(NEW YORK) — After receiving criticism on social media, New Era has pulled a line of ‘Local Market’ hats from its website.
The hats featured a combination of team logos, local landmarks, World Series patches, and area codes.
The Washington Nationals hat featured the 202 area code, a 1776 patch, a bald eagle, a hot dog, a World Series Patch, an outline of Washington DC, and ‘Washington DC’ in a script.
Pittsburgh’s version had a steel beam, a pirate logo, an outline of the state of Pennsylvania with 1887 on the inside, the word ‘Yinzer” – what people from Pittsburgh are called, “Pittsburgh” in big letters, and “Pittsburgh Steel City” in cursive.
The Kansas City Royals even mocked its hat that featured four area codes in Kansas and none of which were in Missouri, where the team plays.
The hat also featured a saxophone, the Missouri state flag, a pig, a 1985 World Series logo, and a “Kansas City Heart of America” in cursive.
Houston’s version featured four area codes, a Cowboy hat, the Texas state flag, a steak, a NASA spaceship, a World Series Patch, and “Houston Space City” in cursive.
Other highlights include a burrito on the Arizona Diamondbacks hat, what appears to be a UFO on the Atlanta Braves, and a cup of coffee on the Seattle Mariners version.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Atlanta 3, Boston 1
Chi White Sox 8, St. Louis 3
LA Dodgers 9, Houston 2
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Kansas City 2, Tampa Bay 1
Cleveland 4, Detroit 1
Toronto 6, NY Yankees 2
Minnesota 7, Baltimore 4
LA Angels 11, Texas 5
Seattle 4, Oakland 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Philadelphia 2, Miami 0
Chi Cubs 4, Pittsburgh 3
Cincinnati 2, Washington 1
NY Mets 3, Colorado 1
San Diego 7, Milwaukee 1
San Francisco 8, Arizona 0
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Brooklyn 130, Boston 108 (Brooklyn leads series 2-0)
LA Lakers 109, Phoenix 102 (Series tied 1-1)
Dallas 127, LA Clippers 121 (Dallas leads series 2-0)
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE PLAYOFFS
Toronto 4, Montreal 0 Toronto leads series 3-1)
Carolina 3, Nashville 2 (OT) (Carolina leads series 3-2)
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Washington 85, Indiana 69
Atlanta 90, Chicago 83
Seattle 90, Connecticut 87 (OT)
(NEW YORK) — The NFL telling its teams on Tuesday that they will be allowed to host fans at training camp this summer, subject to state and local COVID-19 rules.
The pandemic kept fans away from team facilities last year.
The league also saying that 30 of the 32 teams have received approval from the state and local governments to open their stadiums to 100% capacity when games resume in the fall.
Football is hoping for a return to normal by the time the season begins. The league-wide season ticket renewal rate has been about 90 percent, including a surge in the last week and a half, since the reveal of the 2021 schedule.
29 NFL teams will open their training camps on July 27. The other three — the Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers — will be allowed to open earlier because they play in either the Hall of Fame preseason game, or the September 9 regular-season kickoff game.
Peter O’Reilly, the league’s executive vice president of club business and league events, told ESPN that training camp will still look different as the NFL tries to keep its players, staff, and fans safe from the virus.
“It won’t likely look exactly the same as a normal training camp as far as proximity to players and autographs and some of the other things,” he said.
He did add that the league will not implement a fan vaccination policy beyond whatever local regulations might exist.
(WASHINGTON) — One of the NHL’s biggest stars is confident he’ll work out a new contract with his longtime team soon.
Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin said Tuesday that he believes he’ll remain with the only team he’s ever played for. The 35-year-old just finished the last season of a 13-year, $124 million deal.
Ovechkin, who is negotiating a new contract without an agent, said he has been speaking with Capitals owner Ted Leonsis and general manager Brian MacLellan recently.
“I’m confident, we still have time,” he told reporters in a year-end media availability. “Obviously, I want to finish my career here. I’m pretty sure we will do something soon.”
He called 2020-21 a “hard year,” reflecting on being forced to sit out four games after he and several teammates were found to have violated COVID-19 protocols, as well as “lots of mini-injuries and obviously a big injury before the playoffs.”
The team was also eliminated in the first-round of the postseason, the third straight year the Capitals have lost their opening series. The team hasn’t advanced since their 2018 Stanley Cup win.
Sources told ESPN that the Capitals are considering different options for Ovechkin’s new contract, including either a one-year, or four-year deal. Prior to the pandemic, Ovechkin was asking for $12.5 million per year, a source says. It’s unclear if that number will change because of the league’s salary cap remaining flat.
A key figure in the D.C. community, Ovechkin and his wife Nastya recently became investors in the NWSL’s Washington Spirit.
Last month, Leonsis told The Athletic that it was important to keep Ovechkin with the team, saying that whether the capain “plays five more years, 10 more years, whatever it is, we’ve got his back.”
“Our commitment to him is to continue to have great teams,” Leonsis said. “We’ll spend to the cap; we’ll try to win championships.”
Ovechkin has scored 730 goals in his career, 164 shy of Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record. And on Tuesday Ovechkin says he still hopes to break that mark, saying “you just have to go out there and do your thing. Maybe it happens, maybe not. One step at a time.”
(GREEN BAY, Wisc.) — Star quarterback Aaron Rodgers says it’s a disconnect on philosophy and communication that led him to decide he didn’t want to play for the Green Bay Packers anymore, not their drafting of QB Jordan Love.
Rodgers appeared on ESPN’s SportsCenter Monday night, commemorating host Kenny Mayne’s last show on the network. And in an interview, Rodgers explained publicly, for the first time, what caused the rift between himself and the only team he’s ever played for.
“It’s never been about the draft pick,” Rodgers insisted. “I love Jordan; he’s a great kid. [We’ve had] a lot of fun to work together.”
Instead, he says, it was how the situation was handled by general manager Brian Gutekunst.
“It’s just kind of about a philosophy and maybe forgetting that it is about the people that make the thing go. It’s about character, it’s about culture, it’s about doing things the right way.”
The 37-year-old Rodgers won his third MVP Award following the 2020 season, leading the team to 13 wins and an NFC Championship Game appearance.
Gutekunst has acknowledged that he should have communicated better with Rodgers before trading up in the 2020 Draft to select Love, seen by some as Rodgers’ eventual replacement at QB.
The veteran also acknowledged in the interview that he had skipped the team’s first session of organized team activities. The OTAs are voluntary, but he will surrender a $500,000 workout bonus tied to his participation in them.
Earlier this offseason, Rodgers reportedly told some members of the organization that he did not want to return to the Packers. The team has continued to insist, however, that it has no interested in trading Rodgers away.
(NEW YORK) — Former boxing promoter Dave Wooley says that during the 1980s, there were three Black men who “ruled the world”: Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan and Mike Tyson.
But it was Tyson who was “the most recognizable face on the planet,” ex-manager Jeff Wald said. “More than the Pope, more than Queen Elizabeth, more than the president.”
“In white America, the image of Mike Tyson was that he was scary,” said civil rights attorney Carl Douglas. “From the Black perspective, he was a hero because he was a success in the white man’s world.”
Whatever you think you know about Mike Tyson, he is arguably one of the most complex characters in the history of American sports and culture.
Tyson is a man who survived a childhood of violence and neglect to become a Black icon and world boxing champion. A convicted rapist. And a man who weathered the loss of many friends and family members, and became the punchline of late night jokes.
His story “breaks all the rules,” said Mark Kriegel, an ESPN boxing analyst and author. Now, the new two-part ABC News documentary The Knockout sets out to explore the former champ’s successes, repeated falls and big comebacks from the perspective of those who knew him best.
Tyson grew up surrounded by violence in the gritty Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
“The chances of making it out of Brownsville is slim to none,” former world heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs told ABC News. “It’s 50,000 people trying to get through one door, you know what I mean, with no opportunity.”
Tyson’s mother loved him dearly but struggled with alcohol, according to Tyson’s therapist Marilyn Murray.
“She would be drinking, she was extremely abusive,” Murray told ABC News. “Oftentimes, his mother would get beat up [by men she brought home] … so violence, sex, alcoholism, abuse of women — those were his baseline for normal.”
As a child, Tyson picked up the nickname “Dirty Ike” due to his lack of personal hygiene. He was arrested dozens of times and was eventually sent upstate New York to the Tryon School for Boys, a now-shuttered juvenile facility. It was there he was introduced to Bobby Stewart, a guard at the facility and a former professional boxer, who introduced him to the sport.
“Everything I showed him, it was almost like he’d been doing it for 25 years,” Stewart said.
Stewart introduced Tyson to Cus D’Amato, a famed boxing coach who had trained champions Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres. D’Amato immediately saw Tyson’s potential and took him in.
Tyson moved into D’Amato’s home in the Catskills and lived among other young fighters in a sort of dormitory for amateur boxers. D’Amato consistently encouraged the young boxer, telling him that he’d become the greatest. After so much pain leading up to that point in his short life, Tyson finally had safety, direction and support.
“Cus would repeat over and over to Mike from the beginning, ‘Do you know you’re going to be heavyweight champion of the world someday?’” said Nadia Hujtyn, a boxing coach and assistant to D’Amato. “If you say it enough times, you believe it. And if you believe it, then you’ll have no doubt.”
Yet, as Tyson’s life began to take a turn, he would come to know the loss of many loved ones. Tyson’s mother died in 1982. He was 16 and living with D’Amato, who later became his legal guardian. It wasn’t long after that when, in 1985, D’Amato also died.
“I’m sure, at some point, Cus and Mike had a conversation about death,” former world heavyweight champion Michael Bentt told ABC News.
“You have a mission to commit to, we have a pact. If I’m here or not, you complete that pact” of fulfilling D’Amato’s dream of becoming a champion, Bentt said.
On Nov. 22, 1986, Tyson entered the record books as the youngest heavyweight champion in history when he defeated Trevor Berbick, the last man to fight Muhammad Ali.
Tyson’s life was changed forever. He went from living in Brownsville to becoming a multi-millionaire at just 20 years old, and the money kept rushing in. Companies from Pepsi to Toyota wanted to hand him a paycheck to sell their products, and beautiful women vied for his attention.
“I would have girls pull up to the limousine and throw their underwear at me and say, ‘Give this to your boss. Here’s my number.’ It was non stop with groupies,” Tyson’s bodyguard and chauffeur Rudy Gonzalez said.
Those who were watching Tyson, however, say his meteoric rise to fame seemed to be a difficult adjustment.
“The night he won the title from Trevor Berbick, I came in from a club at 4 in the morning and who was sitting in the lobby by himself with that title belt around his waist, but Mike Tyson,” said Wallace Matthews, a boxing writer for Newsday and The New York Post. “He was lonely, isolated. [He] wasn’t sure what to do with himself.”
Instead of running away from his childhood, the champ made a point to return to his neighborhood in Brooklyn. Lori Grinker, a photographer who documented Tyson in his early years, says she can remember riding in a car with him, seeing kids rip up what appeared to be paper bags for him to autograph. He was a hometown hero and he gave out cash to the homeless.
Tyson eventually fell head over heels for actress Robin Givens. They married but their relationship began to fall apart as the media buzzed with abuse allegations.
In 1988, Tyson sat down with Givens for an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC News’ 20/20. Former HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg described the interview as “one of the most remarkable, strange interviews in the history of the medium.”
During the interview, Tyson said he never hit his wife. But Givens told Walters that Tyson had an “extremely volatile temper” and that he “shakes” and “pushes” her.
“Sometimes I think he’s trying to scare me,” she said.
Gonzalez said it was as if Givens “led him right into the limelight and then dropped the hammer on him in front of the world.”
Givens later filed for divorce and sued Tyson for $125 million. In 2009, Mike Tyson admitted to Oprah Winfrey that he had “socked” Givens and that it was “definitely” an abusive relationship “both ways.” Givens, who declined an interview with ABC News for this documentary, also denied to Oprah that she had abused Tyson.
During this time, he constantly made headlines. In separate incidents, he’d gotten into a brawl outside the ring with fighter Mitch Green, crashed his car into a tree, and attacked a news crew that had caught him on a morning run.
“You couldn’t keep up with it,” said Matthews. “This guy basically was reality television way before reality TV was invented.”
Now a single man, those close to him said he relished in the luxury of his fame and wealth.
“We had four penthouse apartments, three mansions … 200 cars, a lot of jewelry,” Gonzalez said. “People wanted to see Mike Tyson just spend a million dollars in Gianni Versace.”
Randy Gordon, former editor in chief of Ring Magazine and the former chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, said that “every single night, instead of resting, Tyson was partying.”
Meanwhile, his next opponent, James “Buster” Douglas, was “training, and resting, and training, and resting,” Gordon said.
On Feb. 11, 1990, Douglas was deemed to be an overwhelming underdog with a 42-to-1 chance of winning. Tyson had been undefeated at the time.
“I really thrived off that negativity,” Douglas told ABC News. “I knew that I had the ability to go fight Tyson.”
Douglas was right. What’s more, he ended up dethroning the king in a 10th-round knockout that shocked the world. To this day, many consider Tyson’s loss in that match to be the biggest upset in heavyweight boxing history.
For more on Tyson’s mistakes, losses and triumphs, watch “The Knockout” May 25 and June 1 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, or stream it on Hulu in the following days.
(HILLSBOROUGH, Fla.) — Just a week into the school year, over 10,000 students and staff in the Hillsborough County Public Schools district in Florida have been isolated or quarantined as districts across the state grapple with COVID-19.
Hillsborough is the seventh-largest school district in the U.S., with more than 213,000 students. As of Wednesday, 10,384 students and 338 staffers are isolated or under quarantine, the district told ABC News.
In total, there were 1,805 COVID-19 cases among students and staff, according to the Tampa-area district’s COVID-19 dashboard.
The district is requiring masks for students, but parents can opt their children out. To date, at least 28,000 parents have opted out, district officials told ABC News.
The district held an emergency school board meeting Wednesday to discuss how to respond to the crisis.
In the heated gathering people shared points both for and against a mask mandate.
One mother of a student yelled, “Have any children died?” as a result of the virus. Some people in the audience shouted back that children have. Parents against masks argued that face coverings prevent kids from smiling at each other and communicate with their peers and teachers.
A wife of a teacher said during the meeting that her husband is immunosuppressed and suggested the district enforce masks just as they enforce girls adhere to a dress code that bans spaghetti straps. One high school student told the anti-maskers, “This tiny piece of cloth is not taking away your freedom. … Grow up.”
District officials said they’re providing personal protective equipment and sanitation stations for each classroom, and have installed MERV-13 air filters at each school.
“As we work to create the safest environment for our students and staff, we also must abide by the governor’s executive order, as well as emergency rules from the Department of Health and state Board of Education. This requires our district to preserve a parent’s right to choose to wear a face covering in school,” a spokesperson for the district told ABC News. “The Governor has been clear that if school districts do not abide by this order, they could face financial consequences.”
Last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an emergency order giving parents the final say over masks for kids in school. At a press conference last month, he said Florida students shouldn’t be “muzzled,” adding, “We need them to be able to breathe.”
Elizabeth Devolder pulled her two children, who are in fifth and second grade, out of school to voluntarily quarantine them due to the “terrifying” rising number of virus cases.
“Although they were not immediately exposed, and they’re not required to quarantine, I felt like why do we have to wait for our kids to get sick before we take action?” she told Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS.
The district is offering face-to-face instruction as well as virtual classes for the 2021-22 academic year.
The Bay Area of Florida has seen an uptick in virus cases. In Pinellas County, 521 cases among students and staff have been reported this school year, while in Sarasota there have bee 227 reported and in Manatee that figure stands at 480, according to those districts’ respective dashboards.
Mounting COVID-19 cases in schools are a rising concern as communities head back to in-person learning, especially as children under the age of 12 are not yet eligible for vaccines.
Florida currently has the country’s highest COVID-19 case rate. The state reported 151,415 new cases from Aug. 6 to Aug. 12 and 286 deaths, with a new-case positivity rate of 19.3%, according to its latest weekly COVID-19 report. And cases among children are up, with over 31,700 new cases reported last week among those 19 years old or younger.
(HILLSBOROUGH, Fla.) — Just a week into the school year, some 8,400 students in and 307 employees of the Hillsborough County Public Schools district in Florida have been isolated or quarantined as districts across the state grapple with COVID-19.
Hillsborough is the seventh-largest school district in the U.S., with more than 213,000 students.
In total, there were 1,695 COVID-19 cases among students and staff, according to the Tampa-area district’s COVID-19 dashboard.
The district is requiring masks for students, but parents can opt-out their children. To date, at least 28,000 parents have opted out, district officials told ABC News.
The district has scheduled an emergency school board meeting Wednesday to discuss how to respond to the crisis.
District officials said they’re providing PPE and sanitation stations for each classroom, and have installed MERV-13 filters at each school.
“As we work to create the safest environment for our students and staff, we also must abide by the governor’s executive order, as well as emergency rules from the Department of Health and state Board of Education. This requires our district to preserve a parent’s right to choose to wear a face covering in school,” a spokesperson for the district told ABC News. “The Governor has been clear that if school districts do not abide by this order, they could face financial consequences.”
Last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an emergency order giving parents the final say over masks for kids in school. At a press conference last month, he said Florida students shouldn’t be “muzzled,” adding, “We need them to be able to breathe.”
Elizabeth Devolder pulled her two children, who are in fifth and second grade, out of school to voluntarily quarantine them due to the “terrifying” rising number of virus cases.
“Although they were not immediately exposed, and they’re not required to quarantine, I felt like why do we have to wait for our kids to get sick before we take action?” she said to ABC Tampa affiliate WFTS.
The district is offering face-to-face instruction as well as virtual classes for the 2021-22 academic year.
The Bay Area of Florida has seen an uptick in virus cases. In Pinellas County, 361 cases among students and staff have been reported this school year, while in Sarasota 227 have been reported and in Manatee that figure stands at 480, according to those districts’ respective dashboards.
Mounting COVID-19 cases in schools are a rising concern as communities head back to in-person learning, especially as children under the age of 12 are not yet eligible for vaccines.
Florida currently has the country’s highest COVID-19 case rate. The state reported 151,415 new cases from Aug. 6 to Aug. 12 and 286 deaths, with a new-case positivity rate of 19.3%, according to its latest weekly COVID-19 report. And cases among children are up, with over 31,700 new cases reported last week among those 19 years old or younger.
Fans of James Cameron‘s sci-fi classic Aliens will soon have the chance to own a replica of one of the movie’s most iconic props — but you might have to scan the toy section for it.
Nerf has announced a limited-edition replica of the M41A Pulse Rifle, the weapon carried by the Colonial Marines in the film, and of course by Sigourney Weaver‘s bug-stomping heroine, Ellen Ripley.
Just like Hasbro Pulse’s take on the Spenger Neutrona Wand — one of the Ghostbusters‘ tools of the trade — the designers of the Nerf M41A painstakingly recreated the original Aliens prop.
Unlike previous Nerf collaborations with licensees like Star Wars, the Aliens rifle is hyper-accurate to the real McCoy, right down to sound effects and the red LED ammo counter on the side. In this case, the counter keeps track of the Nerf darts in the automatic rifle’s magazine.
And just like its sci-fi counterpart, the offering has a shotgun-style pump-action secondary fire feature, which in this case flings the fatter Nerf Mega Darts.
For safety reasons, the Nerf Pulse Rifle is colored to match the yellow and white color scheme of the Power Loader Ripley uses to bash the queen in Aliens‘ climax, though that paint scheme likely is nothing crafty cosplayers won’t be fixing to match the movie’s prop.
The Pulse Rifle will be released October 2022, but they’re available for pre-order on Hasbro Pulse’s website and GameStop for $94.99.
Slipknot is bringing Knotfest back to South American in 2022.
Knotfest Chile will take place December 11 in Santiago, while Knotfest Brazil will be held December 18 in São Paulo. The Knot themselves will headline both lineups, which will also include Bring Me the Horizon, Mr. Bungle and Trivium, among others.
Slipknot is also headlining two U.S. editions of Knotfest this fall, taking place September 25 in the band’s home state of Iowa, and November 5 in Los Angeles. Additionally, you can catch the masked metallers on their Knotfest Roadshow U.S. tour, kicking off in September.
