What happened

Venezuela beat Team USA 3-2 on Tuesday night to win its first World Baseball Classic title, with Eugenio Suárez’s ninth-inning tiebreaking double topping Bryce Harper’s eighth-inning two-run home run. The championship game, in Miami’s loanDepot Park, capped the sixth edition of the 20-nation event, which is held every three years. As the heavily Latino crowd cheered Venezuela’s win in Miami, thousands of people also celebrated in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.

Who said what

“Thirty million people around the world were watching this game today,” Venezuela captain Salvador Perez said after the game. “The World Series, as you all know, is one of the most important championships in the major leagues, but when you fight for your country, that goes beyond.” Team USA captain Aaron Judge, who went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, said his teammates “put on this uniform, signed up to go out there and get a gold medal,” and “we just fell short.”

This year’s Team USA was “the greatest collection of American baseball players ever assembled for the World Baseball Classic,” bringing together “All-Stars and MVPs and future Hall of Famers,” said The Athletic. But “despite the gaudy statistics and lucrative contracts,” the team “lacked cohesion and performed as less than the sum of its parts.” Venezuela was overshadowed ahead of the tournament by the U.S., Japan and the Dominican Republic, the only other Latin American team to win the WBC, in 2013. But Venezuela’s “success was not that surprising,” The Associated Press said, given that 63 Venezuelan-born players “appeared on Major League Baseball opening-day rosters last year.”

What next?

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, declared Wednesday a National Day of Joy, giving everyone but essential workers the day off. Team USA — which has only won one WBC championship, in 2017 — will get its next shot at the title in 2029.

Gawr Gura, the most popular VTuber in the world, has officially announced her retirement. A computer-generated cross between a girl and a shark, Gawr Gura acted as a "torchbearer" of this fast growing internet subculture, said The Gamer.

VTubers, or virtual YouTubers, use face or body tracking to "puppeteer a digital avatar" anime character and sing, stream and speak often to massive audience bases, said Polygon.

The online community, which started in Japan, has "exploded in popularity" in the past few years and is now gaining fans across the world. Entertainers' real faces and voices never appear online – instead, fans follow the avatars, the majority of which "derive their visual style from anime".

With millions of subscribers, Gawr Gura decided to retire due to issues with her agency – the largest of a handful that "recruit and foster talent to become virtual entertainers", said Polygon.

The VTuber's decision feels "bittersweet" to long-time fans, said The Gamer. "They weren't just cheering for a cute anime shark girl, but the voice, personality, and presence they had come to know."

Anime streamers

VTube was first taken mainstream by Kizuna AI, an avatar brought to life by Japanese company Activ8 nearly 10 years ago. Since then, agencies have capitalised on the growing market, building up bases of avatar talent. Cover Corp, the agency that managed Gawr Gura, is the largest, handling dozens of creators and facilitating about a quarter of all VTube views.

VTubers, managed by an agency or not, take to streaming services like YouTube and Twitch to connect with their fans. Masquerading as their character and often taking on a signature, high-pitched anime voice, creators put on performances or simply chat – and people tune in by the millions.

Fans of VTubers often develop parasocial relationships with their favourite entertainers, becoming attached to the real people behind the avatars. In many ways, the community mirrors Japan's "idol" culture, in which singers and entertainers are intentionally marketed to fans as role models, friends, or even potential romantic partners.

Motoaki Tanigo, CEO of Cover Corp, said that despite visual comparisons to artificial intelligence, fans might become confused or disconnected if VTube creators started to use AI in their videos. "This whole business is based on fans' desire to support someone because of their extraordinary artistic talent," he told The Japan Times.

Hitting a home run in LA

Viewership of VTube is growing, and it is slowly "becoming a staple of live content", said Esports Illustrated. Last summer, even more people were exposed to VTube when Cover characters made some special appearances at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game.

The avatars took to the jumbotron, were found in photo spots as cardboard cutouts and sold special merch, like t-shirts and baseball cards. "Gura even went viral for her rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game in the 7th inning," said Esports Illustrated.

Baseball and VTube may seem like an unusual combination, but "the collaboration was a success" even before the Dodgers took home the World Series in October. The sport is incredibly popular in Japan, and the Dodgers with "superstar Shohei Ohtani on the roster" gave the collaboration plenty of momentum.

The agencies behind VTube aren't slowing down anytime soon. For Cover, "the Dodgers' promotion is one step in a campaign to broaden the appeal of VTubers beyond the fervent core" of young men in Japan, said the LA Times.

The company has since launched Cover USA, opening an office in Los Angeles, said Esports Illustrated. And alongside its expansion, Cover has introduced "its VTuber talent" to anime conventions and concerts, hoping to "spread awareness of its creators and brand in the English market".

Over the past two offseasons, the Los Angeles Dodgers have committed more than $2 billion in future player salaries, reigniting debate about whether a salary cap would ease the equity woes across the league. After reaching a $700 million deal with star Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers won their second World Series in four years and are positioned for another deep run following another offseason spending spree.

With frustration growing among fans of smaller market teams, baseball may be headed to a standoff after its Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the players expires in 2026.

Why aren't there salary caps in baseball?

Baseball is unique among the four major North American sports in that it does not have a salary cap, largely because the last effort by the sport's owners to impose one ended in catastrophe. The 1994 season began without a CBA between the players and the owners, who were unified in their desire for a salary cap. By August, the owners were "still pushing hard for that cap, and no agreement was going to be reached while that remained on the table," said Baseball Prospectus. The players struck, and the rest of the regular season games and the playoffs were canceled. Fans were livid, and the "average attendance dropped from over 31,000 per game to just above 25,000 between 1994 and 1995," said Yahoo Sports.

Players and owners agreed to a compromise "competitive balance tax" in 1996, which set a soft spending limit. Teams that "carry payrolls above that threshold are taxed on each dollar above the threshold," said Major League Baseball. In 2024, the luxury tax threshold was set at $237 million and nine teams went over it, contributing $311 million in taxes. The Dodgers alone were assessed more than $103 million in taxes, meaning that they "outspent just in luxury tax the entire payrolls of the bottom six teams or 20% of the league," said Baseball Purist.

Are the rules working?

In some ways, baseball's spending rules have led to parity this century. The MLB "hasn't had a repeat champion since 2000," said CBS Sports, meaning that no team has won back-to-back World Series championships since the Yankees in 1999-2000. There have been 16 different champions in that time, including small-market teams like the Miami Marlins, Kansas City Royals and Washington Nationals. But the Dodgers have been quietly building an empire for more than a decade, reeling off "14 consecutive winning seasons and 12 consecutive playoff appearances," said The Ringer.

Recently, the biggest spenders have "not shown much concern about the impact of their activities on smaller-market clubs," said Front Office Sports. The Dodgers' spending will "only accelerate renewed talk of a cap," said The Athletic. And it's not just the Dodgers: outfielder Juan Soto signed a $765 million contract with the New York Mets this offseason that put him out of reach for almost every team. That reality means it is "possible that some baseball owners may realize they simply aren't wealthy enough to compete against their so-called peers without a cap," said Puck.

Not everyone is convinced that a salary cap is the answer to the sport's inequalities. "It's a cyclical thing, and the cycle has come back around to a tired narrative," said Bill Shaikin at the Los Angeles Times. More teams could easily afford to spend like the Dodgers and the Mets, but "half the league spends less than half of their revenue on the team itself," said Marc Normandin on his baseball analysis site. The issue isn't the Dodgers or the Mets, it is the "lower payroll teams not doing more to field a competitive group," as they pocket revenue sharing while consistently putting up terrible results, said Rowan Kavner at Fox Sports.

All of this is leading to speculation about a work stoppage after the CBA expires. "At this point, I would be surprised if there wasn't a lockout," said Deesha Thosar at Fox Sports. "If owners decide to push aggressively for a cap, history says the fallout will be ugly," said The Athletic.

What happened

The New York Liberty, one of the original WNBA franchises, won their first championship title Sunday, beating the Minnesota Lynx 67-62 in overtime of a hard-fought Game 5. It was New York's first pro basketball title since the Knicks won the NBA championship in 1973. New York City lost a guaranteed World Series victory, however, when the Mets fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday, a 10-5 defeat in the deciding Game 6 of the National League championships. The New York Yankees, though, punched their ticket to the World Series on Saturday night in a 5-2 Game 5 win over the Cleveland Guardians.

Who said what

The Liberty's win capped "27 seasons of disappointment," including five previous trips to the finals since the team's debut in the "WNBA's inaugural season of 1997," The Washington Post said. It was "far from New York's most aesthetically pleasing game," The Athletic said, but "the only number that matters is the final margin." As star Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu said, Sunday's most important stat was "one more [point] than the other team."

There is less novelty in the 12th World Series matchup between the Dodgers and the Yankees, though the players have changed many times since the Dodgers won their last face-off in 1981. Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani will lead his injury-hobbled, deep-benched team against Yankees slugger Juan Soto and a trio of veterans in their 30s — Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole — who covet a "championship as validation as much as accomplishment," The Associated Press said.

What next?

The Yankees and Dodgers play Game 1 this Friday night in Los Angeles. The Liberty will be celebrated with a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan; the date is expected to be announced Monday.

For nearly 40 years, baseball executives have been tormented by Scott Boras, long the most feared player agent in the sport. His brinkmanship on behalf of his clients almost always paid off handsomely with large contracts. Boras' calling card was unapologetic player boosterism, including glossy, book-length treatises about their on-field exploits and future canonization and a willingness to stare down teams during negotiations without blinking. In 1998, the New York Times dubbed him "the most hated man in baseball."

But Boras' strategies have not been working as well as of late, with the 2023-2024 offseason looking like a disaster for some of his clients, including outfielder Cody Bellinger, pitchers Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell, and third baseman Matt Chapman. These players were unable to secure the long-term contracts they were anticipating and had to settle for shorter deals. Is the Boras era over?

A long climb to the top

A former ballplayer who topped out in Double-A in 1977, Boras went to law school and practiced as a defense attorney before getting his big break as a baseball agent. That break happened after the 1984 season, when he negotiated a five-year, $7.5 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays for his former minor league teammate, relief pitcher Bill Caudill.

Caudill turned out to be a terrible investment as a player, but that did not blunt Boras' momentum to the pinnacle of the sport's agent hierarchy. Beginning in the early 1990s, Boras was responsible for negotiating many of the game's most lucrative contracts, including the five-year, $57 million contract for future Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux prior to the 1998 season, and the deal that was at the time the largest contract in professional sports history, the 10-year, $252 million pact that infielder Alex Rodriguez signed with the Texas Rangers in 2000. 

Boras also represented amateur players and pioneered hardball negotiations with teams trying to sign their draft picks. Once such tactic was refusing to sign and then having the player suit up for independent league teams, as happened with outfielder J.D. Drew, the second overall pick in the 1997 amateur draft, who went to play for the St. Paul Saints rather than sign with the Philadelphia Phillies.

The analytics revolution

Over time, Boras negotiated a number of contracts that ended up being catastrophes. In December 2006, Boras negotiated the largest contract ever awarded to a pitcher for Barry Zito, who signed with the San Francisco Giants for seven years and $126 million. The booklet that Boras assembled for Zito projected that he would end his career as one of the all-time greats. Instead, Zito was a mess over nearly his entire tenure with the Giants, one of the worst value-for-investment outcomes since the free agency era began.

Fast forward almost twenty years, and today almost every team in baseball has an enormous analytics operation designed to predict future player performance and avoid Zito-sized mistakes. And it turns out that Boras's booklets aren't working the same magic because front offices can see through the gloss. For example, outfielder Cody Bellinger, one of Boras' players, won the Comeback Player of the Year award last year with the Chicago Cubs, with eye-popping surface statistics. It was a feel-good story that seemed to prime him for a big payday.

But underneath the hood, teams didn't like what they saw. ESPN's Kiley McDaniel predicted that Bellinger would get a seven-year, $147 million deal. Instead, faced with limited interest, Bellinger had to settle for a three-year, $80 million pact with the Cubs that allows him to opt out after the first and second seasons. 

Another Boras' client, Blake Snell, the defending National League Cy Young winner, reportedly turned down a $150 million contract from the Yankees and had to settle for a two-year contract with the Giants, a pattern repeated with Boras clients Jordan Montgomery and Matt Chapman. 

It may be true that Boras "took some big hits," said Buster Olney at ESPN. And some consider him the "biggest loser" of the offseason, said Zachary Rymer at Bleacher Report.  But until Boras starts losing clients, it is too early to say if his reign is over.

There is perhaps no bigger star playing Major League Baseball today than Shohei Ohtani. Over the course of his career in both his native Japan and in the United States, Ohtani has frequently been compared to — and sometimes described as even surpassing — baseball greats like Babe Ruth and other mythological figures of the game. As both a pitcher and hitter he has proven himself to be the sort of generational talent who becomes synonymous with baseball as a contemporary sport and with the broader legacy of baseball as both a national and international institution. 

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that Ohtani had been named in connection to a sprawling federal investigation into alleged gambling bookkeeper Matthew Bowyer and Ohtani's since-fired interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. It's a scandal that has threatened to overshadow Ohtani's legacy in baseball, even as his exact involvement remains unclear. Ohtani's representatives claimed the baseball star had been the "victim of a massive theft" of millions of dollars. Mizuhara claimed to ESPN that Ohtani had agreed to help him pay off a large gambling debt. While multiple money transfers from Ohtani's bank account were wired to an associate of Bowyer, the baseball star himself had "zero involvement in betting." One day later, he recanted, and claimed Ohtani had no knowledge of the debt or payments. 

'The central figure in a whodunit'

While the details of the case are murky, what's at stake for Ohtani "couldn't be clearer," The Ringer said. At risk is not only the "career and reputation of baseball's best, highest-paid, and most famous player" but more broadly, Major League Baseball's "perceived integrity in an era of ever-tightening ties between sports leagues and sportsbooks." Ohtani, meanwhile, is the "central figure in a whodunit in which we don't really know any of the three components of the word 'whodunit,'" Defector said. There are many possibilities: Ohtani could merely be a "loyal yet incompetent friend," or perhaps a "degenerate gambler" setting Mizuhara up for a fall, or a "semi-amiable lummox caught in a series of bizarre switches beyond his comprehension."

The saga is shaping up to potentially be the "biggest gambling scandal for baseball since Pete Rose agreed to a lifetime ban" more than three decades ago, The Associated Press said. With its policy on gambling "posted in every locker room," MLB's rules say that betting on baseball itself is punishable by a year's ban from the game, while "betting on other sports illegally is at the commissioner's discretion." In his interview with ESPN, Mizuhara initially insisted he "never bet on baseball"

Several days after the allegations against Mizuhara were announced, the league said it had opened an investigation into the case, although it is "unclear how much teeth the MLB investigation will have," The Athletic said. For now, at least, the league is "unlikely to place Ohtani under administrative leave, as is common during other investigations" since he has not been officially implicated in a crime. 

A 'cautionary tale'

For some lawmakers, the Ohtani scandal has the "silver lining" of shining a "spotlight on the plague of gambling addiction," NBC News said. While Ohtani's case centers on gambling done illegally in California, it comes amid "growing scrutiny about the rise of legalized sports gambling" in the U.S. In a statement to the network, Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), sponsor of the SAFE Bet Act, predicted that the unchecked proliferation of sports betting would "make this type of incident more common moving forward."

This is a "cautionary tale for the NFL" as well, Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio said, speculating that there are players who are using friends and family as strawmen to place "legal wagers through their phone" while bankrolling the entire operation — a scenario that will "blow up at some point for the NFL." 

For Ohtani specifically, the powers within MLB are committed to him as a "moneymaker, cultural icon, and active ballplayer," Defector said. "Just how bulletproof is Shohei Ohtani?" That remains unresolved, but "based on early returns, that answer is 'as bulletproof as MLB needs him to be.'"

On Friday night, the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies will begin playing in the World Series, a best-of-seven contest that could go later in the calendar than any Fall Classic ever. Here's everything you need to know about this unusual matchup, what each team needs to do to win baseball's championship, and what it would mean for them.

The biggest mismatch in 116 years — on paper

When the Astros and Phillies take the field Friday night, they will sport the largest gap in regular season wins between World Series opponents since 1906. That year, the 116-win Chicago Cubs — part of the dynasty that gave us the poem "Tinker to Evers to Chance" and who still hold the record for highest winning percentage in modern baseball history — were vanquished by a vastly inferior White Sox team that won 23 fewer games during the season.

The 2022 Astros were, similarly, a terrifying steamroller, winning 106 regular season games, and they arrive at the World Series undefeated through the playoffs so far. They are just the third team in the Division Series era, which began in 1995, to reach the World Series without losing a playoff game — the other two, the 2007 Rockies and 2014 Royals, both went home empty-handed. The Astros notably will take on the Phillies, who limped into the postseason after securing the newly-added 6th wild card spot by winning a tepid 87 games. If Philadelphia were somehow to beat the Astros, they would become the third-worst regular season team ever to win the championship, after the 2006 Cardinals and the 1987 Twins, a team that was actually outscored by its opponents over the course of the season.

Of course, regular season win-loss records mean precisely nothing once you get to the playoffs. Like the wild-card-winning Washington Nationals in 2019, the Phillies have gotten white-hot at precisely the right moment, as an expensive team that played like a collection of misfit toys all year finally gelled when the postseason started. Even juggernauts get cold, and in a seven-game series, there's no guarantee that the kind of advantages that become apparent over the course of a long season will hold up. After all, Houston lost four of seven games just a few weeks ago to the Baltimore Orioles, Arizona Diamondback, and Tampa Rays, all of which were markedly worse on paper. Still, there's no question that Houston is the runaway favorite here.

What are the keys for each team?

The Phillies scored more runs than the Astros this year, and they will likely have to slug their way to the title. Reigning National League MVP Bryce Harper is healthy and on fire, with five home runs and 11 RBIs so far this postseason. He and fellow left-handed slugger Kyle Schwarber, who led the NL with 46 home runs, will have to work their magic on Houston's trio of ace right-handed pitchers: future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander, Lance McCullers Jr., and Cristian Javier. Most of Philadelphia's remaining best hitters, including catcher J.T. Realmuto, first baseman Rhys Hoskins, and third basemen Alec Bohm, bat right-handed and will only have the platoon advantage against Houston's likely Game 2 starter, 17-game winner Framber Valdez.

Houston, meanwhile, will have to win at least one game against Philadelphia's pair of aces, right-handers Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler. They will be fully rested and ready to pitch twice each against Houston's righty-heavy lineup. The earlier the Astros can get into the Phillies' weak bullpen, the better off they'll be. The depth in Philadelphia's relief corps is so thin that the team called on starting pitcher Ranger Suarez to close out the San Diego Padres on Sunday. And the Astros will need a big series from slugger Yordan Alvarez, the team's best left-handed hitter, who was nursing a hand injury through most of the season's second half.

More than anything else, the Phillies will need some luck. They start out on the road, against one of the scariest teams of the 21st century, and they'll have to hope that the flaws that kept them from sustained success during the regular season can remain hidden for another 10 days.

What are the best storylines?

The Astros have taken a lot of grief over the past few years after the sign-stealing scandal that tainted the team's 2017 World Series victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Only a handful of players remain from that squad, but they are the heart of Houston's dynasty, including Verlander, third baseman Alex Bregman, and second baseman Jose Altuve. Unless they are getting away with murder again, they've proven to their detractors that they can roll through the regular season without cheating — but they have lost the World Series twice since, in 2019 and 2021. A win this year would serve as a redemption of sorts and an answer to critics who dismiss them as the informal runner-up in 2017.

And it would be no surprise — this is, after all, a team full of postseason regulars, many of whom are playing in their third, fourth, or for Verlander, fifth World Series. It is one of the most balanced teams in memory, and all of the team's key players are healthy and eager to close out their run with champagne. In a piece of arcana that only baseball can deliver, Verlander went 0-2 in the World Series for the 2006 Detroit Tigers as a rookie, on the team that lost to the history-making 83-win St. Louis Cardinals. Even better — Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski was Detroit's general manager in 2006.

Philadelphia's Harper, who signed a 13-year, $330 million contract with the Phillies before the 2019 season, will be playing in his first Fall Classic. So will most of the Phillies — only Schwarber, a rookie on the dominant 2016 Chicago Cubs, and outfielder Nick Castellanos have significant postseason experience among Phillies regulars. That's what happens when your franchise goes 11 years between playoff runs, as Philadelphia just did.

Last but certainly not least, Houston's manager, Dusty Baker, is looking for his first championship in his 25th year as a big-league manager. Baker is ninth on the all-time win list for managers but hasn't been on the right side of the season's last celebration since he played for the 1981 Dodgers.

What isn't in doubt is that one of these teams — and their fans — will soon be on top of the world.

Where and how can I watch the World Series?

The home-field advantage belongs to Houston in game one, which starts at 8:03 p.m. ET on Friday, followed by game two, also in Houston, on Saturday at 8:03 p.m. ET. The series then moves to Philadelphia, with game three set for Monday, Oct. 31, at 8:03 p.m. ET, followed by game four on Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 8:03 p.m. ET.

If necessary, game five would be played Wednesday, Nov. 2, at 8:03 p.m. in Philadelphia; game six would be played Friday, Nov. 4, at 8:03 p.m. in Houston, and a decisive game seven would be played on Saturday, Nov. 5, at 8:03 p.m. ET, also in Houston.

Every game will air on Fox, and can be streamed at FoxSports.com or on the Fox Sports app.

The Houston Astros beat the New York Yankees 6-5 in the Bronx on Sunday night, finishing a four-game sweep to win the American League Championship Series and punch their fourth ticket to the World Series since 2017. The Astros will play the Philadelphia Phillies, who topped the San Diego Padres 4-3 to win Game 5 of the National League Championship Series earlier Sunday. The Phillies last played in the World Series in 2009. Game 1 is Friday in Houston's Minute Maid Park.

Bryce Harper, whose two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth won the game for the Phillies on Sunday, was named NLCS MVP. Astros rookie shortstop Jeremy Pena was named ALCS MVP.

The Astros started their final rally against the Yankees with an infield single by second baseman Jose Altuve in the 7th inning, allowing him to tie the score when Yordan Alvarez hit him home with an RBI single. Alex Bregman's single sent Pena over home plate, giving the Astros their 6-5 victory.

"Altuve and Bregman were part of the sign-stealing cabal" that brought shame on Houston after their 2017 World Series title, but as Sunday night's game ended, Yankees fans were too dispirited to even boo Altuve, "long the fall guy for the cheating Astros' 2017 vanquishing of New York," USA Today reports. Now the Astros are "headed home, their sins of the past further in the rear-view mirror and a second World Series title in sight."

The Major League Baseball playoffs begin on Friday, Oct. 7, under a new playoff format negotiated last spring by the players' union and team owners. This postseason might well run later in the calendar than ever before, with Game 7 of the World Series to be played Nov. 5, if necessary. Here's everything you need to know about baseball's revamped road to the championship.

The new rules

The biggest change from past seasons is the addition of one wild card team in both the American and National Leagues, making the playoffs a 12-team scrum rather than 10. From 2012 until last year, the two wild card teams in each league squared off in a single do-or-die game. This could be dramatic, but also terribly unfair, as when the best Pittsburgh Pirates team in a generation had the misfortune of facing the on-the-make, 97-win Chicago Cubs in 2015, getting eliminated in the span of a few hours.

So this year, the top two teams in each league get to skip the first round, and the other contenders — each league's three wild cards and lowest-ranked division winner — play best-of-three series at the home park of the higher seed. The winners of those series face the bye teams in a best-of-five Division Series before the two victorious teams meet for the League Championship Series to determine the World Series entrants.

Baseball also eliminated so-called "play-in" games in the event of ties for wild card slots or division titles, opting instead to use head-to-head records to determine the winner. Commissioner Rob Manfred must be silently stewing that the Mets and Braves, both winners of 101 games, aren't set to play a tie-breaking 163rd game in prime time for the NL East division crown, a sentiment surely not shared in Atlanta.

Streaks, stats, and stories to watch

The addition of a sixth playoff spot in each league helped end the two longest and saddest postseason droughts in baseball. The wild card–winning Seattle Mariners, led by 21-year-old phenom Julio Rodriguez, hadn't reached the playoffs since 2001, when their record-setting 116-win team bowed out to the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. And in the National League, the Philadelphia Phillies ended a decade of futility by reaching the dance for the first time since 2011, despite a wretched last two weeks that saw them nearly blow their wild card lead to the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Mariners will head to Toronto to face the Blue Jays (the No. 4 seed) and their high-octane offense, while the Phillies will schlepp to St. Louis to square off against the NL Central division–winning Cardinals — the team that eliminated them from the playoffs in 2011.

At the top of baseball's success hierarchy, the 110-win Los Angeles Dodgers will be making their 10th consecutive playoff appearance after winning their ninth division title in that decade. Los Angeles put up the fourth-best run differential of any team in the sport since the beginning of the 20th century, and the best since 1939. Anything less than a World Series Championship will be a huge letdown after such a campaign.

The defending world champion Atlanta Braves continued their run atop the National League East, winning their fifth straight title in style after spending the entire season running down the New York Mets, overtaking them for good only on Sept. 30 — the 157th game of the year. The Mets have the misfortune of being only the 13th team in baseball history to finish in second place after winning 100 games or more. They'll take on the San Diego Padres at home in Queens. The Padres pulled off one of the wildest deadline trades ever in early August, nabbing Washington Nationals superstar outfielder Juan Soto in exchange for five highly regarded prospects, but they were unable to make any headway against the NL West–leading Dodgers.

In the American League, the Houston Astros are making their sixth consecutive trip to the playoffs after a stellar season that saw them win 106 games. Led by the ageless Justin Verlander, the oldest pitcher ever to return to all-star form after Tommy John elbow surgery, Houston is still stinging from their 4-2 loss to the Braves in the World Series last year. They'll sit out the first round along with the Yankees, whose impressive season will be remembered less for the team effort than for the unbelievable contract year of outfielder Aaron Judge, who set the American League record for home runs on Tuesday by swatting his 62nd longball of the season.

The Yankees will face the winner of the Blue Jays–Mariners series. The Astros will take on whoever emerges from the three games the plucky Tampa Bay Rays play in Cleveland against the Guardians, who won the division unexpectedly in their first season since abandoning the "Indians" moniker.

How's this all going to play out?

Regular season dominance is no guarantee of success in the baseball postseason. Unlike the NBA, where no seventh or eighth seed has ever won a championship, baseball's wild cards routinely sneak through to win the World Series, the most recent example being the 2019 Nationals.

Last year there were three 100-win teams in the postseason (the Dodgers, Tampa Bay Rays, and the San Francisco Giants), and none of them made it to the Fall Classic. The winningest team in baseball has won the World Series just four times in the last 10 years, and that includes the Dodgers in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But this is all part of what makes the baseball playoffs so much wild fun. The differences between a 107-win team and a 90-win team are negligible over the course of a short series, and any team that sneaks in can get hot and ride it all the way.

New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge hit his 62nd home run of the season at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, on Tuesday night, setting the American League record for most home runs in a single season. The previous record, 61 home runs set by Roger Maris in 1961, held for 61 years.

The official Major League Baseball record is 73 home runs, set by Barry Bonds in 2001, but Bonds and the other two National League players who hit more than 61 homers — Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire — have steroid-injected asterisks next to their records. Roger Maris Jr. alluded to Judge's "clean" MLB record in his congratulatory tweet Tuesday night.

Judge managed to break Maris' record with just one game left in the regular season. He had hit just one home run in the previous 13 games — when he tied Maris' record last Wednesday — and was visibly frustrated when he struck out in the first game of Tuesday night's double header against the Texas Rangers. "New York wound up losing 3-2 after winning the opener 5-4," The Associated Press reports. "With one game left in the regular season, the split left the Yankees with a fitting 99-62 record — Judge's number and his home run total."

Yankees slugger Aaron Judge hit his 61st home run of the season in Toronto on Wednesday night, leading New York to a 8-3 win over the Blue Jays and, more memorably, tying the American League single-season record set by Roger Maris in 1961. Judge has now surpassed the 60-homer record set by Babe Ruth in 1927 — the record Maris broke first — and has seven more games to swat in home run No. 62. Ruth, Maris, and Judge were all Yankees.

Judge's seventh-inning, tie-breaking homer Wednesday night flew over the left-field fence, hitting right below the railing and dropping into the Toronto bullpen. Blue Jays bullpen coach Matt Buschmann handed it back to the Yankees. Judge's mother and Roger Maris Jr. were among those watching the hit from front row seats.

Three National League players have hit more than 61 home runs in a season, and Barry Bonds holds the record, 73, for the San Francisco giants in 2001. Mark McGwire hit 70 homers for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998, and Sammy Sosa topped out at 66 home runs in 1998 for the Chicago Cubs. All three records were tainted by steroid use, and many fans considered Maris the holder of the "clean" single-season record, The Associated Press reports. Major League Baseball started testing for performance enhancing drugs in 2004.

Just about everybody agrees: Baseball games are too long. But they don't necessarily agree on what to do about it.

Major League Baseball last week approved sweeping new rules that will go into effect for the 2023 season. The bases will get slightly bigger and defensive shifts will no longer be allowed. But the most significant update is the implementation of a pitch clock that will give pitchers a mere 15 seconds — 20 if a runner is on base — between pitches. Fail, and they get charged with a ball. (Hitters who aren't in the box on time will be charged with a strike.)

That should significantly shorten games, which now run more than three hours on average. "It's the fan-friendliest addition to the game of baseball since the introduction of beer," ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote on Twitter. Some major league pitchers, though, vehemently disagree. "I think it's a bunch of crap," Cubs reliever David Robertson said earlier this year. And some fans have appreciated the literally timeless nature of baseball. Putting players on a timer is "the most insidious alteration to the very fabric of baseball's being that has occurred in over a century," Jeffrey May writes for Diario AS.

These are indeed big changes for a tradition-bound game that is usually slow to adopt new ideas. How might the new rules change the character of America's pastime?

Players don't like the new rules, but fans might

MLB player representatives voted against the pitch clock and defensive shift changes. Why? Because "the guys in the majors have thrived under the status quo," Jon Heyman writes at the New York Post. Yes, baseball lovers tend to "go nuts" when the game evolves. But the league's "heart is in the right place" because the rules are designed to give the fans what they want: Shorter games with "more action, and more athleticism." Will they get that? Experiments at the minor league level suggest that while the pitch clock shortens games, batting averages and runs scored have stayed about the same. That could mean "the games will be just as dull, but end more quickly." History says nobody should panic about the new rules. "We hated the wild card, the expanded playoffs, and anything else new, yet none of those changes hurt the game one iota."

The pitch clock is wrong for baseball

"There are a lot of things that happen on the mound that few fans understand," David Gasper wrote in 2019 for Reviewing the Brew, a Milwaukee Brewers blog. It might look like players are "taking their sweet time," but the wait has a purpose. When pitchers and hitters go to work against each other, the contest "is more of a mental battle than it is a physical one." Speeding up the game might put more fatigue on pitchers' arms, and probably won't do much to grow the game anyway. Kids might enjoy elements of the game that can be converted into online memes, but "you can't do anything with a countdown clock." Instead, the result of a time limit will probably just be sloppier play. "The pitch clock will only diminish the product on the field."

Traditionalists should just chill

There's a temptation to believe that MLB has been "unscrupulously ruined in the service of satisfying TV partners and hooking TikTok-obsessed youth," but that's just "your fear of progress talking," Gabe Lacques writes for USA Today. In fact, baseball has problems, and "it certainly can't hurt to try" some new approaches. The bigger bases should make the game more exciting by increasing the odds of success when players try to steal. And the pitch clock has the support of minor league players — the same guys now showing up in the big leagues — who have already played with it. But if the new rules turn out to be no good, they can always be changed. "More likely, this is a starting point, a momentous shift (no pun intended) toward a different and possibly better game."

Will the changes bring the kids back?

"MLB really had no choice" but to make some big changes to the rule book, Paul Newberry writes for The Associated Press. "Many kids have abandoned the game" and fans in the bleachers "look mostly bused in from a retirement home." So it's good that league leaders "took bold steps to address some of the most obvious problems" in the game. The average big league matchup clocks in at more than three hours these days. But in the minors, where the pitch clock is used, the number is nearly 30 minutes shorter. The MLB's attempt to fix itself "might be a little late," however. Attendance is down nearly 6 percent from 2019. And it's not clear the young fans will come back. "It's probably too late to lure back those who've already found better ways to spend their free time."

Los Angeles Angels two-way player Shohei Ohtani is having an incredible season, both as a pitcher and a hitter. Just how unique are Ohtani's accomplishments? The Angels are having another lackluster season, but Ohtani's numbers this year might be the most impressive athletic accomplishment in the history of North American sports. Here's everything you need to know about the baseball superstar's extraordinary 2022:

What has Ohtani done this year?

Despite his team dropping out of the pennant race by June, Shohei Ohtani continues to sizzle. A true rarity, Ohtani signed with the Angels in late 2017 after playing 5 outstanding seasons in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball league with the intention of hitting and pitching full time. Most amateur prospects, even those with significant skills as pitchers and hitters, are tracked onto one path or another by team management. In recent years, only Tampa Bay Rays prospect Brendon McKay has made a real go of the effort to compete on both sides of the ball, and he's dealing with a potentially significant elbow injury after years of battling other physical woes.

Somehow, Ohtani is managing to do something that no one else in the sport can do, which is to star as a batter and a pitcher. As a pitcher, Ohtani has made 23 starts, posting an 11-8 win-loss record with a 2.58 Earned Run Average and 181 strikeouts in 136 innings pitched. Advanced metrics like FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) confirm that Ohtani has been good rather than just lucky. As a pitcher, his 4.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), a widely-used measure of player value, is 6th among all hurlers in the sport. Those numbers are particularly impressive given that the Angels rarely let him pitch past the 6th inning. When he's not pitching, Ohtani serves as the team's Designated Hitter, and has smashed 33 home runs and driven in 86 runs while posting a .892 OPS (On-base percentage plus slugging percentage), good for another 3.2 WAR. He is likely to total around 10 WAR between his pitching and hitting, a superstar showing.

How does Ohtani's season compare to past two-way players?

But WAR alone cannot really capture the essence of his incredible 2022. While there have been pitchers who can hit, like Madison Bumgarner, the two-way player almost completely disappeared from Major League Baseball early in the 20th century. While baseball players are sometimes mocked for their athleticism compared to soccer or basketball athletes, the 162-game regular season is an extraordinary grind to begin with, a punishing, daily slog that has deterred almost everyone from trying to pitch and hit full-time. The sport's skills are also so specialized that most executives probably believed that what Ohtani is doing is impossible.

The sport's most famous two-way player, Hall of Fame pitcher/outfielder Babe Ruth, gave up pitching early in his career to focus on his prodigious home run hitting skills, which transformed the way the sport was played altogether. Ruth tossed just 31 innings after 1919, when he registered 9.1 WAR as a batter and 0.8 as a pitcher. While Ohtani may or may not exceed Ruth's composite WAR from that season, there's no question that if he gets to 4 WAR as a hitter, he will be the only player in baseball history to put up all-star value (defined by Fangraphs as at least 4 WAR) as both a pitcher and hitter in the same season. Ruth never did it. The closest anyone has ever come is Bob Caruthers of the 19th-century St. Louis Browns, who fell just short in 1886 and 1887 when he complemented his MVP-level pitching with 3.9 WAR as a batter in both seasons.

What about other sports?

In basketball and hockey, most players play both offense and defense. So while there are players, like the NBA's Michael Jordan, who have excelled at both offensive scoring and defensive play, there's really no comparison since they are expected to at least play on both sides of the court or the rink. The National Hockey League hands out the Frank J. Selke Trophy each year to the best "two-way forward" in the sport, who contributes at elite levels on offense and defense. But the fact that there is a long list of potential winners of that award each year speaks to how common it is for hockey players to do both things well all the time.

The closest comparison to the position of pitcher in baseball is the quarterback in American football. Sammy Baugh, a Hall of Fame quarterback, also served as a defensive back on occasion and logged some interceptions, but returned nearly all of his value on one side of the line. And there is simply no player in the modern, post-merger history of the sport who put up stud numbers as a QB and also played defense. Deion Sanders was primarily a star defensive player at cornerback who also performed simultaneously at a high level as a kick and punt returner and logged time as a wide receiver. New England Patriots' wide receiver Troy Brown also moonlit as a cornerback in 2004, logging 3 interceptions, but he wasn't elite at either position that year. And that's about it in terms of comps among the four major North American pro sports leagues.

What's the bottom line?

Interestingly, Ohtani might not even win the Most Valuable Player award in the American League this year. As of this writing, his 7.9 total WAR is second to New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge, who is having a legendary season. Judge is on pace to hit 67 home runs and drive in 145 runs, and has spent most of the year threatening to challenge baseball's single-season home run record of 73, set by Barry Bonds in 2001. But Ohtani is quickly earning himself a hallowed place in sports history, as well as setting himself up for an enormous payday when he becomes a free agent after the 2023 season. And it's worth noting that Ohtani isn't just a bunch of numbers on a stat sheet — he's a joy to watch play the game, someone who should be at the forefront of baseball's global effort to market itself to the next generation of fans and whose magical season should be appreciated by die-hard and casual fans alike.

The Major League Baseball Players Association, or MLBPA, on Sunday night launched a "historic" campaign to unionize the minor leagues, ESPN reports.

More specifically, minor league players were sent authorization cards that would permit them "to vote for an election that could make them MLBPA members," ESPN writes.

"Minor leaguers represent our game's future and deserve wages and working conditions that befit elite athletes who entertain millions of baseball fans nationwide,' MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said in a Monday statement. "They're an important part of our fraternity and we want to help them achieve their goals both on and off the field." Over 5,000 minor league players are "under contract" with MLB teams during the season, notes CBS Sports.

Should MLBPA be permitted to represent the minors in collective bargaining, thirty percent of players must first sign union authorization cards, ESPN reports. That would subsequently prompt an election where players would vote for or against union representation. If most are in favor, the league would be required to recognize the union, and then collectively bargain with MLBPA for minor league players.

For most minor leaguers, an annual salary can range from just $5,000 to $14,000 annually. The Senate Judiciary Committee has also "suggested it will call a hearing to explore MLB's antitrust exemption and its treatment of minor leaguers," ESPN writes.

Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers for 67 season, first in Brooklyn then Los Angeles, died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday. He was 94, and his death was announced by the Dodgers. "We have lost an icon," Dodgers chief executive Stan Kasten said in a statement. "The Dodgers' Vin Scully was one of the greatest voices in all of sports."

Scully called his first Dodgers baseball game at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field in 1950 and broadcast his final game in 2016. In between, he earned accolades and the loyal following of generations of baseball fans, especially in Southern California. He was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame's broadcasting win in 1982, was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame later that year, and earned an Emmy for lifetime achievement in 1995. The American Sportscasters Association voted Scully the top sportscaster of all time in 2009, and President Barack Obama awarded Scully the Presidential Medal of Freedom a month after his retirement.

"The way Vin Scully called a baseball game, it felt like bumping into an old friend," David Wharton writes at the Los Angeles Times. "There were stories to tell and memories to share, his soothing banter as familiar as green grass and warm breezes on a sunny afternoon." Working alone without a color commentator for most of his career, Wharton adds, "Scully could spread an anecdote across several pitches, batters even, without a hitch."

Vincent Edward Scully was born in the Bronx in November 1927, the son of Irish immigrants. His father, a silk salesman, died of pneumonia when Scully was 7. He played baseball at Fordham University for two seasons, but gave it up to announce games for the university radio station WFUV. Scully's career with the Dodgers began when CBS Radio sports chief and Dodgers announcer Red Barber hired him after hearing him call some games. He moved to Los Angeles when the team did in 1958.

Scully's first wife, Joan, died in 1972, and his second wife, Sandi, passed away in early 2021. He had six children — his eldest son, Michael Scully, died in a helicopter accident in 1994 — and numerous grandchildren.

Major League Baseball's annual trade deadline is at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 2; after that, acquiring new players from other teams becomes considerably more complicated. Which teams are likely to be buyers and sellers as the deadline approaches, and which players are expected to change teams? How will baseball's new Collective Bargaining Agreement affect the wheeling and dealing? Here's everything you need to know about what is usually a pretty wild week in the sport:

Will changes to the Collective Bargaining Agreement be felt at the deadline?

When owners locked the players out after the expiration of their existing labor agreement in December, one of the main issues was "tanking." Players were livid that teams had been deliberately shedding talent in an effort to be unwatchably terrible, thereby obtaining high draft picks in consecutive seasons. The new CBA adds a lottery element to it, with the worst six teams all having a shot at the #1 pick in the draft. But that didn't stop the Oakland Athletics and Cincinnati Reds from dismantling competitive teams with spring trades after the agreement was signed, and it appears unlikely to do much to freeze the trade market this year.

The Reds, who started out the year with a horrendous 3-22 stretch, hold one of the most coveted trade chips on the market: starting pitcher Luis Castillo. Since his debut in 2017, Castillo has been consistently effective, and in what promises to be a seller's market for pitching, he should fetch a significant haul of prospects if Cincinnati chooses to deal him. Many of the other cellar dwellers across baseball, including the Washington Nationals, Detroit Tigers, Oakland Athletics, and Pittsburgh Pirates, will likely trade or at least seriously consider dealing their best players. The Nationals may even spin away one of the sport's brightest young lights, outfielder Juan Soto, who just rejected a staggering 15-year, $440 million offer that would have been the largest contract in baseball history. The typically competitive Boston Red Sox are having a down season and might dump contracts at the deadline, including those of outfielder J.D. Martinez and starting pitcher Nathan Eovaldi.

Will the dominant teams squeeze out the middle of the pack?

The New York Yankees, Houston Astros, and Los Angeles Dodgers are all on pace to win over 100 games, the mark of a dominant team. Yet even the Yankees, who spent much of the season looking like they might threaten the 2001 Seattle Mariners' record of 116 wins, have huge holes that could be filled by trade. Right fielder Joey Gallo, acquired at last year's trade deadline, has been awful, hitting .161 in 230 at-bats, and the bullpen could use help after a season-ending injury to high-leverage reliever Michael King. The Astros' catchers are hitting well under .200, and 38-year-old first baseman Yuli Gurriel doesn't look like he has much left in the tank. The Dodgers, meanwhile, are looking for help in the bullpen, where closer Craig Kimbrel has been shaky, as well as the starting rotation, which has lost ace Walker Buehler until at least late August with an arm injury. Other first-place teams, like the Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Mets, could be busy too.

Also in the mix are teams who would currently make the postseason with this year's addition of one playoff spot in the National and American Leagues, like the Toronto Blue Jays, St. Louis Cardinals, and San Diego Padres. And then there's a tier of clubs currently trailing in the Wild Card races, particularly the Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies, who had big expectations heading into the season and whose general managers still might see as being just one smart acquisition away from a playoff spot. Exactly how that new playoff structure will affect team decision-making is another bit of intrigue from this deadline. Will teams value that extra playoff spot enough to cough up the necessary prospects to make an expensive push for a title?

Which players have already moved and who should start packing their bags?

The 2021 trade deadline was busy, with star players like starting pitchers Max Scherzer and Jose Berrios and coveted position players including shortstop Trea Turner, second baseman Javier Baez, and outfielder Kris Bryant heading to contenders. But sometimes it's the less heralded deals that can be most consequential. Last year, after losing superstar Ronald Acuña Jr. for the season, the Atlanta Braves picked up outfielders Joc Pederson, Eddie Rosario, Jorge Soler, and Adam Duvall for peanuts; they helped carry the team to its first World Series championship since 1995.

The Yankees already filled one of their outfield craters by trading for Kansas City's Andrew Benintendi, and the Mets addressed their problems at designated hitter by trading for Pittsburgh's Daniel Vogelbach. While all eyes will be on the pursuit of Soto, the Cubs will almost certainly spin off popular catcher Willson Contreras, one of just three players left from the beloved 2016 championship team, as well as outfielder Ian Happ.

Despite denying that they are fielding offers on Shohei Ohtani, a rare two-way player who is having an incredible season on the mound as a pitcher, the Los Angeles Angels could shock the baseball world by moving him. After all, the team is just 42-56, and news of former MVP Mike Trout's scary spinal condition could convince owner Arte Moreno to rebuild. A's starting pitcher Frankie Montas is almost certain to be dealt, and the Miami Marlins could move starting pitcher Pablo Lopez. And there's always a surprise or two when teams ship out players unexpectedly, which could be the case for someone like Cleveland ace Shane Bieber.

To keep track of what is sure to be a dramatic weekend in the national pastime, check out ESPN's deadline tracker.

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer has been suspended by Major League Baseball for two seasons after he was accused of sexual assault.

The league announced Friday that following an investigation, Bauer has been suspended for 324 games, two full seasons, for violating its policy against domestic violence.

In 2021, a woman filed for a restraining order against Bauer, alleging he sexually assaulted her. He was placed on administrative leave, which last month was extended into April.

Bauer has repeatedly denied the allegations. In February, he said he had "consensual sex with this woman on two occasions" and that they mutually agreed to engage "in rough sex." The accuser says she "agreed to have consensual sex" but "did not agree to be sexually assaulted," alleging Bauer punched her in the face and the vagina and strangled her until she lost consciousness.

"The disturbing acts and conduct that she described simply did not occur," Bauer said, and he has filed a lawsuit against her. The Los Angeles County district attorney declined to bring charges. According to The Washington Post, a woman in Ohio also sought a temporary order of protection against Bauer and accused him of assault.

On Friday, Bauer denied violating the MLB's domestic violence policy in the "strongest possible terms" and said he will appeal the decision. According to ESPN, the two-season suspension was the most severe punishment the MLB has ever imposed over a violation of its domestic violence policy.

The owners of the Washington, D.C. baseball team the Washington Nationals revealed to The Washington Post on Monday they'd begun exploring possible changes in the club's ownership structure, "including the possibility of selling the team," the Post reports.

Mark D. Lerner, son of real estate tycoon Ted Lerner and the club's managing principal owner, said the family has brought on a New York investment bank to look into possible investors and buyers for the club. The Lerners bought the Nationals from Major League Baseball 16 years ago.

"This is an exploratory process, so there is no set timetable or expectation of a specific outcome," Mark Lerner said in a statement. "The organization is as committed as ever to their employees, players, fans, sponsors and partners and to putting a competitive product on the field."

"As revenue streams around professional sports continue to evolve and the strength of the Washington Nationals brand continues to grow, the team believes it is prudent to assess all of the options out there," team spokesperson Jennifer Giglio told the Post, noting as well that the Lerners could ultimately just bring on additional partners.

The process is also not expected to impact "the team's ability to make baseball decisions," nor will it "distract the organization from our goal of being a first-class organization and fielding a winning team," Giglio added.

Under Lerner ownership, "the Nationals have claimed four division titles and five postseason appearances," writes CBS Sports. In 2019, the team won its first World Series in franchise history. Prior to the family's purchase, the club had moved from Montreal to D.C., and changed its name from the Expos to the Nationals.

In March, the MLB and the MLB Players Associated finally reached a deal on a collective bargaining agreement, bringing an end to a months-long lockout.

I don't really care about baseball anymore. Before I was old enough to remember, my dad taught me how to love it — which is how these things frequently go — but as I grew up, I drifted away, and going to a football school put the last nail in it. I don't think I've watched a game since 2017.

So I don't care about baseball, but I'm just some guy. But you know who else doesn't care about baseball? The guys who own the baseball teams.

MLB pulls in billions of dollars a year — of course it's about the money. But so is the NFL, and I don't think anyone doubts that NFL owners like football, enjoy watching football, and care about the success of their football teams. The baseball owners? Harder to say.

Rob Manfred, the commissioner they've chosen to represent their interests, claimed that buying an MLB franchise is less profitable than just putting the money in the stock market. In other words, the owners are just in it for the love of the game. But the numbers don't bear this out; David Glass purchased the Kansas City Royals in 2000 for $96 million and sold them in 2019 for $1 billion, doing at least twice as well as he would have by putting the money in the S&P 500.

Manfred, like the owners, doesn't care about baseball. He thought a press conference dedicated to announcing that an inability to resolve the owner lockout had forced him to cancel games was an appropriate time to laugh and yuk it up. He has also referred to the World Series trophy as "a piece of metal." Other people — most notably the players who actually make the game of baseball happen — care a great deal about these things. Manfred does not, and the owners keep him around because he and they are aligned.

The commissioner doesn't understand that people may have emotional attachments to things like "baseball games being played" and "the World Series trophy." The owners don't understand that people may have emotional attachments to superstar players who have played their entire careers with the same franchise. This has always, lamentably, been a problem for small-market teams facing budgetary constraints (although some of them have a great thing going for themselves by taking the revenue-sharing money they receive and then not spending it on player salaries).

But in recent years, even big-market teams have gotten in on the fun of cost-cutting. This offseason, the Braves failed to resign Freddie Freeman, their superstar first baseman who had just led them to a World Series victory after playing all 12 seasons of his career in Atlanta, even though Freeman wanted to stay. Instead, they went out and traded for Matt Olson, another star first baseman, and promptly handed him an extension that was slightly cheaper than the contract the Dodgers ended up giving Freeman. Two offseasons ago, the Boston Red Sox — the Boston Red Sox — traded Mookie Betts, one of the two best players in baseball at the time who, again, had spent his whole career playing for Boston to that point, to the Dodgers, all so that they could dump pitcher David Price's bloated contract and get not much of great value in return. Betts and Freeman should have spent their whole careers being beloved by the fans of Boston and Atlanta.

Instead, they both now play for the Dodgers, one of the few teams that isn't afraid to spend money and go over the luxury tax that almost every team pretends is a hard cap. Even the Yankees are unwilling to trigger the maximum repeater penalty by going over the tax line three years in a row. (George Steinbrenner could not be reached for comment.) The other owners are so scared of Steve Cohen, the new owner of the Mets and the richest non-corporation owner in baseball, that they imposed another tier of luxury tax at $290 million. Cohen, for his part, plans to eventually have to pay it. Good for him.

Even if the owners aren't jettisoning your team's beloved star, you may have trouble watching him play. A Friday night double-header will now be on Apple TV+ instead of the regional sports networks (RSNs) that have traditionally carried most games. And Sinclair, which owns about half the regional sports networks, has kept its RSNs off of streaming options like YouTube TV and Hulu for over a year now. There is also a Bally Sports app (Sinclair sold the naming rights to a casino operator), which you may have to download to your TV if you get your Sinclair-owned RSN through cable. The average MLB fan is 57 years old; there are plenty of even older people who have watched baseball all their lives and who will have little ability to navigate this mess. Making the games difficult and expensive to watch won't help the game grow among younger fans, either.

Is there any hope, or will the owners continue to squeeze every last dollar they can out of the sport while baseball goes the way of boxing? I don't find much reason for optimism. The only potentially exciting thing I could see happening is the current embrace of sports betting and all the money it can bring in by MLB blowing up in their faces. After all, a previous generation of baseball owners was once so invested in making as much money as possible that they turned a blind eye to the influence of gambling on the game — and the Black Sox scandal almost ruined everything. They were very lucky that Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Babe Ruth managed to save the game in the esteem of the public.

I don't think it could realistically happen again. The players make way more money now than they did 100 years ago. And if it did, it would be a disaster for anyone who cares about baseball in any way.

But the owners would deserve it.

Major League Baseball and its players union were unable to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement before a league-imposed 5 P.M. deadline on Tuesday, ESPN reports, a failure that triggered the postponement of Opening Day and the cancellation of the first two series of the season. This will be the first time that MLB has canceled games due to labor issues since 1994, when the season ended in August and the World Series was not played.

There had been hope that a deal would be reached after a marathon negotiating session on Monday, but ultimately the two sides remained far apart on a number of key issues, including player arbitration, tax thresholds, and minimum player salaries. In November, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred downplayed the dispute between the owners and players, saying that "an offseason lockout that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games." On Tuesday, Manfred said, "I had hoped against hope I would not have to have this particular press conference in which I am going to have to cancel some regular season games." And then he did just that.

The votes are in. The Boston Red Sox (and earlier Minnesota Twins) slugger David Ortiz is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. San Francisco Giants (and earlier Pittsburgh Pirates) star Barry Bonds is not.

On paper, that makes little sense. Ortiz was a successful designated hitter who played a leading role in the reversal of fortune the historically second-rate Red Sox enjoyed in the 21st century. But Bonds was the greatest ballplayer of his, and maybe any, generation. A 22-year veteran, he played on 14 All-Star Teams, received seven Most Valuable Player Awards, eight Gold Glove Awards, and holds the MLB records for total home runs and for home runs in a single season.

The outcome wasn't about what Bonds did on the field, though. Along with pitcher Roger Clemens and others that Hall voters denied, Bonds is being punished for his behavior in baseball's steroids era. Other players, including Ortiz, tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs when the league began to impose systematic testing in the early 2000s. But only Bonds faced charges for perjury and obstruction of justice related to a federal investigation.

The question is how much that should matter. There is little dispute that doping was common during the 1990s prime of Bonds' career. Like the players who appeared before a 2005 Congressional committee, Bonds was the focus of attention because he was a star rather than because his behavior was unusual.

To be sure, Bonds was not forthcoming with investigators. Yet the perjury charges against him were dropped and Bonds' conviction for obstruction of justice was overturned on appeal. Bonds' critics might point out that the Hall is entitled to apply a higher standard than avoiding criminal liability. Still, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Bonds has been the scapegoat for conduct that was, at minimum, tolerated by the league until late in his career.

Bonds' personal demeanor has something to do with that, too. While Ortiz was beloved by fans, reporters, and players alike, Bonds kept his distance from the public, the media, and his own teammates. Some observers attributed Bonds' antisocial reputation to shyness, others to competitive pressure, and yet others to unfair expectations that Black players be humble and gregarious. Whatever the cause, plenty of other difficult men (and some who were truly awful) are honored in Cooperstown.

Due to a 10-year time limit for eligibility, this was Bonds' final opportunity to enter the Hall of Fame. Unless the rules are changed, that institution will permanently exclude one of the game's greatest players. Fans won't forget Bonds, though. Lacking a memorial plaque, his achievements will speak for themselves.

Former Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz was the only player to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year.

"I am truly honored and blessed by my selection to the Hall of Fame — the highest honor that any baseball player can reach in their lifetime," Ortiz said in a statement. "I am grateful to the baseball writers who considered my career in its totality, not just on the statistics."

Ortiz, a.k.a. Big Papi, hit 541 career home runs, plus 17 in the postseason, and was a World Series champ three times. "For a young boy from Santo Domingo, I always dreamed of playing professional baseball," Ortiz said. He thanked his parents for supporting him, and called his time with the Red Sox "a sweet and beautiful journey."

Ortiz was the lone player to cross the 75 percent threshold for induction, named on 77.9 percent of ballots in his first year of eligibility. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling were all passed over in their 10th and final year of eligibility.

ESPN's Bradford Doolittle writes that Bonds, Sosa, and Clemons "have gone from posters on fans walls to the poster boys for the performance-enhancing drug era." When looking at their contributions to the sport alone, "they are sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famers," Doolittle said, "but voters prefer that they remain in the PED shadows." Schilling, meanwhile, has a history of making inflammatory remarks and social media posts, and after years of not crossing the threshold for induction, asked to be removed from the ballot, a request that was denied.

Ortiz will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, on July 24. Six players who were chosen in December by era committees — Gil Hodges, Tony Oliva, Minnie Minoso, Jim Kaat, Bud Fowler, and Buck O'Neil — will also be inducted, most of them posthumously.

Major League Baseball has serious problems. The organization is in the midst of its first work stoppage in nearly 30 years, a lockout threatening to shorten the 2022 season. Even worse, some critics say baseball's stubborn reliance on tradition for its own sake signals the sport's inevitable decline.

But don't send baseball to the showers just yet. The sport may no longer be America's favorite pastime — it hasn't been for decades — but it remains the nation's second-most lucrative professional sport. Other sports have problems, too, perhaps more threatening to their long-term success. MLB, meanwhile, still has plenty to offer current and potential fans — after, of course, players and owners settle their squabble over money.

Representatives for both sides met Thursday, seven weeks after the lockout began. Nothing resembling a deal resulted. If camps don't open in a few weeks, the March 31 start of the regular season is in jeopardy, and everyone will start losing money.

MLB's revenues were growing before the pandemic, and they're on track to beat the 2019 record of $10.7 billion this year. The commissioner's office has made the dubious claim that owners and players split the money 50-50, but only two teams opened their books: the Atlanta Braves and the Toronto Blue Jays, both owned by publicly traded corporations. Other estimates put the players' share closer to 40 percent.

Players want and deserve a bigger share of an expanding pie. They want higher MLB salaries for players too young for free agency; they want free agency to start earlier in player careers; and they'd like to reverse current incentives that urge owners to pocket their cash rather than spend it on compensation.

Beyond divvying up the money, baseball also has to repair an image tainted, perhaps unfairly, as being a boring sport with an audience that is slowly dying off. Some critics are right: The games take longer than they should. The embrace of statistics-driven strategies — exaggerated defensive shifts, relying on walks and home runs rather than playing "small ball" — can interrupt the flow of play, reducing the action on the diamond.

But baseball remains a beautiful game, and ending the lockout can be an opportunity to reintroduce Americans to what in fact is a thrilling sport. Some ideas:

Promote the talent

In the 2022 season, MLB may feature the largest collection of generational stars since the 1960s, when the sport first fully integrated racially. Today's greats are young or in their prime, and they encompass a global profile: Japan's Shohei Ohtani, Venezuela's Ronald Acuña Jr., Puerto Rico's Carlos Correa, the "Dominican trio" of Juan Soto, Vlad Guerrero Jr., and Fernando Tatis Jr., and Americans Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Josh Hader, and Walker Buehler. They hit the ball farther, throw it harder, and chase down plays faster than ever before. Most teams have at least one player who's worth the price of admission, or worth changing the channel to see in action.

The players are the game. Fans want to see great competitors perform memorable feats. The sport needs to showcase them early and often. The clubs and their "product" need to bury the hatchet quickly.

Bring fans closer to the action

Video and data technology have made the at-home viewing experience comparable to being at the ballpark. With a premium sports streaming package, you can enjoy a season's worth of action for less than it costs to see one game in person (including travel, tickets, parking, concessions, and the rest). At home, just tune in whenever you like — and you don't have to leave early to beat the traffic.

Broadcasts are innovating, including real-time information from outfits like StatCast, which show how fast pitches rotate, which affects movement, and how hard balls are hit. Fans are getting some of the same granular information executives use to evaluate players and scout opponents. This data also is essential for other transactional followers who help finance the sport: egamers, fantasy league participants, and bettors.

More than 4 million people bought MLB The Show 21, the sport's licensed interactive video game. Baseball pioneered fantasy sports four decades ago, and it's a lucrative business, globally generating an estimated $20 billion in 2021 — and it is expected to grow nearly 15 percent annually over the next four years.

Then there's sports gambling, soon to be legal in most states. The number of MLB games played and the number of opportunities to wager on a specific result — total runs in a game, a player's boxscore, the outcome of a specific plate appearance — make baseball ideal for friendly wagers or serious bets. Last April, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred jokingly told his NBA counterpart Adam Silver that baseball's leisurely pace of play made it a natural for in-game betting.

Sports betting is becoming a perk for ticket holders too — there's a sportsbook inside Nationals Ballpark in Washington, D.C., for instance. Deals with FanDuel and other online gambling sites are expected to produce more than $1 billion a year for MLB alone. Legal gambling can generate interest from casual fans and increase baseball's appeal.

Another way to bring fans closer to the game is to virtually put them on the field. The past couple of seasons, in a few games, players wore microphones and interacted with announcers during play. Doing so more routinely would be another fun way to make the sport relatable, and offer insight into how players process information during the game.

And while we're on the subject of getting closer to the game: Baseball has embraced the metaverse. Virtual reality developers have created VR apps that let gamers "hit" against all-time great pitchers. An entire industry is developing around VR technology to train athletes of all ages to measure their performance and improve their mechanics.

Welcome channel surfers

Admit it: Few of us will sit through a televised nine-inning game. MLB should acknowledge and embrace opportunities to capture even a few extra minutes of fans' time. One way would be an MLB version of the NFL's RedZone channel. RedZone switches from game to game when any team is in scoring position. MLB Network should offer a livelier version of its MLB Tonight program, moving quickly between games and capturing more live highlights and dramatic situations.

Ending local blackouts so fans who buy MLB's "Extra Innings" streaming package can watch every game, not just those outside the local market, would also help teams build better local fanbases.

Other sports may face more existential threats. Concussions and other long-term head injuries resulting from routine play have football-, soccer-, and hockey-backers flummoxed. Minimizing the serious health threats may require fundamentally changing the sports in ways that make them less watchable. Basketball, like baseball, may be enjoying the greatest array of talent in a generation, but it also has a "hero ball" problem: The NBA grabs aspiring stars in their teens, often before they develop a full range of skills and learn the fundamentals of team play. You see stunning individual highlights within sloppy games.

Baseball has (often self-servingly) bragged of its commitment to tradition. But the sport has routinely evolved, including recent changes to speed up games. Baseball offers old-school fans and newcomers alike plenty of chances to watch the game on their own terms. Improving technologies can take any fan inside the action.

The Grand Old Game still has a lot of life, if the leagues decide to let the kids play.

Major League Baseball's 30 controlling owners voted unanimously Wednesday night to lock out players as collective bargaining talks with the players' union stalled before a midnight deadline. This is MLB's ninth work stoppage and the first since an infamous strike that spanned the 1994 and 1995 seasons.

The MLB owners and Major League Baseball Players Association met in Texas this week to hammer out a new collective bargaining agreement, and the negotiations — ongoing since the spring — had not been going well. Wednesday's meeting lasted less than 10 minutes. The union demanded change following anger over a declining average salary, middle-class players forced out by teams concentrating payroll on the wealthy, and veterans jettisoned in favor of lower-paid youth, especially among clubs tearing down their rosters to rebuild," The Associated Press reports.

The immediate impact of the lockout — management's version of a strike — is that players will be barred from team workout facilities and weight rooms, and there will likely be a freeze on trading and hiring players. MLB had intentionally scheduled the lockout during the off-season to avoid the public relations debacle from the long 1994-95 stoppage. The two sides have 11 weeks until pitchers and catchers are schedule to show up for spring training on Feb. 16; spring training games are supposed to start Feb. 26, and opening day of the regular season is set for March 41.

"No player remains active from the 232-day strike that cut short the 1994 season, led to the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years, and caused the 1995 season to start late," AP reports. "That stoppage ended only when a federal judge — future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — issued an injunction forcing owners to restore the work rules of the expired labor contract."

The 2021 World Series isn't over yet.

On Sunday night, the Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves 9-5, in Game 5 of the series. This now forces a Game 6, to be held Tuesday night in Houston.

The Braves had an early lead on Sunday, with center fielder Adam Duvall hitting a first-inning grand slam — the ninth in postseason history, CBS Sports reports. The Astros tied the game 4-4 in the third inning, and then continued the momentum, bringing in five more runs by the end of the game.

The Braves lead the series 3 games to 2, and CBS Sports says that historically, a team entering Game 6 with this margin has won the championship 69 percent of the time. The Braves last won the World Series in 1995.

To cap off his spectacular season, Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani received the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award on Tuesday night, making him only the 16th MLB player to earn the honor.

The 27-year-old phenom accepted the award before Game 1 of the World Series. It's given out at the MLB commissioner's discretion to those who have made "a major impact on the sport," and was first awarded to Mark McGwire and Bud Selig in 1998. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told Ohtani that over the next few years, "I know that there are going to be many, many awards and accolades that come your way. But I felt that 2021 was so special that it was important to recognize the historic achievement."

Ohtani had a stellar year with the Angels — he hit 46 home runs, drove in 100 runs, and as a pitcher had 156 strikeouts and 23 starts, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was also the first player to be selected to the MLB All-Star Game as the American League's pitcher and designated hitter.

Through his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani said the award "is not given out every year, so I know how special it is. I'm not fully sure if I really deserve it, but since Mr. Manfred's going to give it to me, I'm going to accept it."

Eddie Robinson, the last surviving player from the 1948 World Series champion Cleveland Indians and the oldest living former Major League Baseball player, died on Monday at his home in Texas. He was 100.

The first baseman started with Cleveland in 1942, then left to serve in the military during World War II. In his 13 seasons as a player, he was a four-time All-Star, and played on every American League team of the period, except for Boston, The Associated Press reports. He also served as general manager of the Atlanta Braves and Texas Rangers and ended his baseball career in 2004 as a scout for the Red Sox.

The Rangers announced Robinson's death on Wednesday, saying the team is "incredibly saddened with the passing of the legendary Eddie Robinson, who spent nearly 70 years in professional baseball as an All-Star player and respected executive. For Eddie Robinson, it was truly a life well lived." Robinson is survived by his wife, Bette, and sons Robby, Marc, Paul, and Drew.

Several of baseball's brightest young starts — Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. among them — will miss out on the postseason this year. But to make up for it, a slew of familiar faces will take center stage.

First, 37-year-old Max Scherzer will start for the Los Angeles Dodgers in Wednesday's National League Wild Card Game against his contemporary, 40-year-old Adam Wainwright, who will be taking the mound for the opposing St. Louis Cardinals. Both pitchers are as familiar as you can get with the October spotlight.

Wainwright's catcher, as always, will be his longtime battery-mate, the 39-year-old Yadier Molina, and Albert Pujols, himself a former Cardinals legend, will suit up for the Dodgers. Pujols may not start against the right-handed Wainwright in the Wild Card game, but if the Dodgers advance, he could play an expanded role the rest of the way since the squad's All-Star first baseman Max Muncy is out for an undertermined amount of time with an elbow injury.

Beyond Wednesday, the surprising San Francisco Giants are driven by a core of resurgent veterans, including catcher Buster Posey and shortstop Brandon Crawford, who first won World Series titles with the club in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Third baseman Evan Longoria hasn't been in the Bay Area as long as those two — or their injured teammate Brandon Belt — but he's been a prominent player in the big leagues since he broke in during the 2008 season.

The American League bracket may feel a bit fresher on the field, but a pair of baseball lifers will be in the dugout during the Houston Astros-Chicago White Sox series, which begins Thursday. Tony La Russa, who managed his first MLB game in 1979, is back at the helm for the Chicago White House after a 10-year hiatus, while Dusty Baker will guide the Astros, his fifth club (all of whom he's taken to the playoffs at least once) in nearly three decades as a skipper.

Major League Baseball has never had a postseason tie-breaker scenario in which more than two teams were locked in the standings. After Sunday, there could be a four-way draw.

The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees sit atop the American League Wild Card standings at 91-70. If they both win they're in, and the ancient rivals will square off against each other at Fenway Park on Tuesday. But if one or both of them loses, chaos could ensue.

The Toronto Blue Jays and this year's "Cinderella," the Seattle Mariners — who are seeking their first playoff appearance since 2001 — are both still alive at 90-71. If they both win, and Boston and New York both lose, the four teams would all end up deadlocked at 91-71, and they'd have to duke it out in a mini March Madness-style single-elimination tournament starting on Monday. The team with the best winning percentage in common games among the four teams would choose its opponent and the winner of that game would play the winner of the contest between the remaining two in the official A.L. Wild Card game. There are several other scenarios in play, as well, including three-way ties and a more traditional head-to-head tie-breaker. If that all sounds a bit complicated, check out the breakdown below. And if analyzing the graphic doesn't make it any less confusing, just let the process unfold and roll with it.

First pitch of every MLB game on Sunday will take place during the 3 p.m. ET hour. The Yankees will take on the Tampa Bay Rays, the Red Sox face off against the Washington Nationals, the Blue Jays host the Baltimore Orioles, and the Mariners will look to beat the Los Angeles Angels.

When it comes to wedding gifts, Karla Jean Holfelder knocked it out of the park.

Ahead of her wedding, Holfelder decided to have some fun, and sent invitations to several celebrities. Her new husband, David Simmons, is a baseball fan, and Holfelder mailed an invite to his favorite team: the Boston Red Sox. In response, the Red Sox sent the couple a package containing bags of "Fenway Dirt," wristbands, stickers, and a heartfelt letter from the team.

Holfelder posted a video on TikTok showing Simmons opening the package and getting emotional as he read the letter. The team congratulated the bride and groom, saying, "we admire your dedication to each other and wish you many years of joy and happiness," and also pledged to win another World Series soon. The Red Sox didn't stop there — the team commented on Holfelder's TikTok, telling the couple, "We'd love to host you for a game to celebrate your marriage."

New York Yankees great Derek Jeter took a fun-loving shot at the unknown member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America who didn't put him on their Cooperstown ballot last year during his Hall of Fame induction speech on Wednesday.

"Thank you to the baseball writers, all but one of you, who voted for me," Jeter quipped before breaking into grin amid laughter from the crowd.

Jeter, who was known as "The Captain" and led the Yankees' dynasty of the late 1990s to four World Series victories in five years as their starting shortstop (he was still around when the team won its last championship in 2009, as well), was a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. In addition to his rings, he picked up 3,465 hits and made 14 All-Star teams over his 20-year career, during which he posted a .310 batting average.

There really was no reason for anyone to keep him off the ballot once he was eligible, but, alas, there was one holdout, whose identity has not been, and likely will never be, revealed. Therefore, Jeter's longtime teammate Mariano Rivera, who was the Yankees' closer during that run, remains the only player to be elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously.

The players in our national pastime have always looked for an unfair edge. Pitchers recently found a new one. Here's everything you need to know:

How are players cheating?

Pitchers have been doctoring the baseball with sticky stuff, baffling batters with enhanced pitches that can seem unhittable. Unlike the classic spitball — which pitchers began throwing more than a century ago, using Vaseline, K-Y Jelly, or actual saliva to make the ball slip out of their hand and wobble unpredictably — the new trick relies on commercial substances that give pitchers improved grip. The stickiness enables pitchers to throw harder while maintaining control, and to increase their pitches' spin rate and make sliders, curveballs, and sinkers bend and dive like never before. The average pitcher this season is striking out 1 in every 4 batters — on par with all-time greats such as Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan. Major League Baseball began sending this year's game-used balls to a lab, finding suspicious "dark, amber-colored markings that are sticky to the touch" on a majority of specimens. "This should be the biggest scandal in sports," a team executive recently told Sports Illustrated.

Why is this stuff so effective?

Pitchers have always been allowed to use rosin — extracted from pine trees — to modestly improve their grip; in its unadorned state, a baseball is shiny and slippery, and nobody wants a fastball slipping from someone's hand and beaning a batter. In recent years, pitchers began lathering their arms with sunscreen and mixing that with rosin to form a stickier composite. Then they discovered concoctions of hair gel, or Spider Tack, a glue meant for World's Strongest Man competitions, or Pelican Grip, made for bat handles. Pitchers sneak these "foreign substances" onto the mound in their gloves or on their jockstraps, hat brims, shoelaces, or belt buckles.

Have they gotten caught?

Until recently, umpires mostly looked the other way, as did teams, rather than call attention to their own pitchers. But the stickiness of these new substances isn't subtle: A ball once stuck to a catcher's chest protector like Velcro without consequence, and another team was spotted playing with a sticky ball in the dugout, laughing as it dangled from players' open palms. Trevor Bauer, now of the Los Angeles Dodgers, said in 2018 he'd done tests in a pitching lab and found that the new sticky substances enabled him to increase his spin rate enormously. "If I used that s---, I'd be the best pitcher in the big leagues," he said. "But I have morals." In 2020, his spin suddenly climbed, and the once-mediocre pitcher landed a contract paying him at least $38 million this season.

Is cheating new?

It goes back to the dawn of pro baseball. In the 1910s, Chicago White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte threw a signature "shine ball" coated with talcum powder hidden in his pants pocket. Mid-20th-century greats like Gaylord Perry, Whitey Ford, and Joe Niekro were well-known mound scientists, lubing up spitballs or scuffing the ball with secret emery boards or sharpened belt buckles and wedding rings to make pitches break unexpectedly. In 1980, Seattle Mariners pitcher Rick Honeycutt forgot he'd taped a thumbtack to his finger and accidentally gashed his face.

What about batters?

They've used plenty of their own tricks. Six sluggers since 1970 have been busted for using a "corked" bat — drilling a hole in the end of the bat and filling the barrel with cork, making a large bat lighter and thus easier to swing. During the steroid era in the 1990s and early 2000s, hitters used performance-enhancing drugs to build massive, Popeye-like forearms and biceps. Sluggers such as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds grew so massive they could hit the ball out with a flick of the bat, and shattered virtually all home run records. Then there's the art of "stealing" catcher's signs to the pitcher — legal if players on the field simply use their eyesight, but against the rules when teams use technology. The Houston Astros' 2017 championship was marred when it emerged that the Astros used an outfield camera hooked up to a video monitor to steal signs and relay them to the dugout, where players or team staff banged on a trash can to tell batters whether to expect a fastball, breaking ball, or changeup.

Can MLB stop the cheating?

Starting last week, the league began threatening 10-game suspensions for any pitcher caught using foreign substances. Umpires began searching every pitcher's hat, glove, and hands during games, to the irritation of some pitchers: Oakland reliever Sergio Romo sarcastically dropped his pants while being searched. The crackdown seems to be working. The average pitch spin rate has dropped to its lowest level all season, and some pitchers, including Bauer, have become noticeably more hittable. After Tampa Bay ace Tyler Glasnow tore his elbow ligament, he blamed it on the new rules enforcement, saying he had to grip the ball tighter. "I had to change everything I'd been doing the entire season," he complained. "You can't just tell us to use nothing. It's crazy."

The impact on the game

Major League Baseball cracked down on doctored balls out of fear fans would be bored by the lack of hitting and run scoring. The leaguewide batting average is about .237, the second-lowest mark in MLB's 146-year history. During the height of the steroids era, the league batting average was .270. Striking out one batter per inning, once the mark of an electric pitching performance, is now the league norm, and there have been an astonishing seven no-hitters thrown so far this year, tying the modern record for an entire season. There are several factors behind pitching dominance — improved mechanics, teams positioning their fielders based on advanced analytics, batters being trained to uppercut and swing for the fences — but there's no doubt that sticky substances are many pitchers' secret weapon. "Guys are throwing 97 mph super sinkers, or balls that just go straight up with all this sticky stuff," says Colorado outfielder Charlie Blackmon. "It's really hard not to strike out."

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

As much as I am loath to protest changes to Major League Baseball that promote mid-game strip-teases, the sticky stuff crackdown is officially off to the worst and dumbest start imaginable.

Tuesday night marked the second day of the league's renewed crackdown on the rampant use by pitchers of foreign substances to doctor the ball. The idea is that, at least once per game per pitcher, the umpire will visit the mound to check for a reservoir of illegal, grip-enhancing goop, which might be hidden on the brim of a pitcher's hat, inside his glove, or behind his belt. Opposing managers can also request an additional inspection "if the manager (or a member of his team) observes behavior on the field consistent with the use of a foreign substance."

And in the division rivalry game between the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday night, that's exactly what happened. The ump inspected Nats pitcher Max Scherzer three times in five innings; the first two were routine, while the third was at the request of Phillies manager Joe Girardi. While Girardi probably had some reason to be on the alert, Washington's management thinks he was intentionally trying to throw off Scherzer's rhythm with the check.

That's clearly what Scherzer thought too:

It only escalated from there.

But Citizens Bank Park was not the only stadium where pitchers aggressively unbuckled their belts for the umps. In Arlington, Oakland A's reliever Sergio Romo threw off his glove, hat, and belt — then proceeded to pull his pants down to further make his point:

This is embarrassing for everyone involved. More consequently, though, fans seeing their pitchers get frisked every game will only further perpetuate the idea that baseball is a game for cheaters (not to mention that it creates a legitimate pace-of-play problem that will further alienate viewers, too).

Worse, the sticky stuff situation is entirely a problem of MLB's making. If the league wasn't constantly tinkering with balls to promote its desired outcomes — or hadn't turned a blind eye to ball doctoring for years — we'd never have gotten to a place where pitchers were mooning the outfield bleachers. As it stands now, though, there's no easy solution; even a universal league-approved grippy substance, at this point, would likely be too little too late.

Hopefully at the bare minimum going forward, though, pitchers will at least be able to keep their pants on.

The Pittsburgh Pirates haven't won the World Series since 1979, haven't been to the playoffs since 2015, and haven't had a player of note since Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole both departed after the 2017 season. But Pirates first baseman Will Craig made his own dubious history in a game against the Chicago Cubs on Thursday, with what may be charitably described as one of the worst fielding decisions in professional baseball's 152 years.

In the top of the third inning — with two outs and a runner on second base — the Cubs' Javier Báez hit a routine ground ball to third base. Pirates third baseman Erik Gonzalez threw wide to first, pulling Craig off the base; Craig, instead of merely retreating to the bag to end the inning, made the fateful decision to tag Báez. That tag never came. Watch the full video below, if you dare; calliope music not currently included.

O Captain! My Captain!

Baseball fans rejoice — The Captain, a new six-part docuseries on famed former New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, is set for a 2022 release, ESPN Films announced on Tuesday. The series will air on ESPN and ESPN+.

Similar to the Emmy-award winning The Last Dance, ESPN's The Captain (the moniker by which Jeter is affectionately known) will dive into "the man behind the icon" both "on — and off — the field." ESPN promises "candid access" to the Baseball Hall of Fame electee who "helped restore shine to a team, a city, and a culture."

Randy Wilkins (86-32, Docket 32357) is set to direct, and Spike Lee, The Last Dance's Mike Tollin, and 30 for 30's Connor Schell will executive produce.

Jeter's official Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be held on Sunday, July 25th. Read more at ESPN.

Republican politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have called on their supporters to boycott Major League Baseball after it moved the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia's controversial new voting law. So far, at least, the strategy doesn't seem to be working.

Ratings for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, the sport's flagship weekly national broadcast, are actually up 38 percent compared to last season's average, Sports Illustrated's Jimmy Traina reports. That's not surprising now that fans are back in the stands after a season-long, pandemic-related absence, giving the games a more exciting feel, but the ratings have also improved 7 percent from the 2019 season average.

It's only been a few weeks so it remains to be seen if this is a trend, or the result of a few marquee games — this past Sunday's star-studded clash between the rival San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers drew particularly strong numbers, for instance — hitting the airwaves, but, either way, the All-Star Game controversy has not yet proven to be an issue. Tim O'Donnell

Back in 2008, Sean Kazmar Jr., then a 23-year-old middle infielder, played 19 games in the big leagues for the San Diego Padres. Flash forward to Saturday, nearly 13 years later, and he's getting another shot in the show.

Kazmar never made it back up to a Major League roster after his cup of coffee all those years ago, but the 36-year-old just got the call from the Atlanta Braves. If and when he gets into a game, he'll have had the longest break between MLB appearances since 1950, surpassing legends like Satchel Paige and Minnie Miñoso, who were called out of retirement for very brief stints in their 50s.

Kazmar, though, wasn't retired. He was grinding it out in the Minor Leagues, most recently for Atlanta's AAA team, the Gwinnett Braves.

The reason for Kazmar's perseverance is reportedly because he wanted his kids to see him play in the majors. They got the chance; Kazmar pinch hit in the 5th inning during the Braves' matchup with the Chicago Cubs on Saturday.

This story has been updated to reflect Kazmar's appearance.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the latest Republican to lash out at Major League Baseball over its decision to pull the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia's controversial new voting law, which critics say will suppress voters' rights.

Rubio penned a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on Monday, clearly aiming to paint the move as a hypocritical one. "I write to ask whether you intend to maintain your membership at Augusta National Golf Club," Rubio asked, referring to the famous golf club where the Masters is played every year. "As you are well aware, the exclusive members-only club is located in the State of Georgia."

The letter also focused on MLB's partnership to help grow the sport in China, and its engagement with the Cuban Baseball Federation. "Will you end your lucrative financial relationship with Tencent, a company with deep ties to the Communist Party" that "actively helps the Chinese government hunt down and silence political dissidents?," he added.

Rubio wrote that he has no expectations any of those changes will happen. The reason the league reacted the way it did to Georgia, he argued, is because it was "an easy way to signal virtues without significant financial fallout," while "speaking out against the Chinese Communist Party would involve a significant loss of revenue and being closed out of a lucrative market." Read the full letter here.

Cecilia Rouse, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, appeared to dismiss the idea that President Biden is urging private companies to use their economic power to take political positions, namely in response to Georgia's controversial new voting law.

In an interview that aired on Sunday's edition of Face the Nation, CBS News' Margaret Brennan pointed out that a day after Biden, who strongly opposes the Georgia law, said he would like to see the 2021 Major League Baseball All-Star Game move out of Atlanta, the league did just that. Rouse, though, said companies that have spoken out against the state law "have a right to vote with their feet and express their dissatisfaction."

In terms of the fallout from MLB's decision, Rouse acknowledged there "will undoubtedly be a cost" borne in part by workers in Atlanta, but noted the league will move the game to another city, benefiting a different group of workers. "That is exactly the message [MLB] was trying to send," Rouse said. Tim O'Donnell

On November 2, 2016, Chicago Cubs' first baseman Anthony Rizzo snagged a throw from a beaming Kris Bryant for the final out of the World Series, ending a 108-year-old curse. But that chaotic, nail-biting Game 7 victory also seemed like the start of something: A burgeoning Cubs dynasty.

Several core members of that team had yet to celebrate their 25th birthday, and it sure seemed like the club would be recurring visitors to the Fall Classic. It wasn't meant to be. Aside from a laborious run to the National League Championship Series in 2017, the Cubs have yet to play deep into October again, and it feels like 2021 could be their last chance for a while. The final links to the 2016 team, including Bryant and Rizzo, are in the final year or two of their contracts. The Cubs have regressed from a team that looked primed to win multiple championships to a middling club that may wind up trading a group of players that once seemed like Cub lifers at the deadline if things go south this year.

In the American League, the Houston Astros appeared to be on a similarly promising trajectory after they won the 2017 World Series, and the possibility of the two titans trading rings for years to come felt real. Unlike Chicago, Houston did follow up their title with two more dominant seasons, winning more than 100 games in both 2018 and 2019, and they were a few outs from a second trophy in 2019 before letting a late Game 7 lead slip away. The Astros also likely have a more realistic shot at a pennant in 2021, but, with some key pieces gone, it likewise feels like a final stand for the 2017 crew.

This is not to say Chicago or Houston are cautionary tales; most baseball fans would be very happy to have watched their teams win a World Series in the last five years. Ultimately, though, their stories reflect just how small championship windows are these days and the fact that baseball dynasties, at least as they're generally understood, are a thing of the ancient past.

This isn't breaking news. No team has won back-to-back World Series titles since the New York Yankees' three-peat between 1998-2000, so the sport has had some variety when it comes to champions. (The “even-year” San Francisco Giants, who won in 2010, 2012, and 2014 belong in their own category, a topic for another time). The Cubs and Astros, though, had all the ingredients to buck that trend.

Unsurprisingly, there's not a single, clear-cut reason it didn't happen. For starters, playoff expansion has made it challenging to string together championships. As great as the Yankees were in the 1950s, for example, they may not have won five straight championships, or seven in 10 years, if they had to play a division and championship series every year just to get to the World Series.

Some of it can also be chalked up to the randomness of baseball; it's hard to predict the trajectory of ballplayers' careers. In Chicago's case, Bryant, who won Rookie of the Year in 2015 and followed that up with an MVP trophy the next season, appears to have peaked early. He's still a very good player (notwithstanding a brutal, pandemic-shortened 2020), but he hasn't become the transcendent star the Cubs hoped.

Off the field incidents played a role, as well — Addison Russell, the 2016 Cubs' 22-year-old starting shortstop, meanwhile, is out of baseball following domestic violence allegations. The Astros, of course, had their cheating scandal, which resulted in the dismissal of their manager and general manager, and changed the perception of their success.

Houston and Chicago, to varying degrees, also haven't spent the money many thought they would. The Astros, to be fair, have been much more aggressive. They locked up two of their homegrown stars, Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman, and kept adding veteran pieces through trades and free agency, including Michael Brantley and Zack Greinke. But they also let former ace Gerrit Cole and center fielder George Springer walk without much of a fight in successive offseasons, and it's unclear if they'll come to terms with shortstop Carlos Correa before he hits free agency this offseason. The Cubs, meanwhile, have failed to ink any of the stars they developed to long-term extensions, aside from Kyle Hendricks, a solid pitcher, who signed a relatively modest 4-year deal in 2019. Bryant, Rizzo, shortstop Javier Baez, and catcher Willson Contreras will all likely hit the open market. And the one big free agent they've brought in since 2016, starting pitcher Yu Darvish, was just dealt to the San Diego Padres with three years remaining on his deal.

Cubs ownership has claimed the team is short on cash over the last couple of seasons, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, but neither of these teams should be poor. They play in large markets and have had success in recent years. But most franchises these days are simply wary of bogging down their roster with large contracts, fearing the players will age faster than expected. Sometimes just wrong step will do the trick. The Philadelphia Phillies, who won the World Series in 2008, gave out a hefty to contract to slugger Ryan Howard, only for injuries and a rapid decline to derail his career. Howard deserved the money based on his past performance, but it's hard to argue the decision didn't hamper the franchise for several years. Other clubs, including the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels, and Baltimore Orioles, signed players to mega-deals that eventually stretched them thin.

The Cubs and Astros are perhaps more willing to embrace the boom-bust cycle, in which they capitalize on players in their primes before retooling. A more extreme version of this strategy can be seen in Tampa Bay, where the Rays routinely trade their young stars a couple of seasons before free agency, so they can maximize their return. It helps the small-market franchise stay competitive most years, but it means there's a lot of roster turnover.

Other large-market teams have followed suit, perhaps most notably the Boston Red Sox, one of the most lucrative teams in baseball. In 2018, they won 108 games en route to a title and were led by Mookie Betts, the consensus second-best player in baseball, who seemed destined to have a statue outside Fenway one day. A little over a year later, he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers because the sides couldn't agree on an extension, and Boston is now coming off a last-place finish. It might be incredibly frustrating for fans, but it's where the game is at.

Perhaps clubs like the defending champion Dodgers — who may already represent what a modern baseball dynasty actually is: a perennial division-winning force that accepts the randomness of October baseball — or the Padres, their upstart challenger, will prove to be outliers, keeping their young stars around, while continuously adding talent to the roster and making a run at the title every year. But their fans need only to look at the never-realized Cubs and Astros dynasties to know not to take their current success for granted.

There won't be any new plaques in Cooperstown this year after no player met the 75 percent voting threshold required for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

There are several players on the ballot whose resumes would normally make them shoe-ins, but in many cases — like those of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Manny Ramirez — allegations or proof of performance enhancing drug use have stymied their path to baseball immortality. And then there's Curt Schilling, who came closer than anyone to getting in Tuesday. Schilling isn't tied to steroids, but his controversial public persona and political stances have complicated his case (he's asking to be removed from the ballot next year, though it's unclear if the request can or will be granted.)

Those may certainly be valid reasons not to vote for someone, but the voters, who are members of Baseball Writers' Association of America, still face criticism for their choices, and the current focus on the Hall of Fame's "character clause" seems to have sapped the joy from the process, to the point that 14 voters simply submitted blank ballots.

So, ESPN's Buster Olney has an idea — instead of making writers the gatekeepers, forcing them alone to make complex, weighty, and personal judgments on ethics, the Hall of Fame itself could apply the character clause and declare which players warrant a place in its halls regardless of their on-field accomplishments. Tim O'Donnell

There will be no new members of the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, as none of the players on the ballot received the votes necessary.

There were 25 players on the Baseball Writers' Association of America's ballot, but none of them reached the 75 percent voting threshold needed for enshrinement. All-Star pitcher Curt Schilling came closest, but was still 16 votes shy. He has a long history of making inflammatory and offensive remarks, and he has asked to have his name removed from the ballot. This was the ninth time that Schilling, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens were unable to reach the 75 percent threshold.

The 2020 ceremony was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. In July, last year's inductees — Derek Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons, and Marvin Miller — will be celebrated in Cooperstown.

Hall of Fame slugger Hank Aaron — thought by many to be Major League Baseball's "legitimate" home-run king — has died at 86, his daughter said on Friday. Aaron, who played from 1954 to 1976, mostly with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves, finished his career with 755 home runs — a record that stood until 2006, when he was surpassed by the steroid-assisted Barry Bonds.

Aaron still holds major-league records for RBI, extra-base hits, and total bases, and won his lone MVP award in leading Milwaukee to the 1957 World Series title. But Aaron is also revered for his fortitude in facing down racism as he chased Babe Ruth's career home run record in the early 1970's. "When people finally realized I was climbing up Ruth's back, the 'Dear N----r' letters started showing up with alarming regularity," he wrote in his 1991 memoir. "There's no way to measure the effect those letters had on me, but I like to think every one of them added another home run to my total." The Associated Press reports Aaron died peacefully in his sleep.

It may have taken too long in the eyes of many, but Major League Baseball announced Wednesday it will formally elevate the Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948, when baseball was segregated, to "major league" status, Ben Lindbergh reports for The Ringer.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, per a statement from the league, said "we are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as major leaguers within the official historical record."

That means statistics compiled in the aforementioned timeframe — for example, no-hitters thrown by Satchel Paige, or home runs hit by Josh Gibson — will be integrated into MLB's record book. While consistent record-keeping has been challenging for Negro League historians, the counting stats like hits and homers that have been tallied should transition fairly easily. On the other hand, there will likely be some debate over rate stats, like batting average, since Negro League seasons were shorter, although John Thorn, MLB's official historian, said he believes integration means integration, full stop.

Statistical discussions will take place over time, but, most importantly, the decision is seen as a long-overdue move to right a wrong, and it has been warmly received by baseball writers and former Negro League ballplayers, few of whom from the designated time period are still living, alike. Ron Teasley, a 93-year-old who played for the New York Cubans in 1948, told The Ringer "it's a wonderful thing." Teasley was actually signed by the Dodgers, per The Ringer, but never played a game for them. Now, he will officially have played in the majors regardless.

Of course, people who played in or are knowledgeable about the Negro Leagues never thought they weren't on par with the American and National Leagues. Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, told The Ringer the players "knew how good they were" and "didn't need the validation," but added that "for history's sake, this is significant." Read more at The Ringer.

The Democratic congressional baseball team will have a big hole to fill in their rotation.

Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) is headed for the Biden White House, where he'll serve as a senior adviser to President-elect Joe Biden and lead the Office of Public Engagement. But Biden's gain is a loss for congressional Democrats, who will not only miss him in the House (though his seat is in deep blue territory), but also as the their side's ace in the annual congressional baseball game.

Richmond, who pitched at Morehouse College, was perhaps the only true standout in the event every year. FiveThirtyEight previously went all in on advanced metrics and discovered he had a 2.5 WAR in just eight games, well ahead of the rest of the field. On the mound, he struck out a quarter of all batters he faced and pitched to a 2.20 ERA. He was just as good at the plate, slashing .652/.758/1.087 and hitting the game's lone homer in the past 10 years.

Richmond on Tuesday downplayed his prodigious talent, joking at a press conference that he didn't need to be "Hank Aaron or Willie Mays" since he was just playing against congressional Republicans. He also cited incoming Texas Democrat, Colin Allred, a former NFL player who apparently also grew up playing baseball, as a potential replacement on the hill, and suggested he could still lend his skills as a coach. Tim O'Donnell

Kim Ng just made Major League Baseball history.

The Miami Marlins on Friday announced Ng has been hired as the team's general manager, making her the first female Major League Baseball GM, ESPN reports. She's also the "second person of Asian descent to lead an MLB team," MLB says. Ng was previously MLB's senior vice president of baseball operations since 2011 and before that worked for the Chicago White Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"I entered Major League Baseball as an intern and, after decades of determination, it is the honor of my career to lead the Miami Marlins as their next general manager," Ng said in a statement, going on to say that "when I got into this business, it seemed unlikely a woman would lead a Major League team, but I am dogged in the pursuit of my goals. My goal is now to bring Championship baseball to Miami."

Marlins CEO Derek Jeter said "we look forward to Kim bringing a wealth of knowledge and championship-level experience to the Miami Marlins," adding, "her leadership of our baseball operations team will play a major role on our path toward sustained success."

From 1998 to 2001, Ng worked as the New York Yankees' assistant general manager, and at 29, she made history at the time as the youngest person and second woman to serve in that role, NBC News reports. In addition to being MLB's first female general manager, according to ESPN, Ng will also become "the highest-ranking woman in baseball operations among the league's 30 teams."

Tommy Rhomberg wanted to do something nice for a friend, and this act of kindness ended up benefiting his entire community.

The 12-year-old lives in Iowa, which was hit hard in August by a derecho. The storm had winds of up to 140 mph, destroying homes and bringing down trees. To cheer up a friend whose birthday took place amid the derecho, Rhomberg decided to take a tree branch that came down on his lawn and whittle it into a baseball bat to give to his pal.

It took 10 hours to create the bat, which Rhomberg named The Great Derecho. His mom asked him if he would make her a bat, and that's when an idea took shape: Rhomberg would make bats and donate the money earned to help people who needed to rebuild after the derecho. Using wood that came down during the storm, Rhomberg has so far made about 115 bats, raising more than $2,500.

Rhomberg works on his project when he's finished with his homework, and told CBS News he feels like "it's really helping people." Catherine Garcia

When Kevin Ashford heard about a 9-year-old girl whose baseball card collection was destroyed in a fire, he knew exactly what to do with the more than 25,000 cards he had acquired over the last two decades.

Reese Osterberg lives in Fresno County, California, and has been playing baseball since she was in preschool. She began collecting baseball cards about three years ago, and the 100 or so cards she had were lost when the Creek fire recently burned down her family's home. When local firefighters learned that her cards had been ruined, they asked the community to help her get started on a new collection.

Ashford lives in San Jose, and he arranged to have his cards picked up on Tuesday. He told ABC7 he had thought about selling the cards online, but he's glad he held onto them so they can go to Osterberg and her friends. "It's just one thing after another that's been happening here during 2020, and I just want to make it a little easier for these kids," he said. To make the donation even better, Osterberg's favorite player is Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants, and that's one of the cards she'll be receiving. Catherine Garcia

Major League Baseball is not happy with Justin Turner.

The Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman was pulled in the middle of Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday night after his most recent coronavirus test came back positive. The asymptomatic Turner was quickly placed in isolation, but after the Dodgers clinched the title, he returned to the field to celebrate, at one point posing for a club photo and removing his mask.

In a statement Wednesday, MLB "emphatically refused to comply" with league security, who tried to prevent him from rejoining his teammates. The league called his actions "wrong and put everyone he came in contact with at risk." Going forward, the commissioner's office will launch an investigation into the matter. No other Dodger had tested positive following their Tuesday tests, but the traveling parties both Los Angeles and their opponent, the Tampa Bay Rays, underwent another round Wednesday, which will determine whether they can leave the World Series quasi-bubble in Arlington, Texas, and go home. Tim O'Donnell

Joe Morgan, the Hall of Fame second baseman who spent the prime of his career with the Cincinnati Reds, has died, USA Today reported Monday. He was 77.

Morgan is one of the game's all-time great players, earning two MVP awards, 10 All-Star trips, and five Gold Gloves. He was a key piece of Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" teams alongside Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Tony Perez, and Ken Griffey, Sr, and together the group won back to back World Series titles in 1975 and 1976.

Originally signed by the then-Houston Colt .45s (since renamed the Astros) in 1962, Morgan was a solid hitter early in his career with the franchise, but he took his game to another level when he was traded to the Reds before the 1972 season.

Morgan's career .271 batting average doesn't immediately jump off the page, but he got on-base at a .392 clip and led the league in walks and on-base percentage four times each. And once he was on, he was a premier threat, stealing at least 58 bases five years in a row between 1972-76.

After his career, Morgan spent many years as a broadcaster, teaming with play-by-play announcer Jon Miller for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball for two decades between 1990-2010.