CINCINNATI — Near the entrance of Great American Ball Park on Monday night, Shane Vicars laid a baseball among the bouquets of roses in front of the statue of Pete Rose.

Vicars’ signature adorned the ball. He and his wife, Candie, live just a couple of blocks from the home of the Cincinnati Reds, and they felt compelled to take the short walk to the stadium and pay their respects.

“I have plenty of baseballs signed by him,” Shane Vicars said, “and I just wanted to give one to him.”

Another baseball was inscribed “RIP Hit King” and “Thank you.” And then there were, of course, roses. A half-dozen were on the plaque with his name, his nickname — “Charlie Hustle” — and the years he played for his hometown Reds.

Vicars, 50, is not unlike so many other kids who grew up in Cincinnati idolizing Rose, who died Monday at age 83.

“Pete was Cincinnati,” Vicars said.

Geoff Moehlman was born just weeks after Rose’s final game in 1986. Even though Moehlman never saw Rose play in person, here he sat on a large, concrete baseball 15 feet from the statue of Rose. It shows him diving headfirst and sits outside the stadium, across the street from a sportsbook. Moehlman, in a red Reds cap and a white jacket with Cincinnati spelled out in full across the chest, watched…

The San Diego School of Baseball was backed by hitting stars such as Tony Gwynn and Alan Trammell, but it was the pitching minds that gave the early 1980s baseball camp its charm — and its legacy.

Brent Strom and Tom House had been teammates at the University of Southern California and then, later, journeyman pitchers in the major leagues. Aside from lineage, they also shared deep-seated hunches that there was more to learn about baseball than previous generations had taught.

So when the day’s instruction was over, they sat in the dugouts of Grossmont College or ventured to a local watering hole, tossing ideas back and forth: the things they loved about the game, the things they thought were wrong, the things they wanted to change.

Once, during a baby shower for another coach’s wife, the men were scolded when they were found in the corner of a room, playing back film of pitchers. They were all obsessives, and the San Diego School of Baseball was their offseason oasis — a place where they could gather and discuss, without judgment and scorn, some of the very concepts that decades later would alter the balance of baseball.

“A summit,” House called it, “of smart baseball minds.”

Before PITCHf/x and Statcast could measure progress, before internet message boards and…

Shortly after haggling his way out of free-agent purgatory and into a new contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kiké Hernández asked his wife, Mariana, to investigate another market. She contacted former Dodger Rich Hill’s wife, Caitlin, with a request: Could the Hernándezes live in the Hills’ house again? 

The Hills had bought the property, located in the Toluca Lake neighborhood, in 2017, soon after Rich signed a $48 million contract. The family decided not to sell it after Hill’s final season with the team in 2019. The house has since become a popular destination among Dodgers personnel. Catcher Austin Barnes lived there one season. Manager Dave Roberts has inquired about its availability. When Hernández rejoined the team at last year’s trade deadline, he moved into the house, which is a convenient 20-minute drive from Dodger Stadium, with access to three different highways. 

“It’s very appealing, because of the location,” Hill said. 

But that’s not its only selling point; almost as important is that the homeowner understands his tenants’ nomadic baseball lifestyle.

When searching for a place to live, players often rely upon each other’s recommendations, connections, and familiarity with baseball’s unique schedule and travel. That has led to a…

The Hall of Fame is made for players like Adrián Beltré. As a pure hitter, reliable slugger and slick third baseman, Beltré had few peers: No other infielder in the history of baseball has 3,000 hits, 400 homers and five Gold Glove awards. Beltré, now 44, was a lock for the Hall of Fame.

As a first-time Cooperstown candidate, Beltré did not need to follow the breathless tracking of public ballots this winter. Yet he still could not feel secure, he said, until his wife and son assured him on Tuesday that election day looked promising. He could savor it.

“That made me relax a little bit more, and I kind of forced myself to try to enjoy this moment,” Beltré said from his home in Southern California, moments after achieving his sport’s greatest honor. “It was going to be a nice moment, and probably the last moment in baseball that I was going to accomplish, being at the pinnacle of the game.”

Beltré had company at the summit on Tuesday, with Todd Helton and Joe Mauer joining him in the new class of Hall of Famers. Former manager Jim Leyland, elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee last month, will also be inducted at the ceremony July 21.

Candidates must receive 75 percent of the ballots from 10-year members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of…

NASHVILLE — Jim Leyland buttoned up his forever jersey on Monday, the one with “Hall of Fame” in script across the front. He sat on a ballroom dais at the Winter Meetings, flanked by Hall officials as his wife, Katie, beamed with pride from a few feet away. So did former rivals and colleagues like Tony La Russa and Joe Torre.

Leyland, 78, was one of them now: a certified Hall of Famer, elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee on Sunday night. A phone call from the Hall’s chairman, Jane Forbes Clark, welcomed him to Cooperstown.

“My wife said, who is that? I said, ‘It’s Jake from State Farm,’” Leyland said, his deadpan wit still sharp. “Anyway, I had 294 texts last night, from friends and people all over the world, really. … I can’t tell you how fortunate a ride it’s been.”

As joyous as the occasion was for Leyland, it was striking to see the other, empty side of the dais. That’s where Lou Piniella should have been.

At MLB’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, attention has shifted to the Hall of Fame’s newest electee. Jim Leyland addressed the media Monday, reflecting on his life in baseball and looking ahead to July’s Induction Ceremony.

Read more: https://t.co/5wwxyeF79m pic.twitter.com/NDl9cl70oI

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and…

CINCINNATI — Michael Mariot had a deadline — if he didn’t get signed by an affiliated minor league team, a team in Mexico or a team in Asia by June 9th, he was going to retire.

He’d thought about retiring after a 2022 season that saw him play pitch for two Triple-A teams and in Taiwan, but his wife encouraged him to give it one more shot.

Mariot, 34, had 44 games under his belt in the big leagues and two wins and two saves on his ledger from his time with the Royals and Phillies, but he hadn’t stepped on a big-league mound since October 2, 2016.

Since pitching in Philadelphia against the Mets in the final game of that season, Mariot’s lived up to his soundalike surname by appearing all over the world, pitching for 12 different teams, five big-league organizations, and in six leagues that were either unaffiliated or in another country and in three foreign countries.

He signed on for one last shot, joining the Cleburne Railroaders of the independent American Association of Independent Baseball, a league whose website boats “We play for the love of the game” — which tells you all you need to know about the salary structure.

Mariot and his wife decided that if he didn’t get an offer by his deadline, they were going to Hawaii to visit family. He booked flights and a…

CINCINNATI — The friends and family section at Great American Ball Park offers a direct view to the Cincinnati Reds bullpen in left-center field.

You can’t see everything going on in the bullpen, but Kelsi Antone knows when her husband, Tejay, is up by two telltale signs — his high-cuffed pants showing off the red socks and the black sleeves he wears under his jersey.

Dani Sims, the wife of Lucas, listened to Kelsi Antone explain this and pointed out that she tracks Lucas by his pants, worn in the same style as Tejay Antone.

“That’s Lucas’ thing, Tejay’s going to have to change,” Dani Sims said, jokingly.

Saturday night, Sims was sitting in the row in front of Antone and her father-in-law, Tony Antone, both having made it into town in time for what they hoped would be Tejay Antone’s return to a big-league mound more than two years after undergoing a second Tommy John surgery in 2021.

“It’s the culmination of two years of so much hard work,” Kelsi Antone said in the sixth inning with Reds starter Andrew Abbott still in the 0-0 game. “There’s been so much work. I learned to live day to day — for 750 days or whatever.”

Friday morning,…

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It’s time to start thinking about the All-Star rosters, we have history waiting in the wings, and if you’re gonna be a buyer — or a seller — you gotta get it right. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal — welcome to The Windup!

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She plays a tune for those who wish to overlook

I’m just old enough to remember the cover of Sports Illustrated from March 14, 1988. An umpire is shown pointing and yelling, and while the face is obscured by a mask, the headline caught my attention:

THE LADY IS AN UMP: Pam Postema gets a shot at the big leagues

That was 35 years ago, but no woman — not Postema or anyone else — has ever worked a regular-season game in the big leagues, despite women working as officials in the NBA and NFL (including Sarah Thomas, who became the first woman to work a Super Bowl in 2021).

That might change in the coming years. Britt Ghiroli has a great story today about Jen Pawol, who is currently working games in Triple A. It’s a story about a trailblazer, sure, but Ghiroli digs into the history of female umpires, including Postema, who settled out of court on a lawsuit alleging discrimination, and Teresa Cox, whose lawsuit…

If you have questions about the future of your team’s live games on your local cable, satellite or digital provider, particularly those on Bally Sports channels, we’re here to answer with what we know so far.

Diamond Sports Group, the Baltimore-based corporate parent of the 19 Bally Sports channels that air 47 NBA, MLB, NHL and WNBA teams, announced Feb. 15 that it would skip a $140 million debt payment due that day and use the month-long grace period as part of its effort to financially reorganize itself.

Many observers interpret the move as a precursor to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, though that is not a certainty. Diamond has $8 billion-plus of debt, incurred as part of parent Sinclair’s 2019 purchase of the regional sports channels, and lost $1.2 billion in the most recent fiscal quarter.

“Certainly more likely that they will file bankruptcy because they did not make the payment,” said Schuyler Carroll, a bankruptcy attorney who is not connected to Diamond. “But not necessarily that they will file bankruptcy. They are still continuing discussions with their creditors to try and avoid bankruptcy. But those can often be difficult.”

Diamond in a Feb. 15 statement said it “intends to use the 30-day grace period to continue progressing its ongoing…