Ryne Sandberg, a Hall of Fame second baseman who became one of baseball’s best all-around players while starring for the Chicago Cubs, has died. He was 65.
Sandberg was surrounded by his family when he died at his home on Monday, according to the team.
Sandberg announced in January 2024 that he had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. He had chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and then said in August 2024 that he was cancer-free.
But he posted on Instagram on Dec. 10 that his cancer had returned and spread to other organs. He announced this month that he was still fighting, while “looking forward to making the most of every day with my loving family and friends.”
Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts said Sandberg “will be remembered as one of the all-time greats in nearly 150 years of this historic franchise.”
“His dedication to and respect for the game, along with his unrelenting integrity, grit, hustle, and competitive fire were hallmarks of his career,” Ricketts said in the team’s statement.
Sandberg was born and raised in Spokane, Wash. He was selected out of high school by Philadelphia in the 20th round of the 1978 amateur draft.
He made his major league debut in 1981 and went one for six in 13 games with the Phillies. In January 1982, he was traded to Chicago along with Larry Bowa for veteran infielder Ivan De Jesus.
It turned into one of the most lopsided deals in baseball history.
Sandberg hit .285 with 282 homers, 1,061 RBIs and 344 steals in 15 years with Chicago. He made 10 All-Star teams — winning the Home Run Derby in 1990 — and took home nine Gold Gloves.
“Ryne Sandberg was a legend of the Chicago Cubs franchise and a beloved figure throughout Major League Baseball,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “He was a five-tool player who excelled in every facet of the game thanks to his power, speed and work ethic.”
Even with Sandberg’s stellar play, the Cubs made just two postseason appearances while he was in Chicago.
He was the National League MVP in 1984, batting .314 with 19 homers, 84 RBIs, 32 steals, 19 triples and 114 runs scored. Chicago won the NL East and Sandberg hit .368 (seven for 19) in the playoffs, but the Cubs were eliminated by San Diego after winning the first two games of the NLCS at Wrigley Field.
The 1984 season featured what Cubs fans still call “The Sandberg Game,” when he homered twice and drove in seven runs in a 12-11 victory over St. Louis in 11 innings on June 23.
Chicago paid tribute to Sandberg and that game when it unveiled a statue of the infielder outside Wrigley Field on that date in 2024.
Ryne Sandberg throws a ceremonial first pitch before Game 3 of the 2015 NLDS between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals.
(Paul Beaty / Associated Press)
“He was a superhero in this city,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said during a TV broadcast of the team’s game on July 20. “You think about [Michael] Jordan, Walter Payton and Ryne Sandberg all here at the same time, and I can’t imagine a person handling their fame better, their responsibility for a city better than he did.”
Sandberg led Chicago back to the playoffs in 1989, hitting .290 with 30 homers as the Cubs won the NL East. He batted .400 (eight for 20) in the NLCS, but Chicago lost to San Francisco in five games.
Sandberg set a career high with an NL-best 40 homers in 1990 and drove in a career-best 100 runs in 1990 and 1991, but he never made it back to the postseason. He retired after the 1997 season.
“When you examine the offense and defense, you’ll find some years where he was the best player you’ve ever seen in your life,” former Cubs first baseman Mark Grace said.
Sandberg was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005, receiving 76.2% of the vote by the Baseball Writers’ Assn. of America in his third try on the ballot. The Cubs retired his No. 23 that same year.
“Ryne Sandberg had a relentless work ethic and an unshakable positive outlook,” Hall of Fame chair Jane Forbes Clark said. “With it, he inspired all those who knew him.”
Sandberg also managed Philadelphia from August 2013 to June 2015, going 119-159. He got the interim job when Charlie Manuel was fired, and he resigned with the Phillies in the middle of a difficult 2015 season.
SAN DIEGO — Over the years, Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con has built a reputation — and an expectation — as the room where Hollywood juggernauts in attendance at the annual pop culture extravaganza unveil exclusive footage, break news and share behind-the-scenes stories with devoted fans, who often spend hours in line just for a chance to make it through the doors.
It’s not surprising, then, that headlines going into this year’s Comic-Con, which concludes Sunday, carried an air of disappointment about the absence of Marvel and other major film studios from Hall H’s programming schedule — even if 2025 is not the first time Marvel and others have sat out Comic-Con for one reason or another.
But for many fans in attendance, the news merited little more than a shrug.
Hector Guzman, who along with his friend Joaquin Horas made the trip from Los Angeles, acknowledged that the Hall H slate “felt a little bit different this year” with no Marvel Studios panel.
But “there’s still a wide presence of Marvel,” he added. “The ‘Fantastic Four’ movie that just came out — we’ve been seeing a heavy push on that this year.”
Guzman and Horas had spent a little over an hour in the Hall H line Friday afternoon trying to make it to the “Tron: Ares” panel before bailing, but they said that in their three years of attending the event, Hall H usually isn’t on their itinerary.
“If it’s interesting to us, we’ll give it a shot, and if it’s not, then there’s always plenty of other events and stuff going around [the convention],” said Horas. He and Guzman explained that they are generally more interested in exclusive merchandise, custom works by artists and getting together with their friends in cosplay.
Other attendees like Jennifer Moore and Sam Moore of British Columbia, Canada, took advantage of the absence of popular Hall H mainstays to get into Friday presentations they were excited about, including for “Alien: Earth” and “The Long Walk.”
“Last year was my first time [in Hall H],” said Jennifer Moore, who said they’d been attending the event for 10 years.
“Now [that] there’s no Marvel thing or DC thing, it’s pretty easy to get in,” said Sam Moore. “We’ve just been doing walk-ins [for Hall H] this year.”
That’s not to say Hall H was entirely without spectacle: Highlights included an ensemble of bagpipers performing “Scotland the Brave,” a dazzling laser light show, the world premiere of the “Alien” franchise’s first ever television series and an appearance by “Star Wars” filmmaker George Lucas to promote the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
A look inside the “Tron: Ares” Hall H panel at Comic-Con.
(Richard Shotwell / Invision / AP)
And although the Comic-Con experience has grown beyond the walls of the San Diego Convention Center, with immersive experiences and pop-ups spilling into the city’s Gaslamp Quarter and the Embarcadero, Hall H remains a venerated programming space for panelists and attendees alike.
“I want to give people the experience that they bought their tickets for to come here,” said Noah Hawley, the creator of “Alien: Earth” before the upcoming FX series’ Hall H presentation on Friday. “I was surprised the first time I came to Comic-Con, how emotional it is for the people who attend. There’s a lot of people for whom [361] days a year, they have to pretend to be somebody else. These [four] days of the year, they get to be who they really feel like they are on the inside.”
The Moores were among those who were able to make it into Hall H without much of a wait on Friday morning. But by Friday afternoon, the line had grown much longer in anticipation for later panels, which included capacity crowds. Other big draws included anime franchise entry “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle” and DC Studios co-chief James Gunn, who received an ovation for the success of his recent “Superman” reboot while presenting the second season of the John Cena series “Peacemaker.”
Even those who were attending Comic-Con to promote their own projects couldn’t hold in their excitement for anime juggernaut “Demon Slayer.” Besides the Hall H, panel ads promoting the upcoming movie — which has already broken attendance records in Japan — adorned a nearby hotel and the trains of the Trolley.
“There is a part of me that just wants to be out with the fans in my Tanjiro outfit with the earrings with my daughter,” said actor Babou Ceesay of “Alien: Earth,” referencing the young warrior with a gentle heart at the center of “Demon Slayer.”
The growth of anime and animation programming at Comic-Con and inside Hall H is a reminder that the convention is best understood as a reflection of ongoing shifts in nerd culture and fandom. Having evolved from a gathering primarily for comic book collectors to a broader celebration of pop culture where blockbuster movies once had a stranglehold, Comic-Con may now be witnessing the loosening of comic book superhero films’ grip on the zeitgeist as a whole. Indeed, television has steadily increased its Comic-Con footprint for years. Studios and streamers have also been organizing their own promotional events, such as Disney’s D23 and Netflix’s Tudum, to build up buzz on their terms, too.
Plus, as fan Robbie Weber of Los Angeles reiterated, Comic-Con is more than just what happens in Hall H. When he first attended the event 11 years ago he was among those that camped out overnight in order to get into the hall, but this time around he skipped it, opting to explore activations and other panels instead.
“We saw [comic book writer] Jonathan Hickman [on Thursday],” said Weber. “We saw a friend on the “Primitive War” panel [on Friday], which was really cool. It was the first time I’ve been able to see a friend do something like that.”
For many, Comic-Con’s main draw remains how fans can freely celebrate their passions.
“Alien: Earth” actor Alex Lawther said it was nice to hear the excitement of the people around him on his San Diego-bound train as they reminisced about their past experiences and shared photos of their cosplay.
“I really get that intense enjoyment of something to the point where you want to walk down the street wearing the costumes,” he said.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — If you want someone for your next celebrity roast, Ichiro Suzuki could be your guy.
Mixing sneaky humor with heartfelt messages, the first Japanese-born player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame stole the show Sunday in Cooperstown.
Morning showers and gloomy skies delayed the ceremonies by an hour, but the moisture gave way to bright skies and warm temperatures. The sun seemed its brightest during Suzuki’s acceptance speech.
The outfielder was joined by pitcher CC Sabathia, also elected in his first year of eligibility, and closer Billy Wagner, who made it in his final try on the writers’ ballot. Suzuki fell one vote shy of being a unanimous selection and he took a jab at the unidentified sports writer who didn’t vote for him.
“Three thousand hits or 262 hits in one season are two achievements recognized by the writers. Well, all but one,” Suzuki said to roaring laughter.
“By the way, the offer for the writer to have dinner at my home has now expired,” he added, with emphasis on “expired” for good measure.
A pair of Era Committee selections rounded out the Class of 2025: Dave Parker, who earned the nickname Cobra during 20 big league seasons, and slugger Dick Allen. Parker died June 28, just a month before he was to be inducted.
An estimated 30,000 fans crowded onto the field adjacent to the Clark Sports Center, sun umbrellas and Japanese flags sprinkled around. Suzuki’s No. 51 was seemingly everywhere as fans, thousands of them Seattle Mariners boosters who made the trek from the Pacific Northwest, chanted “Ichiro” several times throughout the day. A sign that read “Thank You Ichiro! Forever a Legend” in English and Japanese summed up the admiration for Suzuki on his special day.
With 52 returning Hall of Famers on hand, Suzuki paid homage to his new baseball home in Cooperstown and his adoring fans by delivering his 18-minute speech in English. His humor, a surprise to many, delighted the crowd.
He threw shade at the Miami Marlins, the last stop of his professional career.
“Honestly, when you guys offered me a contract in 2015, I had never heard of your team,” Suzuki joked.
He kidded that he showed up at spring training every year with his arm “already in shape” just to hear Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs scream, “‘Holy smokes! Another laser-beam throw from Ichiro!’”
He even took a moment for some tongue-in-cheek modesty.
“People often measure me by my records. Three thousand hits. Ten Gold Gloves. Ten seasons of 200 hits.
“Not bad, huh?” Suzuki said to more laughs.
He thanked his late agent Tony Anastasio for “getting me to America and for teaching me to love wine.”
But he also took time to get to the root of what made him extraordinary.
“Baseball is much more than just hitting, throwing and running. Baseball taught me to make valued decisions about what is important. It helped shape my view of life and the world. … The older I got, I realized the only way I could get to play the game I loved to the age of 45 at the highest level was to dedicate myself to it completely,” he said. “When fans use their precious time to see you play, you have a responsibility to perform for them whether you are winning by 10 or losing by 10.
“Baseball taught me what it means to be a professional and I believe that is the main reason I am here today. I could not have achieved the numbers without paying attention to the small details every single day consistently for all 19 seasons.”
Now he’s reached the pinnacle, overcoming doubters, one of whom said to him: “‘Don’t embarrass the nation.’” He’s made his homeland proud.
“Going into America’s Baseball Hall of Fame was never my goal. I didn’t even know there was one. I visited Cooperstown for the first time in 2001, but being here today sure feels like a fantastic dream.”
Sabathia thanked “the great players sitting behind me, even Ichiro who stole my Rookie of the Year award (in 2001).” He paid homage to Parker and spoke about Black culture in today’s game.
“It’s an extra honor to be a part of Dave’s Hall of Fame class. He was a father figure for a generation of Black stars. In the ’80s and early ‘90s when I first started watching baseball and Dave Parker was crushing homers, the number of Black players in the major leagues was at its highest, about 18%. Me and my friends played the game because we saw those guys on TV and there was always somebody who looked like me in a baseball uniform.
“Baseball has always been a great game for Black athletes, but baseball culture has not always been great to Black people. I hope we’re starting to turn that around. I don’t want to be the final member of the Black aces, a Black pitcher to win 20 games. And I don’t want to be the final Black pitcher giving a Hall of Fame speech.”
Wagner urged young players to treat obstacles not as “roadblocks, but steppingstones.”
“I wasn’t the biggest player. I wasn’t supposed to be here. There were only seven full-time relievers in the Hall of Fame. Now, there are eight because I refused to give up or give in,” he said.
Suzuki received 393 of 394 votes (99.7%) from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Sabathia was picked on 342 ballots (86.8%) and Wagner on 325 (82.5%), which was 29 votes more than the 296 needed for the required 75%.
After arriving in the majors in 2001, Suzuki joined Fred Lynn (1975) as the only players to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season.
Suzuki was a two-time AL batting champion and 10-time All-Star and Gold Glove outfielder, hitting .311 with 117 homers, 780 RBIs and 509 stolen bases with Seattle, the New York Yankees and Miami.
He is perhaps the best contact hitter ever, with 1,278 hits in Nippon Professional Baseball and 3,089 in MLB, including a season-record 262 in 2004. His combined total of 4,367 exceeds Pete Rose’s major league record of 4,256.
Sabathia, second to Suzuki in 2001 AL Rookie of the Year voting, was a six-time All-Star who won the 2007 AL Cy Young Award and a World Series title in 2009. He went 251-161 with a 3.74 ERA and 3,093 strikeouts, third among left-handers behind Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton, during 19 seasons with Cleveland, Milwaukee and the New York Yankees.
A seven-time All-Star, Wagner was 47-40 with a 2.31 ERA and 422 saves for Houston, Philadelphia, the New York Mets, Boston and Atlanta.
Tom Hamilton and Tom Boswell were also honored during Hall of Fame weekend. Hamilton has been the primary radio broadcaster for the Cleveland Guardians franchise for 35 seasons and received the Ford C. Frick Award. Boswell, a retired sports columnist who spent his entire career with The Washington Post, was honored with the BBWAA Career Excellence Award.
L..A. County plans to pay more to upgrade the Gas Company Tower than it did to buy the downtown skyscraper in the first place.
County officials agreed last November to pay $200 million for the 52-story tower, which they planned to make the new headquarters for county employees.
The estimated price tag to earthquake-proof the tower: more than $230 million. Lennie LaGuire, a spokesperson for the county Chief Executive Office, said the tower is already safe, and the upgrades are “proactive.”
County officials had said some improvements to the tower might be necessary, but the cost and extent had been murky until now.
This week, the county received final proposals from firms looking to secure a contract for “voluntary seismic upgrades” to the Gas Company Tower, located at 555 W. 5th Street.
The Chief Executive Office, which negotiated the purchase, stressed in a statement that the seismic work was expected and far cheaper than the estimated $1 billion it would take to retrofit the county’s current downtown headquarters, the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which was built in 1960 and is vulnerable to collapse during the next major earthquake.
The Gas Company Tower “does not require any seismic work to provide a safe, up-to-code and modern workplace for County employees. The County is choosing to perform this work proactively with an eye to the future, to ensure that the building performs optimally in the decades ahead,” LaGuire said. “The cost of this work, even when combined with the cost of the building, is a fraction of the cost of making urgently needed and long-overdue seismic and life safety improvements to the Hall of Administration.”
The $200-million sale was considered a bargain compared with the building’s appraised value of more than $600 million a few years earlier — a symptom of plummeting downtown office values.
Supervisor Janice Hahn, the only board member who opposed the purchase, said Friday that county officials never should have entered into the real estate transaction before they “had all the facts” on the cost.
“This is turning out to be a bigger boondoggle than was originally sold to the public,” said Hahn, who said she had not been told about the upgrade costs. “I am only more convinced that we are better off retrofitting the historic Hall of Administration and keeping the heart of county government in our Civic Center.”
At the time of the sale, Hahn argued that the purchase would be a fatal blow to downtown’s civic heart and make the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration obsolete. The building is named after her father, who served a record 10 terms as a supervisor.
The Hall of Administration is one of several county-owned properties considered vulnerable in an earthquake. The Gas Company Tower, built in 1991, was considered much safer, but at the time of the county purchase, it was unclear whether it was fully earthquake-proof.
Most of the seismic strengthening for the Gas Company Tower would involve “reinforcing of the welded steel moment frame connections,” according to the request for proposal for the $234.5-million project.
The contract will be awarded in October, according to the bidding documents, and the tower could be occupied during construction. County officials said they have already begun moving employees into the tower.
Times staff writers Roger Vincent and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
In 2018, Paul Simon walked onto the Hollywood Bowl stage for what most in the crowd believed to be his last tour stop in Los Angeles, ever. Simon expected that too — he’d billed the event as his “Homeward Bound — Farewell Tour.” After 50 years of performing, a then-record three Grammy wins for album, a catalog of some of the most sophisticated and inquisitive American songwriting ever put to paper — he’d go out in full garlands.
So what a shock and delight when Simon, now 83, announced a few years later that he was not quite done yet. In 2023, he released a new album, “Seven Psalms,” an elliptical, gracious invocation for the arc of his life, drawing on biblical imagery and intertwined guitar fugues.
But even better, Simon would also return to the stage for a new tour, including a five-night run at Disney Concert Hall. For L.A. fans, these shows were one last chance to reconnect with Simon, who now had a profound late-career album to bookend his catalog. Those songs spanned from his years in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s to a Sabrina Carpenter duet on “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary special.
Wednesday’s show — the last of the Disney hall stand — got to all of it, with Simon still in exquisite form in the last light of his performing career.
If Simon, seven years ago, had any doubts about his interest or ability to perform live at this exacting level, they must have disappeared the second he got a guitar in his hand at Disney Hall. The set opened with a full run of “Seven Psalms,” a short yet profound song cycle in which a dense, ornamental acoustic guitar figure recurs over several songs in an intimate valediction.
“Seven Pslams” belongs alongside David Bowie’s “Blackstar” or Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings” albums in the canon of wide-lens looks at the mystery of late life. Simon’s music was wise before its time even when he was a young man. But the perspective he has at this vantage, on the backside of 80 with a rejuvenated muse, was especially moving.
“I lived a life of pleasant sorrows, until the real deal came,” he sang on “Love Is Like a Braid.” “And in that time of prayer and waiting, where doubt and reason dwell / A jury sat, deliberating. All is lost or all is well.“
Simon’s band members for this stint — a dozen or so strong, spanning percussion, woodwinds and guitars — were mostly impressionists during this portion, adding distant bells and chamber flourishes to the patina of these songs.
While he kicked up his heels a bit on the bluesy “My Professional Opinion,” there was a trembling power in “Trail of Volcanoes” and, especially, “Your Forgiveness,” in which Simon took stock of his time on Earth and whatever lies next. “Two billion heart beats and out / Waving the flag in the last parade / I have my reasons to doubt,” he sang, followed by a gracious incantation: “Dip your hand in heaven’s waters, god’s imagination … All of life’s abundance in a drop of condensation.”
Paul Simon plays and sings Wednesday at Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The hit-heavy back half of the show was a little rowdier. One fan even made a bit of history when he tossed a $20 bill onstage, which was enough for Simon to gamely oblige his request to play a verse of “Kodachrome.”
Simon and his band had looser reins here. “Graceland” and “Under African Skies” still radiated curiosity for the world’s musical bounty, with the fraught complexity of that album nonetheless paving a stone on the road for African music’s current global ascent. (He introduced his bassist, Bakithi Kumalo, as the last surviving member of the original “Graceland” band.)
An elegant “Slip Slidin’ Away” led up to a poignant “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” which took a tale of rock ‘n’ roll self-destruction and pinned it to a generational sense of cultural collapse. Simon didn’t reference any current events beyond the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon assassinations, but you could feel a contemporary gravity in the song.
Veteran drummer Steve Gadd reprised his jazzy breaks for “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and the fatherhood ballad “St. Judy’s Comet” was a sweet, deep-cut flourish. (That mood continued when Edie Brickell, Simon’s wife and vocalist, slipped in from the side stage to whistle the hook on “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.) But the band hit full velocity on a pair of songs from “The Rhythm of the Saints.” “Spirit Voices” conjured an ayahuasca reverie with its thicket of guitars and hand percussion, while the sprawling and time-signature-bending “The Cool, Cool River” showed Simon the musician — not just the poet — still in absolute command.
Simon’s set never got to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or “You Can Call Me Al,” but the final encore wrapped with just him and a guitar and the eternal hymn of “The Sound of Silence.” His guitar work retained all its original power in the opening instrumental runs, and Simon looked genuinely grateful that, perhaps even to his own surprise, the stage hadn’t lost its promise or potency for him just yet.
Who knows whether Wednesday was the last time Angelenos will get to see Simon perform live (this tour wraps next month in Seattle). If it was, then it was a beautiful benediction for one of America’s defining songwriters. But if it wasn’t, take any chance you get to see him again.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — In some ways, one of the longest-serving members of the International Olympic Committee, Anita DeFrantz, paved the way for the new president of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry, to get to where she is today.
That why Coventry, the first female leader of the IOC, pulled a big surprise Saturday. She traveled to Colorado Springs to watch DeFrantz, a trailblazing Olympic rower in 1976 and IOC member since 1986, get inducted into the Team USA Hall of Fame.
“She opened up so many doors, for me and for so many others,” said Coventry, who took over as president last month, in an interview with the Associated Press before the ceremony. “I’m extremely grateful for that. I know that I’ve got to make sure I do that for other women.”
The 72-year-old DeFrantz is part of a class that includes eight individual women — among them 11-time Olympic medalist Allyson Felix, four-time Olympic champion Serena Williams, three-time Olympic champion Kerri Walsh Jennings and 2012 all-around gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas.
Also inducted Saturday were Bode Miller, Mike Krzyzewski, Phil Knight, Steve Cash, Susan Hagel, Flo Hyman and Marla Runyan, along with the 2010 four-man bobsled team and the 2004 women’s wheelchair basketball team.
Coventry showed up for DeFrantz, who played an important role in moving votes toward the five-time Olympic swimmer from Zimbabwe in the seven-person race to succeed Thomas Bach earlier this year.
This was one of Coventry’s first big — albeit low-key — trips in the new role, and DeFrantz was shocked to see the new president standing there as she got out of her car to head into the ceremony at the Broadmoor.
DeFrantz described herself as a little lonely when she went to her first IOC meeting in 1986.
“I walked in and I thought, ‘This is odd,’” she said. “It was this cavernous room” and she was one of only five female committee members there.
One of her main goals in becoming a shaper of world sports policy: “We had to help people open their minds a little.”
While, in some ways, the Olympics has been ahead of its time in the effort to bring women into big-time sports — 22 women participated in the 1900 Olympics while, for instance, it took until 1981 for the NCAA to sanction women’s basketball — it has also shined a global spotlight on some inequities that have existed for decades.
Women’s rowing didn’t debut at the Games until the 1976 Olympics where DeFrantz and her teammates won bronze. Only last year did the Olympics achieve gender parity, with women making up half of the approximately 10,500 athletes, according to the IOC.
DeFrantz, a vice president of the 1984 LA organizing committee, helped spark that progress. She served as chair of the IOC’s women in sport commission for 20 years. She became a member of the IOC executive board in 1992 and was elected as the IOC’s first female vice president in 1997.
Allyson Felix smiles after taking the bronze in the final of women’s 400 meters at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
(Francisco Seco / Associated Press)
A generation later, Felix began her own fight to highlight the way women were treated when they became pregnant. She forced a seismic change in contract terms that, for decades, had given little leeway to female track stars who put careers on hold to have babies.
Felix is now a member of the IOC, as well — following in the footsteps of both DeFrantz and Coventry as Olympic athletes who now have seats at the decision-making table.
“I feel really blessed to come after Anita and I’ve told her this many times, she has paved the way,” Felix said. “She’s a game-changer. Just what she’s seen and contributed to is incredible. For someone like me, it’s just wanting to carry on her legacy.”
DeFrantz’s honor comes at yet another tenuous time for women in sports, punctuated by headline-grabbing debates about eligibility and gender testing in track, boxing, swimming and other sports that will likely bring leaders like Coventry and DeFrantz into the mix.
Coventry said it’s important to “protect the female category,” and has signaled that the IOC will take a more active role in setting guidelines for participation.
But for the 41-year-old president, this was a night for celebrating a mentor who made her role in today’s debates possible.
“It’s all about letting people have opportunities,” DeFrantz said. “You can’t make an Olympian. But you can open the door to possibilities.”
Poised to set a record for player popularity and elite production, the Dodgers had eight finalists for the National League starting lineup in the 2025 All-Star Game as voted by fans.
Voters had 48 hours to choose between the two players at each position who had accumulated the most votes over the last month in what MLB called Phase 1. Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani already was in the starting lineup because he led NL players in Phase 1 votes.
The record of five starting players held by the 1976 Cincinnati Reds, the 1956 and 1957 Cincinnati Redlegs, and the 1939 New York Yankees still stands. The Dodgers fell short, despite the bevy of finalists.
It is the ninth All-Star berth for Freeman, who is batting .308 with 21 doubles, and the third for Smith, who leads the NL with a .320 batting average and .419 on-base percentage. Both players have 10 home runs.
Eleven-time All-Star Mike Trout was the only Angels player among the American League finalists, and he did not finish among the top three outfielders in Phase 2. Thousand Oaks High product and Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson was voted the AL starter at shortstop, beating out Bobby Witt Jr.
Finalists not voted as starters have no guarantee of making the All-Star Game as a reserve. Pitchers and reserves for the 32-man rosters will be determined by a vote of MLB players and the commissioner’s office.
Complete rosters of 20 position players and 12 pitchers will be announced at 2 p.m. PDT Sunday on ESPN. The All-Star Game will take place July 15 at Truist Park in Atlanta. Managers Dave Roberts of the Dodgers and Aaron Boone of the Yankees have no say in the selections.
The teams that boasted five starters included Hall of Famers and also lesser-known players.
The ’39 Yankees had All-Star starters Joe DiMaggio, George Selkirk, Bill Dickey, Red Rolfe and Joe Gordon. Red Ruffing was named the starting pitcher by manager Joe McCarthy, making the ’39 Yankees the only team with six starting players.
The most recent team to land five All-Star starters was the ’76 Cincinnati Reds, known as the Big Red Machine, led by future Hall of Famers Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan. Pete Rose, Dave Concepción and George Foster also started.
The Reds were called the Redlegs from 1953 to 1959 because of a period of intense anti-communism in the U.S. To distance themselves from the Red Scare, the Reds temporarily changed their name.
Cincinnati fans loved their team by any name, casting a deluge of last-minute votes two years in a row that eventually required intervention from MLB commissioner Ford Frick and caused MLB to eliminate fan voting for more than a decade.
Frick stood by the voting in ’56 despite complaints that five Redlegs were voted in, saying, “Everybody had a chance to vote, so there should be no squawks.”
A year later he changed his tune when last-minute voting — remember, all votes were handwritten and manually tabulated — resulted in an all-Redlegs lineup. Frick swiftly stepped in and replaced three Redlegs with future Hall of Famers Stan Musial, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron.
Redlegs fans were incensed, some making an effigy of the commissioner and driving it through Cincinnati tied to a truck. The reaction from players was more muted, with Redlegs center fielder Gus Bell saying, “I’m not exactly burned up about being replaced by Willie.”
Yoshinobu Yamamoto (8-6, 2.51 earned-run average) of the Dodgers is a strong candidate to make the NL pitching staff. At least one Angels player must be chosen as a reserve or pitcher, and the nod could go to Trout, who has 13 home runs but is batting .230.
Other possibilities for the resurgent Angels are catcher Logan O’Hoppe (17 home runs), shortstop Zach Neto (12 home runs, team-high 2.7 WAR), outfielder Jo Adell (18 homers, 44 runs batted in) and starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi (2.79 ERA in 96.2 innings).
MLB All-Star Starting Lineups
National League C: Will Smith, Dodgers 1B: Freddie Freeman, Dodgers 2B: Ketel Marte, Diamondbacks SS: Francisco Lindor, Mets 3B: Manny Machado, Padres OF: Pete Crow-Armstrong, Cubs OF: Kyle Tucker, Cubs OF: Ronald Acuña Jr., Atlanta Braves DH: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers
American League C: Cal Raleigh, Mariners 1B: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays 2B: Gleyber Torres, Tigers SS: Jacob Wilson, Athletics 3B: Jose Ramirez, Guardians OF: Aaron Judge, Yankees OF: Riley Greene, Tigers OF: Javier Baez, Tigers DH: Ryan O’Hearn, Orioles
Frederick M. Nicholas, a war hero, attorney and real estate developer who shaped several of Los Angeles’ major arts and public service institutions, died peacefully at his home Saturday. He was 105.
Nicholas led the design and development of major L.A. landmarks, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Surprisingly enough, Nicholas discovered his love of the arts in law school at the University of Chicago. “When I went downtown, I saw an art gallery for the first time,” he said in a 2022 YouTube interview with Blake Meidel, a young film creator. “I went inside and I looked at it and I was overwhelmed.”
When he returned to L.A., where he had studied journalism at USC, Nicholas took classes in the visual arts and built a law practice that included representation of artists and galleries. He took on several distinguished roles in the arts community, serving as MOCA’s chairman and vice chairman for a cumulative 11 years and a life trustee for the remainder of his life. Nicholas was instrumental to the development of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
It is little wonder that he was nicknamed “Mr. Downtown Culture.” In the 1980s, Nicholas led the city out of a cultural stasis and turned it into a global cultural and architectural powerhouse.
“Fred, we literally wouldn’t be L.A. without you,” former mayor Eric Garcetti said in a message to Nicholas on his 100th birthday.
Renowned architect Frank Gehry told The Times that Nicholas’ involvement in MOCA “was too good to be true.”
“He is an extremely smart man, and he’s sensitive. He’s been involved in and interested in the arts as a collector,” Gehry said in 1982. “He understands both the architecture and business of development. He knows all the players involved with the museum, and he has their respect. When I heard he was involved I thought it was too good to be true. I know he can pull it off.”
Nicholas negotiated with Giuseppe Panza of Varese, Italy, to acquire the Panza Collection. Including works from Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and others, the art now forms the core of MOCA’s permanent collection.
As chair of the Walt Disney Hall Concert Committee beginning in 1987, Nicholas headed a committee to find an architect (Gehry was eventually hired for the coveted gig), fundraise and plan the building process.
Over 105 years, Nicholas engaged with some of history’s greatest artists. “I met Pablo Picasso and I had dinner with him,” he told Meidel breezily.
Nicholas’ influence in L.A. extended into the realm of public service as well. After an incredibly successful law career, he shifted to pro bono work. “I thought that lawyers should do something to help the poor,” Nicholas told Meidel. Nicholas founded Public Counsel in 1970, which provided legal support to vulnerable people, including veterans and unhoused families, in what is now the largest firm of its kind in the U.S.
“Public Counsel really is his greatest legacy,” Nicholas’ son, Anthony Nicholas, told The Times on Tuesday. “They are still helping people today.”
Nicholas was born on May 30, 1920 in Brooklyn, N.Y. When he was 14, his family moved to L.A. In 1941, Nicholas served in the Army and was discharged five years later.
“One of the things that made me successful in law was that I was always in a hurry. I was always eager to move because I felt that I had lost so much time in the war. I had to make it up,” Nicholas, one of the oldest and most decorated WWII veterans, said in a retrospective on his life and work at age 100.
Nicholas was also adored by his family. Anthony recalled his father’s “beaming smile,” “great, great energy” and “the love he spread around the world.”
Nicholas is survived by his children, Deborah, Jan and Anthony; Anthony’s wife Mona; six grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and sister Helen Devor.
Darrell Wayne Lukas, known to the general public as D. Wayne and to friends simply as Wayne or as “The Coach” if you were in the business, died on Saturday after a brief illness. He was 89.
Lukas’ career, which started in Southern California in 1968, not only built a recognizable brand but helped shape horse racing for more than 50 years. He won 15 Triple Crown races among his lifetime win total of 4,953, having run horses in 30,436 races. His horses earned more than $300 million.
He died at his home in Louisville, Ky., after being diagnosed with a severe MRSA blood infection that affected his heart, digestive system and worsened preexisting chronic conditions. Lukas decided against an aggressive treatment plan that involved surgeries and round-the-clock assistance. Instead, he returned home and entered hospice care.
“It is with heavy hearts that we share the passing of our beloved husband, grandfather and great-grandfather D. Wayne Lukas. who left this world peacefully [Saturday] evening at the age of 89 surrounded by family,” the Lukas family said in a statement released by Churchill Downs.
“His final days were spent at home in Kentucky, where he chose peace, family and faith. As we grieve at his passing, we find peace knowing he is now reunited with his beloved son, Jeff, whose memory he carried in his heart always.
“We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of love, prayers and support from all corners of the racing community — from ractetracks across the country to lifelong friends and respected rivals, and from fans who never missed a post parade when ‘Lukas’ was listed in the program.”
His illness was announced on June 22 along with the decision that he would not return to training. All of his horses were transferred to his longtime assistant Sebastian “Bas” Nicholl.
“Wayne built a legacy that will never be matched.” said Nicholl upon learning Lukas was not returning to racing. “Every decision I make, every horse I saddle, I’ll hear his voice in the back of my mind. This isn’t about filling his shoes — no one can — it’s about honoring everything he’s built.”
Lukas was so good that he was in not one but two halls of fame. He was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2007 and the U.S. Racing Hall of Fame in 1999.
“Wayne is one of the greatest competitors and most important figures in thoroughbred racing history,” said Mike Anderson, president of Churchill Downs racetrack in Kentucky, after the Lukas family announced the severity of his illness. “He transcended the sport of horse racing and took the industry to new levels. The lasting impact of his character and wisdom — from his acute horsemanship to his unmatched attention to detail — will be truly missed.”
Lukas’ story started on a small farm in Wisconsin.
Bill Dwyre, who previously was the sports editor of L.A. Times and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, recently chronicled Lukas’ roots.
“Lukas did not grow up on some farm in Kentucky, mucking stables as a teenager and rubbing elbows all day, every day, with grizzled horsemen,” Dwyre wrote last year after Lukas won the Preakness with Seize the Grey. “Lukas did grow up on a farm, all right, but in the state of Wisconsin, where there is no parimutuel betting, and where horse racing is pretty much confined to county fairs. His birthplace, Antigo, Wis., an hour and a half northwest of Green Bay, had a fair and D. Wayne … liked the horses.
Trainer D. Wayne Lukas looks on as Preakness Stakes winner Seize the Grey cools down after a workout ahead of the 156th running of the Belmont Stakes in 2024.
(Julia Nikhinson / Associated Press)
“But that sort of career was not foremost in his mind. He went to the University of Wisconsin, got his master’s degree in education, started teaching and soon was a high school head basketball coach. For a while, he was an assistant coach in the Big Ten for UW’s John Erickson. He stayed close to the game of basketball, even as his days were dominated by barns and backstretches. Along the way, one of his best friends became Bob Knight. D. Wayne liked the toughness and drive to win of the legendary Indiana University coach.”
Lukas decided to try his hand at training and started at Los Alamitos in 1968 working with quarter horses. It took him 10 years to realize that the real stars — and the money — was in thoroughbred racing. Before leaving the quarter horse ranks, he won 739 races and saddled 24 world champions.
He won his first thoroughbred race on Oct. 20, 1977, at Santa Anita. He won his last race at Churchill Downs on June 12 with 4-year-old colt Tour Player.
In between, he won the Kentucky Derby four times, the Preakness seven times and the Belmont Stakes four times. He has won 20 Breeders’ Cup races. He won the Eclipse Award for top trainer four times and was the leading trainer by wins four straight years from 1987 to 1990. In 1995, he won all three Triple Crown races but with two different horses; Thunder Gulch won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes and Timber Country won the Preakness. It was the first time a trainer accomplished that feat.
“The most enduring and essential sports legacies can also be the most complicated,” wrote NBC’s Tim Layden, a multiple Eclipse Award-winning journalist, upon learning of Lukas’ illness. “The very best are not just driven, but obsessive. Not just creative, but ingenious. Not just hungry, but voracious. Jordan. Woods. Ali. Armstrong. Rose. One of Lukas’ favorites, and a close friend: Bob Knight. To name a few. … Transcendence demands a selfish eccentricity; because greatness and normalcy are often mutually exclusive. Lukas has lived long enough to earn a warm embrace that he would not have received as a younger man, but that embrace alone doesn’t tell enough of his outsized story and his place in racing history, where he stands very much alone.”
Lukas first made his thoroughbred mark in 1980 when he won the Preakness with Codex. It was not a popular win as Codex beat Derby-winning filly Genuine Risk and then had to withstand an inquiry to officially give Lukas his first Triple Crown win.
Bookending that win was his last Triple Crown race victory, when he won the Preakness last year with Seize the Grey.
“One of the things that was very significant to me [that day] — and maybe it’s because I’m getting a little bit older — but as I came out of the grandstand and out across the racetrack, every one of the guys that were in that race stopped and hugged me and gave me a handshake,” Lukas told The Times after the race.
“That meant more to me than any single thing. [Bob] Baffert, Kenny McPeek, right down the line.”
Lukas did not get the nickname Coach because of his days as a basketball coach but because of the coaching tree he established during his tenure.
Among those that were his assistants were Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher, future Hall of Famer Brad Cox, Kiaran McLaughlin, Dallas Stewart, Mike Maker, Mark Hennig, Randy Bradshaw, George Weaver and Bobby Barnett.
Among those Lukas was closest to, but never worked for, is Baffert.
“I asked him for a job one time out of high school, and he turned me down,” Baffert told The Times in 2018, while he was on his Triple Crown run with Justify. “I tell him, ‘I’m sure glad you turned me down because you’d be taking all the credit for this.’ But he probably would have fired me after two weeks because he works way too hard.”
Lukas later introduced Baffert at his U.S. Racing Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
“He told me everybody was laughing and kidding [when they heard I was inducting him,]” Lukas told The Times in 2018. “They were saying he’s not going to have Wayne do it because they thought we were rivals. Yet he came to me, and I said, ‘Bob, I’ll be honored to present you.’ And I did.”
“The media portrayed us as rivals and everything, so we would go along with you guys and then we’d go to dinner later,” Lukas said of Baffert.
“We’ve been friends for a long time. I have great respect for his ability. He’s got an excellent eye for a horse. He’s one of the few guys in the sale that when I pick one out that I like, I know sure as hell he’ll be bidding too.”
Seize the Grey’s trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, left, shakes hands with Bob Baffert, Imagination’s trainer, after Lukas’ horse won the Preakness Stakes in 2024.
(Julia Nikhinson / Associated Press)
In fact, this year at the Preakness Alibi Breakfast, an annual affair at Pimlico where trainers, owners and others tell stories and trade barbs about their career and horses, Lukas and Baffert hijacked the event with witty repartee and joking much to the delight of those in attendance. Their friendship was borne out as genuine.
“The horses were everything to Wayne,” Baffert posted on X after learning of Lukas’ death. “They were his life. From the way he worked them, how he cared for them, and how he maintained his shedrow as meticulously as he did his horses. No detail was too small. Many of us got our graduate degrees in training by studying how Wayne did it. Behind his famous shades, he was a tremendous horseman, probably the greatest who ever lived.”
Lukas’ life on the racetrack had one significant downside, when his son and assistant, Jeff, was run over and permanently injured by a loose horse at Santa Anita in 1993.
“I have a phone with one of those long cords,” Lukas told The Times’ Dwyre in 1999, “and so, I was up and walking around and right near the door when it happened. I was the first one to get to him.”
“One of Lukas’ Triple Crown prospects, Tabasco Cat, had bolted and was loose,” Dwyre wrote. “Jeff Lukas, a veteran horseman well schooled in the procedures for such situations, had stepped in Tabasco Cat’s path and was waving his arms. Horses always stop, or veer away. But this time…
“It’s like when you meet somebody in a narrow hallway,” Lukas said. “You go right and he goes right, and then you both go the other way. But eventually, one goes right and one left. Well, Jeff and the horse both went the same way.”
“Witnesses say that the sound of Jeff Lukas’ head hitting hard, compact ground after the collision could be heard several barns away. There was no blood, just an unconscious, badly injured 36-year-old man.”
The next year, Jeff Lukas had recovered enough to return to the racetrack but it proved too difficult for him to work around horses safely. Jeff eventually moved to Oklahoma and lived in a home his father bought him until Jeff’s death in 2016 at age 58.
Santa Anita issued this statement on Sunday after learning of Lukas’ death.
“Santa Anita joins the racing community in mourning the passing of D. Wayne Lukas. … His on-track success was such that it was easy to overlook his outstanding horsemanship that we were lucky to often witness back at the barn, away from the spotlight.”
Funeral arrangements for Wayne Lukas were not immediately announced.
Lukas is survived by his fifth wife, Laurie; grandchildren Brady Wayne Lukas and Kelly Roy; and great-grandchildren Johnny Roy, Thomas Roy, Walker Wayne Lukas and Quinn Palmer Lukas.
A general rule of Persian cuisine in Los Angeles: The khoresht, or complex stew, is the fundament of Iranian home cooking, with infinite individual, regional and seasonal variations. (Local author Naz Deravian’s book “Bottom of the Pot” is one portal into the glories of khoresht.) Out in the world, families and groups tend to go out for kebabs, and restaurant dishes are designed for widespread appeal. Chef and owner Saghar Fanisalek’s six-table dining room may be hidden among the thicket of other Persian cafes and markets in Westwood, but Taste of Tehran stands out as the best of the kebab houses. Fanisalek cooks a reassuring mix of dishes — marinated meats singed over flames and served with snow banks of rice, yogurt and eggplant dips as tart as they are rich — all with uncommon finesse. Just the right amount of grated onion stings the beef koobideh, shaped in undulating patterns on the skewer, and the chicken kabob has fully absorbed its lemony marinade. Tahdig, that bottom-of-the-pot rice, cracks like crystal; order it with chicken fesenjoon spooned over and let its pomegranate-tinged gravy soften the grains for a few moments. On a warm day, try to claim one of the restaurant’s few tables along the well-trafficked sidewalk. You’ll be people-watching while passersby observe back, appraising your meal with ravenous glances.
How about last week when pitcher Chris Sale was crowned the fastest to reach 2,500 career strikeouts?
Not to diminish Sale’s accomplishment: It took him fewer innings (2,026) to record No. 2,500 than any other pitcher in history. But because of injuries and a reduced workload — both huge, flashing signs of the times — he didn’t achieve the feat until his 16th season.
Sale was appropriately humble, telling reporters, “I appreciate it for what it is, but I try not to get too caught up in stuff like that right now.”
Perhaps he realizes it took others far less time to reach the 2,500 milestone, including the top two strikeout artists of all time: Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson.
Strikeouts are a single lens in viewing the substantive changes over the last 100-plus years in how pitchers are utilized, record outs and withstand the burden. But they can be an instructive one.
Catch a whiff of this: A certain Dodger currently on the injured list strikes out more batters per nine innings than any other pitcher in baseball history, which in effect is another way to express Sale’s “fastest” title.
Blake Snell averages a record 11.1679 strikeouts per nine innings, edging out Sale, who is second all-time at 11.1056 among pitchers who average at least one inning per team game.
The believe-it-or-not distinction might explain why the Dodgers gave Snell a five-year, $182-million free agent contract last offseason. His wicked stuff that features a 96 mph four-seam fastball also could help explain why he’s on the injured list for the eighth time in the last eight seasons, this time out since April 6 with left shoulder inflammation.
Snell is the epitome of a highly valued starter in today’s game: He accumulates strikeouts at a higher rate than anyone else, gives up fewer hits than anyone else, and elicits only shrugs when someone points out that he has a grand total of one complete game in 213 career starts.
It is revealing that 13 of the top 20 pitchers on the all-time strikeout per innings list are active. The only one who didn’t pitch in the 21st century is Ryan at No. 19, just ahead of another believe-it-or-not name, Lucas Giolito.
Among the 33 pitchers to average more than a strikeout per inning, the only one whose career began in the 1950s has a statue outside Dodger Stadium: Sandy Koufax.
Koufax and Snell are two of 10 Dodgers among the 33, a clue as to what the Dodgers front office values in mound performance. Several of the names are less than luminary.
Note: Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani averaged a mammoth 11.40 strikeouts per nine innings in six seasons with the Angels but hasn’t pitched enough to qualify for the all-time list. He has recovered from elbow surgery and is expected to return to the mound after the All-Star break for the first time since August 2023.
Sale’s accomplishment, then, is sustaining a near-record rate of strikeouts per nine innings for more than 2,000 innings, certainly worthy of note.
An equally valid definition of “fastest” to reach a strikeout milestone would be how long it took to get there. The pitcher that the 6-foot-6, left-handed Sale surpassed was his boyhood idol: Johnson, a 6-10, left-handed flamethrower who ranks second to Ryan on the career strikeout list with 4,875.
Johnson notched No. 2,500 in inning No. 2,108 — 82 more than it took Sale. But he did so in only his 11th season, five seasons “faster” than Sale.
Incidentally — and incredibly — Johnson was only halfway through his career. He retired in 2009 after 22 seasons with 4,135.1 innings and 303 wins.
Granted, Johnson was an anomaly, the only hurler ever to amass more than 200 innings and 300 strikeouts in multiple seasons well into his 30s. At ages 35-38 from 1999-2002, he averaged a staggering 354 strikeouts and 258 innings a season.
The only comparable hurler was Ryan (record strikeout total: 5,714), who also reached No. 2,500 in his 11th season, the milestone whiff coming in inning No. 2,287 when he struck out Andre Thornton of Cleveland while pitching for the Angels in 1978.
Ryan’s longevity was even more impressive than Johnson’s: 27 seasons from 1966-93, 5,386 innings and 324 wins. No current pitcher will come close to those numbers.
On the other end of the strikeout spectrum are Hall of Fame pitchers from more than 100 years ago who logged vast numbers of innings while striking out far fewer batters per inning. Velocity wasn’t nearly as high or as prized as it is today and pitchers were expected to complete games they started.
Sale ranks No. 40 on the all-time strikeout list, and he next will pass Christy Mathewson, who needed a prodigious 4,788 innings to log 2,507 strikeouts from 1900-16. Mathewson is far down the list of strikeouts per nine innings, checking in at No. 689 with 4.71.
Walter Johnson, the legendary “Big Train” out of Fullerton Union High, is third all-time with 5,914 innings and ninth with 3,509 strikeouts in a career spanning 1907-27. But he averaged just 5.34 strikeouts per nine innings, ranking No. 520, a few notches ahead of the less than legendary former Dodgers swingman Elmer Dessens.
Other fabled names associated with blazing fastballs compiled surprisingly low strikeout rates as well. Bob “Rapid Robert” Feller, for example, sits at 6.07 strikeouts per nine innings.
Kershaw, meanwhile, is on the cusp of reaching a milestone that very nearly guarantees entry into the Hall of Fame: 3,000 strikeouts. The career Dodger in his 18th season has 2,974, and he’s inching toward the finish line, having struck out six in three abbreviated starts since coming off the injured list two weeks ago.
Although Kershaw has consistently downplayed the significance of reaching 3,000, he told Tyler Kepner of the Athletic last week that it’s on his mind.
“Yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t want to do it,” Kershaw said. “But I think the coolest part is the company you get to be a part of. You know what I mean? There’s just some really special names.”
They include, of course, Ryan and Johnson. Nineteen pitchers have reached the milestone and 17 are in the Hall of Fame, with Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling falling short for reasons that had nothing to do with strikeout totals.
Kershaw is considered a Hall of Fame shoo-in, his earned-run average of 2.51 the lowest of any active pitcher that meets the innings qualification and his 212 career victories an impressive number in today’s game.
Snell’s candidacy falls into the “way too early to tell” category. Yes, he is the only pitcher to win a Cy Young award in each league, and his 3.18 career ERA sparkles. And, of course, striking out more batters per nine innings than anyone else in history stands out on his resume.
Yet Snell is in his 10th season and he has just 77 wins. Hall of Fame starters with the fewest MLB wins are Dizzy Dean (150) and Koufax (165), the careers of both cut short by arm injuries.
Snell’s career should be far from over. He’s only 32 and his lucrative Dodgers contract doesn’t expire until after the 2029 season. But to have a shot at the Hall, Snell must fulfill the promise that prompted the Dodgers to sign him.
The only active pitchers besides Kershaw considered Hall of Fame locks are Justin Verlander and Scherzer, both hard throwers with the requisite strikeout totals.
Verlander, 42, has 3,457 strikeouts while averaging 8.98 per nine innings. He also has 262 wins — 46 more than Scherzer and 50 more than Kershaw, the next two active pitchers on the all-time list. No one else is close to 200.
Scherzer ranks fifth all-time in strikeouts per nine innings at 10.65, trailing only Snell, Sale, Robby Ray (another believe-it-or-not name) and Jacob DeGrom. Scherzer’s career total of 3,408 ranks 11th, just behind Verlander.
Gerrit Cole, 34, appeared on a Hall of Fame track before undergoing Tommy John surgery in March. He won’t pitch again until early next season, putting a long pause on his current totals of 153 wins, 2,251 strikeouts and 10.37 strikeouts per nine innings.
The only recently retired starter who might be rehearsing his Hall induction speech is another former Dodger, Zack Greinke, who posted 225 wins and 2,979 strikeouts along with a 3.49 ERA before retiring in 2024 after 20 seasons.
What about Sale, whose rebound from four years of debilitating injuries to win a Cy Young award with the Atlanta Braves was one of baseball’s best stories of 2024? He finished in the top five of Cy Young voting seven years in a row from 2012-2018, and his 3.04 career ERA is lower than any active starter besides Kershaw and DeGrom.
“He’s kind of doing Hall of Fame stuff,” Braves manager Brian Snitker told reporters. “That guy is probably as big a baseball fan as anybody, just the history of the game and the competition. He’s a ballplayer, and it’s really cool to watch.”
Yet Sale has only 141 wins, and that perceived blemish could be an interesting litmus test for Hall voters who profess to recognize that wins are much more difficult to accumulate now that teams routinely limit starters to six or fewer innings.
Strikeouts are king these days, and the Dodgers clearly know it.
It was the first and possibly the most dramatic act by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after she took office: declaring a city emergency on homelessness.
That move, backed by the City Council, gave Bass the power to award no-bid contracts to nonprofit groups and to rent hotels and motels for interim homeless housing. It also allowed Bass to waive regulations limiting the size and scale of certain types of affordable housing.
Now, two and a half years into Bass’ tenure, some on the council are looking to reassert their authority, by rescinding the homelessness emergency declaration.
Councilmember Tim McOsker said he wants to return city government to its normal processes and procedures, as spelled out in the City Charter. Leases, contracts and other decisions related to homelessness would again be taken up at public meetings, with council members receiving testimony, taking written input and ultimately voting.
“Let’s come back to why these processes exist,” McOsker said in an interview. “They exist so the public can be made aware of what we’re doing with public dollars.”
McOsker said that, even if the declaration is rescinded, the city will need to address “the remainder of this crisis.” For example, he said, the homeless services that the city currently provides could become permanent. The city could also push county agencies — which provide public health, mental health counseling and substance abuse treatment — to do more, McOsker said.
Bass, for her part, pushed back on McOsker’s efforts this week, saying through an aide that the emergency declaration “has resulted in homelessness decreasing for the first time in years, bucking statewide and nationwide trends.”
“The Mayor encourages Council to resist the urge of returning to failed policies that saw homelessness explode in Los Angeles,” said Bass spokesperson Clara Karger.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, also known as LAHSA, reported last summer that homelessness declined by 2.2% in the city of L.A., the first decrease in several years. The number of unsheltered homeless people — those who live in interim housing, such as hotels and motels, but do not have a permanent residence — dropped by more than 10% to 29,275, down from 32,680.
The push from McOsker and at least some of his colleagues comes at a pivotal time.
Last month, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to pull more than $300 million from LAHSA, the city-county agency that provides an array of services to the unhoused population.
Meanwhile, the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, which has been battling the city in court over its response to the crisis, is pushing for a federal judge to place the city’s homelessness initiatives into a receivership.
Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for the alliance, said the city has “very little to show” for its emergency declaration in terms of progress on the streets.
“It’s our view that a state of emergency around homelessness is appropriate, but that the city is not engaged in conduct that reflects the seriousness of the crisis — and is not doing what it needs to do in order to solve the crisis,” he said.
Inside Safe, Bass’ signature program to bring homeless people indoors, has moved 4,316 people into interim housing since it began in 2022, according to a LAHSA dashboard covering the period ending April 30. Of that total, nearly 1,040 went into permanent housing, while nearly 1,600 returned to homelessness.
Council members voted this week to extend the mayor’s homelessness emergency declaration for another 90 days, with McOsker casting the lone dissenting vote. However, they have also begun taking preliminary steps toward ending the declaration.
Last week, while approving the city budget, the council created a new bureau within the Los Angeles Housing Department to monitor spending on homeless services. On Tuesday, the council asked city policy analysts to provide strategies to ensure that nonprofit homeless service providers are paid on a timely basis, “even if there is no longer a declared emergency.”
The following day, McOsker and Councilmember Nithya Raman — who heads the council’s housing and homeless committee — co-authored a proposal asking city policy analysts to report back in 60 days with a plan addressing the “operational, legal and fiscal impacts” of terminating the emergency declaration.
That proposal, also signed by Councilmembers John Lee and Ysabel Jurado, now heads to Raman’s committee for deliberations.
While some on the council have already voiced support for repealing the emergency declaration, others say they are open to the idea — but only if there is a seamless transition.
“I want to make sure that if we do wind it down, that we do it responsibly,” said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the southwest San Fernando Valley.
Blumenfield wants to protect Executive Directive 1, which was issued by Bass shortly after she declared the local emergency, by enshrining its provisions into city law. The directive lifts height limits and other planning restrictions for 100% affordable housing developments, which charge rents below market rates.
Raman said the city must confront a number of issues stemming from the homelessness crisis, such as improving data collection. But she, too, voiced interest in exploring the end of the emergency declaration.
“This is also an extremely important conversation, and it is one I am eager to have,” she said.
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When tenant rights attorney Ysabel Jurado ran for Los Angeles City Council last year, she positioned herself as a potential fourth vote against Mayor Karen Bass’ plan to hire more police officers.
While she was waging her campaign, the council’s three-member super progressive bloc — Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto–Martínez — voted against the mayor’s budget, decrying the amount of money allocated for the Los Angeles Police Department. Jurado, who went on to unseat Councilmember Kevin de León, said she would have joined them, turning the 12-3 budget vote into an 11-4.
Turns out it none of that was necessary.
On Thursday, the council approved a $14-billion annual budget that would cut police hiring in half, while sparing hundreds of other city workers from layoffs. Jurado, now on the council, praised the spending plan, then voted for it.
And this time around, the council members on the losing end of a 12-3 vote were those who occupy the body’s more moderate wing: Monica Rodriguez, Traci Park and John Lee.
The shift in budget votes from last year to now offers perhaps the strongest evidence of the political pendulum swing under way at City Hall. When other recent votes are added to the equation, the council chamber might even be undergoing a permanent realignment.
The council also voted 12-3 last week to hike the city’s minimum wage for hotel employees and private-sector tourism workers, boosting it to $30 per hour by 2028. Park, Rodriguez and Lee were in the minority on that issue as well, arguing that hotel and airport wages were rising too much and too quickly, jeopardizing the financial health of L.A.’s tourism industry.
The three ultra moderates also voiced alarm at their colleagues’ decision to scale back the mayor’s plan for increasing hiring at the fire department. Rodriguez, who gave a long and passionate speech against the budget, said in an interview she thinks “there’s clearly a shift in the politics of the council.”
“We have different ideology with respect to how we need to be making sure that the city is safe,” she said.
Soto-Martínez, who represents an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, wouldn’t pin the political shift on any one vote, arguing instead that “the realignment has been happening for quite some years now.” The move to the left at City Hall, he said, has been driven by the election of candidates — including himself — who have sworn off contributions from corporations and real estate interests.
Because this year’s financial situation was so dire, and the list of proposed cuts so large, the council had no sacred cows when preparing the 2025-26 spending plan, he said. That paved the way for the council to scale back the recruitment of new police officers, he said.
“For many years, including the first two years that I was here, that issue was untouchable. No one would touch it or go near it,” said Soto-Martínez, who was elected in 2022. “And this year, we were realistic about police hiring.”
The realignment is in part of the product of years of campaigning and grassroots advocacy from the hotel workers’ union, LA Forward, Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles and many other organizations. But it also reflects the choices of Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is still in his first year in his leadership role.
Harris-Dawson reshuffled the council’s committee assignments last year, offering plum spots to the newest arrivals. Hernandez, who promised during her 2022 campaign not to hire any additional police officers, landed a coveted spot on the budget committee. She then forged a strong working relationship with Councilmember Heather Hutt, another new appointee to the budget committee, who broke into tears on Thursday as she described Hernandez’ contributions to their deliberations.
Over the course of the budget committee’s nine meetings, Hernandez worked with her colleagues to restore funding for programs that help day laborers, an LGBTQ+ liaison in the city’s civil rights department and $1 million for the legal defense of immigrants facing deportation. She also fought for core services, such as street light repairs, graffiti removal and crews that address illegal dumping.
By contrast, Rodriguez, Park and Lee made clear they felt excluded from key decisions, particularly the budget committee’s vote to shift management over certain homelessness initiatives out of the office of City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo and into the Los Angeles Housing Department.
After a lengthy debate, the three moderates picked up two votes in their effort to delay those changes, not enough to win the day. Instead, their biggest victory — one that took multiple tries — was securing the votes to restore $376,961 at the fire department, which will allow the city to send 45 firefighters to paramedic training.
Park, whose district includes the fire-scarred Pacific Palisades, sounded furious by the time the entire budget came up for a vote.
“I don’t think we should agree to spend another penny on homelessness until we as a full council — not just the few of you who get invited into the conversation — have the chance to chime in,” she said, adding: “But instead of fixing that mess, what did we decide to go after? The increase [Bass requested for] our fire department, after all we literally just witnessed in January.”
One day after the budget vote, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield acknowledged that the pendulum had swung left at City Hall, pointing to the results of several recent elections. Still, he cautioned against reading too much into a single budget, saying a pendulum can swing in opposing directions.
Blumenfield, who represents part of the west San Fernando Valley, said he voted to slow down police hiring as part of a compromise to protect civilian jobs at the LAPD and elsewhere. “I hate seeing the lower number of police recruitment,” he said.
Blumenfield, who occupies the terrain between super progressive and ultra moderate, said he’s still hoping the council will find additional funds later in the budget year to allow the LAPD to hire more officers beyond the 240 that received funding from the council.
“I don’t like to look at the council as a spectrum. I don’t see myself on that spectrum,” he said. “On different issues, I feel like I’m on different parts of it.”
State of play
— SEEKING A VETO: Business groups pressed Mayor Karen Bass to veto the measure hiking the minimum wage of tourism workers, saying hotels and other businesses cannot afford to wage hikes of 50% between now and 2028. Bass, appearing Tuesday at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, sounded sympathetic to their complaints but stopped short of stating her opposition.
“I’m concerned about the hit to tourism and just the hit in general, especially with downtown, but citywide, because downtown was already suffering,” she told the audience. She also raised doubts that she would intervene, calling the initial wage vote “veto proof.”
— BAD CALL: Former deputy Mayor Brian Williams struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors, admitting he called in a fake bomb threat to City Hall late last year that was blamed on anti-Israel sentiment. Williams, who handled public safety issues for Bass, falsely stated that he had just received a call on his city-issued cellphone from an unknown male caller who made a bomb threat against City Hall, according to his plea agreement.
— HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD: L.A.’s mayor promised to reduce barriers to filming in Los Angeles this week, signing an executive directive aimed at streamlining city permit processes and increasing access to legendary L.A. locations, such as Griffith Observatory and the Central Library. “We’ve taken the industry for granted,” Bass said. “We know that the industry is a part of our DNA here. And sometimes, if you think it’s a part of your DNA, you can think it’s always going to be here.”
— ZOO STORY: The elephants Billy and Tina were whisked out of the Los Angeles Zoo this week, relocated to a zoo in Tulsa over the fierce objections of animal advocates. The late night relocation drew complaints from Blumenfield and an array of activists, who argued that the pachyderms needed a much larger expanse of land for their health and well being.
— PUBLIC PAYOUTS: Two fired employees who received a combined $800,000 in legal settlements from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority had accused the agency’s chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, of hiring cronies for top jobs, attempting to destroy records and being “extremely inebriated” at an out-of-state conference, according to two settlement demand letters released this week. LAHSA “strenuously” denied the allegations, saying the agency “made a business decision” to pay the fired workers and resolve the employee dispute.
— PUSHBACK OVER PCH: Officials from city and state government tussled this week over plans for reopening an 11-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway. Nancy Ward, who leads the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, complained that her office had been kept “in the dark” about the city’s security plan for the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades area. A Bass spokesperson pushed back on that claim, saying the city would deploy 112 officers to staff 16 checkpoints 24 hours a day in the Palisades. Either way, traffic was flowing Friday afternoon.
— COUNTY CRIME: A veteran emergency management official with Los Angeles County has been arrested on charges of murdering his mother. Robert Barreras, 42, was suspended without pay, and had been on leave when the crime took place, a county official said.
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness carried out operations in two locations: the area around Lankershim Boulevard and Strathern Street in Councilmember Imelda Padilla’s San Fernando Valley district and the area around Vermont Avenue and 73rd Street in Harris-Dawson’s South L.A. district. Outreach workers also returned to other parts of South L.A. and Hollywood, according to the mayor’s team.
On the docket for next week: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take up appointees to its new governance reform task force, which will help oversee the implementation of Measure G, last year’s voter-approved measure to overhaul county government.
Stay in touch
That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
INDIANAPOLIS — Jim Irsay, the Indianapolis Colts’ owner who leveraged the popularity of Peyton Manning into a new stadium and a Super Bowl title, died Wednesday at age 65.
Pete Ward, Irsay’s longtime right-hand man and the team’s chief operating officer, made the announcement in a statement from the team. He said Irsay died peacefully in his sleep.
“Jim’s dedication and passion for the Indianapolis Colts in addition to his generosity, commitment to the community, and most importantly, his love for his family were unsurpassed,” Ward said. “Our deepest sympathies go to his daughters, Carlie Irsay-Gordon, Casey Foyt, Kalen Jackson, and his entire family as we grieve with them.”
Irsay had a profound impact on the franchise.
With Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian, Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy and Manning, Irsay helped turn the Colts from a laughingstock into a perennial title contender.
He also collected guitars, befriended musicians and often found inspiration in rock ’n’ roll lyrics.
A drum set played by Ringo Starr of the Beatles is part of the Jim Irsay Collection of rock ‘n’ roll artifacts that was on a national tour.
(Courtesy of Jim Irsay Collection)
Irsay had battled health problems in recent years and became less visible following a fall at his home. Police officers from Carmel, Ind., a northern suburb of Indianapolis, responded to a 911 call from Irsay’s home Dec. 8. According to the police report, the officers found Irsay breathing but unresponsive and with a bluish skin tone.
Ward, the report said, told officers that he was worried Irsay was suffering from congestive heart failure and that Irsay’s nurse had said Irsay’s oxygen level was low, his breathing was labored and he was “mostly” unconscious.
A month later, he was diagnosed with a respiratory illness.
During his annual training camp news conference last summer, Irsay told reporters he was continuing to rehab from two surgeries — though he remained seated in his golf cart. Irsay did not speak during the recent NFL draft as he typically did.
He had also battled addictions to alcohol and painkillers.
Irsay began his football life as a ball boy after his late father, Robert, acquired the team in a trade with the late Carroll Rosenbloom, who took over the Los Angeles Rams. The younger Irsay then worked his way up, becoming the youngest general manager in NFL history at age 24. He succeeded his father as owner in early 1997.
Rather than stew over whether Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson should be admitted, the Baseball Hall of Fame should open a special wing for miscreants. Rose, the Black Sox members who are HOF-worthy, and PED users like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, whose accomplishments before they started using would have earned them plaques, would all be welcome.
Brian Lipson Beverly Hills
So MLB has reinstated Pete Rose, months after his death. What a major league error to Pete Rose and his family, the fans and the Hall of Fame.
I understand that he violated the rules and bet while a player/manager, but his numbers, which make him a Hall of Famer, had nothing to do with bets. He didn’t cheat, he violated a rule. The Astros cheated and still kept the World Series title.
Russell Morgan Carson
On the field a great player and fun to watch. Off the field bad news. His character a complete disaster. I hope he does not get in the Hall of Fame.
Phil Schneider Marina del Rey
Was that a bit of ironic humor from Bill Shaikin saying he checked with bookies to see what the odds are on Pete Rose getting into the Hall of Fame?
Sports betting is now at epidemic levels and appears in various commercials and program commentary throughout sports media as a display of odds changing throughout many games. It’s so out of control that it’s become normalized.
As for Rose, he brazenly and obsessively bet on baseball, including games involving his own team when he was a manager. That has always been considered a cardinal sin in the sport. He lied about it for decades, then came clean half-heartedly to make money on a book, then tried to play the aggrieved victim being denied his rightful place in the Hall. It was a nauseating spectacle that went on for years.
Rose was an exceptional player. But character and certain violations matter, otherwise there’s no point in trying to protect the integrity of the game.
T.R. Jahns Hemet
I understand the steroid thing with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, and maybe they too will be honored in the Hall of Fame someday, but this “integrity, sportsmanship and character” purity test is nonsense! Look at Ty Cobb! What matters is what happened on the field. Let the all-time hits leader in ASAP.
A judge approved a plan Friday to move more than 100 youths out of a troubled Los Angeles juvenile hall that has been the site of riots, drug overdoses and so-called “gladiator fights” in recent years.
Los Angeles County Superior Judge Miguel Espinoza signed off on the L.A. County Probation Department’s plan to relocate dozens of detainees from Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, months after a state oversight body ordered the hall to be shut down.
The Downey facility, home to approximately 270 youths, most of whom are between the ages of 15 and 18, has been under fire since last December, when the Board of State and Community Corrections ordered it closed because of repeated failures to meet minimum staffing requirements. The probation department has faced a years-long struggle to get officers to show up to work in the chaotic halls.
But the probation department ignored the state board’s order to shut down. Since the body has no power to enforce its own orders and the California Attorney General’s Office declined to step in, Los Padrinos continued to operate in defiance for months. In that time frame, several youths suffered drug overdoses, a teen was stabbed in the eye and 30 probation officers were indicted for allegedly organizing or allowing brawls between youths.
Roughly three-quarters of the youths at Los Padrinos are awaiting court hearings connected to violent offenses including murder, attempted murder, assault, robbery, kidnapping and gang crimes, according to the probation department.
The probation department made its plan to de-populate Los Padrinos public earlier this month, promising to remove 103 detainees from the facility by June.
Under the department’s plan, youth who are awaiting trial on cases that could land them in the county’s Secure Youth Treatment Facility will be moved to Barry J. Nidorf Hall in Sylmar. Others will be moved out of Los Padrinos and into the lower-security camps, where some juvenile justice advocates say teens perform much better and are far less likely to act violent.
“This plan reflects our continued commitment to balancing public safety, legal compliance, and the rehabilitative needs of the young people in our care,” the department said in a statement. “It is key to note that the court denied an indiscriminate mass release of youth, and that Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall will not be fully depopulated or closed.”
Espinoza originally weighed shutting down the facility last year when the public defender’s office questioned the legality of its continued operation in defiance of the BSCC. On Friday, he declined to adopt a plan from the Probation Oversight Commission that could have resulted in the release of some youths through a review process.
Some members of the oversight body expressed frustration that Espinoza’s order won’t solve the larger issues that have plagued the probation department for years. Milinda Kakani, a POC board member and the director of youth justice for the Children’s Defense Fund, also noted the moves might cause some youths to backslide by returning them to Nidorf Hall after they had already graduated from the prison-like SYTF, which some derisively refer to as “The Compound.”
“I imagine it’s deeply damaging to a young person to go back to the facility they had worked so hard to get out of,” Kakani said.
Espinoza warned he could take further action if the department’s plan does not bring it into compliance with state regulations. It was not clear when the next BSCC inspection of Los Padrinos would take place and a spokeswoman for the oversight body did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The probation department must provide Espinoza with an update on conditions at Los Padrinos by July.
When Rob Manfred announced Tuesday that a dead man can no longer be banned from baseball, my first thought was this: If Pete Rose is going into the Hall of Fame, then Barry Bonds is too.
My second thought was this: What if neither one is going into the Hall of Fame?
Sounds silly, I know. There is no reason to reinstate Rose except to make him eligible for the Hall of Fame. Baseball does not need a commissioner setting up a fresh recounting of Rose’s sins every few years because he keeps appearing on a Hall of Fame ballot without getting elected. The Hall of Fame does not need that either, and Manfred is on the Hall’s board of directors.
But, over the years, that very board has made crystal clear who it did not want in its hallowed Hall, Rose and Bonds included.
The Hall did not have a rule against the election of banned players until it hurried to adopt that rule when Rose was banned. And, in 2017, amid the debate over Bonds and Roger Clemens, Hall of Famer Joe Morgan — then the vice president of the Hall — wrote in a letter to voters: “Steroid users don’t belong here.”
Rose’s fate will be decided by a committee selected by the Hall of Fame, since so much time has passed since his playing days. After the Baseball Writers Assn. of America rejected Bonds and Clemens 10 times, their fate was left to such a committee.
In the 10 BBWAA elections, the share of yes votes for Bonds and Clemens ranged from one-third to two-thirds. In the subsequent committee election, the share of yes votes for Bonds and Clemens did not even reach one-fourth.
That committee included 16 members: six Hall of Famers; seven team executives or owners (the Angels’ Arte Moreno included); two baseball writers; and one baseball historian.
The members might be different this time, but the rule is the same: 75% of the vote required for election. Of the six other players on that ballot with Bonds and Clemens, one got elected: Fred McGriff. No one else topped 50%.
Rose is the all-time leader in hits, Bonds the all-time leader in home runs. No one has more MVP awards than Bonds; no one has more Cy Young awards than Clemens. But the Hall of Fame instructs voters to consider “integrity, sportsmanship (and) character,” and the committee voters — Hall of Famers, club officials, writers and historians — all consider themselves guardians of the game.
The Hall of Famers themselves, particularly so. They were not thrilled that Rose repeatedly showed up on induction weekends at Cooperstown, stealing the spotlight so he could peddle his autograph. They may not be amenable to sharing the stage with contemporaries they may believe disgraced the game.
“There will always be a cloud above any discussion about Pete Rose,” Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt told the Athletic.
Even on whether he should get into the Hall?
“I think if you posed the question to all of the living Hall of Famers right now, “ Schmidt said, “I think it would almost be 50-50.”
In his letter, Morgan did not name Bonds or Clemens or anyone else, but it is difficult to imagine his words would not also apply to the Rose situation.
“I hope the Hall of Fame’s standards won’t be lowered with the passage of time,” Morgan wrote.
“For over eighty years, the Hall of Fame has been a place to look up to, where the hallowed halls honor those who played the game hard and right. I hope it will always remain that way.”
The Hall of Fame does not say how individual committee members voted. That lack of transparency, although unfortunate, could be critical in maintaining the independence of the vote, given the pressure applied by President Trump, who publicly campaigned before and after his election for Rose’s induction. Manfred met with Trump last month.
If the purpose of the Hall of Fame is to honor the game’s very best players, then of course Rose and Bonds and Clemens should be in it. The track record of the committees that will decide on Rose and Bonds and Clemens indicates that those voters believe in criteria beyond statistics, so jumping to the immediate conclusion — Rose is getting in! — may be no sure thing.
On Wednesday, I checked. Bookies.com put the chance of Rose getting into the Hall at 83.3%.
Rose had been exiled from the sport since 1989, after he was found by then-commissioner Bart Giamatti (yes, the father of actor Paul Giamatti) to have been betting on his team’s games while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. Rose died Sept. 30, 2024, at age 83.
Rose’s daughter, Fawn Rose, filed a petition for reinstatement Jan. 8 and met with current MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. In February, President Trump advocated for the lifetime ban to be lifted in a social media post, then met with Manfred in April to discuss the matter.
Jeffrey Lenkov, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented Rose at the time of his death and prepared the petition pro bono, told The Times the decision was the result of several years of working with Manfred and his executive team.
“The Rose family and I are extremely overjoyed at the wisdom, courage and compassion exhibited by the commissioner,” Lenkov said. “The reinstatement in and of itself is a historic moment because many people, including Pete at times, thought the ban would never be lifted.
“Getting into the Hall of Fame on his merits is an opportunity he wanted and should be able to receive now.”
Cincinnati Reds player-manager Pete Rose hits a line drive single to break Ty Cobb’s all-time hits record in 1985.
(Associated Press)
From his 24-year career that resulted in more MLB hits — 4,256 — than any other player in history to his lifetime ban, Rose’s saga was as complex and sad as it was triumphant. Pete Rose Night will take place Wednesday at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, and the decision to lift the ban undoubtedly will elevate the mood.
Here is a look at key elements of his rise, fall and potential inclusion in the Hall of Fame.
Will Rose immediately be inducted into the Hall of Fame?
No. Barring an unforeseen exception, a three-year waiting period will apply before Rose can be put on the ballot because the committee that could vote him in doesn’t convene until December 2027 to consider candidates for induction in the summer of 2028.
Rose remains ineligible to be voted in by the Baseball Writers Assn. of America because its ballot includes only candidates whose playing careers ended no more than 15 years prior to the election. Players are eligible to be voted into the Hall of Fame by the baseball writers five years after they retire. However in 1991, two years after Rose was banned from baseball and months before he was set to make the ballot, the Hall’s board of directors passed a rule prohibiting anybody on the ineligible list from being a candidate for induction.
Now that he is eligible, his case will be reviewed by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era Committee that evaluates players who made their greatest impact before 1980. Rose would qualify for consideration because his 24-year career began in 1963.
The committee voted in Dick Allen and Dave Parker this year. When it convenes again to vote for 2028 induction, Rose would need an aye from a 75% majority — 12 of the 16 members.
What did Rose do to deserve a lifetime ban?
Since before the 1919 Black Sox Scandal resulted in Shoeless Joe Jackson and other players being banned for life for taking money from gamblers and throwing games, Major League Baseball has had a rule against gambling to protect the integrity of the game. Rule 21(d) is posted in every clubhouse and states: “Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible.”
Rose bet on the Cincinnati Reds when he was the team’s player-manager in 1985 and ‘86, and the manager in ’87. An MLB investigation headed by lawyer John Dowd resulted in a 225-page report released in 1989 that named men that Rose allegedly placed bets with and cited evidence that Rose bet on Reds games.
Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose before a spring-training game March 22, 1989, after the Commissioner’s Office investigation into his gambling was released.
(John Swart / Associated Press)
After denying for nearly 15 years that he bet on baseball, Rose admitted it in his 2004 book, “My Prison Without Bars,” written with Rick Hill. Later, he would sign and sell baseballs with the inscription, “Sorry I bet on baseball.” The balls currently go for $200 to $400 apiece online.
Born and raised in Cincinnati, Rose began gambling as a youngster when his dad took him to a local racetrack. By the time he reached the big leagues, he bet on college and pro basketball and pro football in addition to the horses.
“On Feb. 5, 1986, I wrote three checks for eight grand each to cover my losses on the NFL playoffs,” Rose wrote. “The NFL turned into March Madness, which turned into the NBA playoffs, which always turned into the skids.
“I always lived by one hard and fast rule: You don’t bet on baseball. But for the first time in my life, I was no longer playing baseball, just managing. A part of me was still looking for ways to recapture the high I got from winning batting titles and World Series. If I couldn’t get the high from playing baseball, then I needed a substitute.
“I can’t honestly remember the first time I bet on baseball. But I remember the first time I spoke openly about it. I was sitting in my living room, watching the 1986 playoffs between the Mets and the Astros. I had a group of friends over for the game. Without even thinking of the consequences, I said, ‘Betting on the playoffs makes the games more exciting to watch.’ ”
Rose’s immense popularity in his hometown began to erode when the Dowd Report was made public on June 27, 1989.
“Forever and ever and ever, the people here have been solidly behind Pete,” Marty Brennaman, longtime broadcaster for the Reds, told The Times’ Bill Plaschke. “This is the most provincial city I’ve lived in. I can’t imagine a more provincial city.
“But now, there is a segment of the population where, if they haven’t completely gone the other way against Pete, there is at least an element of doubt in their minds. People are becoming divided.”
Longtime Cincinnati historian Dan Hurley insisted the public reaction was even harsher.
“I think the reaction finally is, ‘Hey, they got him,’ ” Hurley said of Rose. “And for us, that’s not very pleasant.”
Rose does have his supporters within baseball. Terry Francona, his former teammate who is in his first season as Reds manager, recently said, “If he’s not in the Hall of Fame, there isn’t one.”
Why the change of heart by MLB?
Pete Rose speaks at a news conference in Las Vegas after MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he has no intention of altering Rose’s lifetime ban from baseball.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
Rose first petitioned for reinstatement in 1997 when Bud Selig was commissioner. Selig didn’t meet with Rose until 2002 and did not rule on the issue before he retired in 2006. Manfred rejected a second petition by Rose in 2015, saying, “Mr. Rose has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing, so clearly established by the Dowd Report, or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of the circumstances that led to his permanent eligibility in 1989.
“Absent such credible evidence, allowing him to work in the game presents an unacceptable risk of a future violation by him of Rule 21, and thus to the integrity of our sport. I, therefore, must reject Mr. Rose’s application for reinstatement.”
The fact that Rose died in September created an opportunity to revisit his status. If the permanently ineligible list exists to prevent a person who poses a threat to the integrity of the game from working in baseball, could that status change when the person is no longer living?
Roses adorn the statue of Pete Rose at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati after the all-time hits leader died.
(Kareem Elgazzar / Associated Press)
That argument was made in the December petition by Rose’s family, and Manfred took it into consideration.
“The decision was very complex and it’s not easily said that it could have been done during his lifetime,” Lenkov said. “MLB had a lot of factors to work through. They had to be receptive to listening for a number of years on this issue, and they did.
“Pete in his lifetime felt he had done his time, paid the price. I believe he lived with a scarlet letter on him because of it. His punishment was substantial.”
The relationship between gambling and professional sports — including MLB — has evolved dramatically in recent years. Sports betting is legal in 40 states, and the American Gaming Assn. estimates that its total economic impact is $328 billion a year and revenue from it exceeded $115 billion in 2024.
Yet restrictions still apply, again to protect the integrity of the game. Can a baseball player, coach or umpire bet on March Madness brackets, the Super Bowl or participate in a fantasy football league? Yes. Can they bet on anything — baseball or otherwise — through illegal or offshore bookmakers? No.
What was President Trump’s role in the reinstatement?
Seemingly out of nowhere, the president injected himself into the conversation. Even before the family’s petition for reinstatement had become public, Trump posted a bombastic message on Truth Social on Feb. 28 that read:
“Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as ‘Charlie Hustle,’ into the Baseball Hall of fame. Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME!
“Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING. He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!”
No evidence has surfaced of Rose betting on the Reds to lose. After confessing in his book that he bet on baseball, he emphasized that point.
“I bet on my own team to win,” Rose told NJ.com. “That’s what I did in a nutshell. I was wrong, but I didn’t taint the game. I bet on my team every night because that’s the confidence that I had in my players. And I was wrong.”
A pardon wasn’t necessary for Manfred to reinstate Rose, although in 1990 Rose served five months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion.
Trump met with Manfred at the White House on April 16, but neither man spoke publicly about what they discussed. MLB issued a statement that said, “President Trump is a longtime fan of baseball. As he has done in the past, Commissioner Manfred was pleased to visit the White House again to discuss issues pertaining to baseball with the president.”
What are Pete Rose’s Hall of Fame credentials?
Cincinnati Reds player-manager Pete Rose is congratulated by his teammates after he broke Ty Cobb’s hitting record in Cincinnati on Sept. 11, 1985.
(Associated Press)
Rose broke Ty Cobb’s career hits total of 4,189 in 1985 and finished with 4,256. That alone would be enough for entry into the Hall of Fame, but Rose also was named National League Rookie of the Year in 1963 and the NL Most Valuable Player in 1973. He won three batting titles and three World Series titles — two with the Reds in 1975 and ’76 and one with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980.
Rose batted .303 with an on-base percentage of .375, earning the nickname Charlie Hustle because he sprinted to first base even on a walk. He led the NL in hits seven times, doubles five times, and in 1978 put together a 44-game hitting streak, second in baseball history to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game streak.
Rose played in more games (3,562), had more plate appearances (15,890) and more at-bats (14,053) than any other player.
