Players voted to accept Major League Baseball’s offer on a new labor deal, paving the way to end the 99-day lockout and salvage the season.
AP Photo/Gregory Bull
A sports economist explains how the deal leaves players with a fundamentally different – and in many ways, worse – arrangement than their counterparts in the other major US sports leagues.
While the league has taken steps to make baseball more welcoming for LGBTQ employees and fans, no active player has come out.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Among the more than 20,000 men who have played major league baseball, not one has publicly come out of the closet while still in uniform.
Queer women in sports is often hidden from history. ‘A Secret Love’ helps illuminate missing pieces. Here, Terry Donahue, fifth from the left in the front row, in the Peoria Redwings team photo in 1947, the same year she met her long-time lover, Pat Henschel.
(Netflix)
The Netflix documentary A Secret Love tells the remarkable story of a decades-long relationship between two gay athletes and opens up a conversation about racism, classism and homophobia in the 50s.
It used to be spit balls, but now sticky baseballs are giving pitchers an advantage.
Tage Olsin
Pitchers in Major League Baseball have been striking out more batters than ever, and some people say it’s because they’re adding sticky stuff to the balls.
The 2020 World Series featured two teams at opposite ends of the salary spectrum: the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays. The richer Dodgers were the winners.
(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Twenty years ago, a few small-market Major League Baseball teams used advanced analytics as a secret weapon to compete with large-market teams. But the Moneyball effect is gone now.
Super League plans have fans screaming into the void, like soccer star Lionel Messi here.
Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images
More competitive games between top soccer clubs is desirable but creating a ‘closed’ system would harm a soccer culture built on dreams, says the man who predicted the Super League two decades ago.
The Texas Rangers packed the stands for their home opener on April 5, 2021.
AP Photo/Jeffrey McWhorter
New sports are being added to the Olympics all the time in an effort to remain relevant to younger audiences, while others (sorry baseball) are left out.
When commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis received a petition to integrate baseball with over a million signatures, he simply ignored it.
APA via Getty Images
By removing Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ name from the plaques awarded to each league’s MVP, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America acknowledged Landis’ role in upholding segregation.
A New York Mets employee places cutouts of fans in the seats before the team’s first game of the year on July 24.
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Mark Otten, California State University, Northridge
It will be possible to compare the outcomes of games with and without fans, giving new insights into the relationship between fans, home-field advantage and clutch performances.
Will robo-umps make the game of baseball better or worse?
AP Photo/Julio Cortez
This isn’t the first time sports have been put on hold. But in the past, the reprieve was brief, and sports went on to act as a way to bring Americans together. This time’s different.
Tomoyuki Sugano of the Yomiuri Giants pitches in front of empty stands at Tokyo Dome during a preseason baseball game.
AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko
In 2002, Mike Veeck, a minor league baseball owner with a knack for bizarre promotions, decided to set the record for lowest attendance – and bar fans from entering the stadium.
Josh Gibson slides into home during the 1944 Negro Leagues All-Star Game.
Bettmann/Getty Images
While segregation was a shameful period in baseball history, the Negro Leagues were a resounding success and an immense source of pride for black America.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes celebrates after his team won the NFL divisional playoff football game against the Houston Texans on Jan. 12, 2020.
AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
Up until the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, gambling and baseball had a marriage of convenience. A century later, gambling is again being seen as a solution to the sport’s woes.