The major league season is scheduled to start April 1 with the New York Yankees hosting Toronto and Detroit hosting Cleveland, part of an opening-day schedule of 15 games.
Professional baseball will stay in the Biggest Little City for at least 10 more years, as the Reno Aces have accepted an affiliate invitation from the Arizona Diamondbacks. The 10-year agreement comes after the team signed Major League Baseball’s Professional Development License (PDL). “We are overjoyed to continue our longstanding partnership with the Arizona Diamondbacks,” said Aces president Eric Edelstein. “Northern Nevada is fortunate to have such incredible Major League partners, and our entire community has earned this opportunity to represent Triple-A Baseball in the new Major League Player Development system.”
Former Reno Aces catcher Blake Lalli, who managed the Arizona Diamondbacks’ AA minor league team in Jackson in 2019, has been named the new manager of their AAA affiliate in Reno.
So much of it looked familiar — from the heartfelt rendering of the national anthem, to the silvery, star-studded halftime show, to Tom Brady standing there at the end with a mile-wide smile, awash in confetti.
Last Sunday, Nevada embarked on a pivotal four-games-in-eight-days stretch. This Sunday, the Pack walked off the Lawlor Events Center court with four-straight wins, and key sweeps of UNLV and Boise State after a 73-62 victory over the Broncos.
The stadium was full of cardboard cutouts and people in masks. A poet — yes, a poet — introduced us to some real heroes, and one of them handled the opening coin flip like she had done it 100 times before. On the field a woman joined the crew in stripes for the first time in a Super Bowl. Even the commercials reminded us — at times somberly — that this was a season like no other in a time unlike any other.
Leah Withrow has been promoted to head groundskeeper for the Reno Aces, making her the only female currently leading a grounds crew in all of Triple-A baseball, and the first female head groundskeeper in team history. Withrow has been with the team full-time since 2018, working under each of the team’s two previous head groundskeepers.
Major League Baseball has proposed a one-month delay in starting spring training due to the coronavirus pandemic and pushing back opening day to April 28, two people familiar with the plan told The Associated Press. Under the plan presented to the players’ union on Friday, the regular season would be cut from 162 games to 154.
There have been four previous Super Bowls in Tampa, some amid war and economic distress, but none have faced the challenges this year’s event encounters because of the coronavirus pandemic and its fallout.
Considering that there has been no repeat NFL champion since the 2004 season, clearly some major obstructions have gotten in the way. For the Chiefs, that hurdle wears a No. 12 jersey and is the last guy to pull off the feat. After demolishing Buffalo for the AFC title, the Chiefs head to Tampa looking to complete the double. It’s been done eight times, twice by the Steelers. But there’s never been such a gap for a repeat winner, and after winning its first Super Bowl in a half-century last year, Kansas City seems primed to end that string of failures.
For Tom Brady, another trip to the Super Bowl — but this time, in a Tampa Bay uniform. And for his new team, the Buccaneers, a first-of-its-kind home game, but without the usual home-field advantage. To put a bow on this make-it-up-as-we-go NFL season — a campaign upended but never fully undone by the coronavirus pandemic — it comes as no surprise that there is no such thing as a straightforward storyline.
UNLV mascot Hey Reb!, which was criticized for what some saw as connotations of the Confederacy, has retired, university President Keith Whitfield announced on Tuesday. The announcement comes after a statue of Hey Reb! was removed from its pedestal outside the Tam Alumni Center on the university’s campus in June. Since the removal, the university stopped using the mascot in the traditional areas of student recruitment and athletics, Whitfield said in a statement.
Anytime news comes out on a late afternoon, it is usually not good. In case of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association and the sports of basketball and wrestling, the news wasn’t good this past Friday. Both sports were schedule to start practice on Jan. 2 and start games on Jan. 14.
In the 1990s, the Bills buffaloed their way to four successive — if not successful — Super Bowls. No other franchise has managed that. About a decade later, the long-downtrodden Buccaneers swashbuckled to an NFL title. Ever since, pretty much nothing for those teams. Until now. Next weekend, Buffalo, which last got this far in the 1993 season, heads to reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City. And the Chiefs could be missing their dynamic star quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, who was concussed in a 22-17 victory Sunday over Cleveland. “It’s a special time to be a Buffalo Bill, ” tackle Dion Dawkins said.
Grant Sherfield scored 27 points, making it six 20-point games in a row, and Nevada beat Fresno State 79-65 on Sunday. Sherfield hit all 10 of his free throw attempts. He added eight assists.