Connect with us

Published

on

From births to funerals — and everywhere in between — the job of a major league baseball general manager is never done. That is especially the case this time of year, when talks heat up in advance of the July 31 trade deadline.

Calls and texts can come at the most inopportune times for front office members, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to go unanswered. After all, there’s always another team willing to do a deal.

With that in mind, we asked MLB executives to tell us their favorite trade stories.

Trade talks at the most inopportune times

‘We went back and looked at the time stamp of when he had sent texts and when the baby was born’

Brewers general manager Matt Arnold and Dodgers president Andrew Friedman worked together in the Tampa Bay Rays front office before moving on to their current jobs. Arnold was an assistant to Friedman, who was the executive vice president of baseball operations.

“We had two different trade deadlines with Andrew in the hospital,” Arnold recalled. “One year his appendix almost burst. He was doubled over in a lot of pain and we ended up having the doctor come to the stadium.”

Friedman was rushed to the hospital, where the Rays’ staff spent the trade deadline trying to work out deals while their front office leader was undergoing treatment for an appendicitis.

“We spent July 31 at the hospital with him, medicated, going in and out of consciousness,” Arnold said. “We’re trying to piece together conversations we’ve had with him as he’s in a lot of pain. That was pretty nuts. BJ Upton was involved, but I don’t think we ended up trading him.”

Arnold believes his second Friedman-in-the-hospital trade story tops even a deadline-day emergency appendix removal.

“Something like the next year, he’s at the hospital because his wife is in labor,” Arnold said. “She had a baby on the trade deadline.”

With the team involved in several trade scenarios and the deadline fast approaching, Rays staff members were texting with Friedman the entire time.

“We went back and looked at the time stamp of when he had sent texts and when the baby was born,” Arnold said with a laugh. “It was minutes apart. So we asked him what was going on in there?”

“He said she was kind of propped up, and behind her head, he was texting stuff about the trade. We were like ‘Welcome to the world, Zach Friedman.'”


‘My phone is ringing at the funeral now’

White Sox general manager Chris Getz loved his Uncle Mike. So when his uncle died during the offseason, Getz made sure to attend the funeral and even was asked to be a pallbearer. But on the day of the proceedings, the White Sox top decision-maker’s phone was buzzing.

“There’s a GM out there who if there is interest, he doesn’t stop calling,” Getz recalled. “So I told him my uncle had passed away and I have his funeral, but don’t worry, we’re going to do the deal. I’m not going anywhere other than the fact that I’m a pallbearer at my uncle’s funeral. I need a couple hours. He says, ‘Cool, I got you.'”

The funeral started, but the calls didn’t stop.

“My phone is ringing at the funeral now,” Getz said. “It wasn’t actually ringing when I was carrying the casket, but it was close enough. I told people at the celebration afterwards what was going on and they were like ‘Hey Chris, Uncle Mike would have absolutely loved that you executed a trade at his funeral.”


I’m literally going from the church to the graveyard, on the phone trying to get us $500,000′

Getz isn’t the only executive who has needed to tend to work matters during a family funeral. New San Francisco Giants GM Zack Minasian had a similar experience after his grandmother died last offseason.

“It was this past January. I had to find us $500,000 of international money,” Minasian said. “I’m literally going from the church to the graveyard, on the phone trying to get us $500,000. It was not my best day. And it’s the same church my grandmother got married in. I had my brother [Perry] next to me as I’m trying to hide my phone. He was driving so I could text.”

Zack’s older brother is the GM of the Angels, but it wasn’t Perry he was working to acquire the international bonus money.

“I got $250,000 from the Red Sox for Blake Sabol and $250,000 from the Marlins for Will Kempner,” Minasian said. “I got it done.”

Minasian was asked why not just ask his brother for it. He was sitting right next to him.

“Shocker. He didn’t have it!” the younger Minasian said with a laugh.


‘I’m feeling the texts coming through in my pocket’

Another executive, who was willing to tell his story as long as his name wasn’t used, remembers navigating a Passover seder while trying to pull off a minor deal.

“I was at my in-laws’ temple’s seder,” the executive said. “Not a fancy, formal one, but still. I’m feeling the texts coming through in my pocket.”

At one point, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. That allowed the trade to move closer to the finish line — but it wasn’t done yet.

“I was trying to be respectful, not checking the phone,” the executive said. “But at one point, one of my kids needed to go to the bathroom and my hand shot up. I said, “I’ll take him.’

“I ran out in the hall and took him to the bathroom and real quick called the other team to get the ball rolling. It definitely wasn’t easy, but we got the deal done.”

Communication issues

‘I knew I was going to lose cell service’

A few days before Christmas during the 2022 offseason, Arizona Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen was in the midst of a family vacation in Hawai’i — and also working the phones for a major trade during what is usually a rare quiet stretch for MLB execs.

Executives never know exactly when a deal is going to line up, but Hazen had a feeling he might be caught in a tough spot being so far from his home base.

“I was trying to finalize the Daulton Varsho/Gabriel Moreno/Lourdes Gurriel trade [with the Blue Jays],” Hazen said. “I talked to [Brian Cashman] in the morning, I talked to another team later, and I finalized the deal with Ross [Atkins] right before we were supposed to go zip lining that day.

“I was with my kids. We are driving to the middle of nowhere in Maui, and I knew I was going to lose cell service. We have a time slot for the zip lining we have to get to. I had my oldest kid driving and I was trying to get a hold of Varsho to tell him about the trade and I couldn’t. And we were getting closer and closer to the abyss, knowing I was going to lose service.”

Hazen couldn’t find Varsho anywhere and was told the outfielder could be “in a tree hunting somewhere.” This put Hazen in a time crunch to inform the player he would be included in a deal, but eventually he got a hold of him to tell him of the trade. Now he wanted to talk with the guys he was acquiring.

“When we get to the bottom of the gully, there is no cell service, so I’m hoping the zip line company has Wi-Fi to use,” Hazen said. “And they were like ‘The Wi-Fi just went down.’ I could not believe it. So I had not talked to Gurriel or Moreno yet. So I drop the kids off at the zip line and tell them I’ll be back when I can, and I drive back to the closest town so I could get cell service.”

Hazen sat at a restaurant, called his players and then headed back to his kids.

“They were halfway through zip-lining,” Hazen said. “They didn’t mind. At least, I don’t think so.”


‘He whipped the phone to me and he said, “Finish the Roberts deal”‘

Current Cubs president Jed Hoyer was a young executive with the Boston Red Sox in 2004, working under GM Theo Epstein during a tumultuous trade deadline.

Boston was seemingly having talks with everyone in the league, eventually trading star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs in a blockbuster, four-team trade. The team was also trying to trade for a base-stealing player named Dave Roberts.

“Theo was trying to finish the Nomar deal on like an old-school phone,” Hoyer said. “At one point, he whipped the phone to me and he said, ‘Finish the Roberts deal.’ But I couldn’t understand [Dodgers GM] Paul DePodesta on the phone. It was a choppy connection.”

After Hoyer hung up, Epstein asked him if he got the deal done.

“I just looked at him and said, ‘I think so?’ with a shrug,” Hoyer said with a laugh. “I think we’re good, but not sure.”

Hoyer noted what that trade led to a curse-breaking title in Boston and newfound fame for Roberts, whose crucial stolen base during Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS will live forever in Red Sox lore.

“And now he might be a Hall of Fame manager,” Hoyer said. “Glad it worked out.”


‘All of a sudden the skies open up, it’s pouring, and I can’t hear on my cell phone’

In July 2009, St. Louis Cardinals executive John Mozeliak was getting ready to play golf when trade talks began to heat up.

“I wasn’t a golfer but I got invited by a friend to play at St. Louis Country Club,” Mozeliak recalled.

The calls he was getting came from Athletics GM Billy Beane with the two sides discussing a deal involving slugger Matt Holliday.

“All of a sudden the skies open up, it’s pouring, and I can’t hear on my cell phone,” Mozeliak said. “It was just disastrous. And by the way, I only played three holes because my phone was just blowing up.”

Mozeliak headed back to his car — to stay dry and find some quiet. And also to avoid trouble at the club.

“I ended up having to call our Double-A manager to get his opinion on a couple of players that were going to Oakland, trying to orchestrate all of this at a very exclusive country club where you’re not supposed to be on your cell phone,” Mozeliak said. “I’m sitting in my car getting pelted by small hailstones and rain.”

The conversation carried on through dinner time, when Mozeliak was due to be with his family and his friend’s family.

“We’re having dinner at Dewey’s Pizza, which is a local pizzeria in New City,” he said. “And so there I’m having to just not focus on this family dinner. I already missed 15 holes of golf, but by the time that dinner ended, we had a deal and we got Matt Holliday.”

With the help of their new slugger, the Cardinals went on to win 91 games and the NL Central.

“You’re not in your office, you’re not in your normal environment to do it but we were able to complete it and obviously the rest was history when it came to having Holliday.”

When chaos reigns

‘We had to tell Drew he was going to be traded — but not for two weeks’

In July 2012, current Cubs GM Carter Hawkins was an assistant in Cleveland.

“We were about to trade Alex White, Drew Pomeranz and two other players to Colorado for pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez,” Hawkins said.

After the deal was complete, Hawkins was dispatched to the farm team in Akron to inform the players they were being dealt.

“Pomeranz was starting,” Hawkins said. “We had to go get him out of the bullpen and tell him. But there was some miscommunication and Jimenez was still in the game for the Rockies that day so the trade was on hold. So we brought them all back in to tell them they weren’t being traded.”

Eventually, Jimenez was pulled from the game and was told he was going to Cleveland.

“So we brought all the guys back in to tell them they were being traded, including Pomeranz. Then we realize it had not been a calendar year since the day Pomeranz had signed and that used to be a rule. You could not trade a drafted player within that first year of his signing. So now we had to tell Drew he was going to be traded — but not for two weeks. By that time, his head was spinning.”


‘All he said was “No, I don’t want to trade him.” No reason. Just “No!” I couldn’t believe it’

Jim Duquette and Mike Flanagan were the co-GMs of the Baltimore Orioles in 2006 and the duo was working hard on a July deal involving slugger Miguel Tejada after getting permission from ownership to trade him.

“We spent like 16-hour days sorting through the level of interest,” Duquette recalled. “We had it narrowed down to three teams: the Mets, Astros and Angels. I mean we worked hard on this deal.”

The duo determined the Angels had the best offer.

“It was a significant trade,” Duquette said. “We had a chance to get Bartolo Colon and Erick Aybar or even Ervin Santana. It would have changed our organization.”

When they were ready, Duquette and Flanagan marched down to owner Peter Angelos’ law office to present the offers and their suggestions to him.

“I had a whiteboard,” Duquette explained. “We put down all of the names on it. It was a whole elaborate presentation to Peter. We’re up against the deadline. We sat there for 30 minutes going through all the options.

“At the end of it, he pauses, looks up at us both and all he said was, ‘No, I don’t want to trade him.’ No reason. Just ‘No!’ I couldn’t believe it.”

A few years later, Duquette had a laugh at his cousin Dan’s expense when nearly the same thing happened to him. In 2017, the Cubs and Astros were both vying to trade with Baltimore for reliever Zack Britton. Dan was now the Orioles’ general manager and was fielding offers.

“Theo [Epstein] opted out of the running for Britton,” Jim Duquette recalled. “He didn’t want to wait around for Peter [Angelos]. The Astros rolled the dice and waited. And Peter said no to that too. They got stuck with nobody. If you remember, one of their players even criticized ownership for doing nothing but that’s only because Angelos said no at the last minute.”


‘Frankly, we got that done well after the deadline’

In 2008, Hoyer’s Red Sox were looking to move on from Manny Ramirez, who wanted out of Boston.

“Manny was really disgruntled about his contract,” Hoyer said. “He had two club options with no buyouts. He was forcing his way out. We felt like we had to do the deal.”

The deal was “convoluted,” according to Hoyer, because it involved multiple teams as the clock was ticking down on deadline day.

“It looked like it was never going to get done,” Hoyer said. “It was a last-second three-team deal. That was the most confusing one because there were so many cooks in the kitchen. At one point, the Marlins were involved with a young [Giancarlo] Stanton.”

In the end, the Red Sox, Pirates and Dodgers pulled off the three-teamer, which sent Ramirez to Los Angeles and outfielder Jason Bay back to Boston while the Pirates got four prospects.

“Frankly, we got that done well after the deadline,” Hoyer stated. “That was the most manic and confusing one.”

When the trade goes through — for better or worse

‘We didn’t know we were getting a star’

In 2012, Jerry Dipoto was in his first full year as GM of the Los Angeles Angels. He had a good team with All-Star hitters and top-of-the-rotation pitchers, but his bullpen really struggled early in the season.

“May is a difficult time to make any meaningful trades,” Dipoto said. “And we didn’t have a burgeoning farm system to deal from either. But we were able to acquire Ernesto Frieri from the Padres. He was like fourth or fifth on the Pads depth chart.”

Frieri was out of options so the Padres didn’t mind moving him.

“He was like a 1.5-pitch type of reliever,” Dipoto said. “We got him for two prospects: second baseman Alexi Amarista and minor league pitcher Donn Roach.”

The Angels were immediately impressed with their new reliever.

“He played catch down the line the first day and our pitching coach was like ‘Wow, you can’t pick up this guy’s ball at all,'” Dipoto recalled. “He threw a scoreless inning that night and the next night he was closing.”

Frieri ripped off 20 scoreless innings to begin his Angels career and was a finalist to make the All-Star team.

“I distinctly remember [scout] Charlie Kerfeld asking me how I pulled that one off. It’s so hard to do it in May. We didn’t know we were getting a star.”


‘He threw out a slew of names and said, “We will overpay”‘

Trader Jerry, as Dipoto is known, was at it again during the shortened 2020 season, now working for the Mariners. And again, it was the Padres on the other end of the phone. San Diego had a really good team and was looking for some specific help.

“They were trying to fortify and they needed a catcher,” Dipoto said. “We had Austin Nola, who was going bananas for us in that short season.”

Nola was hitting .306 with a 151 OPS+ when AJ Preller called Dipoto.

“We were in full rebuild mode but didn’t have much interest in moving him, simply because it’s a tough position to fill and he’s a great makeup guy,” Dipoto said.

But Preller wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“He threw out a slew of names and said, ‘We will overpay,'” Dipoto recalls. “AJ is that way.”

In return, the Mariners received four players, including Ty France — but it was a second, late trade that year with San Diego that Dipoto liked even more. The Padres wanted reliever Taylor Williams.

“After doing the first deal, we’re inside of 10 minutes until the deadline,” Dipoto said. “We’ve asked for a number of mainstream players. They said no. But they had a guy in their farm system who had thrown one inning as a minor leaguer after being drafted the previous year. Then COVID hit. That was Matt Brash. We were so close to the deadline that I heard AJ cup the phone and yell, ‘BRASH?’ to one of his assistants. Then he gets back on and says, ‘We’ll do it.’

“It’s the only deal I’ve ever done without seeing the medicals. There was no time. But Brash has been good for us.”


‘To this day, I don’t think Kazmir knows the full story of why we traded him’

When asked about his most interesting deals, Jim Duquette immediately thought of the oft-discussed trade of prospect Scott Kazmir during his time as GM of the Mets — with some insight even hard-core Mets fans may not know.

In July 2004, Duquette traded Kazmir to the then-Tampa Bay Devil Rays for starter Victor Zambrano. But few knew that an off-the-field sponsorship would have a lasting impact on the deal.

“A lot of it centered on the medical,” Duquette said. “[Kazmir] was high risk.”

Kazmir was a first-round pick, but the Mets were worried about his health from the time they drafted him on. They did the deal after clearing Zambrano of any medical concerns of his own. And that backfired on them.

“It didn’t help that we had an inexperienced ortho group that had just started overseeing our entire medical staff in 2003, after their hospital had signed a multiyear sponsorship deal with the organization,” Duquette said. “The ultimate irony is Kazmir never got injured while Zambrano was cleared and got injured after three starts. It was a double whammy.”

Zambrano missed the rest of 2004 but was healthy in 2005 before undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2006. Kazmir eventually did get hurt but first provided the Rays and later the Angels with several productive seasons before needing Tommy John surgery in 2011.

“To this day, I don’t think Kazmir knows the full story of why we traded him,” Duquette said.

When the deal falls apart

‘For an hour we thought we were getting Felix Hernandez’

Before joining the Giants in 2018, Zack Minasian spent 14 years in the Brewers. During one of his seasons under GM Doug Melvin, the team thought it had a deal for one of the game’s top pitchers.

Milwaukee was deep in conversations with the Seattle Mariners, who had a former Brewers executive, Jack Zduriencik, serving as GM.

“Jack and Doug were talking about a trade that would have sent Felix Hernandez to Milwaukee,” Minasian recalled. “At one point, we thought Jack had agreed to it but he needed to make one other move before we could finalize it.

“It didn’t happen, but for an hour we thought we were getting Felix Hernandez. We were nervous, anxious, excited and just waiting.”

That is not the only time a trade that failed to come to fruition created a memory for Minasian. After a trade with the Mets involving Wilmer Flores and Zack Wheeler fell through, Minasian ended up at a bar while the front office was looking at other potential deals.

“One of my friends owned a place in Milwaukee,” he said. “I got a call from Doug while I was there and I had to go in the basement of the bar where all the liquor is being stored, huddled in the back corner, going through Astros prospects.

“You have to do what you have to do, right?”


‘We don’t get Gallen if we make that trade’

Sometimes a trade that fell through can turn out to be a blessing in disguise for a team. Hazen remembers such a trade during his second trade deadline as Diamondbacks GM.

As trade season heated up, Arizona was running neck and neck with the Los Angeles Dodgers in a battle for the top spot in the National League and the teams were among the top suitors for the prize of the deadline: Baltimore star Manny Machado, who was set to hit free agency after the season.

Ultimately, Machado went to the Dodgers and L.A. won the NL West and reached the World Series. But the ripple effects of Arizona not landing Machado helped the D-backs make a World Series appearance of their own in 2023.

“We tried to get Manny Machado from the Orioles in 2018 and Jazz Chisholm would have been in that trade,” Hazen said. “We didn’t trade Jazz there but that got us Zac Gallen in 2019. We don’t get Gallen if we make that trade for Machado, so you never know.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Red Sox activate 3B Bregman from 10-day IL

Published

on

By

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.”

Continue Reading

Sports

How Jim Abbott changed the world

Published

on

By

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+.

Continue Reading

Sports

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

Published

on

By

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.

Continue Reading

Trending