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It is notoriously difficult to see a truly great race car driver ever show us a lot of real, raw emotion. Not anger. We’ve all seen that plenty. Not celebratory joy. That’s what we see most, when the driver who has just pulled into Victory Lane finally shows us their face after it’s been hidden under a helmet for four hours. But by that time of revelation, they’ve typically already done all their real emoting when we couldn’t see them and what we get is the scripted, corporatized post-win photo and hat dance.

We never see tears. Ever. We might hear them, a quick choke of the throat caught over a racer’s radio transmission to their pit crew during the cooldown lap. But by the time that lap is done, the ice-in-their-veins drivers have long ago hit their temperament reset button and their once-wet eyes have completely dried.

Not being able to find a crack in that firewall of feeling has always been a bit maddening, particularly when it has come to Kyle Larson. But Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway, Larson, the just-crowned Cup Series champion, wept openly. Then he wept again. And again. In his car, caught on camera. On the pit lane during his live TV interview. In Victory Lane, amid celebrating the race win and the resulting championship. In the media center. During the late evening photo ops with the trophy.

“Just thinking about the journey and how tough of a road it’s been to get to this point for so long,” the 29-year-old explained when he was asked about what had produced so many repeated tears. “But especially the last year and a half.”

Larson has always been a master of the classic motorsports understated reaction. He has won hundreds of races across countless series and tracks, so once he started winning regularly in NASCAR’s Cup Series, the big leagues of American auto racing, he always stuck to the “act like you’ve been there” approach.

But where he has been over that past year and a half he keeps referring to, no racer has been before or since. A self-triggered trip into stock car purgatory, fired by Chip Ganassi Racing and banished from the NASCAR garage on April 13, 2020, for an inexplicable utterance of the N-word during a live broadcast of a pandemic lockdown video game competition.

On Nov. 8, 2020, Kyle Larson watched Chase Elliott celebrate winning the Cup no different than the rest of us, from a television in his living room. On Nov. 7, 2021, he outran now-teammate Elliott and three others to not only win NASCAR’s ultimate prize, he did so by way of the most dominant statistical season seen in nearly a decade and a half.

His 10 wins (11 if you include the non-points-paying NASCAR All-Star Race) was the most seen since Jimmie Johnson, also driving for Hendrick Motorsports, won that many races in 2007. He posted 20 top fives and 26 top 10s in 36 races, both first among all drivers, and his 2,581 laps led was nearly 1,100 more than the nearest competitor. He became only the seventh driver in 75 years of NASCAR racing to win a Cup Series title one year after not racing in the series full-time, and the first to do it since 1966.

What’s more, he also spent 2021 dominating the American short track scene at a level only matched by the likes of A.J. Foyt and drew comparisons from his Hendrick Motorsports boss, Jeff Gordon, to another auto racing cross-discipline demigod, Mario Andretti. From the Chili Bowl to the Knoxville Nationals to Sunday at Phoenix, it’s been an all-time Paul Bunyan-with-a-steering wheel type of season.

Now, what’s he going to do with all of that? Where will Larson, with “NASCAR Cup Series champion” forever affixed to his name, go from here? There are those who will say the answer to that question should be racing-only, that he has served his time of public shame and it’s time to move on.

But nothing with Larson will ever be that simple again.

To earn NASCAR reinstatement, he was required to spend 2020 undergoing sensitivity training, but he also chose to do more than was required. He traveled to see young Black racers that had once looked up to him as a hero and faced their questions of “Why would you say that word?” face to face. He was given history lessons on racial tensions in America by the people who run that program. Before the tears we saw at Phoenix on Sunday night, there were others we will never see, from those days in April 2020 when he called the likes of Bubba Wallace, Black members of his own race team, and then most painfully, his mother.

Janet Larson (née Miyata) is a Japanese-American woman who had been so proud of her son’s development, more easily embracing his Asian heritage as he grew into adulthood, researching his grandparents’ time in World War II internment camps and visiting youth centers to talk to Asian-American kids about his racing career. Now she was just mad.

NASCAR leadership continues to work to undo its once-well-earned reputation as a place unwilling to embrace diversity. That’s not what the garage is anymore. Anyone who was there years ago and is also there now, we are fully aware of the very different world that it has become. But there is still so much more work to do. Officials in business suits can only do so much. Ultimately, it will always be the racers in the firesuits who will have the greatest impact.

Say, showing how someone can learn from their stupidest mistake. Showing how someone can bomb their career and the reputation of their sport back to the Stone Age with one idiotic sentence, but if given a second chance can perhaps become a better person and even a better race car driver.

Larson has always been a tough nut to crack emotionally. As an interview subject, he has been downright maddening because he’d never allow himself to fully open up and dive as deeply into hard topics of conversation as it felt like he could if he would just give himself permission. Even when the subjects were his multiracial background or that he might be the first graduate of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program to win the Cup.

But Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway, amid the most meaningful racing celebration of a lifetime that is marked by trophy after trophy, Larson finally cracked a door into his emotions. He finally let us in.

His potential impact as an educator and a game-changer for the audience that watches the sport he loves more than most anyone? This part of the gig was not his dream. This is the burden he’ll always carry because of the nightmare, one of his own ignorant creation. But if he does what he could — what he should — he might very well make some racing dreams come true for someone who thought their race might keep them out of racing.

If he chooses to do nothing for the short-term sake of taking the path of least resistance, he would be lowering his visor to the long-term damage. Silence will only bolster those who see NASCAR as still stuck in 1968, the perceived free pass given to the driver who dropped the N-word and then won the championship one year later. But Larson owning it publicly and carrying it with him as prominently as a sponsor on a car hood is the only way to convince anyone that anything has actually changed.

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Nats’ Strasburg, in retirement impasse, put on IL

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Nats' Strasburg, in retirement impasse, put on IL

CINCINNATI — Pitcher Stephen Strasburg was put on the 60-day injured list by the Washington Nationals ahead of Thursday’s opener at Cincinnati.

The 2019 World Series MVP has not pitched since June 2022 because of injuries that have derailed his career. He still has three seasons left on a seven-year, $245 million contract.

Strasburg, 35, decided in late August to retire, but the Nationals announced in September that there would be no retirement news conference. Owner Mark Lerner said in a statement at the time that the team looked forward to seeing Strasburg at spring training.

The right-hander did not report to the Nationals’ facility in West Palm Beach, Florida. The only practical impact of him being on the roster is it takes up a protected spot for the Rule 5 draft in December.

Strasburg gets $35 million annually, with $11,428,571 per year deferred at 1% interest. The deferred money is payable in equal installments of $26,666,667 on July 1 in 2027, 2028 and 2029, with an interest payment of $3,999,974 on Dec. 31, 2029.

Restructuring the money Strasburg is owed could be part of a retirement agreement.

Washington also selected the contracts of right-handers Matt Barnes and Derek Law along with outfielders Eddie Rosario and Jesse Winker from Triple-A Rochester. Barnes, Rosario and Winker get $2 million salaries while in the major leagues, and Law gets $1.5 million.

The Nationals also placed right-handers Cade Cavalli and Mason Thompson (Tommy John surgery) and left-hander Jose Ferrer (left lat strain) on the 60-day injured list and outfielder Stone Garrett (recovery from left ankle reconstruction surgery) on the 10-day injured list, a move retroactive to Monday.

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Manfred eyes ‘short’ time for Ohtani investigation

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Manfred eyes 'short' time for Ohtani investigation

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday the league is committed to its investigation of the scandal surrounding Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani and hopes it will take a “short” time to resolve.

Last week Ohtani’s interpreter Ippei Mizuhara was fired after questions surrounding at least $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from the superstar’s bank account to a bookmaking operation.

Ohtani claims his close friend Mizuhara repeatedly took money from his accounts to fund his illegal sports gambling habit. Ohtani also says he was completely unaware of the “massive theft,” as his lawyers termed it, until Mizuhara confessed to him and the Dodgers last week in South Korea, where the team opened its regular season against the Padres.

“Given the way the story unfolded, it’s important in assuring our fans about the integrity of the game that we verify the things that Mr. Ohtani said, it’s really that simple,” Manfred said on Major League Baseball Network’s “High Heat with Chris Russo” on Thursday.

Mizuhara incurred the gambling debts to a Southern California bookmaking operation that is under federal investigation, multiple sources told ESPN. How he came to lose his job started with reporters asking questions about the wire transfers.

“It’s really difficult for the federal authorities to cooperate with us fully when they have their own ongoing investigation so I think this is one where we’ll have to proceed on our own,” Manfred said. “We never have the kind of authority that law enforcement people have but we manage to get these investigations done and find the facts and I’m sure we will on this one.

“I hope [it’s] short, but I just don’t know.”

Ohtani’s camp initially said Ohtani transferred the funds to cover Mizuhara’s debt and presented Mizuhara for an interview with ESPN, during which he laid out the process in detail. The following day, a statement from Berk Brettler LLP, the law firm representing Ohtani in the matter, instead said the two-way star “has been the victim of massive theft.” Mizuhara then told ESPN that Ohtani had no knowledge of his debt and that Ohtani had not transferred the money.

Ohtani’s representatives declined again Tuesday to answer ESPN’s questions about which authorities they have contacted to report their allegation of theft against Ohtani’s former interpreter.

ESPN has been asking repeatedly for the information since Ohtani’s lawyers first issued a statement last week alleging that “Shohei has been the victim of a massive theft, and we are turning the matter over to the authorities.”

When asked Tuesday to provide proof that Ohtani or his representatives have reported the theft to an investigating agency, a spokesperson for Ohtani declined to comment.

ESPN received no confirmation from any of the likely local, state or federal agencies that could investigate allegations of theft that they received a report from Ohtani’s camp.

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Yanks put Cole on 60-day IL due to injured elbow

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Yanks put Cole on 60-day IL due to injured elbow

Any dreams of a speedy return to the mound for reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole were dashed Thursday when the New York Yankees moved the right-hander to the 60-day injured list due to elbow inflammation.

On March 16, Cole said he wouldn’t throw for three to four weeks in an effort to heal his ailing throwing elbow, telling reporters that nerve irritation and edema were the source of his problem, with rest and recovery the prescription.

The Yankees finalized their Opening Day roster Thursday morning, also moving right-handers Tommy Kahnle (right shoulder inflammation) and McKinley Moore (right knee bursitis) to the 15-day IL and infielders DJ LeMahieu (right foot contusion) and Oswald Peraza (right shoulder strain) to the 10-day IL. All four moves were retroactive to Monday.

New York added newly acquired infielder Jon Berti to the active roster, recalled right-hander Luis Gil from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and signed right-hander Nick Burdi to a major league contract and selected him to the roster.

Cole, 33, pitched just twice this spring, once in a Grapefruit League game on March 1 and then in a simulated game six days later. He subsequently was shut down and underwent medical tests.

Cole has been one of the most durable pitchers in the majors, making at least 30 starts in every season since 2017 except for the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign.

Cole is coming off a season in which he went 15-4 while leading the AL in ERA (2.63) and innings pitched (209). He struck out 222 and walked 48.

The Yankees open the 2024 season at the Houston Astros. Nestor Cortes will start for the Yankees against Framber Valdez in a matchup of left-handers.

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