The first time Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis spent meaningful time with Alex Ovechkin was after the 2004-05 NHL lockout. Ovechkin, who had been drafted No. 1 overall by the Caps in 2004, arrived at Leonsis’ house to spend a day with the family.
Leonsis’ wife, Lynn, made lunch. Leonsis was impressed that the Russian superstar, then just 20, helped pick up dishes afterward and brought them to the kitchen.
Afterwards, they played basketball with Leonsis’ kids and a few friends. “He was an unbelievable basketball player,” said Leonsis. (Ovechkin’s mom, Tatyana, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in basketball). They then went swimming. “He was like a torpedo in the pool,” Leonsis recalled. “I’m not kidding, that’s what it felt like.”
Then the two men sat in the pool and talked. “Alex was making eye contact with me, and really listening,” Leonsis said. “I explained how hard this was going to be for him. The reason we were able to draft him No. 1 is that we were a really bad team. It was going to take a really long time to be a good team. Our goal was to win the Stanley Cup, but also for him to live a full self-actualized life and grow up with us.”
Ovechkin remained a captive audience. Leonsis then got philosophical.
“My belief was that communities fall in love with a young player,” Leonsis told Ovechkin. “And then they often get their heart broken when the young players want to leave.”
Leonsis ended his spiel with a pitch: “Alex, trust me. Let us trust you. Let’s do this together.”
Ovechkin said, “OK.” He was in.
Last week, the Capitals announced a new contract for Ovechkin: five years, with an average annual value of $9.5 million. The deal will take Ovechkin through age 40; should he average 33 goals per season, it will also include him breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goal-scoring record of 894.
Ovechkin negotiated the deal himself, emblematic of the trust he and the organization have forged over nearly two decades together.
“The idea of him playing in Russia, or playing for another organization, just didn’t make sense,” GM Brian MacLellan said. “It was important we brought that tone into the negotiations that we were going to try to make it work. We wanted him to finish his career here, be happy about the contract, be happy about the term, and go out the right way.”
Here is the story of how it all came together.
Ovechkin has been a superstar ever since he stepped on NHL ice. He scored 52 goals as a rookie. Two years later, he was named league MVP. He was MVP the next season, too.
Leonsis was right: it would take a long time to reach their goals. Despite making the playoffs in 10 of his first 13 seasons, it took until 2018 for Ovechkin to help lead the Capitals to the organization’s first ever Stanley Cup. Ovechkin’s impact off the ice was felt well before that.
“When I bought the team [in] 1999, I paid $85 million, and we struggled to put fans in the stands,” Leonsis said. “We had 2,900 season ticket holders in a 20,000 arena. The year before I bought the team they had gone to the Finals and couldn’t sell out playoff games. The following year, they didn’t make the playoffs and renewals were terrible.”
After Ovechkin’s first MVP season in 2007-08, the first under coach Bruce Boudreau, the Capitals sold out the playoffs. “The next season we sold out every game. And we’ve sold out every game since,” Leonsis said. “Now we’re a top-10 revenue team, and a top-six or eight ticket-selling team. We’ve become a destination. Now I would say the Caps are worth a billion dollars.”
The Caps realized the power of Ovechkin by the time his three-year, entry-level deal was expiring in 2008.
“When it was time for his second deal, there was a standard deal template,” Leonsis said. “[Sidney] Crosby had signed a five-year second deal, and we could have done something like that too.”
Team president Dick Patrick had other ideas. In a meeting with Leonsis, Patrick said: “I’m very conservative, and I’m very skeptical. And when you give players long-term deals for a lot of money, sometimes they change, sometimes their love of the game changes. I think there’s something special here, though. So why don’t we do something radical? Why don’t we tell Alex we want to negotiate your bridge contract, your B contract, and your free-agent deal all at the same time?”
At the time, Tatyana Ovechkin was serving as her son’s agent. Leonsis brought the idea to them of a long-term contract, and explained the Capitals were the ones assuming the risk. If Ovechkin got hurt, he’d still get paid.
The benefit of a long-term deal: if Ovechkin lived up to what the Capitals hoped he would be, it would work out for both sides.
The negative: there could be someone else in the industry that gets paid more in that span, as the salary cap grows.
“What I admired about Alex is, he never once compared himself and his deal to anybody else,” Leonsis said. “He never asked to be traded. He never said fire a coach. It’s just a remarkable personal journey for him.”
And so in 2008, Ovechkin signed a 13-year, $124 million deal. It was the NHL’s first $100 million contract.
Sometime in the middle of Ovechkin’s 13-year contract, Leonsis met Wayne Gretzky at an event. The two men sat down and talked.
“Alex is the only player I’ve ever thought could break my record,” Gretzky told Leonsis. “He loves the game. He has such a great relationship and comfort in D.C.; don’t ever break that.”
Leonsis promised Gretzky: “I won’t.”
Soon after, Leonsis saw the 30-for-30 documentary about Gretzky’s trade from Edmonton to Los Angeles. “And I laugh,” Leonsis said. “Because the Oilers won four Stanley Cups but the only thing the owner is known for is trading Wayne Gretzky.”
As Ovechkin’s 13-year deal was nearing expiration this season, Leonsis often joked during talks with other team officials: “They’re not going to make a 30-for-30 about us.”
During the pandemic, ESPN released “The Last Dance.” Leonsis was riveted.
“It was 10 hours about Michael Jordan’s greatness,” Leonsis said. “But also about how they did not feel loved or connected to the team.”
Leonsis didn’t want to be that guy. He already felt like he was on a good track, though.
Because Ovechkin had signed a long-term deal in 2008, teammate Nicklas Backstrom followed by committing to 10 years in 2010.
“Alex not only made the commitment to us, but made it to Nick, then they embraced John Carlson,” Leonsis explained. “Keeping Alex, keeping Nick, keeping John Carlson, building a 20 to 25-year journey with these guys, with Alex as the bedrock, was the right thing for us to do. It’s a wonderful story.”
Backstrom’s deal expired in 2020. He chose to negotiate his next deal himself.
“Nick is very analytical,” Leonsis said. “He sat down with us, and said ‘This is how many years I’d like to play, I’d like to play my whole career here. I want to play with Alex my whole career. I want to play in front of this crowd my entire career. This is what we need to do to win the Stanley Cup, and this is how Alex is going to break Wayne Gretzky’s record.’
“He literally went season by season, of what we needed to do and how he’d have to play, with five-on-five goals and power play. He landed on five years [for his contract]. It was remarkable how the two of them — unlike Lennon and McCartney, instead of breaking up, they were totally in sync.”
Contract negotiations for Ovechkin’s new deal began informally. Ovechkin talked to MacLellan throughout the season. The captain and GM met a few times, often at hotels on the road.
“He’d go back and talk to his family, and a few advisors,” MacLellan said. “Then he’d come back to me and we’d talk again. It went on for quite a while.”
The first discussions were philosophical. Ovechkin wanted to hear the direction of the Capitals. He wanted to know what MacLellan envisioned and what types of moves he planned on doing.
“Then term became important,” MacLellan said. “He zeroed in on five years, and that became very important. He liked the term of five years; he has some personal goals in mind.”
Once five years was determined as the term, the two needed to hash out the average annual value.
“His main goal wasn’t to make as much money as possible,” MacLellan said. “He probably would get a shorter term at a higher AAV if he wanted to go outside [of the Capitals]. Probably could have made more money going back home to Russia, I would assume, there are probably some tax advantages there. We had discussions: ‘Here are your career earnings. Is a higher contract going to affect your standard of life going forward, or is it about finishing your career out the right way?'”
At $9.5 million — just a shade lower than the $9.54 million AAV on his last deal — the Caps and Ovechkin felt like they could keep the team competitive. (That Ovechkin’s contract has nearly the same cap hit it had 13 years ago is an interesting indictment of the NHL; Leonsis says it is a direct byproduct of the NHL still being driven more by local revenues than national revenues).
Just as the Capitals finished Ovechkin’s deal, they also traded defenseman Brenden Dillon to the Winnipeg Jets.
“We had to get a $4 million player out,” MacLellan said. “You go higher than that, we probably have to move another player out. You get thin quick when that cap isn’t going up. So that was an important factor keeping it at $9.5 [million].”
Conversations between the Capitals and Ovechkin continued as the captain returned home to Russia for the summer. They hashed out final details on the phone, and via text, before finally landing on the deal.
“It was a bummer we weren’t able to do it in person,” MacLellan said. “But we all felt really happy about it. He was excited. He’s an emotional person. I think he was excited about knowing what he would be doing for the next five years.”
On Thursday, the Capitals held a press conference announcing the deal. And shortly after that, Leonsis was pulled into talks regarding the NBA’s Washington Wizards, a team that he also owns.
“We had a superstar player with the Wizards, he had an opportunity and wanted to be traded to the Lakers,” Leonsis said. “And I was dealing with that as we were announcing Alex. I couldn’t help but self-reflect on what a difference it is. Here’s a great player in Russell Westbrook, played in OKC, wanted to be traded, went to Houston, wanted to be traded, came to D.C., wanted to be traded and is now in L.A. He’s an unbelievably great person and an unbelievably great player. But that’s the difference between the NBA and the NHL, I suppose.”
BOSTON — The Red Sox activated All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman from the 10-day injured list before Friday’s game against Tampa Bay.
Bregman, who has been sidelined since May 24 with a right quad strain, returned to his customary spot in the field and was slotted in the No. 2 spot of Boston’s lineup for the second of a four-game series against the Rays. He sustained the injury when he rounded first base and felt his quad tighten up.
A two-time World Series winner who spent the first nine seasons of his big league career with the Houston Astros, Bregman signed a $120 million, three-year contract in February. At the time of the injury, he was hitting .299 with 11 homers and 35 RBI. Those numbers led to him being named to the American League’s All-Star team for the third time since breaking into the majors with the Astros in 2016.
Bregman missed 43 games with the quad strain. Earlier this week, he told reporters that he was trending in a direction where he didn’t believe he would require a minor league rehab assignment. With three games left before the All-Star break, the Red Sox agreed the time was right to reinstate a player to a team that entered Friday in possession of one of the AL’s three wild-card berths.
“He’s going to do his part,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said before Friday’s game. “Obviously, the timing, we’ll see where he’s at, but he’s been working hard on the swing … visualizing and watching video.”
JIM ABBOTT IS sitting at his kitchen table, with his old friend Tim Mead. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were partners in an extraordinary exercise — and now, for the first time in decades, they are looking at a stack of letters and photographs from that period of their lives.
The letters are mostly handwritten, by children, from all over the United States and Canada, and beyond.
“Dear Mr. Abbott …”
“I have one hand too. … I don’t know any one with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy.”
“I am a seventh grader with a leg that is turned inwards. How do you feel about your arm? I would also like to know how you handle your problem? I would like to know, if you don’t mind, what have you been called?”
“I can’t use my right hand and most of my right side is paralyzed. … I want to become a doctor and seeing you makes me think I can be what I want to be.”
For 40 years, Mead worked in communications for the California Angels, eventually becoming vice president of media relations. His position in this department became a job like no other after the Angels drafted Abbott out of the University of Michigan in 1988.
There was a deluge of media requests. Reporters from around the world descended on Anaheim, most hoping to get one-on-one time with the young left-handed pitcher with the scorching fastball. Every Abbott start was a major event — “like the World Series,” Angels scout Bob Fontaine Jr. remembers. Abbott, with his impressive amateur résumé (he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1997 and an Olympic gold medal in 1988) and his boyish good looks, had star power.
That spring, he had become only the 16th player to go straight from the draft to the majors without appearing in a single minor league game. And then there was the factor that made him unique. His limb difference, although no one called it that back then. Abbott was born without a right hand, yet had developed into one of the most promising pitchers of his generation. He would go on to play in the majors for ten years, including a stint in the mid ’90s with the Yankees highlighted by a no-hitter in 1993.
Abbott, and Mead, too, knew the media would swarm. That was no surprise. There had been swarms in college, and at the Olympics, wherever and whenever Abbott pitched. Who could resist such an inspirational story? But what they hadn’t anticipated were the letters.
The steady stream of letters. Thousands of letters. So many from kids who, like Abbott, were different. Letters from their parents and grandparents. The kids hoping to connect with someone who reminded them of themselves, the first celebrity they knew of who could understand and appreciate what it was like to be them, someone who had experienced the bullying and the feelings of otherness. The parents and grandparents searching for hope and direction.
“I know you don’t consider yourself limited in what you can do … but you are still an inspiration to my wife and I as parents. Your success helps us when talking to Andy at those times when he’s a little frustrated. I’m able to point to you and assure him there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.”
In his six seasons with the Angels, Abbott was assisted by Mead in the process of organizing his responses to the letters, mailing them, and arranging face-to-face meetings with the families who had written to him. There were scores of such meetings. It was practically a full-time job for both of them.
“Thinking back on these meetings with families — and that’s the way I’d put it, it’s families, not just kids — there was every challenge imaginable,” Abbott, now 57, says. “Some accidents. Some birth defects. Some mental challenges that aren’t always visible to people when you first come across somebody. … They saw something in playing baseball with one hand that related to their own experience. I think the families coming to the ballparks were looking for hopefulness. I think they were looking for what it had been that my parents had told me, what it had been that my coaches had told me. … [With the kids] it was an interaction. It was catch. It was smiling. It was an autograph. It was a picture. With the parents, it ran deeper. With the parents, it was what had your parents said to you? What coaches made a difference? What can we expect? Most of all, I think, what can we expect?”
“It wasn’t asking for autographs,” Mead says of all those letters. “They weren’t asking for pictures. They were asking for his time. He and I had to have a conversation because this was going to be unique. You know, you could set up another player to come down and sign 15 autographs for this group or whatever. But it was people, parents, that had kids, maybe babies, just newborn babies, almost looking for an assurance that this is going to turn out all right, you know. ‘What did your parents do? How did your parents handle this?'”
One of the letters Abbott received came from an 8-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario.
She wrote, “Dear Jim, My name is Tracey Holgate. I am age 8. I have one hand too. My grandpa gave me a picture of you today. I saw you on TV. I don’t know anyone with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy. I hope to see you play in Detroit and maybe meet you. Could you please send me a picture of you in uniform? Could you write back please? Here is a picture of me. Love, Tracey.”
Holgate’s letter is one of those that has remained preserved in a folder — and now Abbott is reading it again, at his kitchen table, half a lifetime after receiving it. Time has not diminished the power of the letter, and Abbott is wiping away tears.
Today, Holgate is 44 and goes by her married name, Dupuis. She is married with four children of her own. She is a teacher. When she thinks about the meaning of Jim Abbott in her life, it is about much more than the letter he wrote back to her. Or the autographed picture he sent her. It was Abbott, all those years ago, who made it possible for Tracey to dream.
“There was such a camaraderie there,” she says, “an ability to connect with somebody so far away doing something totally different than my 8-year-old self was doing, but he really allowed me to just feel that connection, to feel that I’m not alone, there’s other people that have differences and have overcome them and been successful and we all have our own crosses, we all have our own things that we’re carrying and it’s important to continue to focus on the gifts that we have, the beauty of it.
“I think sometimes differences, disabilities, all those things can be a gift in a package we would never have wanted, because they allow us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us.”
Now, years after Abbott’s career ended, he continues to inspire.
Among those he influenced, there are professional athletes, such as Shaquem Griffin, who in 2018 became the first NFL player with one hand. Griffin, now 29, played three seasons at linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.
Growing up in Florida, he would watch videos of Abbott pitching and fielding, over and over, on YouTube.
“The only person I really looked up to was Jim Abbott at the time,” Griffin says, “which is crazy, because I didn’t know anybody else to look up to. I didn’t know anybody else who was kind of like me. And it’s funny, because when I was really little, I used to be like, ‘Why me? Why this happen to me?’ And I used to be in my room thinking about that. And I used to think to myself, ‘I wonder if Jim Abbott had that same thought.'”
Carson Pickett was born on Sept. 15, 1993 — 11 days after Abbott’s no-hitter. Missing most of her left arm below the elbow, she became, in 2022, the first player with a limb difference to appear for the U.S. women’s national soccer team.
She, too, says that Abbott made things that others told her were impossible seem attainable.
“I knew I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” says Pickett, who is currently playing for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. “To be able to see him compete at the highest level it gave me hope, and I think that that kind of helped me throughout my journey. … I think ‘pioneer’ would be the best word for him.”
Longtime professional MMA fighter Nick Newell is 39, old enough to have seen Abbott pitch for the Yankees. In fact, when Newell was a child he met Abbott twice, first at a fan event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan and then on a game day at Yankee Stadium. Newell was one of those kids with a limb difference — like Griffin and Pickett, due to amniotic band syndrome — who idolized Abbott.
“And I didn’t really understand the gravity of what he was doing,” Newell says now, “but for me, I saw someone out there on TV that looked like I did. And I was the only other person I knew that had one hand. And I saw this guy out here playing baseball and it was good to see somebody that looked like me, and I saw him in front of the world.
“He was out there like me and he was just living his life and I think that I owe a lot of my attitude and the success that I have to Jim just going out there and being the example of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Who’s to say you can’t be a professional athlete?’ He’s out there throwing no-hitters against the best baseball players in the world. So, as I got older, ‘Why can’t I wrestle? Why can’t I fight? Why can’t I do this?’ And then it wasn’t until the internet that I heard people tell me I can’t do these things. But by then I had already been doing those things.”
Griffin.
Pickett.
Newell.
Just three of the countless kids who were inspired by Jim Abbott.
When asked if it ever felt like too much, being a role model and a hero, all the letters and face-to-face meetings, Abbott says no — but it wasn’t always easy.
“I had incredible people who helped me send the letters,” he says. “I got a lot more credit sometimes than I deserved for these interactions, to be honest with you. And that happened on every team, particularly with my friend Tim Mead. There was a nice balance to it. There really was. There was a heaviness to it. There’s no denying. There were times I didn’t want to go [to the meetings]. I didn’t want to walk out there. I didn’t want to separate from my teammates. I didn’t want to get up from the card game. I didn’t want to put my book down. I liked where I was at. I was in my environment. I was where I always wanted to be. In a big league clubhouse surrounded by big league teammates. In a big league stadium. And those reminders of being different, I slowly came to realize were never going to go away.”
But being different was the thing that made Abbott more than merely a baseball star. For many people, he has been more than a role model, more than an idol. He is the embodiment of hope and belonging.
“I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Dupuis says. “I think we have to just not box everybody in and allow everybody’s innate light to shine, and for whatever reasons we’ve been created to be here, [let] that light shine in a way that it touches everybody else. Because I think that’s what Jim did. He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world, so you have this boom of brightness that’s happening and that’s uncontrollable, that’s beautiful.”
NEW YORK — Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected to receive the largest amount from this season’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool based on his regular-season statistics.
Crow-Armstrong is on track to get $1,091,102, according to WAR calculations through July 8 that Major League Baseball sent to teams, players and agents in a memo Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
He earned $342,128 from the pool in 2024.
“I was aware of it after last year, but I have no clue of the numbers,” he said Friday. “I haven’t looked at it one time.”
Crow-Armstrong, Skenes, Wood, Carroll, Brown, De La Cruz and Greene have been picked for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
A total of 100 players will receive the payments, established as part of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement and aimed to get more money to players without sufficient service time for salary arbitration eligibility. The cutoff for 2025 was 2 years, 132 days of major league service.
Players who signed as foreign professionals are excluded.
Most young players have salaries just above this year’s major league minimum of $760,000. Crow-Armstrong has a $771,000 salary this year, Skenes $875,000, Wood $764,400 and Brown $807,400.
Carroll is in the third season of a $111 million, eight-year contract.
As part of the labor agreement, a management-union committee was established that determined the WAR formula used to allocate the bonuses after awards. (A player may receive only one award bonus per year, the highest one he is eligible for.) The agreement calls for an interim report to be distributed the week before the All-Star Game.
Distribution for awards was $9.85 million last year, down from $11.25 million in 2022 and $9.25 million in 2023.
A player earns $2.5 million for winning an MVP or Cy Young award, $1.75 million for finishing second, $1.5 million for third, $1 million for fourth or fifth or for making the All-MLB first team. A player can get $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, $500,000 for second or for making the All-MLB second team, $350,000 for third in the rookie race, $250,000 for fourth or $150,000 for fifth.
Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. topped last year’s pre-arbitration bonus pool at $3,077,595, and Skenes was second at $2,152,057 despite not making his big league debut until May 11. Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson was third at $2,007,178.