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Major League Baseball is pausing all political contributions through its PAC in response to the deadly Capitol riot. The league announced the move, a first among major professional sports leagues in the wake of the siege, in a statement to the Associated Press. “In light of the unprecedented events last week at the U.S. Capitol, MLB is suspending contributions from its Political Action Committee pending a review of our political contribution policy going forward,” the league told the news service.

According to FEC filings, in the lead-up to the 2020 general election, San Francisco Giants principal owner Charles B. Johnson and his wife Ann each donated $2,800 — the maximum allowable amount for congressional candidates — to Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a QAnon sympathizer who tweeted about the location of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi during the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol that caused five deaths. Charles B. Johnson, 88, is a billionaire with decadeslong ties to the Republican Party. His donations have already come under scrutiny in recent years — an ESPN/FiveThirtyEight analysis from October revealed that since...

ATLANTA -- Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro has died at the age of 81.Niekro passed away in his sleep on Saturday night. The suburban Atlanta resident had a longtime battle with cancer.

Major League Baseball on Wednesday announced that records of Negro Leagues players will be included in the game's official statistics, in a "long overdue recognition."...The records and stats of 3,400 players who competed in seven leagues for Black players between 1920 and 1948, will be included in MLB records, officials said.

During the annual “Hat’s off to Heroes” Ceremony with the Boston Red Sox, the team typically honors members of the military but it’s 2020 and this year team the decided to honor 32-year-old Black Lives Matter leader Ernst Jean-Jacques Jr. On Saturday, Jean-Jacques Jr. was arrested in Swampscott, Massachusetts for punching an 80-year-old female who was attending a support rally for President Trump. OutKick reported that Jacques Jr., was released on $550 bail. According to ItemLive, he was charged with assault and battery on a person 60 years or older. According to his Facebook page, Jacques Jr. was approached by...

Early Sunday afternoon news emerged that the Cleveland Indians were preparing to change the team’s name in an effort to appease parties that are offended by it. Later that same day, President Donald Trump weighed in on the matter.

Cleveland's Major League Baseball team has decided to change its nickname, moving away from the moniker it has employed for more than 100 years and that is considered insensitive to indigenous peoples, according to David Waldstein and Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times. An announcement from the team could come as soon as this week, per the Times. It's unclear how Cleveland will refer to itself during the upcoming season. One option is to keep the name for an additional year before then transitioning to a new identity; another is to go the route of the National Football...

The objection is to the culture, not the people. The objection is to the people manipulating and controlling the culture, not the people being manipulated and controlled. The puppet masters want you to read my words as a rebuke of black people. It’s a rebuke of the puppet masters, the organizers of the “Unapologetically Black Olympics” that I referenced last week in columns that explored comedian Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live monologue. I am repulsed by the people who have worked tirelessly for more than 400 years to convince black people that our skin color is our most prized asset...

Throwing out the first pitch at a Major League Baseball game is something of a time-honored tradition for American Presidents.

Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty Monday against former Major League Baseball prospect Brandon Martin in the 2015 triple murder of his father, uncle and a home alarm installer. Martin, once a top prospect for the Tampa Bay Rays, was convicted in the slayings Wednesday. He had been on a mental health hold two days before the slayings. The family was installing an alarm system on Sept. 17, 2015 at their Corona, Calif., home after he repeatedly displayed violent behavior toward them. Prosecutors said Martin used a baseball bat to beat to death his wheelchair-bound father, Michael Martin,...

Bill de Blasio has privately told Major League Baseball that he will do everything he can to stop Steve Cohen from buying the Mets. The Post has learned that Hizzoner called MLB commissioner Rob Manfred earlier this month and told him outright that he opposed the idea of a hedge-fund billionaire buying a local team and would be using his oversight power of the city’s control of the Citi Field lease to prevent the sale from being finalized.

The Los Angeles Dodgers finally tasted victory in October on Tuesday, winning the 2020 World Series. The ratings of the contest itself weren’t nearly as victorious. Game 6 of this year’s World Series, a 3-1 Dodgers win to clinch the series, drew in 12.6 million viewers, according to the Associated Press. That made it the most-watched game of the series, but also cemented an ignominious record for the 2020 Fall Classic. The series ended up averaging 9.785 million viewers per game, shattering the record for lowest average viewership in a World Series, according to The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch. The previous...

The Los Angeles Dodgers are World Series champions after defeating the Tampa Bay Rays 3-1 on Tuesday night. With the victory, LA secured its first title since 1988. Immediately after Game 6, Dodgers fans took to the streets of Los Angeles to celebrate the occasion. The scenes from the festivities were absolutely wild.

Joe Buck’s necessities for the next two weeks: one giant suitcase, two garment bags, plenty of room service and at least nine novel coronavirus tests. That’s the price of entry for the unusual stretch he is in, calling what could be 13 baseball games and four football games in 18 days. As the sports schedule has been scrambled this fall by the pandemic, Buck, the lead play-by-play announcer for Fox Sports’s baseball and football coverage, has seen his itinerary warped, too. Image without a caption “The silver lining in all of this, at least in my life, is baseball is...

In the latest TV ratings, Fox’s coverage of the World Series opener between the Dodgers and Rays averaged 7.2 million total viewers and a Tuesday-topping 1.8 demo rating — though down sharply from the preliminary numbers (11.6 mil/2.9) for last year’s Nationals/Astros Game 1. Check back later for the final tally! NBC | The Voice (7.5 mil/1.0) was down a tick from Monday’s premiere, but teed up Transplant for Stateside highs of 4.3 mil/0.6. ABC | The Bachelorette (4.1 mil.1.1) slipped about 20 percent from last week. Leading out of that, a Supermarket Sweeeeeeep! encore did 1.8 mil and a...

Whitey Ford, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won more World Series games than any other pitcher, died on Friday, the New York Yankees announced. He was 91.Ford had a career record of 236-106, setting the Yankees club records for victories. He was the Cy Young Award winner in 1961, and was a 10-time All-Star.

Whitey Ford, who pitched the Yankees to 11 American League pennants and six World Series championships in the 1950s and 60s and who still holds the highest winning percentage (.690) among all modern-day major league pitchers with at least 150 wins, died Thursday night at his Long Island home. He was 91. Nicknamed “the Chairman of the Board” by teammate Elston Howard for his calm demeanor in pressure situations, Ford spent his entire 16-year career with the Yankees for whom he went 236-106. The Yankees signed the left-hander out of high school in 1947 for $7,000, outbidding the crosstown Giants...

The economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic that already led Walt Disney to lay off nearly 30,000 employees who worked in the theme park business may soon affect one of the company’s other ventures: ESPN. The Worldwide Leader could lay off hundreds of employees in the coming weeks, sources told Front Office Sports. On the high end, 700 employees could be gone. On the low end, 300. While the majority of layoffs are expected to affect employees who work behind the camera, some on-air talents are also expected to be let go, especially if they are working with an...

By almost any account, Stan Musial was considered the greatest Cardinals player. By the same accounts, Bob Gibson, who died at age 84 Friday night in Omaha, Nebraska, under hospice care after fighting pancreatic cancer for more than a year, was considered the franchise’s greatest pitcher. Gibson was the Cardinals' second National Baseball Hall of Famer to die in the past month. His longtime teammate, Lou Brock, died at age 81 on Sept. 6. Gibson's death came on the 52nd anniversary of perhaps his greatest game, a record 17-strikeout performance in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series.

Posted here: tiebreakers, including Divisional records, which MLB calls INTRADIVISIONAL And the next tiebreaker is Divisional Record in the 2nd half, which is the final 20 divisional games. THE focus is on the National League. Look for A.L. info sporadically in the thread. NOTE: St LOUIS is scheduled to play a doubleheader makeup on MONDAY at DETROIT. THE doubleheader will be played if it effects which 8 teams qualify. If that doubleheader only effects seeding, one or two of those games will be cancelled. NOTE: there will be no tiebreaker games. Example, if CIN and PHIL tie for the final...