MINNEAPOLIS — In applying for U.S. citizenship at age 78, the latest chapter in his fascinating life, Rod Carew used the same approach that made him one of the best pure hitters in Major League Baseball history.

The Hall of Famer diligently prepared for the 10-question citizenship test the same way he might if he were getting ready to face Bob Gibson. Carew put himself on alert for any and all possibilities as he spent months breaking down the citizenship test question by question.

Carew officially became a U.S. citizen on Aug. 2 and will be sworn in at a later date. The native of Panama revealed the accomplishment this weekend to friends during festivities surrounding a Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame event at Target Field.

“I’m so proud of my husband,” said his wife, Rhonda Carew. “He studied those questions and the answers to those questions like there was no tomorrow. He was not going to miss a question.”

“I love this country,” Rod Carew said. “It has given me everything and more.”

The news of Carew’s newly gained citizenship surprised just about everyone. Carew’s family moved to Washington…

Welcome to the 38th Media Mailbag for The Athletic. Thanks for sending in your questions via the website and app. There were more than 170 questions, so this is Part 1 of a two-parter. (Note: Questions have been edited for clarity and length.)

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Does hiring guys like Tom Brady to broadcast football games REALLY move the needle for viewership? Are there people out there who will say, “Yeah, let’s watch that game because ____ is calling it?” Don’t most fans prefer their own homer broadcasters anyway? Am I way off on this? — Kris A.

It’s an interesting question, Kris, and one that’s discussed within the industry all the time given the extraordinary salaries of the NFL analysts who call the top games for their respective networks. The core answer is that viewers watch games for the game itself; the viewership number would likely be close to the same if you and I were calling it.

But the presentation of the game and how viewers process the game matters greatly to leagues and broadcasters because they want you to leave the broadcast wanting to come back. With leagues specifically, they want people in the booth who they believe represent their product — and leagues have some veto power on broadcast hires, even if the networks don’t publicly admit that.

Now for Brady…

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…

Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball. 

It was glimmering out there for Ryne Sandberg, the same destination for a very different test of endurance and will. He had made it to Cooperstown as a player. Now, he wanted to make it as a cancer patient on the way to recovery.

And he did. Sandberg was one of the 14 Hall of Famers who gathered last Saturday at Doubleday Field for the East-West Classic, a recreation of the old Negro Leagues All-Star Game. He didn’t play, but he won.

“The timing was good for this trip, so I had this on the calendar, kind of penciled in,” Sandberg said behind the batting cage before the game. “Then I got good news last week, so it freed me up to come up here. And this is a well-needed getaway. This is a special place to come anyway, and my wife also needed a break; she’s had her hands full as well. We always love coming here.”

Sandberg, 64, announced on Jan. 22 that he had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. In the four months since, he has chronicled his ordeal on Instagram, posting messages through six rounds of chemotherapy.

In a post last week, Sandberg revealed that PET and MRI scans on May 20 revealed “NO detection of Cancer!” He said he would…

BOSTON — It’s not uncommon for kids to go out to the backyard and play catch with their dad.

What is uncommon is when the dad is a former big-league pitcher.

And when Dad happens to have been a longtime practitioner of the tricky and dreaded knuckleball, that’s off-the-charts unusual. But so it was with the late Tim Wakefield and his two kids, Trevor and Brianna. Like most dads, he played catch with the kids. Like hardly any dads, he taught them how to throw a knuckleball.

Which brings us to Fenway Park, Tuesday afternoon, Opening Day, Red Sox versus Baltimore Orioles. The Red Sox held a pregame ceremony in memory of Wakefield and his wife, Stacy, both of whom died of cancer over the past six months. The club also remembered longtime Sox president Larry Lucchino, who died last week.

When it came time for someone to throw out a ceremonial first pitch, it was Brianna Wakefield, an 18-year-old high school senior who’ll be headed to Boston College this fall, who toed the Fenway rubber. Now for everyone who was at Fenway Park on Tuesday afternoon, for everyone who was watching on television, for everyone who was listening to Hall of Fame-bound Joe Castiglione call the game over the radio, the answer to your question is yes, yes, yes, of course Brianna Wakefield took a very Tim…

There are many unanswered questions surrounding the betting scandal involving Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. What we do know, though, is Mizuhara wasn’t just an interpreter. He was Ohtani’s right-hand man, his catch partner, his liaison for on –and off– the field matters because the most successful interpreter-player relationships are built on one thing: unrelenting trust.

“It’s such a big part (of the job),” Mizuhara told The Athletic last summer of establishing a close connection. “We are together pretty much every day, longer than I’m with my wife, so it’s going to be tough if you don’t get along on a personal level.”

The Mizuhara-Ohtani relationship — the pair worked out together on Christmas – was perhaps extreme, but the role of interpreters in baseball has evolved significantly over the years. Interpreters are in dugouts, team meetings and have carte blanche into the life of a professional baseball team. It’s not impossible to imagine a scenario where Mizuhara had access to Ohtani’s finances, as interpreters are often tasked with off-the-field errands like picking up food or dry cleaning.

So what exactly do interpreters in Major League Baseball do on a daily basis? And how do you get the gig?…

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has declined his invitation to be a part of the 2004 championship ceremony the Red Sox will hold during their home opener on April 9, according to team sources. The Boston Globe first reported the news.

The Red Sox announced earlier this week they would be hosting a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the 2004 team during their home opener and that all members of the team had been invited to attend. In addition, the club plans to honor the life of former Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield and his wife Stacy, both of whom died recently from cancer.

GO DEEPER

At the Jimmy Fund, tragic loss of Stacy and Tim Wakefield felt deeply: Buckley

Schilling pitched in Boston for four seasons and was a key part of the Red Sox’s 2004 and 2007 World Series teams, but became a controversial figure in his post-playing career. Schilling officially retired in March 2009 but threw his last official MLB pitch in 2007.

In 2015, he was suspended from a broadcasting job at ESPN and then fired the following year for making insensitive remarks on social media about Muslims and members of the transgender community.

Later in 2016, Schilling made headlines again for sharing a photo on Twitter of a Donald Trump supporter wearing a T-shirt that read, “Rope. Tree….

With ESPN’s direct-to-consumer plan, the network is attempting to uphold its mission statement of, “Serving sports fans. Anytime. Anywhere.”

In the process, Disney CEO Bob Iger and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro are looking to make deals. Anytime. Anywhere.

Iger and Pitaro are trying, through equity stake talks with the biggest leagues and with distribution discussions with the largest digital players, to add to ESPN’s already impressive content lineup and have price points to serve every sports fan.

It all sounds simple, but they are engaged in complicated negotiations with a full ESPN direct-to-consumer subscription product launching this fall in combination with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, and then ESPN’s standalone service slated for 2025.

At a fee of more than $10 per subscriber, no company has been more important to the cable bundle than ESPN, and no one has benefited more. While ESPN will still be offered on cable, Disney/ESPN are trying to stack the sports content and distribution deck even more in their favor.

In 2011, ESPN peaked with 100 million cable homes, according to Nielsen, but now is at around 71 million homes. One of the overarching goals for Iger and Pitaro is to reverse the subscriber trend with its direct-to-consumer plan.

ESPN’s goal is to sell…

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…

Shohei Ohtani has yet to debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he already has a ring — a wedding ring.

The two-way superstar, who is notoriously private about his personal life, revealed the news on Instagram early Thursday morning. He said his wife is Japanese, but he didn’t provide her name or any details about his wedding.

“Not only have I began a new chapter in my career with the Dodgers but I also have began a new life with someone from my Native country of Japan who is very special to me and I wanted everyone to know I am now married,” Ohtani said. “I am excited for what is come and thank you for your support.”

Ohtani, whose statement is in Japanese, said he would share more information in an interview, according to the Associated Press.

The 29-year-old’s Instagram post featured a photo of his dog, Dekopin, whose American name is Decoy.

“We hope the two of us — and one animal — will work together,” Ohtani wrote, per the AP.

This isn’t the first time Ohtani has abruptly revealed major news on Instagram. In December, he announced on the social media platform that he signed with the Dodgers, ending feverish speculation about his landing spot in free agency. Ohtani’s agency, CAA, later said he agreed to a 10-year, $700 million contract with the club.