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The Los Angeles Dodgers take the field again for meaningful baseball in less than a week. In the meantime, let’s look at some of the top headlines from around the sport.
WBC Draws Record Audience
The World Baseball Classic final game shattered viewership records.
Nearly 11 million viewers tuned in to see Team Venezuela top Team USA 3-2 with a ninth-inning run.
The game, the most watched in the tournament’s 20-year history, even dwarfed the 2023 edition and its finale between Team USA and Team Japan, featuring Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani.
“According to Fox Sports, a record 10.784 million across Fox and Fox Deportes tuned in, with peak viewership clocking in at 12.148 million around 10:30 p.m. ET,” Emily Ohman and Dan Shanoff wrote for The Athletic. “Venezuela’s win drew more than twice the number of viewers (4.48 million) than the 2023 final between Japan and the U.S.”
Rays Wear Pieces of Stadium Roof
The Tampa Bay Rays will play at Tropicana Field again for the first time in 18 months, and their jerseys will carry a piece of history.
Tropicana Field was destroyed by Hurricane Milton, and when the Rays return, their jerseys “will include sponsored patches on the sleeves, and pieces of Tropicana Field’s old, destroyed roof will be stitched into the patches themselves,” reports Chad Jennings of The Athletic.
The sponsor is Webull, an online investment company based in the area.
Rays CEO Ken Babby called the patches “a message of resilience and strength and just how strong our community is.”
Guardians on Unpaid Leave
Two Cleveland Guardians who are accused of participating in a pitch-rigging scheme will start the season on “unpaid non-disciplinary leave,” Jeff Passan of ESPN reports.
The designation for Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz was the result of discussions between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association.
“As the legal proceedings involving Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz continue to move forward, MLB and the MLBPA have agreed that both players will remain on non-disciplinary leave from the Club without pay until further notice,” MLB said in a statement. “This agreement is not an admission of any wrongdoing by Clase or Ortiz. MLB has been closely monitoring the matter since alerting federal law enforcement at the outset of its investigation and will have no further comment until its investigation has been completed.”
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