There’s this old, wonderful baseball field in Williamsport, Penn. Currently known as BB&T Ballpark at Historic Bowman Field, I spent a summer getting to know the place pretty well before a bank, which has since merged with another bank, cut a check to get its name plastered on signage. It was then known as Historic Bowman Field, a ballpark erected in 1926 to give Williamsport’s local New York-Pennsylvania League squad — which has existed for decades — a home.

The tiny city’s first team was known as the Williamsport Grays. Through the weirdness that is Minor League Baseball, where teams hop around in some form or fashion from city to city with different major league affiliates, the club that’s currently planted its roots in Williamsport is the Crosscutters, the short-season single-A squad belonging to the Philadelphia Phillies. Between my sophomore and junior years of college, I found myself desperate for something to do so my resume included more than “he had decent grades, and welp, see ya later.” I lived about 45 minutes away, and the team offered internships in sports, so during the summer months of 2012, I made that drive a few times a week and served as a Gameday Intern.

It was good, unpaid work, an oxymoronic phrase that is eerily familiar, particular for those in my generation. The bleachers needed to be wiped down before every game, the mascot had to be assisted around the stadium, college students and parents who did not know better had to be helped into and out of sumo suits for one of the many in-game promotions, tarps sometimes needed to be put on. The team wasn’t great, the players were a tight-knit bunch, the grounds crew made the diamond look good, and everyone who worked or interned there seemed to enjoy one another.

The Crosscutters are also an important part of the community in Williamsport, a generally baseball-crazed one by nature of being home to the Little League World Series (which, as an aside, rules and you should attend as soon as it is safe). This is why a report by J.J. Cooper of Baseball America on Tuesday stopped me in my tracks: Major League Baseball, in its quest to make The Numbers look a little better, might finally get its wish and have a handful of minor league squads shut down as part of negotiations toward a new Professional Baseball Agreement. The argument, as MLB makes it, is that despite its 17th consecutive year of increased revenue in 2019 — a cool $10.7 billion — MiLB as it currently exists just costs too dang much.

“From the perspective of MLB clubs, our principal goals are upgrading the minor league facilities that we believe have inadequate standards for potential MLB players, improving the working conditions for MiLB players, including their compensation, improving transportation and hotel accommodations, providing better geographic affiliations between major league clubs and their affiliates, as well as better geographic lineups of leagues to reduce player travel,” MLB deputy commissioner Dan Halem said back in October.

Cooper indicates that MiLB plans to signal its agreement to the measure soon, meaning…

If both sides agree, it would mean as many as 42 current minor league teams would be lopped off by eliminating short-season and Rookie ball. Two independent league teams, the St. Paul Saints and Sugar Land Skeeters, would be added to affiliated ball. The two sides are working on a potential deal to ensure the majority of those 42 markets would have still have baseball with ties to MLB in a system that has long-term viability.

An important thing to stress here is that Minor League Baseball has called these reports “largely inaccurate,” releasing a statement on its official Twitter account that I only saw because it was retweeted by the Crosscutters.

This is not a particularly reassuring development, however, as this has seemingly been on league commissioner Rob Manfred’s list of things to do in an attempt to have any sort of memorial to his time in charge of the league vandalized for the rest of eternity. A potential idea that has been bandied about is a “Dream League,” which would keep teams in these cities but instead use unaffiliated players. Minor League Baseball previously called this a “shell game,” per the New York Times. The Athletic noted that minor league owners disagree with the feasibility of a structure that has franchises exist on their own “vehemently.”

It also hit home because Williamsport was one of the teams on the chopping block back when an initial list was circulated in November. There are 14 teams in the NYPL, nine of them are on that aforementioned list.

When this list was first circulated, Vermont senator and then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders met with the commissioner and went on a media blitz to put some heat on Manfred — Sanders’ office in Burlington is just down the road from Centennial Field, home to the Vermont Lake Monsters, another team which appears on that aforementioned list of 42 squads.

A Brooklyn native who recalled what it was like to watch his beloved Dodgers pack up their things and head to Los Angeles, Sanders is one of the several members of Congress from both parties who are against minor league contraction. Another member of the Senate, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, previously said “the antitrust exemption for Major League Baseball is at risk if they persist with this misguided, deeply unfortunate plan to cripple minor league baseball for more profits.”

The line from Major League Baseball is that reducing the number of minor league teams is a smart fiscal move, one that helps with Viability and Nimbleness and Flexibility and all the other words that look great on PowerPoints but oftentimes ignore any sort of real-world consequences. But as Sanders mentioned to the Los Angeles Times back in December, Minor League Baseball’s role is important because it is representative of a time when a thing’s value was measured beyond a bottom line.

“Some 30 years ago, I helped bring minor league baseball — it was a double-A team affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds — to Vermont,” Sanders said. “What I saw with my own eyes is what minor league baseball does to a community. It is especially gratifying to see kids go out to the ballgames, families able to afford the relatively low price of tickets, and kids get autographs from the players. There’s just a huge amount of excitement and community spirit.”

Fast forward to Tuesday, when the report dropped that Minor League Baseball, strangled in part by the COVID-19 pandemic that is impacting billions of people worldwide, was finally willing to agree to a reduction in the number of teams. Like all of us, MiLB — which Baseball America reports was ready to engage in “a public relations and political campaign” before everything came to a stop due to the virus — is not afforded the luxury of thinking about the future at the present moment. There is only now, there is only survival, and in its quest to stay afloat in a normally cold, cruel, crushing world that is quite a bit more cold, cruel, and crushing than usual lately, it reportedly plans to relent to what The Numbers indicate is best for Longevity and Feasibility.

This is not an uncommon thing, mind you. There is assuredly a restaurant, mom and pop store, movie theater, or some other institution near and dear to your heart has closed its doors in the last however many years, leaving you devastated as happy memories rushed back. You were probably in whatever soulless, hyper-corporate thing you settled on going to in a feeble attempt to fill that void while experiencing this. Or think of that website you loved so dearly, for whom The Numbers looked bad, so it shut down, and that person who wrote things in a way you particularly loved is looking into a Patreon while simultaneously considering whether it’s worth ditching journalism altogether to join a PR shop.

The Numbers have their place for informing major decisions, of course. Minor League Baseball’s entire appeal, though, is that it is a reminder of a time where sports were sports, not a vehicle through which you consumed ads while a game is going on in the foreground (that foreground, by the way, is sponsored by Burger King). For families that might not have much, the ones who are damned to a life of struggle due to circumstances outside of their control, taking an extra couple of dollars and buying some $10 tickets to a ballgame — everyone gets a hot dog, mom and dad get a beer — is worth exponentially more than what The Numbers might indicate. There is something particularly cruel about a multi-billion dollar organization like Major League Baseball deciding that people who already don’t have much deserve even less.

Minor League Baseball is one of the few remnants of American society that has survived our collective shift from viewing ourselves as members of communities much larger than ourselves to one of radical individualism. It serves an important function in the world of baseball, yes, but it serves a much more important function in the towns and small cities where 37th round draft picks who hit .187 and get to say they spent a year as a short-season single-A baseball player are propped up as stars — hell, as an intern, I wore a jersey with a name tag during most games, and I vividly remember a child shoving a baseball in my face with a sharpie and asking if I would sign it.

The sport is the country’s pastime, something as deeply ingrained in the American spirit as [insert whatever trivial American thing you’d like to make this simile work right here]. In MiLB, people from every single background are afforded the opportunity to experience a professional sport, or a night to remove themselves from whatever problems they’re dealing with. I think of the families that would come to games in Williamsport, or the elderly folks who have been coming to games at Bowman Field for years, because their parents brought them to games, and that’s just what they do. I didn’t always learn the names, but from June to September, those faces became recognizable, and I like to think they recognized me, too. I think of the children who joyously laughed on Sundays when they got to run the bases, or the smiles on faces during Saturday night’s postgame fireworks show, or the way that people would lose their minds when the team’s mascot, Boomer, acknowledged their existence. I think of the night where a bunch of Little League World Series teams from every corner of the world came and had the time of their lives watching one of the lowest levels of pro baseball that exists in the United States, because it was fun, and they are children, so of course they’re going to have the time of their lives.

These moments do not generate gobs of revenue, but their importance cannot be quantified. Minor League Baseball, at its core, is part of the soul of an increasingly soulless country. Taking that away from 42 communities would be a shame.

Wale capped off 2019 by dropping his sixth album, Wow… That’s Crazy. The record begins with the Kelly Price-featuring “Sue Me,” and now Wale has shared a lengthy visual for the song. In the seven-minute, Kerby Jean-Raymond-directed video for the track (which Wale previously asserted has “one of the greatest beats ever“), Wale plays with race. The video follows a struggling white teenager who has the unfortunate experience of getting racially profiled at a “Morebucks” coffee shop.

Wale says of the clip:

“What if you could walk through a day in the life of an average African American young man? What would you see? What would you hear? What would you face? We wanted to redefine the whole narrative and allow everybody to step into these shoes. I’ve never been more proud of a video than what we did here. Kerby really brought this vision to life, and Reebok helped make it a reality. I hope it makes you think a little. While you’re thinking, stay safe and stay home!”

He also previously said of Wow… That’s Crazy as a whole, “Hands down, this is my most personal project. Somebody told me the other day that this is a beautiful, healing album, and it’s the beginning stages of healing from black trauma. It’s unapologetically black, but it’s also a healing — the good and bad that comes from all the sh*t that comes from being a black man or a black woman in America.”

Watch the “Sue Me” video above.

Wale is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After weeks of investigation, MLB has determined that specifically within the Red Sox organization, it was not manager Alex Cora who was at the center of the team’s sign-stealing efforts. Rather, it was a video operator named J.T. Watkins.

This news comes from Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic, who note that Cora, who was suspended by commissioner Rob Manfred for his efforts in a separate Houston Astros’ scandal and subsequently fired by the Red Sox, was not found to have spearheaded Boston’s rule-breaking during the 2018 regular season.

So while Cora remains out of baseball for this year, “Watkins will be suspended without pay for the 2020 regular season and prohibited from serving as a replay room operator for the 2021 regular season and postseason.” Though Manfred has repeatedly laid blame at the hands of managers and general managers in such circumstances, Watkins allegedly “acted as a rogue employee.”

Watkins and 30 of the 34 Red Sox players interviewed by the league denied Watkins’ cheating, according to the report from The Athletic. The league investigation also determined that the Red Sox sign-stealing efforts did not continue in the 2018 postseason, when they won the World Series, or in the 2019 regular season. Boston will also forfeit a 2020 second-round pick as part of the punishment to be handed down by the league.

Manfred is reportedly quoted in the investigation’s official report as saying, “Many players told my investigators that they were unaware that in-game sign decoding from the replay station had been prohibited in 2018 and 2019.”

Those same players, according to Watkins, “were aware that they were supposed to routinely provide him with sign information gathered when they were on second base.” Clearly, Watkins was at the center of the efforts, but the report seems to leave much undetermined.

One year ago today, on Earth Day, Lil Dicky recruited some of today’s biggest stars to lend a hand on his charitable single “Earth.” The track saw verses from the likes of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, and Katy Perry. He even tried to call up Kanye West to be on the track but couldn’t reach him because the rapper had changed his number. Though the track came out a year ago, Dicky aims to continue the song’s philanthropic message by donating a large amount of money to assist in the fight against both climate change and the global pandemic.

Dicky has offered an impressive $800,000 in donations to benefit various organizations. Arriving across six grants, Dicky’s charitable act will benefit Amazon Frontlines, the Carbon Cycle Institute, Global Greengrants Fund, Quick Response Fund For Nature, Shark Conservation Fund, and The Solutions Project. Along with donating to specific charity groups, Dicky is offering over $200,000 to his newly-minted COVID-19 x Climate Response Fund.

In a statement, the rapper explained his reasoning behind the large donation:

“I’m very honored and humbled that we’re able to give this money to these organizations, and super thankful of all of the artists on this song who made this possible. And of course, thank you to every Earthling out there for listening and spreading the word. Unfortunately, the fight to save this planet isn’t even close to over, and we’re going to have to amplify our efforts way more to turn this thing around. Because pretty soon, it’ll be too late. Even though times have never been scarier with the COVID-19 pandemic, it has shown me something: that we can modify our day-to-day behavior to adapt to a crisis when it’s right in front of us. Even if you don’t feel the climate crisis at every moment, it is truthfully right in front of us.”

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Much of the second episode of “The Last Dance,” which aired Sunday on ESPN, centered around the hardship of Scottie Pippen’s upbringing and the ways it impacted his NBA career, including the infamous seven-year contract he signed in 1991. That has led many to revisit Pippen’s impact on those Bulls teams and place in the NBA hierarchy historically.

In an interview with Rachel Nichols on The Jump on Tuesday, Warriors coach and then-Bulls guard Steve Kerr praised Pippen mightily.

Aside from being “the best defensive player in the league by far,” Kerr said Pippen also was vital in the locker room. “Scottie was sort of the counter-balance to (Michael Jordan’s prickly personality),” Kerr said.

Another focus of part two of the series was Pippen’s decision to undergo surgery at the start of training camp rather than over the summer. Pippen made no mistake about the fact that the delay was intentional, as he wanted to enjoy the offseason rather than rehabbing. Kerr, however, insisted there were no hard feelings from the team.

“We felt his frustration with him,” Kerr said. “Nobody resented him for having that surgery later. We all just understood … Let’s give him his space, and he’s going to be there in the second stretch of the season for us.”

Whereas Jordan in the film calls Pippen “selfish” for making the decision, Kerr’s perspective is probably more representative of other teammates. Jordan understandably felt the weight of Pippen’s departure heavily, as the Bulls got off to a rocky start (which we also see in the second episode) and Jordan had to, as always, shoulder a heavy load. Still, the documentary is also built around the acidic atmosphere around the team due to the way Jerry Krause and Jerry Reinsdorf managed it.

Considering the financial circumstances and soured relationships around the Bulls at that time, Pippen’s decision to wait on his surgery is a relatively minor offense. And as Kerr says, Pippen had enough built-up goodwill from teammates and others within the organization that he was given the space to make his own decision rather than kowtowing to Jordan or Krause again.

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When Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores whispered “Welcome to the end of the game,” to Ed Harris’ frazzled William, Westworld fans were quick to theorize that season three would bring a surprise ending to the robot series. Guess again.

The HBO original has been officially renewed and will continue its technological war between humans and hosts into a fourth season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Not only that, but the series is apparently far from finished as the showrunners, husband and wife team Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, have plans for a season five and six, which means Westworld is only halfway through its full story.

“From the Western theme park to the technocratic metropolis of the near future, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed every twist and turn from the minds of master storytellers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy,” HBO programming president Casey Bloys said in a statement announcing the pickup. “We can’t wait to see where their inspired vision takes us next.”

Considering the series has a history of long gaps between its seasons, it probably won’t come as a surprise that a season four release date has yet to be determined, and production delays from the current pandemic will almost certainly be a factor. In the meantime, it will be surprising to see if Harris reprises his role as the Man in Black after he recently told THR that he wasn’t exactly thrilled with his season three storyline.

First of all, I really enjoyed playing the Man in Black, right? Then all of the sudden, he’s the Man in White. So I wasn’t the happiest camper to tell you the truth, because I really enjoyed the part I was playing, and I was hoping that he, the Man in Black, would continue to somehow be prevalent in the story.

Harris went on to say that the sudden character change was “jarring” and “hard to enjoy” before repeating once again that he wasn’t a fan of William’s arc. “I didn’t like it,” he said. “I still don’t. But that’s my problem.”

(Via THR)

In case you couldn’t tell from the inevitable, uniform reactions from Los Angeles’ transplant population on Twitter, a 3.7-magnitude earthquake hit LA in the wee hours of the morning, prompting the aforementioned flurry of “Earthquake!” tweets. However, native Angelenos, who are well-accustomed to having the ground move at random points throughout their lives, didn’t even notice the tremors. One native who slept through the shakes was Snoop Dogg, who posted a hilarious reaction video to Instagram after discovering that not only was there an earthquake, but that his hair apparently felt it before he did.

“They said we just had an earthquake,” he quipped. “They said we just had an earthquake.” However, Snoop’s often carefully-manicured coiffure had come undone, prompting him to wonder, “The f*ck happened to my hair?” This led to the theory that, “We must’ve had an earthquake because my hair didn’t look like this when I went to bed. My hair must’ve got scared and gathered itself up to protect itself from the earthquake.” However, despite all this apparently happening in his sleep, Snoop maintained his insistence that he remained unaffected. “I didn’t feel it… I’m going back to bed,” he declared.

While Snoop was more than willing to joke about the shakeup on Instagram, some of his fellow famous people seemed a bit more… shaken. Cardi B wondered, “Who felt that earthquake?” while Chrissy Teigen combined both reactions into a single tweet: “You’re telling me the earthquake busted in mere minutes after it becoming earth day?? An icon.”

Watch Snoop’s hilarious reaction above.

Last year, Netflix released the explosive documentary chronicling the failure of the high-profile Fyre Festival. The festival landed the founder Billy McFarland in jail and Ja Rule in hot water. But the documentary also generated viral success for Andy King, who quickly became a meme after revealing what he almost had to do to save the festival. King now aims to flip the script and bring people together through a virtual festival experience.

King is hosting the livestream music festival Room Service, a three-day live event with an eclectic lineup of musicians. Boasting acts like A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Gallant, Mxmtoon, Yungblud, and more, the entire festival benefits charity. Room Service is free to view, but virtual attendees are asked to donate to funds which will benefit the non-profit organizations Feeding America and Sweet Relief to provide support to those in need during the pandemic. The festival goes down from Friday, April 24 to Sunday, April 26, which is almost exactly three years after Fyre was scheduled to take place.

In a statement, King detailed his excitement about the virtual festival: “I’m beyond thrilled to host Room Service this weekend and bring everybody some well-deserved joy and distraction. This festival gives us a chance to translate the anniversary of Fyre into some real good that’s needed in the world right now.”

Watch the Room Service Music Festival trailer above and check out the full lineup below.

The three-day festival kicks off 4/24. RSVP here.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Muffet McGraw is among the most legendary women’s basketball coaches of all-time, having accrued 936 wins in her career, including 842 in her 33 years at Notre Dame. During that time, the Irish went to nine Final Fours and won a pair of national titles, most recently in 2018, and McGraw was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017.

On Wednesday, McGraw and Notre Dame announced that she would be stepping down as head coach of the Irish in a move that stunned the hoops world. McGraw said “the time has come to step down,” and issued thanks to Notre Dame’s leadership, the fans, and players she coached over her tremendous 33-year tenure in South Bend.

Not only was McGraw a tremendously successful coach, but she also used her platform to speak out about issues of gender inequality and the need for more women in leadership positions not just in sports but across politics and business. Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick also issued a statement of appreciation for McGraw and for how much she cared about not just helping the women she coached become better basketball players, but also developing skills beyond the court.

“It is inevitable and appropriate that as we mark Muffet’s retirement from coaching today, much of the focus will be on the remarkable record of competitive success that makes her a Hall of Fame coach,” Jack Swarbrick stated. “But my reflections go more to her as an educator, friend, and role model. Every time I had the privilege of stepping into her classroom, be it at practice or courtside during a game, I was struck by how much she cared about her students and how important it was for her to use basketball as a vehicle to help develop future leaders.

“Winning over 900 games and two national championships make Muffet a legendary coach; nurturing “strong confident women who are not afraid to use their voice and take a stand” makes Muffet a teacher who made a difference in the lives of every student-athlete she taught. While we will not have the benefit of Muffet as our coach going forward, we will make certain that through her ongoing work with Notre Dame Athletics we continue to enjoy all that she has to offer as an educator, friend, and role model.”

McGraw retires ranking sixth among D-1 coaches in wins, fifth in Final Four appearances, fourth in NCAA Tournament wins, and won three National Coach of the Year awards. Former Notre Dame player, assistant coach and, most recently, assistant coach with the Memphis Grizzlies, Niele Ivey will take over as the Irish’s new head coach.