Trivia

What MLB player holds the most home run derby titles?

Last Week’s Answer: Peyton Manning holds the most MVP awards in the history of the NFL.

Baseball:

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred “indeed wants to stay on as commissioner, but didn’t specify when an election would take place, be it November’s owners’ meetings or otherwise,” according to The Athletic. Manfred’s current contract is a “five-year deal that runs until Jan. 25, 2025,” but he could “receive an extension before the year is out.” A nine-month window where the commissioner can be re-elected “by a majority vote, rather than the three-quarters vote required at other times, is about to begin.” Technically, a commissioner could be extended “at any time on a three-quarters, written vote by owners.” But for a commissioner seeking re-election, the sport’s constitution “calls for a period where a majority vote is enough to cement another term.” That window “starts 18 months before a commissioner’s current contract expires and runs until nine months remain on the deal.” Starting in the next couple of weeks, then, Manfred will be “in the window where he could be brought back by a majority vote.” While Manfred’s commissionership has been intense and controversial, the timing “seems, in at least one prominent way, quite strong for him.” Manfred is “in the midst of enjoying perhaps the most significant feather in his cap to date: the rule changes, which have largely produced the on-field results he and his group said they would.

Football:

The legal negotiations between the NFL and representatives for Washington Commander’s owner Daniel Snyder have created issues that could make the approval and close of Snyder’s $6.05 billion sale of the franchise to a group led by Josh Harris more complicated, reported by The Washington Post. It is “not clear” whether those complications will "affect the NFL’s plans to have team owners vote to approve the sale at a meeting next week in Minneapolis." The complications are "related at least in part to legal issues pertaining to the leaking of emails” that led to the October 2021 resignation of Raiders coach Jon Gruden. A source described the complications as “‘significant’ and ‘not just some small snag.’” The source also "left open the possibility that Snyder and his attorneys merely are attempting to extract last-minute concessions from the NFL on legal indemnification related to Gruden’s lawsuit against the league." However, a source said that the complications “relate to the willingness of Snyder and his family to indemnify the league and owners against liability related to the Gruden case.” The source also said that Snyder “no longer is willing to sign an affidavit that he did not leak the emails that led to Gruden’s resignation,” after “previously being willing to do so.” Sources said that the owners are “expected to ratify Harris’s deal to buy the team from Snyder at next Thursday’s special league meeting" if the "issues with Snyder can be resolved.”

Basketball:

Charlotte-based car dealer and entrepreneur Felix Sabates, who invested in the city’s original basketball expansion franchise in 1987 and “stayed on through the Michael Jordan era,” is “ready to get out of his basketball investment,” according to The Charlotte Business Journal. Sabates, who is 78, said that he wants out “not because of Jordan’s imminent sale of majority interest in the Hornets.” Rather, he said he is “excited” for the new majority investor group led by Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall saying, “These guys want to win.” Sabates: “They’re going to put up the money. And they’re young enough to do it.” On the “business side, prospects are bright” for the franchise. Sabates said, “You saw how well we did financially with a crappy team,” adding Hornets President Fred Whitfield “and his people deserve a medal.” Sabates: “You haves fans, a lot of sellouts –  you have to give credit Fred (and the front office.)” Last season the team sold 12,000 season tickets, the “most since the NBA returned in 2004," and that number “includes all of the lower bowl.” The Hornets also “sold out 16 of 41 home games in 2022-23,” the “most in a season” dating to the original Hornets in 1997-98.

Other:

PGA Tour COO Ron Price during a Senate hearing said the investment by the PIF into the tour will be “significant ... north of $1 billion,” according to Golf Digest. That is “about the same number as the tour’s net assets last year” at $1.3B. The acknowledgement of the PIF’s potential investment of more than $1B “underscored the scale of Saudi Arabia’s mounting ambitions in international sports, which have included forays into soccer and Formula 1 racing.”

Sources: SportsBusiness Daily; YahooSports.com; Espn; The Athletic; Charlotte Business Journal; The Washington Post