At 89, Willie Nelson is already entrenched as an American music icon. Just last week, he was revealed as a nominee for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, before winning his 11th Grammy this past Sunday for “Live Forever,” his tribute album to his good friend, the late singer-songwriter Billy Joe Shaver.
But on Sunday, he finds himself again near the center of the television universe. Nelson stars in a Super Bowlcommercial for the second straight year, alongside another old pal, Snoop Dogg, and Martha Stewart, in a spot for BIC’s new EZ Reach lighters. Snoop and Willie starring in a wink-wink lighter commercial on the biggest broadcast stage isn’t much of a stretch for the two old friends who have recorded songs together for each other’s albums, including the most notable, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.”
“It’s been a lot of fun, naturally,” Nelson told ESPN this week. “… it’s always fun hanging out with him. We did a song one time: ‘I’ve had all my medication, it’s half past 10. We’re just sitting around waiting for something to kick in.'”
And yet, that image of the long-haired, pot-smoking hippie might not seem a natural fit with football. But true to his Texas roots, football has been a major part of his life as well, beginning with playing in his hometown of Abbott in Central Texas.
“I played a lot of football for the Abbott Panthers,” Nelson said. “I had a little ol’ thin helmet on. It was like wearing a sock on my head and we played on a bunch of rocks out there. So I’m surprised I made it through the game.”
While he never played beyond high school, Nelson would end up making a huge impact on the Texas Longhorns, becoming one of legendary Texas coach Darrell Royal’s closest friends.
Royal, the straight-laced football coach who ran a tight ship of clean-cut players, raised plenty of eyebrows around UT due to his close friendship with Nelson, the outlaw country pioneer. Yet the two were nearly inseparable. Nelson played concerts for Longhorn players before the 1969, 1970 and 1971 Cotton Bowls.
The two had met in the 1950s, when Nelson was a bit player in lineups that would play in Austin. Royal, who grew up in the Great Depression in Oklahoma, was a devoted fan of heartbreak songs, appreciated good lyrics, and was drawn to Nelson’s songwriting. Their friendship really evolved after Nelson moved back to Austin in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, Nelson became one of Earl Campbell’s best friends when the legendary Heisman trophy-winning running back starred for the Longhorns and then the Houston Oilers.
“I followed him around and we hung out together a lot,” Nelson said. “He was a great player and became a good friend of mine.”
Royal was famous for holding “pickin’ parties” in his hotel suites, at the Villa Capri in Austin, or in his rooms on the road. Royal would turn on a lamp, and everyone in the suite would have to sit silently and listen to the songs, or would face Royal’s wrath.
Royal and Nelson are due a great deal of credit for establishing Austin as a music stronghold, with Royal legitimizing Nelson with the more conservative football crowds and Nelson bringing people of all types together, like at the legendary Armadillo World Headquarters in 1972.
“When I walked into the Armadillo for Willie’s first show, I was stunned,” Eddie Wilson, the storied venue’s owner, told Texas Monthly. “All our hippies were there, but the walls were lined with UT football players.”
Royal and Nelson became family. Nelson sang “Healing Hands of Time” for Royal and his wife, Edith, after the deaths of two of their children nine years apart. He would visit Royal’s assisted living facility and sing gospel songs for him when he was wracked with Alzheimer’s. When the coach died in 2013, Nelson performed “Healing Hands” one more time at his funeral.
“It was all for the coach,” Nelson said with reverence toward his late friend this week.
Nelson keeps on going, bearing down on his 90th birthday while still touring frequently, because he can’t stop working. Or competing. After growing up playing every sport he could, he became a black belt in multiple forms of martial arts, including becoming a fifth-degree black belt in Korean mixed martial arts.
Nelson is still a big football fan, and is looking forward to Sunday’s game and his surreal commercial. But while the phrase “Willie Nelson’s Super Bowl Party” might conjure up wild images, he said he really just is more likely to be hanging out with his wife watching the game.
“It’s just me and Annie, sitting around laughing a lot,” he said.
After that, he’s back at it, with a milestone. He has made 150 albums with another due out in early March.
On April 29-30, he’ll mark his birthday with a party at the Hollywood Bowl, with an absolutely loaded lineup, including Chris Stapleton, Kasey Musgraves, Neil Young, Lyle Lovett, Sheryl Crow, Tom Jones, the Avett Brothers and more.
And of course, Snoop will be there. It’ll be a massive celebration with an eclectic lineup fitting of a man who has brought people together for nearly a century.
“I don’t see any reason to ever quit,” Nelson said. “I quit after every tour. And then I retire a while then say, ‘OK, let’s go do it again.’ I’ve come out of retirement about 100 times.”
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
NEW YORK — A blunder that typifies the current state of the New York Yankees, who find themselves in the midst of their second six-game losing streak in three weeks, happened in front of 41,401 fans at Citi Field on Saturday, and almost nobody noticed.
The Yankees were jogging off the field after securing the third out of the fourth inning of their 12-6 loss to the Mets when shortstop Anthony Volpe, as is standard for teams across baseball at the end of innings, threw the ball to right fielder Aaron Judge as he crossed into the infield from right field.
Only Judge wasn’t looking, and the ball nailed him in the head, knocking his sunglasses off and leaving a small cut near his right eye. The wound required a bandage to stop the bleeding, but Judge stayed in the game.
“Confusion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I didn’t know what happened initially. [It just] felt like something happened. Of course I was a little concerned.”
Avoiding an injury to the best player in baseball was on the Yankees’ very short list of positives in another sloppy, draining defeat to their crosstown rivals. With the loss, the Yankees, who held a three-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East standings entering June 30, find themselves tied with the Tampa Bay Rays for second place three games behind the Blue Jays heading into Sunday’s Subway Series finale.
The nosedive has been fueled by messy defense and a depleted pitching staff that has encountered a wall.
“It’s been a terrible week,” said Boone, who before the game announced starter Clarke Schmidt will likely undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.
For the second straight day, the Mets capitalized on mistakes and cracked timely home runs. After slugging three homers in Friday’s series opener, the Mets hit three more Saturday — a grand slam in the first inning from Brandon Nimmo to take a 4-0 lead and two home runs from Pete Alonso to widen the gap.
Nimmo’s blast — his second grand slam in four days — came after Yankees left fielder Jasson Dominguez misplayed a ball hit by the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the first inning. On Friday, he misread Nimmo’s line drive and watched it sail over his head for a double. On Saturday, he was slow to react to Starling Marte’s flyball in the left-center field gap and braked without catching or stopping it, allowing Marte to advance to second for a double. Yankees starter Carlos Rodon then walked two batters to load the bases for Nimmo, who yanked a mistake, a 1-2 slider over the wall.
“That slider probably needs to be down,” said Rodon, who allowed seven runs (six earned) over five innings. “A lot of misses today and they punished them.”
Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s throwing woes at third base — a position the Yankees have asked him to play to accommodate DJ LeMahieu at second base — continued in the second inning when he fielded Tyrone Taylor’s groundball and sailed a toss over first baseman Cody Bellinger’s head. Taylor was given second base and scored moments later on Marte’s RBI single.
The Yankees were charged with their second error in the Mets’ four-run seventh inning when center fielder Trent Grisham charged Francisco Lindor’s single up the middle and had it bounce off the heel of his glove.
The mistake allowed a run to score from second base without a throw, extending the Mets lead back to three runs after the Yankees had chipped their deficit, and allowed a heads-up Lindor to advance to second base. Lindor later scored on Alonso’s second home run, a three-run blast off left-hander Jayvien Sandridge in the pitcher’s major league debut.
“Just got to play better,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s fundamentals. Making a routine play, routine. It’s just the little things. That’s what it kind of comes down to. But every good team goes through a couple bumps in the road.”
This six-game losing skid has looked very different from the Yankees’ first. That rough patch, consisting of losses to the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, was propelled by offensive troubles. The Yankees scored six runs in the six games and gave up just 16. This time, run prevention is the issue; the Yankees have scored 34 runs and surrendered 54 in four games against the Blue Jays in Toronto and two in Queens.
“The offense is starting to swing the bat, put some runs on the board,” Boone said. “The pitching, which has kind of carried us a lot this season, has really, really struggled this week. We haven’t caught the ball as well as I think we should.
“So, look, when you live it and you’re going through it, it sucks, it hurts. But you got to be able to handle it. You got to be able to deal with it. You got to be able to weather it and come out of this and grow.”
Bobby Jenks, a two-time All-Star pitcher for the Chicago White Sox who was on the roster when the franchise won the 2005 World Series, died Friday in Sintra, Portugal, the team announced.
Jenks, 44, who had been diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a form of stomach cancer, this year, spent six seasons with the White Sox from 2005 to 2010 and also played for the Boston Red Sox in 2011. The reliever finished his major league career with a 16-20 record, 3.53 ERA and 173 saves.
“We have lost an iconic member of the White Sox family today,” White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. “None of us will ever forget that ninth inning of Game 4 in Houston, all that Bobby did for the 2005 World Series champions and for the entire Sox organization during his time in Chicago. He and his family knew cancer would be his toughest battle, and he will be missed as a husband, father, friend and teammate. He will forever hold a special place in all our hearts.”
After Jenks moved to Portugal last year, he was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in his right calf. That eventually spread into blood clots in his lungs, prompting further testing. He was later diagnosed with adenocarcinoma and began undergoing radiation.
In February, as Jenks was being treated for the illness, the White Sox posted “We stand with you, Bobby” on Instagram, adding in the post that the club was “thinking of Bobby as he is being treated.”
In 2005, as the White Sox ended an 88-year drought en route to the World Series title, Jenks appeared in six postseason games. Chicago went 11-1 in the playoffs, and he earned saves in series-clinching wins in Game 3 of the ALDS at Boston, and Game 4 of the World Series against the Houston Astros.
In 2006, Jenks saved 41 games, and the following year, he posted 40 saves. He also retired 41 consecutive batters in 2007, matching a record for a reliever.
“You play for the love of the game, the joy of it,” Jenks said in his last interview with SoxTV last year. “It’s what I love to do. I [was] playing to be a world champion, and that’s what I wanted to do from the time I picked up a baseball.”
A native of Mission Hills, California, Jenks appeared in 19 games for the Red Sox and was originally drafted by the then-Anaheim Angels in the fifth round of the 2000 draft.
Jenks is survived by his wife, Eleni Tzitzivacos, their two children, Zeno and Kate, and his four children from a prior marriage, Cuma, Nolan, Rylan and Jackson.
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
NEW YORK — The New York Yankees, digging for options to bolster their infield, have signed third baseman Jeimer Candelario to a minor league contract and assigned him to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, the affiliate announced Saturday.
Candelario, 31, was released by the Cincinnati Reds on June 23, halfway through a three-year, $45 million contract he signed before the start of last season. The decision was made after Candelario posted a .707 OPS in 2024 and batted .113 with a .410 OPS in 22 games for the Reds before going on the injured list in April with a back injury.
The performance was poor enough for Cincinnati to cut him in a move that Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall described as a sunk cost.
For the Yankees, signing Candelario is a low-cost flier on a player who recorded an .807 OPS just two seasons ago as they seek to find a third baseman to move Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base, his natural position.
Candelario is the second veteran infielder the Yankees have signed to a minor league contract in the past three days; they agreed to terms with Nicky Lopez on Thursday.