
At the combine, they kicked with long snappers they’d never practiced with before. At their pro day, they chose to kick with a long snapper and holder, a risk very few college specialists take, because they wanted to address the biggest question in their NFL transition: can they consistently handle the live field goal operation?
A perfect NFL snap, hold and kick should happen in 1.3 seconds to beat the rush, and the lads aren’t quite up to speed yet. Scouts at USF muttered that the kickers were a bit slow. But Brown is mindful that they are at the infant stage of the position. Learning intricacies, like how to adjust a plant leg for wind, will come later.
In September, the NFL announced that starting in 2024, every NFL practice squad would expand to include a 17th spot reserved for an international player. (In the past, international players had been allocated to just one division per year.) That could prove to be an opportunity for specialists.
Most NFL teams don’t carry a second kicker or punter on the roster, and most starters only practice two days a week. Special teams practice goes on without them with the help of the JUGS machine.
“Everybody probably should use that spot for a kicker,” Fassel said. “Let’s have a guy on the roster the whole time so we’re training him so we don’t have to go get somebody once somebody gets hurt.”
And in the NFL’s salary-capped world, a potential source of young, homegrown — read “cheap” — developmental talent could prove incredibly valuable. “Could they kick this year in the NFL?” Brown said. “Maybe, but the deck is stacked against them. Could they develop in the next 12 to 24 months? Absolutely.”
“This isn’t some marketing tool,” Jackson said. This isn’t any gimmick. We’re elite-level kickers. We’re not perfect, but if we were on a roster for a year we won’t be too far off.”
As the scouts cleared out of the USF facility following a long day, Leader sat on the turf and reviewed his notes, sighing in relief and exhaustion.
His work wasn’t done yet. He’d head back to Ireland the next day to host another kicking workshop to discover the next wave of young talent. “You think I’m joking, but there’s hundreds of Irish kids just like these guys,” Leader said.
Smyth scrolled through a flurry of excited texts from his parents, who’d been watching his workout on Instagram Live from their home in Mayobridge. When he earned his IPP spot in December, his friends still didn’t believe this was legit. “Sure you’re not going to the NFL,” he says they told him.
“Just you watch, boys,” Smyth told his friends then.
A week after the Florida workout, Smyth was in a yoga class with the rest of the IPP players. They aren’t supposed to bring their phones in, but he was expecting an important update. During the last meditation, he opened his eyes a crack to see a notification flash a message with a New Orleans Saints logo.
“We were doing our last namaste, but I knew this was happening,” Smyth said. “I was just trying to stay calm and I was like, sh–, the Saints are bringing me in!”
Smyth worked out for New Orleans that Friday morning. Afterward, coaches told him he could go shower before his flight back to Tampa. Then, Harry Piper, a Saints scouting assistant, told Smyth he should head upstairs.
They were getting his paperwork ready.
Smyth is back in Ireland until OTAs start next week, and he’s talked to what feels like every journalist in the country. He overheard his sister’s colleagues talking about him on a work call and was even a guest on “The Late Late Show,” the country’s most popular television show.
This past weekend, Smyth’s club GAA team in Mayobridge threw him a party. When he walked in, everybody cheered and applauded. He says he hasn’t cried yet, because he always knew what he was capable of.
“It’s where I saw myself getting to,” he said. “It’s where I expected to be.”
In New Orleans, he believes he has a chance to compete for the starting job. “I didn’t make all these sacrifices just to be happy to sit on a practice squad,” Smyth said.
After a Q&A with the 100 or so kids at his club reception, he headed to Gorman’s, the local pub, with a few pals. He’s normally not a Guinness guy, but he ordered a few pints. He knows it won’t taste as good in New Orleans.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos courtesy of NFL UK)
Citing a lack of consistency in the kicking game, Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome announced that the team was releasing young kicker Stephen Hauschka, who hours earlier missed a 36-yard attempt against the Cleveland Browns on “Monday Night Football.”
Hauschka was just 9-of-13 on field goal attempts through nine games, and all of his misses were from under 50 yards. The Ravens replaced him by signing free agent Billy Cundiff, who was working at a venture capital firm at the time.
That transaction occurred in November 2009. That’s the last time the Ravens made an in-season, performance-based change at typically one of the most volatile positions in the sport.
Ravens coach John Harbaugh made clear Monday that he has no plans on making another one, even as his longtime kicker, Justin Tucker, is mired in the most difficult stretch of his 13-year career.
“There’s no thought to that,” Harbaugh said. “You have to find that competition first if you’re going to be blunt about it. Where is that competition? That would be one thing. The best option right now is to get Justin back on point, because he’s fully capable of doing it. (We) certainly haven’t lost any confidence in Justin Tucker.”
Harbaugh’s comments came a day after Tucker missed two kicks in an 18-16 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers at Acrisure Stadium. After entering the season as the most statistically accurate kicker in NFL history, Tucker has missed 6 of 22 attempts this year, along with a point-after try. Two of the misses came from inside 50 yards, where Tucker had made 90 percent of his kicks over his first 12 NFL seasons. His extra-point miss was just the seventh of his career.
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“It’s certainly frustrating, especially when we know that these games come down to the wire, like this one did, that I let a couple get away,” Tucker said after Sunday’s game. “But, like I’ve said before, the only thing that we can do is just get right back to work and focus on making the most out of our next opportunity.”
Considered one of the most unique weapons in the league for over a decade and the Ravens’ most reliable performer since he entered the league in 2012, Tucker — and by extension, the team’s field goal operation — has suddenly become one of the reasons Baltimore is losing games.
It’s harsh and it feels uncomfortable to say or write about a guy who has been the gold standard in the sport at his position for many years, but the numbers are hard to ignore. The Ravens’ four losses have come by a total of 17 points, and Tucker missed a field goal in each of them that factored prominently in the defeats.
Tucker “needs to make kicks,” Harbaugh said after Sunday’s frustrating loss in Pittsburgh. “He knows that. He makes them in practice, and he made the long one (54-yarder) later, which was good to see. He’s still very capable. Kick them straight, we’ll be good.”
Missing seven total kicks through 11 games would get plenty of other kickers a pink slip. That’s just the nature of the position in the NFL and the fine line between winning and losing. Kicking issues are omnipresent around the league, and Tucker is hardly alone among proven veterans having a tough time this season. The New York Jets have had four different kickers in as many weeks.
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For the Ravens, however, kicking stability has been a constant. Matt Stover, nicknamed “Money Matt” for his accuracy, was the team’s kicker from 1996 to 2008. Cundiff replaced Hauschka in 2009 and was the team’s kicker for three seasons before his crushing late miss in the AFC Championship Game loss to the New England Patriots in January 2012. Tucker arrived on the scene as an undrafted free agent several months later, beat out Cundiff for the job and hasn’t missed a game in 13 seasons.
Just the idea of making a kicking change in Baltimore seems blasphemous, given Tucker’s well-earned status. Before the two misses in Pittsburgh on Sunday, Tucker’s career field goal percentage (89.7) made him the most accurate kicker in NFL history and put him on a Hall of Fame track.
His clutch kicking as a rookie in 2012 was instrumental in the Ravens winning their last Super Bowl. He’s been selected to seven Pro Bowl teams and named an All-Pro on eight occasions. Time and time again when the Ravens needed points, particularly late in games, Tucker stepped up, performed his tried-and-true pre-kick ritual and calmly delivered. He’s previously been the highest-paid kicker in the sport, and for good reason.
Tucker’s kicking brilliance, along with his charisma, outgoing personality and multitude of talents, made him one of the faces of the team and one of the most popular and recognizable athletes in Baltimore. Tucker’s No. 9 jerseys are not hard to find when you’re scanning the seating bowl at Ravens games.
But this season has brought long-avoided angst in Baltimore about the performance of the kicker and led to a small but growing segment of Baltimore’s fan base to question why the organization hasn’t moved on, or at least brought in competition, for its longtime star.
“Knowing the team, knowing the character of Justin, yes, his performance in the past does warrant him the benefit of the doubt, for sure,” Stover said. “But this is the NFL. It is a very immediate performance you have to have. With an objective job like being a kicker, it becomes a quick response for people to say, ‘Hey, man, what’s wrong with you? Do we need to make a change?’”
Yet, Stover said, “He’s one of the best who has ever done it. Who are you going to get who you can guarantee will be better?”
Justin Tucker has missed a field goal in each of the Ravens’ four losses this season. (David Eulitt / Getty Images)
Bringing in another kicker in mid-November likely means either signing a well-traveled veteran who hasn’t been able to land another job or plucking someone off another team’s practice squad. It’s inconceivable at the moment that the Ravens would trust one of those options more than Tucker at a time when they fancy themselves as Super Bowl contenders.
“He’s definitely our best option, and he’s going to make a lot of kicks — I really believe that,” Harbaugh said. “But it’s up to him and the guys he works with every day to make those balls go straight. Competition right now, at this time, no that’s not something we’d want for Justin.”
Stover, who is in the Ravens’ Ring of Honor, still lives in the Baltimore area and has relationships with many people in the building, including Tucker. He also understands what Tucker is going through. There were times early in his career with Cleveland when he struggled and the Browns brought in competition for his job. In 1999, the Ravens claimed kicker Joe Nedney on waivers while Stover remained on the roster.
“That was brutal. He wasn’t on the practice squad. He wasn’t on IR. He was on the roster,” Stover said. “It really just comes down to performance. There’s no subjectivity. I got through it.
“Justin is going through a little blip. He’s mentally strong. He’s got a great support staff around him. He’s got a head coach who totally gets it. To do it for 12 years as well as he’s done it says a lot about who he is and his character. It’s the first time he’s ever had to deal with this. I dealt with it three or four times. It was hard and it sucks. He’ll get through it.”
Stover, who trains young kickers, acknowledged that he hasn’t broken down Tucker’s mechanics, but he maintains the fact that Tucker has missed all seven kicks wide left is a “good thing,” because that often points to a fixable issue. It doesn’t appear to be a leg strength issue with Tucker. Almost all of his kicks, except one, have had the necessary distance.
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There has been plenty of speculation about whether his issues are being caused by snapping and/or holding problems, but Tucker and others at the Ravens’ facility have continued to say snapper Nick Moore and holder Jordan Stout, who aren’t new at this or to the team, are doing their jobs.
After Sunday’s misses, Tucker retreated to the locker room to address reporters and insisted his struggles are not a confidence issue, either.
“I’m still confident I’m going to go out there and nail every single kick,” Tucker said. “Part of the way we stay confident is by continuing to work and trust the process, and I know I might sound like a broken record, but it’s a part of what brings us success — just trusting the process and then taking it one kick at a time.”
Harbaugh, a former special teams coach, has a very close relationship with the kicker. Senior special teams coach Randy Brown has been with Tucker every step of his career and is considered one of the top kicking gurus in the league. Ravens assistant special teams coach Sam Koch is a former holder for Tucker and one of his closest confidants.
Stout has been holding for Tucker for three seasons, and Moore has been in the Ravens organization since 2020. The kicking battery and coaching staff have an established routine that has yielded very strong results for many years.
“You try to attack everything to the utmost that we can, across the board,” Harbaugh said. “Justin is one of the aspects that we’re looking at. He’s going to get it figured out. We have coaches. We have technique. We look at the tape. He’s practicing well. He’s got to kick it straight.”
(Top photo: Barry Reeger / Imagn Images)
Sports
Florida city council changes mind on paying to repair Tampa Bay Rays' ballpark after hurricane ripped roof off
Just hours after voting to finance repairs to the home stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays, the St. Petersburg City Council reversed course.
The Rays will now pay the division rival New York Yankees $15 million to play their home regular-season games at New York’s spring training ballpark. That is now the only certain home the Rays will have until further notice.
The stadium’s fiberglass roof was ripped clean off Oct. 9 when Hurricane Milton swept ashore just south of Tampa Bay. Then came the destructive water damage inside the venue, causing an estimated $55.7 million in damage. The extensive repairs cannot be finished before the 2026 season, city documents show.
The city at least would have supplied some funding and started the process with its initial vote, which was a 4-3 decision.
A drone image shows the dome of Tropicana Field, which was torn open by Hurricane Milton in St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 10, 2024. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)
The initial vote Thursday was to get moving on the roof portion of the repair. Once that was done, crews would begin working on laying down a new baseball field and fixing damaged seating and office areas and a variety of electronic systems, which would require another vote to approve money for the remaining restoration.
Members who opposed it said there wasn’t enough clarity on numerous issues, including how much would be covered by the ballpark’s insurance and what amount might be provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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The reversal on fixing Tropicana Field came after the council voted to delay consideration of revenue bonds for a proposed new $1.3 billion Rays ballpark. Just two days earlier, the Pinellas County Commission postponed a vote on its share of the new stadium bonds, leaving that project in limbo.
“This is a sad place. I’m really disappointed,” council Chair Deborah Figg-Sanders said. “We won’t get there if we keep finding ways we can’t.”
The Rays say the lack of progress puts the new stadium plan and the future of Tropicana Field in jeopardy.
“I can’t say I’m confident about anything,” Rays Co-President Brian Auld told council members.
Cots at Tropicana Field before the arrival of Hurricane Milton in St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 7, 2024. (Reuters/Octavio Jones)
The reversal now means the city and Rays must work on an alternative in the coming weeks so that Tropicana Field can possibly be ready for the 2026 season.
“I’d like to pare it down and see exactly what we’re obligated to do,” council member John Muhammad said.
Several council members said before the vote on the $23.7 million to fix the roof that the city is contractually obligated to do so.
“I don’t see a way out of it. We have a contract that’s in place,” council member Gina Driscoll said. “We’re obligated to do it. We are going to fix the roof.”
The team’s planned new stadium would be ready for the 2028 season, if that project advances, the team said Tuesday.
Rays top executives said in a letter to the Pinellas County Commission that the team has already spent $50 million for early work on the new $1.3 billion ballpark and cannot proceed further because of delays in approval of bonds for the public share of the costs.
The damaged roof of Tropicana Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays, after Hurricane Milton made landfall in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 10, 2024. (Reuters/Octavio Jones)
“The Rays organization is saddened and stunned by this unfortunate turn of events,” a letter, signed by co-presidents Auld and Matt Silverman, said. They noted the overall project was previously approved by the County Commission and the City of St. Petersburg.
Asked if Major League Baseball can survive long term in the Tampa Bay area, Rays Principal Owner Stuart Sternberg said the outlook is “less rosy than it was three weeks ago. We’re going to do all that we can, as we’ve tried for 20 years, to keep the Rays here for generations to come.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The coronation was nothing new.
The narrative that came with it, however, reflected just how much has changed in one year.
For the third time in his decorated Major League Baseball career, Shohei Ohtani won most valuable player honors Thursday, claiming the National League’s top individual accolade by a unanimous vote from 30 members of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America.
While no designated hitter had won an MVP, the award was not a surprise. In his first season with the Dodgers, Ohtani led the NL in home runs (54), RBIs (130) and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (1.036). He was second in batting average (.310). And with 59 steals, he became the first player in history with a 50-homer, 50-steal season.
Unlike his previous two MVP awards in 2021 and 2023 with the Angels, the two-way star didn’t win this one while pitching, limited to hitting this past season after undergoing last year a revision of the Tommy John surgery he had.
“The fact that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pitch this season,” Ohtani said through an interpreter, “just made me focus more on my offensive game.”
And the circumstances surrounding Thursday’s announcement that Ohtani won were even more different. There were no looming questions about free agency. No lingering doubts about his lack of postseason experience.
Only one last victorious appearance to bookend a celebratory season for the newest Dodgers star.
“I’m representing the team, winning this award,” Ohtani said on MLB Network, after teammate Clayton Kershaw delivered the announcement.
“I obviously don’t go into the season trying to strive to get the MVP award,” Ohtani added. “I was more focused on being one of the guys with a new team, with the Dodgers. I wanted to embrace the fans, as well, and just let them learn who I was. That was my main focus.”
When Ohtani won his second MVP this time last year, the announcement was surrounded by thick offseason speculation. Ohtani was early in his process as a marquee free agent. He had yet to start meeting with clubs trying to sign him. His future was hanging in the balance.
Fast-forward 12 months, and there were a few constants to be found Thursday — right down to Ohtani’s new interpreter for the announcement, Matt Hidaka (who interpreted for Ohtani during his introductory news conference with the Angels in 2017).
Instead of facing total offseason uncertainty like he did last year, Ohtani was looking ahead to his return to the mound with the Dodgers next year, when he is expected to resume two-way duties as a member of their rotation.
Exactly when Ohtani will retake the mound is unclear. He ended the season needing to check a few more boxes in his recovery from elbow surgery, including facing hitters again in live batting-practice sessions.
“The goal is to be ready for opening day, and that includes hitting and pitching,” Ohtani said. “But we are taking our time, obviously … I think we are going to take a little bit more time and be conservative and we’re going to make sure I’m healthy before I step back on the mound.”
A labrum surgery on his left shoulder this month — resulting from the dislocated shoulder Ohtani suffered in the World Series — also likely will push back his pitching timeline, leaving his chances of starting during the Dodgers’ season-opening trip to his home country of Japan seemingly slim.
“The goal is to be ready for opening day, and that includes hitting and pitching,” Ohtani said. “But we are taking our time, obviously … I think we are going to take a little bit more time and be conservative and we’re going to make sure I’m healthy before I step back on the mound.”
It’s also unknown how strictly the Dodgers will limit Ohtani’s pitching workload, as they typically do with pitchers returning from major arm surgeries.
What is clear: Ohtani will have a leading role to play in multiple ways for the Dodgers, who are hoping he can replicate some of his dominant offensive form from the past year while also being in position to impact what was a shorthanded staff.
“Right now my focus is to get healthy, come back stronger, get on the mound and show everybody what I can do,” Ohtani said, after laughing off a question about whether he hopes to add a Cy Young Award to his trophy case next year.
It was all a far cry from where Ohtani was last year, as he embarked on a free-agent process that resulted in a record-breaking $700-million contract.
In hindsight, it’s a decision that worked out for both parties.
En route to helping the Dodgers win the World Series — their second since 2020 and first in a full season since 1988 — Ohtani pulled away from all other NL MVP contenders, including New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor (who finished second) and Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte (who finished third).
It made Ohtani the 12th player in MLB history with three or more MVP awards (of that group, only seven-time winner Barry Bonds won a fourth). It made Ohtani the second player in history to win both an AL and NL MVP, joining Frank Robinson’s honors in 1961 (with Cincinnati) and 1966 (with Baltimore). And it marked the 13th time in Dodgers history one of their players won an MVP. Cody Bellinger had been the last to do so in 2019.
The Dodgers’ hope is that more MVPs — and World Series titles — are in Ohtani’s future, as he enters the second year of his 10-year deal with the club.
Other than his pitching rehab, after all, the lack of uncertainties surrounding Ohtani on Thursday reflected just how quickly he has settled with the Dodgers.
It wasn’t his first time winning the honor. But it only added to what has been the most triumphant season of his MLB career yet.
“The next goal,” Ohtani said, “is for me to do it again.”
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