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President Biden has not been shy in the past year about personalizing Russia’s war with Ukraine. He has called President Vladimir Putin a killer, levied sanctions on Putin’s friends and relatives, described him as tactically wrong to believe Russia could easily crush its neighbor and delusional for craving a revival of Russia’s autocratic past.
The vastly different world views of Biden and Putin are vividly apparent today amid an increasingly direct contest, The New York Times reports. With high stakes and an unclear path to victory, Putin used a state-of-the-nation address in Moscow at noon local time to accuse the West of trying to destroy Russia by stoking war (Reuters).
Biden is set to speak later today from the Royal Castle in Warsaw. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the president will deliver an “affirmative statement of values,” not a head-to-head rebuttal to Putin’s grievances. “There’s a kind of absurdity in the notion that Russia was under some form of military threat from Ukraine or anyone else,” Sullivan added (CNN).
The Russian president said his country’s economy has withstood sanctions, accusing Western nations of seeking to set post-Soviet countries on fire through means of economic suppression (FirstPost live blog).
Speaking in an enormous hall in front of an audience of parliamentary and military leaders, Putin said Russia will continue its war with Ukraine while seeking to defeat what he claimed is the West’s determination to crush his country. Putin said the Russian people support opposition to aggressors in the West and he railed against same-sex marriage and “corrupt” values.
“Even paedophilia is announced as a normal thing” in the West, he remarked (Independent).
▪ CNN: Russian forces have made incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, analysis from the Institute for the Study of War suggests.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: During one year of war with Ukraine, Russia’s armed forces have sustained up to 60,000 fatalities and up to 200,000 combined dead and injured, including military and paramilitary, according to estimates by the United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry.
▪ The New York Times: Moscow sends poorly trained recruits, including convicts, to the front lines in eastern Ukraine with a strategy to pave the way for more seasoned fighters, U.S. and allied officials say.
After Biden’s five hours on the ground in Ukraine, which Russian state television presented as a publicity stunt, Putin had been expected to flip the global script, portraying Russia as the West’s intended victim and war with Ukraine as a valiant, patriotic cause.
▪ The Hill’s Niall Stanage, The Memo: Five takeaways from Biden’s trip to Ukraine.
▪ The Atlantic, by Eliot A. Cohen: The president’s visit to Ukraine was a gut punch to the Russian leader.
▪ The Guardian: Biden’s Ukraine trip undercuts Kremlin narrative of waning support among western allies.
After making his way from Poland on Monday to Kyiv under the cloak of darkness to stand under a blue sky with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky without the protection of a military base, Biden retraced his steps to Poland where he will deliver remarks this evening. He and Polish President Andrzej Duda will meet before flying back to Washington. Other allied leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, were also scheduled to visit Kyiv (Reuters).
The U.S. announced another $460 million in weapons and ammunition for Ukraine but made no mention of the advanced arms that Zelensky has asked for, including long-range weapons and fighter jets as it attempts to hold off a Russian offensive in the east.
▪ Politico Europe: The European Union wants to buy ammunition for Ukraine. Doing it will be harder.
▪ EU Observer: A new EU blacklist designed to mark a year of war names Russians accused of organizing mass abductions of Ukrainian children.
Biden’s message remains that the United States and European allies will stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes,” even as definitions of that timeline and military commitments vary among world leaders.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who speaks with Putin periodically, said during Saturday media interviews that Russia must be defeated in Ukraine but warned against “crushing” Russia (France 24). Macron favors a diplomatic solution, the shape of which is gossamer, while Zelensky pushes for the defeat and withdrawal of Russian forces from all regions of his country.
“I am convinced that, in the end, this will not conclude militarily,” Macron told two French newspapers and broadcaster France Inter. “I do not think, as some people do, that we must aim for a total defeat of Russia, attacking Russia on its own soil. Those observers want to, above all else, crush Russia. That has never been the position of France and it will never be our position,” he continued.
Zelensky, dressed in his customary khaki attire, lauded Biden for his clandestine trek to Kyiv, saluting him on Monday for championing “the liberty and democracy in the world.”
“This will be remembered eternally. And Ukraine is grateful to you, Mr. President, to all the U.S. citizens, to all those who cherish freedom just as we cherish them. Glory to our warriors. Glory to our allies. And glory to Ukraine.” — Ukrainian President Zelensky
Meanwhile, China on Monday bristled at the U.S. claim that Beijing is mulling sending “lethal support” to help Russia in its war with Ukraine. China accused the Biden administration of spreading lies and defended its close partnership with Russia (The New York Times).
Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, arrived in Moscow on Monday, according to Russian state media. He met briefly last week in Munich with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who warned against China’s involvement in helping Moscow’s war effort. Wang reportedly responded vaguely that China supports dialogue and an end to the war. A Kremlin spokesman said Wang may meet with Putin.
▪ Vox: The U.S.-China relationship is still a mess.
▪ PBS Frontline: Putin and the presidents (program transcript HERE).
Related Articles
▪ BNN Bloomberg: The Pentagon announced a package of $460 million in additional weapons and lethal assistance for Ukraine, including HIMARS ammunition, artillery rounds, about 2,000 anti-armor rockets, more Javelin anti-armor systems, air surveillance radars, four Bradley Infantry Fire Support Team vehicles, night-vision devices and other gear.
▪ Bloomberg News: The U.S. will impose new export controls and a fresh round of sanctions on Russia, targeting key industries a year after the invasion of Ukraine.
▪ The New York Times: Russian ally Belarus on Monday expelled Polish diplomats as the rift widens between neighbors.
▪ NBC News: Conservative House Republicans on Monday criticized Biden’s trip to Ukraine, arguing the president is neglecting domestic issues while abroad on Monday and Tuesday.
▪ The New York Times: As quickly as the national craziness over three downed objects began, the U.S. called off the search, leaving answers encased in Arctic ice and under the whitecaps of Lake Huron.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ POLITICS
The culture wars have entered the budget battle, as GOP leaders take aim at “woke” spending and Democrats push back with charges of bigotry, write The Hill’s Aris Folley and Mike Lillis. Republicans are beginning to sharpen the focus around areas of so-called “woke-waste” to target in the federal budget, ranging from funds for transgender immigrants in Los Angeles to a nature trail named for former first lady Michelle Obama in Georgia.
The items were included in a list unveiled earlier this month by Republicans on the House Budget Committee, which identified areas of “wasteful” spending GOP leaders are hoping to eliminate, saying they’re working to safeguard taxpayers from a federal government that’s abused its authority with efforts to promote “equity” and “inclusion,” typically on issues of race, gender and sexuality. Democrats are accusing GOP leaders of targeting minority benefit programs, not because they’re expensive, but because the fight energizes their conservative base.
“It’s very exemplary of their approach, which is a blend of cutting support to working-class families while also lacing in bigotry and racism,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), adding the real goal is “to distract from the actual economic impact, negative economic impact, that they’re having on working families.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) left the Sunshine State and traveled to Staten Island to give a speech on Monday about New York’s crime (ABC News) while simultaneously criticizing Biden for “neglecting” domestic issues while traveling to Ukraine and Poland Monday and Tuesday (The Hill). DeSantis on Monday took aim at New York City Mayor Eric Adams over New York City crime (Fox News).
DeSantis, a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, hinted on Fox & Friends Monday that he will decide on a presidential bid after the Florida legislative session ends this summer (The Hill).
The Hill: DeSantis hits back at 2024 Republicans who criticized him.
Ahead of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court primary today, The Hill’s Caroline Vakil has rounded up five key things to know, including candidates, turnout and issues — such as abortion and redistricting. The race may act as a bellwether for the 2024 elections.
▪ Wisconsin Public Radio: Money pours into Wisconsin Supreme Court race ahead of Feb. 21 primary.
▪ NBC News: Democrats see a prime chance to take control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
▪ Politico: He was once an illiterate teen running the streets. Now he’s running for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.
Three key figures connected to former President Trump are at the intersection of two accelerating Justice Department probes seen as the most viable pathways for a prosecution against the former president, The Hill’s Rebecca Betisch reports. Special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing what began as two entirely separate cases: the mishandling of classified records at Mar-a-Lago and the effort to influence the 2020 election that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
But several Trump-world figures straddle both events, providing prosecutors with what experts say is a potent opportunity to advance both investigations. Alex Cannon, Christina Bobb, and Kash Patel played different roles in the two sagas, but each has been contacted by the Justice Department in the documents dispute and has also been called in by the special House committee, now disbanded, that investigated the Jan. 6 riot.
Des Moines Register: Trump announces 2024 Iowa caucuses campaign staff with some familiar names.
➤ CONGRESS
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said ties between the U.S. and India are a “crucial counterweight to outcompete China” as he led a congressional delegation to New Delhi that met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “India is one of the leading powers of the world and a strong U.S.-India relationship is a must for democracy, technology advancement, and a strong world economy,” Schumer said in a statement. Among the countries’ shared strategic interests, he listed “outcompeting China, combating climate change, increasing trade and deepening bonds between our two countries.”
He was joined on the trip by fellow Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), among others. Modi said that it was “wonderful” to meet with the delegation and expressed appreciation for bipartisan congressional support on “deepening India-US ties anchored in shared democratic values and strong people-to-people ties.”
Schumer’s trip and comments about out-competing Beijing come amid heightened U.S.-China tensions; the Biden administration has made out-competing China a priority, emphasizing the importance of strengthening international alliances to make that happen (The Hill).
Meanwhile, a House delegation met with the head of Taiwan’s legislature on Monday as part of a five-day visit to the self-ruled island. The delegation, which arrived Sunday, includes Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) and Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.), and is expected to meet President Tsai Ing-wen as well as business leaders. On Monday, they held talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s founder Morris Chang, considered the father of the island’s chip industry (ABC News).
“Our efforts to come here are in no way provocative of China, but consistent with the president’s foreign policy that recognizes the importance of the relationship like Taiwan, while still seeking ultimately, peace in the region,” Khanna said.
▪ Bloomberg News: Republican delegation led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to meet with the president of the United Arab Emirates.
▪ Politico: What Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) tells world leaders about Biden.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has given Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, Axios reports. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks on programs hosted by Carlson, who has repeatedly questioned official accounts of Jan. 6, downplaying the insurrection as “vandalism.” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the former chairman of the select committee investigating the insurrection, on Monday criticized McCarthy for the decision.
“When the Select Committee obtained access to U.S. Capitol Police video footage, it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex,” Thompson said in a statement. “If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson — a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and Putin’s poisonous propaganda — and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.”
The New Republic: Why Is the most powerful member of the House handing over Jan. 6 footage to Tucker Carlson?
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ INTERNATIONAL
A strong earthquake and its aftershocks struck southern Turkey and Syria on Monday, causing buildings to collapse and killing at least eight people. The quake came just weeks after the region was devastated earlier this month by its worst seismic event in decades — which killed more than 47,000 people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. The new 6.4 magnitude earthquake shook the southern Turkish province of Hatay just after 8 p.m. local time, according to Turkey’s disaster management agency AFAD (Reuters and The Wall Street Journal).
Blinken on Sunday visited Turkey, touring earthquake damage by helicopter and U.S. military relief efforts at the Incirlik Air Base near Adana before announcing another $100 million in American aid to supplement the already-sent elite search-and-rescue teams, heavy equipment, $85 million in humanitarian aid and at least another $80 million in private donations. When it was first planned, Blinken’s trip promised to be a difficult, even contentious diplomatic visit, as Washington and Ankara have been at odds on several important issues — from Turkey’s ties to Russia to its refusal to allow Sweden and Finland to join NATO and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian drift. But the U.S.’s aid, as well as promises of support, have served to smooth over some of the more difficult parts of the countries’ relationship (The New York Times).
Nuclear inspectors in Iran have reportedly discovered uranium in the country that has been enriched to 84 percent purity — just below the level needed to develop nuclear weapons. Bloomberg News reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is investigating how Iran managed to enrich uranium to that level, which the report says is the highest level found by inspectors to date. To create a nuclear weapon, uranium must be enriched to at least 90 percent. A nuclear official in Iran denied the claim that the country had enriched uranium above 60 percent purity “so far,” and said that the claim was “a smear and a distortion of the fact.”
“We are in close contact with our partners following reports that Iran may have enriched uranium to levels over 80 percent,” a senior European diplomat told The Wall Street Journal. “If confirmed this would be an unprecedented and extremely grave development.”
▪ Reuters: IAEA says it is in discussions with Iran after reports of enrichment.
▪ i24 News: Iran denies “slanderous” reports it enriched Uranium above 60 percent.
OPINION
■ Jimmy Carter’s presidency was not what you think, by Kai Bird, guest essayist, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3xEamvM
■ Parsing Russian support for Putin’s war, by Ilan Berman, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3SirTmD
WHERE AND WHEN
📲 Ask The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.
The House will hold a pro forma session at noon.
The Senate meets in a pro forma session at 11 a.m.
The president is in Warsaw, Poland, where he meets today with President Andrzej Duda at 1:30 p.m. CET. The president will deliver a speech at 5:30 p.m. CET about Ukraine and allied support for the Ukrainian people and NATO, speaking from Warsaw’s Castle Gardens.
Vice President Harris is in Washington and has no public events.
The secretary of State is in Athens where he kicked off the U.S.-Greece Strategic Dialogue and met with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias. Blinken held a joint press conference with Dendias and met with Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras. The secretary this afternoon will tour ancient Athens with Greek Minister of Culture and Sports Lina Mendoni and plans to meet with Greek earthquake rescue workers, accompanied by Dendias and Minister for the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Christos Stylianides. Blinken at 2:30 p.m. local time will join a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Dendias, followed by greetings with employees and families of the U.S. embassy in Athens.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to Bengaluru, India, to participate in the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors.
Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo will speak at the Council on Foreign Relations at 10 a.m. ET and participate in a moderated conversation about sanctions against Russia. He will preview “additional steps the sanctions coalition will take” to counter evasion of restrictions aimed at Russia.
The Supreme Court at 10 a.m. will hear oral arguments in Reynaldo Gonzales et. al. v. Google LLC (SCOTUS blog and The Hill).
ELSEWHERE
➤ SPORTS
🏀 After being detained for 10 months in Russia, Brittney Griner fulfilled the promise she made to play for the Phoenix Mercury again in the 2023 season. Griner, a 32-year-old free agent, signed a one-year contract with the Mercury on Saturday, ESPN reports. She’ll return to the team that drafted her first overall in 2013 for a 10th season.
In addition to her career in the U.S., Griner played professional basketball in Russia. She was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February 2022 after Russian authorities said she was carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil. The State Department declared Griner to be “wrongfully detained.” After months of strained negotiations, Griner was released from Russian prison on Dec. 8 during a prisoner swap in which the WNBA star was exchanged in the United Arab Emirates for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
⛳ Tiger Woods played his best golf over the weekend since the car crash in February 2021 that threatened to end his career. He finished tied-45th at the Genesis Invitational in his first competitive outing since The Open Championship in July 2022. The 15-time major winner has played sparingly since sustaining serious leg injuries in the crash. Following his final round, Woods said his goal from now on is to play the four majors every year, but he doesn’t expect “to play too much more than that” (CNN).
“My body and my leg and my back just won’t allow me to play much more than that anymore,” he told CBS. “So that was my goal last year and I was able to play three of the four, and this year, I can hopefully play all four. That is going to be my schedule going forward because of all of the limitations I have.”
➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH
⚕️In a January study from the American Nurses Foundation 57 percent of 12,581 surveyed nurses said they had felt “exhausted” over the past two weeks, and 43 percent said they felt “burned out.” Just 20 percent said they felt valued. While burnout has always been a part of nursing, an effect of long working hours in physically and often emotionally taxing environments, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated those factors and added some of its own: understaffing, a rise in violence and hostility toward health care workers over masking mandates and an increase in deaths.
“Burnout and our current issues have been going on for decades,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, the president of the American Nurses Association, the umbrella group for the foundation. “So what did we learn from the last couple of years? That we need to make sure that we implement programs and processes to decrease the burnout and to improve the work environment. Because Covid is not the last pandemic, or the last major issue to happen.”
But for some, those changes may not come soon enough, as 43 percent of those surveyed said they were at least thinking about switching jobs (The New York Times).
▪ The New York Times: Helping stroke patients regain movement in their hands.
▪ The Washington Post: To stay healthy in old age, research finds building muscles is key.
▪ Forbes: Fifth man cured of HIV after stem cell transplant.
▪ The New York Times: A fraught new frontier in telehealth: Ketamine can be mind altering and getting it has become much easier.
😴 Do you ever fall asleep mid-conversation? Abruptly wake up feeling like you’re gasping? Disturb your partner with your snores? All may be signs of sleep apnea — a disorder in which the throat muscles relax and block the airway, causing breathing to temporarily stop multiple times during sleep — and getting diagnosis is critical because it’s the first step toward treatment, and better sleep (The Washington Post).
▪ The Hill: Is Bell’s palsy a side effect of COVID-19?
▪ The Wall Street Journal: Why the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. is still rising. The pandemic is less risky for most people, but America still sees hundreds of deaths daily.
Information about the availability of COVID-19 vaccine and booster shots can be found at Vaccines.gov.
Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,117,564. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,838 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)
THE CLOSER
And finally … Biden is not the only U.S. president who has traveled to dangerous war zones and battlefields while serving as commander in chief. Former President Obama surreptitiously flew to Kabul in Afghanistan in 2012 to mark the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death.
CNN: How the media almost blew Obama’s secret trip to Afghanistan in May 2012.
In 2003, former President George W. Bush flew secretly to Iraq to meet with troops and share a Thanksgiving meal.
In 1952, former President Eisenhower arrived in Korea and spent three days surveying troops there. To mask the outset of the trip for security reasons, the White House created the impression that Ike was in the country by unveiling Cabinet appointments from the president’s home.
▪ Business Insider: Here are five presidents in addition to Biden who knew how to pull off secret trips.
▪ National Geographic TV special (YouTube): Bush’s secret trip to Iraq.
▪ The Hill: How Biden’s unannounced trip to Ukraine came together.
▪ The New York Times: Trains, planes and automobiles: Biden’s whirlwind trip to Ukraine. Biden makes first wartime visit to Kyiv Peak flu season appears to have passed
Stay Engaged
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Sports
‘That place is a nightmare’: 30 years of Coors Field pitching horror stories
Published
1 hour agoon
April 29, 2025By
admin
Thirty years ago, the New York Mets and Colorado Rockies opened Coors Field on April 26,1995 in a game that would embody the beauty (if you’re a hitter) and absurdity (if you’re a pitcher) of the ballpark, when they combined for 20 runs and 33 hits in an 11-9, 14-inning Colorado win. It was just the beginning of a baseball experience like no other.
Standing 5,280 feet above sea level in Denver’s LoDo neighborhood, the picturesque ballpark is one of the sport’s gems, constantly ranking near the top of MLB stadium rankings and keeping the Rockies’ attendance among the league’s highest regardless of the home team’s record.
“Since 1995 I’ve been at nearly 95% of the games played at Coors Field,” owner Dick Monfort told ESPN last week. “Of all those thousands of games, my fondest memories are of a sold-out ballpark on an 85-degree day with no humidity, a beautiful sunset, and 50,000 men, women and kids soaking in the timeless magic of iconic Coors Field.”
But for the pitchers who have taken the mound at the stadium over the past three decades, Coors Field is something else: a house of horrors.
‘S—, the whole time there was a horror story, man,” said Marvin Freeman, who started 41 games for the Rockies over the first two years of the ballpark. “We called it arena baseball. It was like a pinball machine up in there sometimes. Balls were flying out of there. And you just had to make sure when you did leave Colorado you maintained some sanity because it could be hard on your mentality.”
To commemorate the anniversary of a launching pad like no other, we asked those who have pitched or taken the field at a place where breaking balls don’t break and a mistake left over the plate can travel 500 feet into the mountain air to share their best (er, worst) Coors Field horror stories.
A big swing haunts you: ‘It’s all part of the Coors experience’
On May 28, 2016, Carlos Estevez was less than a month into his major league career when he entered in the eighth inning against the San Francisco Giants with a daunting task: facing a future Hall of Famer in a one-run game.
Before Buster Posey stepped into the batter’s box, Estevez’s Colorado coaches and teammates gave the reliever some advice on how to approach the situation.
“I remember throwing a fastball away,” Estevez recently recalled to ESPN. “He could crush pitches close to him. ‘Stay safe. Go away. He’s going to single to right field, worst-case scenario.’ I’m new. The new guy was showing up.”
When Posey connected on a 96 mph fastball on the outer half of the plate with a 2-0 count, it momentarily appeared to Estevez that following the advice had paid off.
“I go [points in the air like pitchers do for popups]. It was one of those. The ball goes out. I didn’t even look anywhere else. I just kept my face down,” Estevez said. “Oh my god. That was so bad. After that, never again — unless I knew the ball was right on top of me. Man, that was bad. I felt so bad. The older guys, of course, made so much fun of me with that. Like, bro, you don’t know where you’re pitching.”
0:28
Flashback: Buster Posey cranks his second 3-run HR of the game
On May 28, 2016, Giants catcher Buster Posey takes Carlos Estevez deep for his second three-run homer of the game at Coors Field.
If Estevez can take solace in anything from that day, it is that his experience mirrors that of pitchers throughout the sport — just ask Ubaldo Jiménez, who had a run of stardom for the Rockies until being traded in 2011. “We were like, you can never point up, you can never think it is a fly ball, because it’s probably going to go out.”
Jerry Dipoto, Rockies reliever (1997-2000) and current Mariners general manager: I saw some of the longest home runs that a human can possibly hit. At the height of Mark McGwire, I watched him literally hit one over the scoreboard, which, if you have a chance and you stand at home plate, look at the left-field scoreboard, the Coke bottle that used to run alongside the scoreboard. He hit it over the Coke bottle, into the parking lot, through the windshield of Jerry McMorris, our owner, which was awesome.
Andrés Galarraga and Mike Piazza hit home runs over the center-field fence, over the forest in the rock waterfall up there, and up into the concourse that has like a 20-foot opening, looks like something out of “Star Wars,” and they were both line-drive missiles that probably only stopped because they hit something out in the concourse.
Ryne Nelson, opposing pitcher: I haven’t pitched there a ton, but C.J. Cron hit a ball that felt like it was 10 feet off the ground the whole way and it left the yard. So I’m not sure if it would’ve been a home run everywhere, but it was one of the more impressive home runs that I’ve given up.
Dipoto: I can remember giving up a homer to Henry Rodriguez to left field, one year when he was at the height of hitting homers. It was like a broken-bat, end-of-the-bat, oppo, what I thought was just a floater. It wound up in the wheelchair section out there.
Jeremy Guthrie, Rockies starter (2012): I was facing the Oakland Athletics. And they hit at least two, maybe three, upper-deck home runs. I was not under the impression they weren’t going to go out. Seeing balls go further and further and fans boo louder and louder, though — it’s all part of the Coors experience.
Dipoto: They had a row of seats in the upper deck in right field that was like a ring around the upper-deck seats, and it was a mile above sea level. An absurd distance beyond home plate.
I remember I had a really difficult time through the years with Ray Lankford. And Jeff Reed was catching me one day and I’m trying to get fastballs by Ray Lankford and I can’t get anything past him. It’s foul ball, foul ball, it feels like a 10-pitch AB. And he comes walking out. And every day in spring training, in my catch game, I’d throw a changeup. I didn’t actually have one or throw it in a game. It was just something to try to get some feel. Reeder came to the mound and said, “Hey, what do you think about just throwing that changeup?” I said, “I’ve never done it in a game, Reeder.”
He said, “Yeah, if you’ve never done it in a game, he won’t be expecting it either.” So I threw a changeup, and I actually threw it for a strike, and he hit it above the purple seats. It wound up going a mile. Like literally going a mile.
Tyler Anderson, Rockies starter (2016-19) and current Angels pitcher: My rookie year when I was called up … I remember there was a runner on first and two outs, which usually you feel pretty safe.
[Evan Longoria] hit like a line drive that got past the second baseman, where normally you’re like, “All right, there’s runners on first and third now.” And it just like rolled all the way to the wall. He got a triple and the runner scored from first. And I remember thinking to myself, How the heck is that a triple? Obviously I was pretty young in my pitching career, but I pitched a lot in college and the minor leagues, and that was never a triple. That was crazy. I remembered that. And I always thought pitching in Coors Field, it doesn’t matter if there’s only a runner on first, you’re never safe. Two outs, runner on first sometimes could feel safe, but it’s never safe.
Freeman: I always liked to say that every bad game that I had at Coors Field was because of Coors Field, not me. I usually fall back on that. But I do remember one particular case where I made it into the ninth inning, my son was going to be born the next day, and I was actually on the mound thinking about pitching my first complete game.
I ended up giving up a home run to Hal Morris. He hit an opposite-field home run on me. And Ellis Burks, I thought he was going to jump the fence and bring it back, but he didn’t catch it. And then I end up getting knocked out of the game in the ninth inning, and we subsequently end up losing that game, and my son was born the next day. That’s really the only game that sticks out to me … you gotta try and survive the next one.
ERAs turn into a scary sight: ‘That place is a nightmare’
Late in the 2023 season, then-Minnesota Twins reliever Caleb Thielbar boarded the plane to Colorado with something treasured by pitchers everywhere — an ERA starting with a 2.
With the Twins trailing 6-4 in the series opener, Thielbar was summoned from the bullpen to face Rockies star Charlie Blackmon. Thielbar retired the Colorado outfielder and left the outing with his sub-3.00 ERA still intact.
But the next day, with the Twins ahead 14-0, Thielbar entered the game in the bottom of the seventh inning — and his ERA wasn’t so lucky that time.
“It was my last outing of the year and I gave up back-to-back homers,” Thielbar told ESPN earlier this month. “And it bumped my ERA up over 3.00. And just one of those things that makes you mad and it stuck with me for a little bit.
“I don’t understand how to pitch there. For some reason, the Rockies have always kind of gotten me — no matter home or away — so they really got me there. But that place is a nightmare.”
Even though the back-to-back home runs hit by Colorado’s Elehuris Montero and Sean Bouchard pushed Thielbar’s ERA from 2.67 to a season-ending 3.23 mark, you’ll have to excuse some other pitchers who might not feel too badly for someone whose Coors Field horror story only involves allowing two runs.
Guthrie: I don’t know that I had any good outing at Coors. I know my ERA was 9.50 [at Coors] and 3.67 on the road that year. I really did want to pitch well there. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I went in with high hopes and a positive attitude. There aren’t as many people who go in with a good attitude as you hope. I really felt like the organization treated pitchers, and especially new pitchers, in a way where it’s almost inevitable you’re going to struggle. You need to change the way you prepare. You need to be aware of how your body is going to react at high altitude. Nothing felt different physically. I just pitched a lot worse.
Among the 223 pitchers with at least 40 innings at Coors, Guthrie’s 9.50 ERA is second worst, ahead of only Bryan Rekar, who posted a 10.16.
Walker Buehler, opposing pitcher: If you’re a starting pitcher and you normally go six, seven innings — going five innings there is some sort of accomplishment. I think honestly the toughest part from our side of it is not necessarily the home run, which a lot of people think it is. The field is so big. You give up a lot of hits you normally don’t give up.
On June 27, 2019, Buehler gave up 13 hits over 5⅔ innings at Coors, although the Dodgers won the game 12-8. Buehler gave up seven of the eight runs and his ERA rose from 2.96 to 3.43.
Honestly, it’s probably a top-five ballpark in baseball, but I just don’t think our game should be played at that kind of elevation. It legitimately changes the game. It’s just different. I don’t know if there’s some sort of f—ing dome vacuum technology thing we can get going there or what.
The scoreboard becomes a horror show: ‘Every game there is like a football game’
Sometimes it doesn’t matter who is on the mound at Coors Field, especially in the summer months when the days get warmer and the Rocky Mountain air gets even drier. An entire pitching staff can leave the ballpark with a battered ERA.
In fact, teams have averaged at least five runs per game at Coors Field in every season it has existed. Over that span, there were just three seasons since 1995 when the MLB average was 5.0 runs per game or more (1996, 1999 & 2000).
Even in the ballpark’s long history of scores that look like they belong in a football game, four-hour marathons of runners touching home plate and double-digit rallies, one series stands out from the crowd. Over four days on Father’s Day weekend of 2019, the Rockies and Padres combined to score 92 runs, setting a modern record for runs in a four-game series by surpassing a total set by the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers … in 1929.
“Every game was like 15 to 14 or something like that. We would take the lead and then they would take the lead and then they would take the lead back,” recalled Trevor Story, the Rockies’ shortstop from 2016 to 2021 and a current Red Sox infielder. “It was just back and forth the whole way. Every game of the series was this way, so it was just mentally exhausting. You felt like whoever hit last was going to win. I think we lost a series and it ended up, it was just kind of deflating because we put up all those runs. That series sticks out to me.”
The teams scored in double digits five times, six runs were the fewest for either team in any game, and the Padres’ team ERA jumped from 4.23 to 4.65 while the Rockies’ rose from 4.97 to 5.29.
“My god, that series against the Padres. PTSD still. Between both teams, we scored 92 runs in a four-game series. It was miserable,” Estevez said. “That series just ran through everyone. Everyone gave up runs. [Fernando] Tatis had an amazing series. I don’t know what he didn’t do. I mean, he didn’t pitch.”
While not every series is quite that extreme, almost anyone who has spent enough time at Coors Field has a similar story to tell.
Ryan Spilborghs, Rockies outfielder, 2005-11: One of my favorite memories of Coors Field was against the Cardinals. We were down 7-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning, and we ended up walking off the Cardinals. The best part of it was Tony La Russa. Threw his hat and broke his glasses. And so the next day, it was a Sunday and they didn’t have time to get his glasses fixed so you could see him. He got them taped. Looked like the Poindexter glasses. So we’re just loving it. We’re like, “Hey, we broke La Russa’s glasses.”
Bruce Bochy, opposing manager: We had a game in which Bob Tewksbury started great, six or seven good innings. I had to take him out when we were ahead 9-2, and Willie Blair went in and we lost 13-12.
Dan O’Dowd, Rockies general manager, 1999-2014: You’d give up five or six runs, and you’d be like — ah, no problem. You never felt like you were out of it.
Clint Hurdle, Colorado Rockies manager, 2002-09, and current hitting coach: It’s almost like when we were playing street basketball. You get your two teams together. Last bucket wins, right? That’s what I realized early on. But it was going to be a blessing and a curse because your position players actually started believing we’re never out of it.
Jack Corrigan, Rockies radio broadcaster: Even with the humidor and everything else, the outfield’s the biggest in baseball, the wind — I think sometimes that’s why it’s a great place to watch a game. The Rockies might be a bad team that particular year or whatever, but it might be a heck of a game.
Trevor Hoffman, opposing pitcher: Every game there is like a football game. The offense always has a chance. I cannot imagine playing 81 games a year like that.
The altitude goes to your head: ‘This is not baseball’
Jim Leyland took the job as Rockies manager in 1999 coming off a sustained run of success in Pittsburgh and Miami — and lasted only a year. Buck Showalter managed the opposing Diamondbacks in one of Leyland’s final games in Colorado, and after the game, Leyland told him he was finished. “He said, ‘I’m out of here. You can’t win here.’ He was done,” Showalter recalled over the weekend. “He said, ‘I love the game, I want to manage baseball. This is not baseball.'”
Near the end of that season, Leyland turned to then-first-year general manager Dan O’Dowd and said, “Do you have any f—ing idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
O’Dowd stayed with the organization through the 2014 season and was constantly racking his brain for ways to manage the unusual circumstances in Colorado.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, he says he would try the model that the Rays use: build around player development, and then, when young players are at their peak trade value, flip them for a big return. “I’d have waves and waves of depth — power arms, strike throwers and athletic guys.”
Showalter was heavily involved in the planning and building of another expansion team of that era, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and wonders how the pitcher-centric approach would work sustainably at Coors Field. If you were running the Rockies, he said, “You’d have to develop your own pitchers. You’d take pitchers in all 20 rounds. You’d have to be three layers deep.”
The longtime manager also noticed during his time competing against the Rockies that there was always some new idea on how to conquer Coors Field.
“It seems like everybody has had some magic potion [to deal with the elevation], but none of them worked,” Showalter said. “It wore on you physically to play games there.
“What they should do is put a 40-foot-high jai alai wall and play it off the fence, and use four outfielders.”
O’Dowd’s attempts to reinvent baseball at altitude were never that extreme, but he did oversee the deployment of the ballpark’s humidor in 2002, and looking back, he “almost wishes I hadn’t.” In some ways, it mitigated the home-field advantage that the Rockies had in the early days of the ballpark — and he believes that in order for the Rockies to have success, they have to thrive at home, because the inherent closer-to-sea-level or at-sea-level conditions in road games will always be a disadvantage for the team.
“We were looking for a way to normalize the game. … In hindsight, it would’ve been better to not have it.”
Bud Black, Rockies manager, 2017-present: Other managers, coaches come to me. I’m sure they came to Baylor. Leyland quit after one year. They say, “How do you do it? How can you hang in there?” I just know that when I was with the Padres and we’d come in, our hitters were like, “Yes!” Our pitchers were like, “Oh, s—.” You can see pitchers visibly rattled.
Freeman: It wasn’t just the Rockies. It was the visitors. Some of them guys that came in, they were coming up with mysterious injuries for three days when they came in for a series with the Rockies, man. I know for a fact some of my Braves buddies used to ask me all the time, “How do you guys survive mentally out here?” We’re like, “We just look forward to going on the road when it’s our time to pitch.”
Bochy: They had one of those smoke shops by the ballpark. I always said they put that there for the managers, to stop there and get something that would get them through the game.
It’s a different game — a totally different game. It’s a beautiful ballpark, with the architecture, the Rockpile, everything they have there. But it changed how you played the game. You had to manage a little bit different, stay with your starting pitchers a little longer because you could really tear up your bullpen over a series.
LaTroy Hawkins, Rockies reliever, 2007, 2014-15: I think because they let the elements intimidate them. They’re mind-f—ed already, before they even get there and before they even take the mound. They’re already mind-f—ed. And that’s not having a positive attitude about the situation. Hey, everybody else pitches in this stadium. Everybody else. I’m going to have to pitch in it too. Let me go in it with a positive mental approach — PMA — a positive mental approach to Coors Field. And that’s how I got through it.
Kyle Freeland, Rockies starter, 2017-present: It is not an easy place to pitch. It comes with its factors with the altitude, the dryness, how hard it is to recover in that environment that guys throughout the rest of the league don’t understand until they come to Coors for a four-game series and they realize their body feels like crap on Day 2, and that’s a big factor.
Shawn Estes, Rockies starter, 2004: You always looked at the calendar when the schedule opened and you knew when you were going to pitch and when you’re not going to pitch. So you know you have three trips into Coors and you have a pretty good idea if you’re going to pitch in any of those series. Put it this way, if you find out you’re not pitching for three games there, it’s probably the best road trip you take of the year.
Dipoto: I remember the first or second year of interleague [games], John Wetteland, who at that time was one of the best closers in the league, comes in and blows a save. He was really fighting himself. And the next day, he comes out and gets ready to walk in from the visitors bullpen and he [knocks] on the cage, and he looks at us all getting ready for the start of the game, and he says, “I have to know, how do you guys do this?” And everybody told him the same thing: “Short memory, man. You just have to move on.”
Ubaldo Jimenez, Rockies starter, 2006-11: Colorado is a different monster than anything else. If you go out there for a couple innings and you start throwing, I don’t know, 20, 25 pitches, you’re probably going to be out of breath right away. If you run to cover first base, when you go back to the mound, you’re going to feel the difference.
I wanted to be out there regardless of how difficult it was. I wanted to be out there for the fans. It made me develop; it made me be a better pitcher because I work hard. I work really hard. I worked so hard, running-wise and conditioning-wise. I remember I used to do the stairs in the stadium, or I used to go to Red Rocks Amphitheatre that’s like 20 minutes away from Denver, like going to the mountains. Rocky is the one who inspired me for sure. Every time I had to run in the mountains, I ran — I just didn’t chase the chicken. Other than that, I did pretty much everything Rocky did just to get ready for Coors Field.
Your stuff disappears in thin air: ‘They tell you to keep it down, don’t listen’
Pitchers are taught to “trust their stuff” from the time they first pick up a baseball, but at Coors Field, they learn quickly that pitches don’t do what’s expected.
During Dipoto’s four seasons in Colorado, Rockies relievers bonded over the shared experience of sitting beyond the outfield walls while waiting to go in and find out how their stuff would fare on a given night.
“There’s a storage room in the back of the bullpen at Coors Field, where during the course of a game — because you’re so far out, I mean, it’s the biggest field in the league — we would sit because we had a small TV at that time that would allow us to see what was happening in the game. … There’s these brick walls, painted brick walls. Every reliever had his own brick, and you got to write a message to all the relievers that came after you. It was related to the ballpark, some of the challenges. It was almost like a yearbook, but it was, in theory, preserved forever because it was on a brick wall.
“The trick was you weren’t allowed to have a brick until you gave up four runs in an inning. And everybody had a brick. So this was going on for like five years, and everybody who had come and gone had their own brick, even guys who were kind of small-time then. And [general manager] Bob Gebhard walked in one day and saw the messages on the wall and got angry with the relievers for writing on the wall and had the grounds crew paint over it. All of a sudden what was really something special that you could pass along from generation to generation, and mostly just laugh it off, like you have to be able to laugh at that, got covered over.
“My brick was something along the lines of, ‘They tell you to keep it down — don’t listen.’
“I went to Colorado. And the first thing — Billy Swift was one of our starters. And I walked into the clubhouse; we shared an agent. Billy shook my hand and he said, ‘Sinkerballer, right?’ And I said ‘yeah.’
“He said ‘Good luck, bro. It doesn’t work.'”
Even when the humidor was added after Dipoto’s time in Colorado, pitchers routinely saw their trusted pitch mixes abandon them at high altitude.
Spilborghs: A couple of years ago, they had to repaint in the bullpen [again], but if you went into the bullpen before, all there, all these great names of pitchers like Huston Street, Tito Fuentes, literally all these great bullpen arms, and they’d have their line — a third of an inning, nine hits, nine runs — written on the wall. Just to prove to you that Coors Field would get everybody.
Estevez: What you’re used to, it doesn’t work up there. If you’re a big sweeper guy, the sweeper doesn’t do anything, it just spins. Guys that are not up there for a long time, they go, like, “Man, my sweeper is off today.”
No, bro, it’s not. It’s just Coors Field. You’re fine. Trust me. That’s the thing. Even your fastball doesn’t ride as much. What plays better over there is changeups. It’s hard to find what truly works over there. For me, you’ve got to find the consistency.
Zack Wheeler, opposing pitcher: I’ve been lucky to miss it a bunch, thankfully. I did get roughed up there early in my career, but you hear about breaking stuff not breaking like it should. The ball flies, of course. When I made the All-Star team in 2021, when the game was there, the bullpen catcher told me to break out my changeup if I had a good one. I didn’t know about that until he told me. So now I tell everyone that I know, “Hey, if you have a good changeup, use it.”
Anderson: The ball flies, your stuff doesn’t move. When you throw two-seams, sometimes they cut. So if you’re a two-seam guy — like you know the seam-shift, right? I think what’s happening with some of these two-seams is they’re a seam-shift to two-seam where the seam catches, then it gets to two-seam. And maybe because the air is thinner it doesn’t have the same catch. So it just cuts instead.
Hoffman: The thing that I remember about pitching in Coors is that you just couldn’t feel the baseball.
The former star reliever tried different methods to get some moisture onto his hands to rub up the ball. Saliva didn’t work, because he would be dried out — it’d be like spitting cotton balls, he said. Remnants from chewing gum could make the surface too tacky.
Hoffman is in the Hall of Fame largely because of the excellence of a straight changeup that he threw — and when he pitched at Coors, it just wasn’t the same changeup.
The velocity was the same, but the pitch just didn’t have the same depth. I threw some good ones, but sometimes the changeup would just sit there, like it was on a tee.
Of course, it was Hoffman’s Padres teammate, Jake Peavy, who took the mound in the most famous game in Coors Field history — Game 163 of the 2007 MLB season.
Late in the regular season, the Padres were fighting to clinch a playoff spot and knew in the last weekend that if they tied the Rockies, necessitating a play-in game, the tiebreaker would be held in Coors Field. Needing just one win to wrap up a berth, the Padres lost on Saturday — and Jake Peavy met with manager Bud Black and general manager Kevin Towers and lobbied hard for them to let him pitch the next day in Milwaukee. Peavy begged Black and Towers to let him pitch Game 162 in Milwaukee on Sunday, and he thought that Towers would back him. But Peavy was overruled: Black and Towers hoped that the Padres would clinch without Peavy, so they could line him up against the Phillies’ Cole Hamels in Game 1 of the playoffs. Instead, the Padres lost Sunday, and Peavy started Game 163 in Colorado.
Peavy: I’ve been part of a lot of great games there, but that place is not baseball. It’s a different game than anywhere else. I was a sinker-slider guy, but I didn’t use the sinker there; I couldn’t. Because half the time the ball would cut and go the opposite way.
That team was hotter than anybody on the planet, and [the elevation] took my sinker away from me — and I didn’t have that against Holliday, Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki. That’s a huge weapon taken away.
What happened in Game 163 was classic Coors: Colorado led 3-0, fell behind 5-3, the two sides swapping the lead back and forth. Peavy allowed six runs in 6⅓ innings. The Padres took an 8-6 lead in the top of 13th, and in the bottom of the inning, the Rockies scored three to win 9-8 on Matt Holliday’s famous slide. Peavy has never looked at a replay of the close game-ending play at home plate.
What’s the point?” Once he’s called safe, it doesn’t matter anymore. We didn’t have replay back then.
Slaying the Coors Field monster: ‘My first time pitching at Coors was unbelievable’
Yet despite all of the horror stories, some pitchers have managed to succeed at Coors Field, whether for a single start or a sustained period — and speak of their experience in the same conquering manner a mountain climber would after scaling a hallowed peak.
Shawn Estes was well-versed in pitching at Coors Field when he joined the Rockies for the 2004 season, having spent the first seven seasons of his career with the division-rival San Francisco Giants. Though his 5.84 ERA was the worst of any full season during his 13-year career, he also won 15 games for the Rockies during his lone season in Denver, and he credits a mindset shift for helping him succeed.
“As a [Rockies] player pitching in Coors Field, I could care less what my ERA was. That wasn’t my mentality at all. It was about winning. And fortunately I had enough years of playing against the Rockies in Coors Field where I knew exactly what I was getting into.
“It was really trying to get through five innings, minimize the damage and know that your offense is going to score runs as well. As a visiting player, it was all about survival when you went to Coors Field and just trying to somehow get through the meat of that order with as little the damage as possible.”
But of the 34 starts he made for the Rockies in 2004 (15 of them in Colorado), it was the last time he took the mound at Coors Field in a home uniform that still resonates most for Estes, because he outdueled a Hall of Famer — and even registered a base hit off him.
“I remember beating Randy Johnson there for my 15th win in 2004. And I got a hit off him. Yep, I threw seven innings. That was probably my best game that season when you consider everything.”
Estes is not the only one who looks back with fondness at the times he stood tall at the game’s highest elevation.
Mark Leiter Jr., opposing pitcher: My first time pitching at Coors was unbelievable. I punched out nine in four innings. Second time I pitched at Coors, struck out five in the first two innings and it was early in the season so I got tired. I would say the thing about Coors is it definitely fatigues you a little more. That’s definitely real. And I think you have to be precise — like, you can’t have lazy finishes.
I feel like the second you change how you’re pitching because it’s there, you lose out on your flow. And that’s where I think guys get intimidated, if I had the right way to put it. Just being more selective and careful of your off-speed puts you probably in more of a defensive mode.
Jeremy Hefner, opposing pitcher: The game I pitched well, I think it was a makeup of a snowout earlier in the year. So we were somewhere, had to fly to Colorado for one day, and I end up making the start. I gave up a homer right down the left-field line to Tulo. I think CarGo [Carlos Gonzalez] may have hit a double or a hard hit. I got an RBI groundout — bases-loaded RBI groundout. I remember it being very sunny. The opposite of when we came earlier in the season.
Blake Snell, opposing pitcher: I can’t remember just one [horror story] but I can remember the opposite of one. July 19, 2016. My first game there. I gave up one hit. I was young and naïve. I’ve never pitched well there since.
When asked “What do you think of first when you think of Coors Field?” Snell paused before summing up what’s on the minds of many pitchers as they arrive in Colorado’s thin air.
When we fly out.
UK
Woman dies in skydiving incident in County Durham
Published
1 hour agoon
April 29, 2025By
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A woman has died in a skydiving incident in County Durham.
Emergency crews were called to Wreford’s Farm in Shotton Colliery, near Peterlee, on Sunday morning.
The woman, aged in her 30s, was pronounced dead at the scene.
A Durham Constabulary spokesperson said the woman’s death is not being treated as suspicious and a file will be prepared for the coroner.
North East Ambulance Service said it was called to the incident at 10.17am on Sunday.
“We dispatched one ambulance crew and one specialist paramedic to the incident,” a spokesperson added.
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Wreford’s Farm is described on its website as a “small, family run farm” which produces pork and beef using “regenerative agriculture”.
UK
No criminal charges over death of ice hockey player Adam Johnson whose neck was cut by opponent’s skate
Published
1 hour agoon
April 29, 2025By
admin
No criminal charges will be brought over the death of an ice hockey player who died during a match in Sheffield, prosecutors have announced.
Nottingham Panthers’ Adam Johnson died in October 2023 after his neck was cut by an opposition player’s skate during a match at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena.
The Sheffield Steelers player, Matthew Petgrave, was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and later bailed – but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has now said it will not bring criminal charges against the Canadian.
Michael Quinn, deputy chief crown prosecutor, said: “This was a shocking and deeply upsetting incident. The CPS and South Yorkshire Police have worked closely together to determine whether any criminal charges should be brought against the other ice hockey player involved.
“Following a thorough police investigation and a comprehensive review of all the evidence by the CPS, we have concluded that there is not a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offence and so there will not be a prosecution.
“Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Adam Johnson.”

Tributes were left outside the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham following the ice hockey player’s death. Pic PA
Before joining Nottingham Panthers, the Minnesota-born Johnson played in Pennsylvania for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Sweden for the Malmo Redhawks.
He also played in California for Ontario Reign and in Germany for Augsburger Panther.
A post-mortem examination confirmed the 29-year-old died as a result of the fatal neck injury.
The crowd of 8,000 spectators watched in horror as desperate attempts were made to save his life as he lay on the ice, shielded by fellow players.
The game was abandoned and spectators were asked to leave in the aftermath.

Pic PA
Kari Johnson, Johnson’s aunt, was watching the match via a livestream with his father and grandmother when he was fatally injured.
Speaking to Sky News at the time, Ms Johnson said: “It was a mess, it was a nightmare, it was like it wasn’t real. We were in shock, we couldn’t believe this was happening.”
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Kari Johnson said her nephew was ‘a kind soul’
Ms Johnson described her nephew as a “kind soul” and a “private kid” who “never would have wanted to be in the limelight like this”.
He simply wanted to be “good at hockey and have fun”, she said, adding he was “having the time of his life in the UK” and was planning to get engaged to his girlfriend.
Read more from Sky News:
Woman dies in skydiving incident
Two men went on ‘moronic mission’ to fell famous tree, jury told
In January 2024, Sheffield’s senior coroner, Tanyka Rawden, suspended her investigation while the police inquiry took its course.
It later emerged that Ms Rawden had issued a Prevention of Future Deaths Report to Ice Hockey UK and the English Ice Hockey Association (EIHA) about the use of neck guards in the sport.
In the report, Ms Rawden said she was “sufficiently concerned that deaths may occur in the future if neck guards or protectors are not worn”, with the bodies given 56 days to say what action had been taken – or why action had not been taken.
Neck guards have been mandatory in the Elite League (EIHL), in which the Nottingham Panthers and Sheffield Steelers compete, since January 2024.
This followed the International Ice Hockey Federation’s decision in December to mandate the use of neck laceration protectors for its competitions.
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