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PHOENIX — NICOLE HAZEN just wanted it to feel like Christmas. It was the winter of 2020, six months after she had suffered a seizure that uncovered a cancerous brain tumor, and Nicole was seeking reminders of her festive childhood holidays in the Cleveland suburbs. Her husband, Mike, had always refused to climb atop their roof to install lights. But this time he offered a compromise. “We’ll pay somebody,” Mike, the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ general manager, told her. Nicole had a better idea:

Torey Lovullo would do it for free.

Lovullo spends about three-quarters of his year obsessing over his full-time job as the Diamondbacks’ field manager. Much of the rest is dedicated to another passion — meticulously decorating his Scottsdale home with various Christmas-themed accouterments, a fixation that has reached Clark Griswold levels of exorbitance. In 2019, he rented an aerial lift and overcame a slight fear of heights to outfit his palms with fluorescent lights 40 feet above the ground. Near the end of 2020, Lovullo promised he would take care of Nicole’s lights, too.

She wanted something simple, elegant, so he lined the roof of her Arcadia home with white bulbs, then took them down shortly after the start of 2021. As the year progressed, Nicole’s condition rapidly worsened. Treatments did not take; clinical trials were unsuccessful. It was becoming increasingly clear that glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer with a survival rate of less than two years, would soon take her life. And so Lovullo made her a promise: Every year, he’ll be in charge of the Christmas lights at the Hazen house.

He went through the process again in December 2021, upgrading the hooks, replacing faulty bulbs, hiding stray extension cords and setting up a timer to keep them all on schedule. When it was time to take them down again, Mike — Torey’s best friend in baseball over these last 20 years, his boss for the last seven — stopped him. “Leave them up year-round,” he told him.

They turned on every night in 2022, up to and after Nicole’s death that August.

They haven’t shut off since.

“They’re up right now,” Lovullo said the weekend before he led the Diamondbacks into the National League Championship Series. “They’ll stay up for the rest of our lives.”


LOVULLO AND HAZEN have what Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall believes to be “more than a working relationship,” one strengthened by hardship and built on brutal honesty. It now sets the tone for an entire organization.

“When a true partnership exists,” Hall wrote in an email, “it can be magical.”

Before the breakthrough 2023 season that saw their young, scrappy Diamondbacks sneak into the playoffs, race past the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild-card round and sweep the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers in the division series; before the 110-loss 2021 season that tested their relationship like never before; before the tragedy around Nicole that changed the dynamic between the two of them forever — there was an old farmhouse on a massive tobacco field in a North Carolina town called Kinston.

It was the summer of 2004. Lovullo, by then approaching 40, was managing the Cleveland Indians’ Class A affiliate in the area and rented a home that was big enough to house his kids when they came to visit. Hazen, who was in his late 20s, had been promoted as Cleveland’s assistant director of player development and stopped by at least twice a month to watch some of the younger players. The team’s other roving instructors — a group that included current Pittsburgh Pirates manager Derek Shelton — routinely joined him, often sleeping over. The front porch became their haven. They talked late into the night, drinking beers and smoking cigars and sampling whatever infused vodka Lovullo kept in his pantry. They usually stayed hungry.

“The only thing I remember from his house was there was no food in it,” Hazen said. “The refrigerator had candy — the s—iest candy you could ever find. You get hungry at night, and all the guy had in his house was candy. So you had to go to the freezer and eat Kit Kats.”

Lovullo is from Los Angeles, the son of a man who produced the immensely popular, long-running television variety show “Hee Haw.” Lovullo was laid back, calm, low-key, and he found himself drawn to Hazen, who grew up near Boston and was noticeably intense, hard-edged, animated. Their personalities fit the stereotypes of the cities that shaped them. It was obvious early on that, despite an 11-year age gap, they meshed.

“He’s very similar to the people that, as I was growing up, that I would spend most of my time with,” Lovullo said. “I tend to be a little bit boring, I tend to be very vanilla, and I like to be the audience and let somebody else more or less entertain me, and I think that’s how our conversations went. I was intrigued by him, and I liked being around him — because of his wit, because of his intelligence, because of his kindness.”

Lovullo, a major league infielder for more than a decade, continued managing in Cleveland’s minor league system until 2009, then joined the Boston Red Sox‘s Triple-A affiliate in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for a year. He spent the next two seasons as the Toronto Blue Jays‘ first-base coach, and throughout, he and Hazen remained close. When Lovullo returned to the Red Sox as their major league bench coach in 2013, Hazen was in his eighth year in Boston’s front office, working as an assistant general manager under then-GM Ben Cherington.

Three years later, in October 2016, Hazen was given his first opportunity to run a baseball operations department when the Diamondbacks hired him as their executive vice president and GM.

Less than a month later, in a move that had been widely anticipated from the outset, Hazen hired Lovullo to be his manager, choosing him over a list of candidates that included Alex Cora and Phil Nevin.

“I knew that a major component of this job was the relationship between the manager and the front office,” Hazen said. “And I worked with him for so long, in so many different capacities, that I felt like I knew almost everything about him on a personal level.”


LAST WEEK, HAZEN sat in a suite at Chase Field in Phoenix and took a moment to appreciate the circumstances. Two years ago, his team finished tied for the worst record in the sport. Now it was the middle of October, a time when Hazen is usually leading meetings steered toward the upcoming offseason, and the Diamondbacks were preparing for another postseason round, a mere four wins away from their first pennant in 22 years.

He has become better at appreciating that sort of thing.

“We’re focused on beating the Phillies right now,” Hazen said, “but I have not lost sight, one iota, of where we’re standing right now.”

The Diamondbacks put together a winning record in Hazen’s and Lovullo’s first three years together from 2017 to 2019, but they flopped during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and finished a whopping 55 games out of first place in 2021. Hazen spent most of that year juggling the demands of his job while caring for his four sons and accompanying his ailing wife to the hospital. He called them his “darkest days.”

Lovullo’s darkest day arrived on Sept. 19, 2021. It was a Sunday getaway day in Houston, the morning before the Diamondbacks’ 101st loss in 149 games, and Lovullo was screaming at Hazen through his cellphone.

Intense arguments were nothing new for Lovullo and Hazen by then. They quibbled over countless trivial issues and had it out over bigger roster decisions. But the arguments never got personal and the anger they triggered never lingered. Hazen recalled only two instances in which a heated discussion even necessitated a follow-up phone call. They knew how to have a fight.

This time, though, it was different.

The Diamondbacks were terrible, and it wasn’t on purpose.

“We weren’t trying to tank,” D-backs assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye said. “We were trying to put a team together to win.”

They lost 17 in a row in June and allowed 22 runs in one night on July 10. By the start of September, they sat 44 games below .500. With two weeks remaining in their season, Hazen’s mind had already shifted to the following year. But Lovullo’s contract remained unsettled at a time when fans were clamoring for his firing. That day, during a heated phone conversation, “it all came to a head,” Lovullo said.

“I snapped at him. I legitimately snapped at him.”

Lovullo can still recall the details from that morning. He remembers what he wore and where he stood. He remembers chastising Hazen for never having his back. And he remembers retreating to the stands at Minute Maid Park shortly thereafter and sobbing. “It was an ugly moment personally for me,” Lovullo said. He had made it about himself, at a time when Hazen was navigating through unspeakable tragedy, and he made claims he knew to be untrue.

“In reality,” Lovullo said, “he always had my back.”

Four days after the most heated exchange of their time together, Lovullo signed a contract extension. Hazen had consistently placed the shortcomings of that year squarely on his own roster construction. Firing Lovullo never actually crossed his mind.

“I would’ve gone out and tried to replace Torey with Torey,” Hazen said. “That didn’t seem very smart.”

Barely two years later, the Diamondbacks — trailing the Philadelphia Phillies 2-0 with the best-of-seven series shifting back to Arizona for three straight games — are the first team in the 54-year history of the league championship series to reach that round within two years of losing at least 110 games, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

The core of their team was built through successful drafts (of Corbin Carroll, Alek Thomas and Brandon Pfaadt in particular), savvy trades (Ketel Marte from the Seattle Mariners, Zac Gallen from the Miami Marlins, Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. from the Blue Jays) and shrewd acquisitions (Christian Walker was plucked off waivers, Merrill Kelly was signed out of South Korea). But their turnaround, many will say, was sparked by the authenticity of Lovullo’s and Hazen’s relationship and the effective problem-solving it produced under difficult circumstances.

Lovullo apologized days after his blowup, but Hazen deemed it unnecessary. By the end, the 2021 season had seen both men gain a deeper appreciation for one another. Hazen was in awe of the consistency Lovullo showed in the midst of a torturous season. Lovullo will never forget the poise with which Hazen handled the unthinkable.

“I just admired how, in the face of so much adversity and so much unknown, something so personal to him, he posted, showed up, brought the same passion every single day,” Lovullo said. “He cared for people at a time when he shouldn’t be caring for anybody else. I would leave my office sometimes and I’d be like, ‘Am I seeing this right? He just came in and talked about A, B, C and D, and I can’t believe he’s actually paying attention to that when he should be paying attention to nothing but his wife.’ The way he separated it, he was everybody’s hero. He defined the word ‘courage.'”


KRISTEN LOVULLO AND Nicole Hazen met through their husbands, but they bonded over raising boys and navigating the tumultuous schedules of their significant others. When Torey and Mike were off running a baseball team, Kristen, Nicole and their children were often together.

“We were unintentionally put together, and then we just made it happen ourselves,” Kristen said in a phone conversation. “Our friendship flourished on its own.”

Nicole first suffered a seizure in May 2020 and received a definitive diagnosis of glioblastoma about two months later, after multiple MRIs. In August, doctors surgically removed as much of her cancerous tumor as they could, triggering six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation. Over the better part of the next two years, Nicole underwent three craniotomies and three different drug therapies in an effort to slow the advancement of her tumor. Her resolve hardly wavered, even as her condition worsened.

Over the last few months of her life, Kristen barely left her side.

“It wasn’t necessarily a responsibility that I saw it as; I saw it as just time with my friend,” Kristen said. “It was extra time that I got with her, that I wouldn’t ever be able to get back. I needed that.”

Nicole died on Aug. 4, 2022, at the age of 45, shortly after she and Mike celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary. She was remembered in the days after as a dedicated mother, a supportive wife and a passionate educator, teaching middle school English more than a year after her initial diagnosis. Her personality, according to those who knew her, was magnetic.

When Hazen thinks about Nicole’s illness, he also thinks about the people who formed a community around her. It replaces some of the sorrow with gratitude. He thinks about his bosses, Hall and principal owner Ken Kendrick, who gave him the freedom of unlimited time off, even though he didn’t necessarily take it. He thinks about his front-office executives, namely Sawdaye and Mike Fitzgerald, who picked up so much of the slack while he worked from home. And he thinks about Torey and Kristen, who basically dedicated their lives to his family.

“I don’t know how to express that gratitude to them ever,” Hazen said. “I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I’ll never be able to say anything other than ‘thank you.’ A billion times.”

Hazen’s goal in 2021 was to maintain normalcy. Baseball had been a central part of his entire relationship with Nicole, and she wanted to keep it that way. Later, after Nicole lost her ability to speak and eventually began hospice care, Hazen’s focus shifted to his boys, all between the ages of 13 and 17. Hazen was ready to give up his job to raise them full-time. He left it up to them.

“If they had wanted me to stop,” Hazen said, “I would’ve stopped.”

But they all wanted him to keep going, and they found it weird that he would even ask.

“They’ve grown up in baseball, through the Red Sox, through here,” Sawdaye said. “I think if he left and, whatever, took a job in the private sector, his boys would be really disappointed.”

Hazen has spent the 2023 season carving out the type of schedule that would allow him to be everything to everyone. On most weekdays, he’ll pick his sons up from school and cook them dinner and help with their homework and watch the Diamondbacks’ games from his living room. He’ll still come into the office when needed, and he weighs in on every baseball decision, but he’ll leave most of the logistics for Sawdaye and Fitzgerald and the rest of his staff to sort out in person. He’s learning how to separate.

“I’m not going to have my 13-year-old put himself to bed,” Hazen said.

On Sunday afternoons during homestands and throughout the offseason, Hazen’s house is a gathering place. Sawdaye, Fitzgerald and any other front-office members in the neighborhood stop in at 5 p.m. and bring their kids. Often, Lovullo and his wife will make the short drive over, too. Nicole loved to cook. Now Mike is the one trying out different recipes.

Hazen often finds himself second-guessing whether he did right by his kids in returning to work. He’s comforted by the knowledge that he made the decision with their interest, not his, in mind.

But it helps him, too.

“These people that I work with are my best friends,” Hazen said. “They’re my entire life.”


AS THE YEARS have gone on and their lives have become increasingly intertwined, Lovullo, 58, and Hazen, 47, have found themselves reversing roles. Lovullo has taken a harder edge on team performance, and Hazen is the one trying to talk him down.

Somehow, they always seem to balance each other out.

“They are supportive of one another,” Hall wrote, “yet brutally honest and critical at the same time.”

Lovullo admires Hazen’s ability to see the bigger picture.

“One of my limitations is I just see the pile of mud right in front of me; I wish I saw the dirt field a little bit more clearly,” Lovullo said. “His perspective is eye-opening.”

Hazen admires Lovullo’s authenticity.

“He dives into conversations to a level that I sometimes really want to have but have a hard time doing,” Hazen said. “He gets into the nuance of the players that he manages — into their lives — in a way that is so genuine.”

On the fourth day of October, Hazen signed an extension that will keep him with the Diamondbacks at least through the 2028 season. At some point this offseason, Lovullo, whose contract runs through 2024, might sign one, too.

At this point, they’ve become inseparable.

“We’re married to one another,” Lovullo said. “My wife and his wife used to say we’re like an old married couple.”

And like most married couples, they argue. Lately, their most intense discussions revolve around subjects outside of baseball. Hazen, who, according to Lovullo, “can self-loathe with the best of them,” will talk about never finding love again. Lovullo will tell him he’s being foolish. He’ll also remind him that people are eager to help him take care of his sons, an offer Hazen will often dismiss.

“His mindset is, “I’ve got this. I have to do this. This is for my children and me. I’m raising my children as a mother and a father, and I got this,'” Lovullo said. “I want him to know that we’re there to help him whenever he needs it. And he’s like, ‘I got this. Shut up, dude, leave me alone.'”

Less than a month after Nicole died, the Diamondbacks raised an initial $1.5 million to launch the Nicole Hazen Fund for Hope, which supports medical research for aggressive brain tumors. Her four boys (from youngest to oldest: Sam, Teddy, John and Charlie) each threw out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 3 of the NLDS, which qualified as the franchise’s first postseason home game in six years. Lovullo, of course, caught one of them.

It took Lovullo 14 years, from 2002 to 2016, to earn a job as a major league manager. Along the way there were several interviews and a handful of other teams that came close to hiring him. He could have landed with any one of them, and instead he wound up working alongside his close friend and helping him through tragedy.

He thinks about that a lot.

“I believe in fate, and I think there’s a lot of times where you want something so bad, you don’t know the reason why you don’t get that or achieve that goal, and so you’re on a totally different path,” Lovullo said. “Personally, I couldn’t have imagined it going any other way. I’m so grateful for the hardships that I’ve had to go through and endure, because it’s landed me here in Arizona with Mike Hazen.”

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How Jim Abbott changed the world

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How Jim Abbott changed the world

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.”

“Southpaw – The Life and Legacy of Jim Abbott,” a new edition of ESPN’s “E60,” debuts Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN; extended version streaming afterward on ESPN+.

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Red Sox activate 3B Bregman from 10-day IL

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Red Sox activate 3B Bregman from 10-day IL

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.”

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Cubs’ PCA on track for $1.1M from bonus pool

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Cubs' PCA on track for .1M from bonus pool

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.”

Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes is second at $961,256, followed by Washington outfielder James Wood ($863,835), Arizona outfielder Corbin Carroll ($798,397), Houston pitcher Hunter Brown ($786,838), Philadelphia pitcher Cristopher Sánchez ($764,854), Cincinnati shortstop Elly De La Cruz ($717,479), Boston catcher Carlos Narváez ($703,007), Red Sox outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela ($685,366) and Detroit outfielder Riley Greene ($665,470).

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.

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