DAYTONA BEACH, Florida — They don’t call it the Fair American Race.
They do not call it the Satisfying American Race, the Predictable American Race or the Tidy American Race. It’s the Great American Race. As in, great at keeping us guessing.
NASCAR‘s biggest single event, which was held for the 66th time on a rain-postponed Monday evening at the self-declared World Center of Racing, can be described by a list of lead characteristics that shifts and shuffles more chaotically than this year’s Daytona 500 pinball machine of a leaderboard that produced 41 lead changes between 20 different drivers, five over the race’s final 20 laps.
But fair? No. Never fair. That’s the nature of a 2.5-mile superspeedway with tight quarters in skyscraper turns, an asphalt beast that has never made much sense to any eyes, be they engineers, spectators or the poor souls who have decided to drive around that monster at 200 mph.
“It’s speedway racing. It’s a lot of fun until it sucks,” declared Joey Logano, who led a race-best 45 laps but ended his night 33rd, wrecked while running third and battling for the lead again with less than ten laps remaining. “It’s usually the guys who start the wreck that survive. That’s the frustrating part.”
The car whose nose found the car that hit Logano? It was in the accordion collision only because another car had hit it when the cars ahead of them started scrambling and forced everyone behind them to suddenly slow down, and was driven William Byron. Byron’s Chevy was popped from behind by teammate Alex Bowman, causing Byron to hit second place Brad Keselowski, who was turned into Logano, who then teamed up to take out 20 other cars behind them. That group included nine of the 20 drivers who had led the race at some point during the day.
When the checkered flag was finally shown nearly 30 minutes later, who was the winner? It was Byron.
See? Not fair.
“You’re trying to make the right decisions, the right calls, to get yourself into position to win the race,” said Jeff Gordon, who won this race twice driving the same No. 24 Chevy that he now helps oversee as chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. “But in this type of racing, when the finish is coming, there isn’t much you can control but to put your foot into the gas and hope that whatever happens — because something is going to happen — that you be out in front of it.”
Something definitely happened. And it did again when Byron was leading and barely made it across the start-finish line to begin the 199th and final circuit before another multicar crash unfurled behind him.
“Yes, you know that’s coming. So, if you are fortunate to be in the lead — and by the way, that also makes you the target — you look in the rearview mirror and hope you can outrun it,” Byron said in Victory Lane, his firesuit freshly saturated in champagne. “We did. And I can’t believe it.”
Neither could many of the tens of thousands of fans who showed up for a sunny, cool Monday afternoon green flag after Daytona had also been saturated in two days of near-record February Central Florida rainfall. They had watched fan favorites such as Byron’s other Hendrick Motorsports teammates, former Cup champs Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson, run up front. They had cheered and booed as they watched veterans such as Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch and Keselowski — all future NASCAR Hall of Famers — also spend time at the point, only to come up short. Hamlin failed to earn a historic fourth Daytona 500 win. The other three extended their Daytona 500 career droughts to a combined 0-for-54.
However, no one, not those in the grandstands Monday night nor those watching from home, should make the lazy mistake of viewing Byron’s victory as a fluke.
“I’m always the ‘other guy’ right?” Byron half-joked, pointing in his very own building to Elliott and Larson, not to mention Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., even Terry Labonte, Tim Richmond, Geoff Bodine and the other legends who have won at Hendrick Motorsports. His win Monday was the team’s record-tying ninth Great American Race triumph and came on the 40th anniversary of its very first Cup race, when Bodine finished eight in the 1984 Daytona 500. “That has been hard on me. I have probably let it bother me too much, but it has also been a big motivator for me. I came into this year with a chip on my shoulder because of it. I am a quiet guy. My background in racing isn’t typical. I started out in gaming, a kid who was just a NASCAR fan, and I got a relatively late jump on driving. I don’t come from a long line of racers. But OK, underestimate me. See how that works out.”
Make no mistake, this race produces flukes. Or, put more kindly, unforeseen victories. One year ago, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and little JTG Daugherty Racing earned the first win for the driver in seven years and for the team in nearly a decade, and did it in the sport’s most prestigious race. In 2022, Austin Cindric, a de facto rookie, earned his first — and so far, only — Cup Series win. In 2021, Michael McDowell snapped a career 0-for-357 winless streak by outlasting a demolition derby of a 500 and pulling into a pandemic-emptied Victory Lane.
But Byron led the Cup Series with six wins one year ago and made the cut for the season finale Championship Four. The year before he won two races. In seven years of driving at NASCAR’s top level, he has made the Playoffs six times, missing only his rookie campaign, and has now posted at least one win in each of the past five years. His 11th career win not only all but guarantees him a spot in this year’s fall playoff field, it also moves him past Donnie Allison on NASCAR’s all-time victories list. Allison was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame last month.
Byron is 26 years old.
“What we know about this race is that we don’t know what is going to happen. For a long time, we have hauled zero trophies home, but instead we have hauled home a lot of wrecked race cars,” an emotional Rick Hendrick explained, quick to remind that, yes, this was his ninth Daytona 500 win, but his first in a decade. “There are always a lot of surprises in this race and at this place. Mostly bad ones. But no one should be surprised that William Byron is a Daytona 500 champion.”
Hendrick reached over and grabbed the arm of Gordon.
“He reminds of you this guy back in the day,” he said. “He has so much talent and he’s just getting started. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
NEW YORK — Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said he discussed Pete Rose with President Donald Trump at a meeting two weeks ago and he plans to rule on a request to end the sport’s permanent ban of the career hits leader, who died in September.
Speaking Monday at a meeting of the Associated Press Sports Editors, Manfred said he and Trump discussed several issues, including concerns over how immigration policies could impact players from Cuba, Venezuela and other foreign countries.
Manfred is considering a petition to have Rose posthumously removed from MLB’s permanently ineligible list. The petition was filed in January by Jeffrey Lenkov, a Southern California lawyer who represented Rose prior to the 17-time All-Star’s death at age 83.
“I met with President Trump two weeks ago … and one of the topics was Pete Rose, but I’m not going beyond that,” Manfred said. “He’s said what he said publicly. I’m not going beyond that in terms of what the back and forth was.”
Trump posted on social media Feb. 28 that he plans to issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.”
It’s unclear what a presidential pardon might include. Trump did not specifically mention a tax case in which Rose pleaded guilty in 1990 to two counts of filing false tax returns and served a five-month prison sentence.
The president said he would sign a pardon for Rose “over the next few weeks” but has not addressed the matter since.
Rose had 4,256 hits and also holds records for games (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890). He was the 1973 National League MVP and played on three World Series winners.
An investigation for MLB by lawyer John M. Dowd found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team. Rose agreed with MLB on a permanent ban in 1989.
Lenkov is seeking Rose’s reinstatement so that he can be considered for the Hall of Fame. Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997 and met with Commissioner Bud Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on Rose’s request. Manfred in 2015 denied Rose’s application for reinstatement.
Manfred said reinstating Rose now was “a little more complicated than it might appear on the outside” and did not commit to a timeline except that “I want to get it done promptly as soon as we get the work done.”
“I’m not going to give this the pocket veto,” Manfred said. “I will in fact issue a ruling.”
Rose’s reinstatement doesn’t mean he would automatically appear on a Hall of Fame ballot. He would first have to be nominated by the Hall’s Historical Overview Committee, which is picked by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and approved by the Hall’s board.
Manfred said he has been in regular contact with chairman Jane Forbes Clark.
“I mean, believe me, a lot of Hall of Fame dialogue on this one,” Manfred said.
If reinstated, Rose potentially would be eligible for consideration to be placed on a ballot to be considered by the 16-member Classic Baseball Era committee in December 2027.
Manfred said he doesn’t think baseball’s current ties to legal sports betting should color views on Rose’s case.
“There is and always has been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, can do on the one hand, and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling,” Manfred said. “The fact that the law changed, and we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises, I don’t think changes that.
“It’s a privilege to play Major League Baseball. As with every privilege, there comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that they not bet on the game.”
Manfred did not go into details on his discussion with Trump over foreign-born players other than to say he expressed worry.
“Given the number of foreign-born players we have, we’re always concerned about ingress and egress,” Manfred said. “We have had dialogue with the administration about this topic. And, you know, they’re very interested in sports. They understand the unique need to be able to go back and forth, and I’m going to leave it at that.”
It was old faces in familiar places for the Atlanta Braves on Monday after they activated right-hander Ian Anderson to the active roster and signed outfielder Eddie Rosario to a major league contract.
In corresponding moves, outfielder Jarred Kelenic was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett, while right-hander Davis Daniel was optioned to Triple-A after Sunday’s game.
Both Anderson and Rosario emerged as 2021 postseason heroes in Atlanta as the Braves went on to win the World Series.
Anderson, who was claimed off waivers from the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday, went 4-0 with a 1.26 ERA in eight postseason starts for the Braves over the 2020 and 2021 postseasons.
In the 2021 World Series, Anderson famously pitched five no-hit innings in Game 3 to lead Atlanta to a 2-0 victory over the Houston Astros. The Braves defeated the Astros in six games.
Anderson, who turns 27 Friday, was traded by the Braves to the Angels on March 23 for left-hander Jose Suarez. He struggled badly with his new club, going 0-1 with an 11.57 ERA in seven relief appearances. He allowed 17 hits and seven walks in just 9⅓ innings.
Rosario, 33, signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in February and played in two games with the club, going 1-for-4. He was designated for assignment and became a free agent when Shohei Ohtani returned from the paternity list just over a week ago.
Rosario was the 2021 National League Championship Series MVP, when he powered the Braves past the Dodgers with three home runs, nine RBIs and a 1.647 OPS in six games.
Over parts of 11 seasons, Rosario is a career .261 hitter with 169 home runs and 583 RBIs in 1,123 games with five different clubs, including five seasons with the Minnesota Twins (2015-20) and four with the Braves (2021-24).
Kelenic, 25, was batting .167 with two home runs in 23 games and is a career .211 hitter with 49 home runs and 156 RBIs in 406 games with the Seattle Mariners (2021-23) and Braves.
Daniel, 27, made his only appearance for the Braves on Sunday with a scoreless inning and has appeared in 10 games (six starts) over the past three seasons with a 4.95 ERA.
Mike Sullivan, who led the Pittsburgh Penguins to back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017, is out as the team’s head coach, it was announced Monday.
Sullivan was the longest-tenured coach in Penguins history after just completing his 10th season. The 57-year-old, who also coached Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off, was under contract in Pittsburgh through 2026-27.
In a statement, Penguins GM Kyle Dubas said the decision was “the best course forward for all involved” as Pittsburgh navigates a transitional period.
“On behalf of Fenway Sports Group and the Penguins organization, I would like to thank Mike Sullivan for his unwavering commitment and loyalty to the team and City of Pittsburgh over the past decade,” Dubas said. “Mike is known for his preparation, focus and fierce competitiveness. I was fortunate to have a front-row seat to his dedication to this franchise for the past two seasons. He will forever be an enormous part of Penguins history, not only for the impressive back-to-back Cups, his impact on the core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Bryan Rust, but more importantly, for his love and loyalty to the organization. This was not a decision that was taken lightly, but as we continue to navigate the Penguins through this transitional period, we felt it was the best course forward for all involved.”
The Penguins have missed the playoffs for three straight seasons as Dubas works to retool the team into a contender while Crosby is still competing at a high level. Crosby just completed his 20th straight season in which he posted a point-per-game scoring pace, and he was voted by his peers in the NHLPA as the league’s most complete player. The captain is under contract through next season on a two-year extension he signed prior to the 2024-25 season.
Sullivan was elevated to Penguins head coach in 2015 after leading the organization’s AHL team in Wilkes-Barre. With 409 wins in Pittsburgh, he leaves as the Penguins’ all-time wins leader.
Sources also said Sullivan is keen on coaching again next season and will be a top candidate for several of the vacancies. Sullivan worked as an assistant coach with the Rangers and as both an assistant and head coach with the Bruins earlier in his career.