Nike Honors FC Barcelona With Special Total 90 III Model
Nikeis honoring the belovedFC Barcelonateam with a specialTotal 90 IIIshoe.
The upcoming model, which drops some time this fall, bears the team's colors on its leather uppers. Dark blue lands on the lateral and quilted toebox, garnet on the medial and heel and, finally, gold on the circular '90' logo, insoles and '90III' insignias.
Additional branding is spotted on the panel, toebox, heel and midsole swooshes, as well as the embossed 'total90III' stamps on the ankle and tongue, but no official Barça emblems appear despite the Nike's sponsorship of the club. The shoe then rests on a white midsole and bespeckled gum outsole, offering extra comfort and traction. Blue laces tie them together for a neat finish.
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USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
We hit 44 in our Raiders countdown to kickoff. Who wore it best and who's wearing it now
We've reached 44 days until the Raiders season opener at Foxboro against the Patriots, With our countdown at 44 days we take a look at who currently dons the number in Silver & Black and who has brought it the most distinction. No. 44 Who's wearing it now: LB Tommy Eichenberg Eichenberg enters his second season with the Raiders. The Ohio State alum was selected in the fifth round of the 2024 NFL Draft. He appeared in 14 games as a rookie, starting one game and compiling 13 combined tackles. He did most of his work on special teams, seeing 313 snaps there (79%). This offseason he has often been lining up with the second team alongside rookie Cory Lindenberg. Who wore it best: RB Marv Hubbard Hubbard's time with the Raiders snuck right between their first trip to the Super Bowl and their second. Because his first season with the team was 1969 -- two years after their appearance in Super Bowl II -- and 1975 -- the year before their first Super Bowl win in 1976. But those were successful years for the Raiders and for Hubbard. He went to three Pro Bowls and the Raiders were in the playoffs six of those seven seasons. It was just terrible luck that he suffered a shoulder injury that knocked him out all of the 1976 season. But he still received a Super Bowl ring from the Raiders.
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Sliders: For new Baseball Hall of Fame class, growing the game means rethinking the way in
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game. COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – Billy Wagner broke his right arm twice when he was 5 years old. He started throwing with his left hand instead and soon realized it was loaded with thunderbolts. Wagner's 100 mph heat was a rarity in his time and led him, eventually, to a Hall of Fame induction ceremony this weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y. Advertisement Baseball may be a game of imitation, but breaking your dominant arm while hunting for velocity would be extreme. 'I would avoid that path,' Wagner said last week, on a Zoom call with reporters. 'I mean, that's a little painful.' The sad fact is that too many aspiring pitchers shred their arms, anyway. When Wagner and CC Sabathia — who also goes into the Hall on Sunday, with Ichiro Suzuki, Dick Allen and Dave Parker — consider the future of their craft, the wide-ranging impact of youth development concerns them. 'I think some of these guys are coming into the game broken,' Sabathia said, adding that the 'insane' outbreak of Tommy John surgery starts with overuse at the younger levels. 'That was something that my dad fought against for me for a long time. He recognized that my arm was special, (and) he never let anybody pitch me more than one time on a weekend.' Sabathia then outlined his plan for his 14-year-old son, Carter, who is 6-foot-2, 170 pounds and throws 85 mph. 'If I put him in the Perfect Game circuit right now, we'd be flying around everywhere, every weekend for him to pitch, and I won't do it,' Sabathia said. 'He plays third base, he plays center field, and he only pitches here with his local team in Jersey, and we'll get reps that way…. He's going to play other sports, and he's going to be as diverse an athlete as possible.' Wagner — whose son, Will, is an infielder for the Toronto Blue Jays — has coached high school baseball in Virginia for years. He sees the same problems as Sabathia. 'When they get to the major-league level, they're running out of what we call runway,' Wagner said. 'And so they're injured because they've done all this massive training to get to that point, to chase their dream.' He added: 'At the lower levels, there needs to be more joy in what we're doing to grow the game. It's not a job. We don't need to take lessons every single day to make the perfect swing. The swing comes because you're out in the backyard throwing up rocks and hitting them off a bat. You're playing sandlot baseball, you're playing Wiffle ball.' Advertisement The rising expense of youth baseball has made it harder for lower-income families to afford. That's part of a multifaceted issue affecting the makeup of MLB rosters, which included just 6.2 percent Black players on opening day, down from a peak of more than 18 percent in the 1980s. Sabathia is the first Black AL/NL starter elected to the Hall since Fergie Jenkins in 1991, and the third, with Jenkins and Bob Gibson, to record 3,000 strikeouts. Of the 20 pitchers with a 20-win season since Sabathia last did it, in 2010, only David Price is Black. 'I'm excited to be able to get up there and talk to (Fergie) about what it means, (but) the one thing that keeps crossing my mind, though, is like: who's next?' Sabathia said. 'I feel like, through the Players Alliance and some of the efforts that we're putting together for this next generation, I almost feel even more responsible now to be on guys about being that next Black Ace, whether it's Taj Bradley or now Chase Burns or Hunter Greene, or whoever else. I don't want to be the last Black pitcher to win 20 games, be in the Hall of Fame, to do all these things.' Sabathia has stayed involved in MLB as part of the Commissioner's Ambassador Program, a group that has caused 'tension and an awkwardness' with the union, as The Athletic's Evan Drellich reported this week. To Sabathia, the open exchange of ideas is all positive. 'You can go to Rob (Manfred) and talk about whatever kind of problems you have,' Sabathia said. 'That's something that we didn't have when I was playing. I never got a chance to have the commissioner come and sit in the clubhouse and kind of go over what's happening during the season. So I'm trying to do whatever I can to help grow the game and point the game in a positive direction.' The other living inductee this weekend, Suzuki, now serves as a special assistant to the chairman of the Seattle Mariners. He suits up before many games, refining his technique so he can help current players with theirs. To Suzuki, preserving the immeasurable aspects of baseball is vital to the essence of the sport. Advertisement 'Baseball is a game of human beings playing against human beings, and to have the passion and the energy that is created by that is something that I really hope is still part of the game,' he said through an interpreter. 'That's what I really value and is very important to me.' Hobby shops line Main Street in Cooperstown, with treasures great and small, so it's fitting that baseball cards helped build the museum at the end of the block. The Hall of Fame was around long before the memorabilia craze of the late 1980s and early 1990s, of course. But as Marq Evans explains in 'The Diamond King,' a compelling documentary released this year, a surprisingly profitable relationship between Donruss cards and the Hall brought a windfall that paid for new administrative offices and an expansion of the library. Evans set out to tell the story of Dick Perez, the prolific artist who painted more than 400 portraits for a series of 'Diamond Kings' cards that appeared in Donruss sets from 1982 to 1996. Along the way, he learned how several connections — like the puzzle pieces within each pack — combined to grow the Hall of Fame. 'The Hall was a place I had wanted to go to my entire life, but it's hard to get to from Eastern Washington, where I grew up,' Evans said. 'So it was just really fascinating to hear that this artist and this company, Perez-Steele Galleries — and really the Diamond Kings — played such a part in making the place as magical as it is.' Perez began painting portraits of Hall of Famers for the Hall to sell as postcards in 1979. The next year, a federal judge ruled against Topps' monopoly of the baseball card industry, allowing Fleer and Donruss to sell cards starting in 1981. Bill Madden — a New York Daily News writer who also worked with Donruss and keenly followed the collectibles business — knew of Perez's Hall of Fame postcards and thought something similar could work for Donruss. Frank Steele was friendly with the Hall's then-chairman, Ed Stack, and negotiated a deal between the card company and the museum. Advertisement The Hall would make Perez its official artist, endorse the fledgling card company and receive an escalating scale of royalties from every pack sold. Nobody knew how lucrative the relationship would be. 'The first year with Donruss, in 1981, they sold like $1 million worth of cards, and the Hall of Fame got some royalty off that, which was very small,' Evans said. 'And then just a couple of years later, they were doing like $80 million in sales — and not only, of course, is the royalty off that a much larger number, but the higher it went, the royalty percentage also went up. So all of a sudden, the Hall of Fame has a ton of money that they did not expect to have.' Eventually, the oversaturation of the card market led to Donruss' demise. But Perez's work continues, and the Diamond Kings' legacy survives in the form of a permanently endowed internship program now in its 25th year. Peggy Steele, who owned and operated Perez-Steele Galleries, said that 33 alumni are returning this weekend to help with induction ceremonies. 'We always felt like you give back where you make it,' she said. 'That's where the Hall continues to benefit. If we hadn't had that relationship, it never would have happened.' Tom Hamilton was born in Wisconsin in 1954, a year after Major League Baseball arrived in Milwaukee. The Braves would leave for Atlanta while Hamilton was still in grade school, but the Brewers arrived in his high school years, giving Hamilton a new team — and another set of broadcasters — to follow. Hamilton, this year's Ford C. Frick Award winner for broadcasting excellence, has spent 36 seasons bringing the Cleveland Indians and Guardians to his radio listeners with gusto and verve. But his formative influences are all from Wisconsin: Earl Gillespie, Merle Harmon, Bob Uecker, Gary Bender and Eddie Doucette. 'Those were five incredible radio play-by-play guys in the three sports that I did: basketball, football and baseball,' Hamilton said recently. 'I didn't realize it, but it was like grad school.' Advertisement Here are some thoughts from Hamilton on each of the five voices who set him on his path to Cooperstown. Earl Gillespie: 'I got to do University of Wisconsin football with him for one year, and for me, that was like winning a jackpot. He was a guy that I had grown up — I don't want to say emulating, but a guy I had so much respect and admiration for as a broadcaster because he did the Braves. When they went to Atlanta, he wanted to stay back in Wisconsin. Then he did the Packers and Badgers on radio. So to do a year of University of Wisconsin football with Earl was kind of like: 'I'm playing center field next to Hank Aaron.'' Merle Harmon: 'Listen to Merle Harmon's football calls. He was the voice of the Jets when Joe Willie (Namath) won the Super Bowl. He was really good. He initially was the No. 1 guy for the Brewers, and Bob was the No. 2 guy. And the only reason Merle gave up the Brewers (was because) he was going to do the Olympics for NBC in 1980. He had to give up the Brewers to do it.' Bob Uecker: 'Well, he was so funny — none of us can be that — but I don't think Bob's ever been given credit for how good he was at play-by-play. He was phenomenal, to the point that when I started going out on my own and doing games, I had to make sure I wasn't imitating Bob — you know, 'get up, get out of here, gone!' There's only one Bob. But I think because he was so accomplished in everything else and is noted for the movies, the beer commercials, Johnny Carson, I don't think he got enough recognition for being an incredible play-by-play guy on radio.' Gary Bender: 'He was at Madison, he was a sports anchor, but he did Badger football and Packer football. And then he went from Madison to be the main guy for CBS. He did the Final Four, the North Carolina State-Houston game. And the one thing about those four guys — Earl, Merle, Bob, Gary Bender — they were as good of people, if not better, than they were broadcasters. And they were incredible broadcasters.' Eddie Doucette: 'I never got to know Eddie, but he was doing Milwaukee Bucks basketball on radio when they had Lew Alcindor and Oscar Robertson. And Eddie, oh my god — energetic creativity. He's the one that came up with the 'jack-knife jumper' and 'into the low post in the toaster to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.' He came up with Bobby 'The Greyhound' Dandridge, and the 'sky hook' for Kareem. I've never been that creative, but those are all terms he used. That's why I always said about Hawk (Harrelson): 'When people are imitating your calls or your vocabulary, that sets you apart from everybody.'' The 75 percent threshold for election to the Hall of Fame serves two purposes. It's a high enough figure to be a landslide, but low enough so a few misguided voters can't influence the outcome. The result is what matters — in or out? The rest is just details. Advertisement Of course, one detail of Ichiro Suzuki's election has generated plenty of conversation: He fell a single vote short of joining Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous electees to Cooperstown. That very fact shows that there's always been a lot of curious, stray votes among the hundreds in each election. The point is that Suzuki cleared 75 percent. And while there's no excuse for even one voter to pass over such a decorated candidate, remember that writers used to be really, really stingy. Consider the case of Yogi Berra, who hit 30 homers twice and batted .300 four times, qualifying him for the center square of last Saturday's Grid. Berra did pretty much everything else, too: three MVP awards, 10 World Series titles, 15 years in a row as an All-Star, the life of a legend. Yet when Berra first came before the Baseball Writers' Association of America, for the 1971 election, only 242 of 360 voters checked his box — 28 shy of election. Could you imagine? In fact, nobody was elected on that 1971 ballot, which featured 16 players who eventually would get plaques. 'Sure I'm disappointed,' Berra told Dick Young of the New York Daily News. 'But then, DiMag didn't make it his first year, either.' At the time, only four candidates had been elected on the first ballot since the initial class of 1936: Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams and Stan Musial. Some fairly decent players — Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott and, yes, Joe DiMaggio — were forced to wait their turn. Players now must wait five years to be included on the ballot, but DiMaggio, who retired after the 1951 World Series, was deemed eligible in 1953. Yet the writers made him get in line behind Dizzy Dean and Al Simmons, who both made it on their ninth try. DiMaggio fell 81 votes short. In 1954, DiMaggio missed by 14 votes, with Bill Dickey (ninth ballot), Rabbit Maranville (14th) and Bill Terry (14th) getting the call. DiMaggio finally made it in 1955, and Berra got in easily on his second try, in 1972, with newcomer Sandy Koufax and 300-game winner Early Wynn, who had been denied three times. 'It is great to make it, whether it takes one, two, three or four years,' Berra said then. 'It doesn't matter.' It's been 10 years since a newly elected Hall of Fame duo matched up precisely with their years in the game. Randy Johnson and John Smoltz, from the class of 2015, both started in 1988 and finished in 2009. Now it's CC Sabathia and Ichiro Suzuki, who made their MLB debuts in 2001 and played their final games in 2019. Advertisement When speaking about Suzuki, Sabathia often mentions a game that served as a fulcrum in his career. On July 30, 2005, with Cleveland, Sabathia took the mound in Seattle after one of his worst starts ever: an eight-run shelling in Oakland. It brought his ERA to 5.24 and prompted a meaningful bullpen session with Indians pitching coach Carl Willis. 'I was trying to learn an out pitch,' Sabathia recalled last week. 'I was getting to two strikes and I was getting a lot of foul balls. I couldn't get a strikeout. And we went down to the bullpen in Oakland and he taught me how to throw a cutter, and it came out like an 82 mph slider. And I was like, 'Oh, this thing is good. I'm taking this into the game.'' Against Suzuki in Seattle, however, Sabathia's new cutter/slider met its match. 'I throw him a slider, (he) hits it off the window in Safeco,' Sabathia said, referring to a second-level restaurant at the Mariners' ballpark, then known as Safeco Field. 'I was like, 'All right, you know, that's Ichi. I could keep throwing this thing.' Comes back up later in the game, I throw it to him (on a 1-1) pitch, he takes it deep again. 'But that ends up being, like, the best pitch of my career, right? It changed my career, being able to throw that pitch. And he just peppered it off the window.' Sabathia was right about his new pitch. He lost that day in Seattle but went 9-1 over the final two months in 2005, a stretch that marked the beginning of a 7 1/2 year prime. Before that start in Seattle, Sabathia's career ERA was 4.26. From August 2005 through the end of the 2012 season, it was 3.10. All he needed was to weather Suzuki's two homers and keep his confidence in the new pitch – which, apparently, was easy to do. After all, as Sabathia said, 'That's Ichi.' (Top photo, l-r, of Suzuki, Sabathia and Wagner in January 2025: New York Yankees / Getty Images)
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Who is getting inducted to Baseball Hall of Fame? Ichiro leads global 2025 class
COOPERSTOWN, NY – They come from Appalachia; Aichi, Japan; Wampum, Pennsylvania; Vallejo, California; and Cincinnati, Ohio. They are sluggers, a slap hitter, an ace and a closer. The quintet makes up one of the most diverse Baseball Hall of Fame classes in history, including three Black players and the first Japanese-born inductee. Outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, starting pitcher CC Sabathia, reliever Billy Wagner and deceased Dave Parker and Dick Allen all will be inducted Sunday, July 27, into the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in front of a crowd that could be the largest in history. 'It's an incredible Hall of Fame class," Hall of Fame closer Goose Gossage tells USA TODAY Sports. 'These guys all come from different backgrounds and eras, but the thing I love about these guys is their respect for the game, and their place in history." CC Sabathia Sabathia, the 2007 AL Cy Young winner who won 251 games, is hoping that his induction will help pave the way for more young Black pitchers in the game. He will be only the third Black pitcher to be elected into the Hall of Fame with only 15 Black pitchers who have won 20 games, with David Price the last in 2012. 'The one thing that keeps crossing my mind is who's next?' says Sabathia, who is a special assistant to Commissioner Rob Manfred. 'I'm on the search for who's next and what I can do to get that person or kid on the mound and going in the right direction." Sabathia meets with young players today in camps across the country, letting them know that if a kid like him can make it out of Vallejo, they can do it, too. 'Especially with where I came from, just knowing that I'm going to be someplace where the best that ever played have been honored," Sabathia says, 'is really amazing. When I was still playing, Reggie (Jackson) would tell me that having the Hall of Fame attached to my name would give me an edge in life. It's going to be amazing to finally get there.' Ichiro Suzuki When Suzuki arrived in Seattle in 2001, he was already a star in Japan, but he had no idea whether his success would translate to the United States. Well, 3,089 hits, 10 All-Star selections and 10 Gold Gloves later, and he helped open the door for three-time MVP Shohei Ohtani and the current crop of Japanese players in MLB. 'We're able to play this game because of players of the past,' says Suzuki. 'Baseball is human beings playing against human beings, and to have the passion and the energy that is created by that is something that I really hope is still part of the game. That's what I really value. It is very important to me that baseball continues to be a game that has the human element to it, with all the emotions and everything that comes along with having humans play this game. … 'If I can be of any help to the players, that's why I'm here.' Billy Wagner Wagner, who already is allotting time for interruptions during his Hall of Fame speech to wipe away tears, will remind everyone that he came from poverty. His dinners often consisted of crackers and water while growing up in the homes of different relatives with his parents divorcing when he was 5, and attending 11 different schools. 'I was just a poor kid," Wagner said, 'who didn't back down." Wagner will let everyone know that he'll continue to do everything in his power to help grow the game as a high school baseball coach, knowing it may not be the same as when he played, but the game still remains great. "Our game's always going to evolve,'' Wagner says, 'and there's always going to be parts that we like and we don't like. Every era has that moment. … But I think the game on the field is as great as it's ever been. But I guess the way we portray it, and push it forward, that's the biggest thing." Dick Allen Dick Allen, who died in 2020, represents the strength of fighting racism during his career. He received death threats playing in Little Rock, Arkansas, as the minor league team's first Black player, and was later pelted with batteries and garbage playing for the Philadelphia Phillies. Fergie Jenkins, who along with Bob Gibson were the only other Black Hall of Fame pitchers before Sabathia, vividly remembers the pain. They were not only teammates, but roommates in Little Rock. 'Dick was a real personal guy, I mean, he got along with everybody," Jenkins told USA TODAY Sports. 'Nobody ever bothered me, but then Dick bought a car, and I think that was the wrong thing to do. They bannered that thing all of the time. They were always putting stuff on it. There were people in the stands who didn't like him with name calling. 'It was just those times in segregation. We couldn't stay with the same players on the road. We stayed in a brothel one year in the summer. Another year we stayed in a funeral home. We couldn't eat in the same restaurants. We had to give our money to other players, have them order the food, and have them bring it back to us in the bus. 'I only stayed a month and a half. Dick was there all year. He never forgot it." Allen went on to become one of the greatest sluggers of his era, hitting 351 homers with a .534 slugging percentage, but his refusal to accept the bigotry and racial hatred in the country prevented him from getting the accolades he deserved. 'Dick Allen played the game in the most conservative era in baseball history," Hall of Famer Willie Stargell once said. 'It was a time of change and protest in the country, and baseball reacted against all that. They saw it as a threat to the game. The sportswriters were reactionary too. They didn't like seeing a man of such extraordinary skills doing it his way. Dick Allen was ahead of his time. His views and way of doing things would go unnoticed today.'' Says Gossage: 'He's the greatest ballplayer I've ever seen play in my life. There's no telling the numbers this guy could have put up if all he worried about was stats. He's the smartest baseball man I've ever been around in my life. He taught me so much about pitching and how to respect the game. He's probably the most misunderstood player in the history of the game." Dave Parker The shame is that Allen, and Parker, aren't alive to stand on the stage themselves to deliver their speeches. Parker, who died just a month ago from Parkinson's, let his son know just what he wanted to convey before he died. 'That's just heartbreaking," said Gossage, who was also teammates with Parker. 'Dave was one of my all-time favorite teammates. He was a true five-tool player. He was like Dick. There was not one ounce of BS from those guys." Parker's speech will remind folks of the leadership legacy he left behind. Sure, he was a fabulous player as an MVP, seven-time All-Star, three-time Silver Slugger winner, three-time Gold Glove winner, two-time batting champion and two-time World Series champion. Yet he will be remembered as one of the game's finest team leaders, guiding the Pirates to the 1979 World Series title while mentoring Reds stars Barry Larkin and Eric Davis in Cincinnati. 'The Pirates meant a lot to me," Parker said in a Zoom call after learning of his election in December. 'They were a great brotherhood, and they were always behind me. I could leave, come back, and everything is the same.'' Now, they'll be immortalized together, with Suzuki, Sabathia and Wagner on stage and Allen and Parker smiling from the heavens. They'll be enshrined in this beautiful hallowed place where Suzuki visited seven times, easily the most by an active player during his career. The next time he walks in he'll see his plaque inside the gallery room alongside his new Hall of Fame teammates. 'Ichiro would go all of the time and I always wondered why," Sabathia said. 'Now I know. It would have been super-motivating as a player. It's almost like a church. It's surreal to be in that room, especially now as a Hall of Famer, with my peers. 'When I walked in there, I almost came to tears. The way the sun beams through, it's almost magical." Follow Nightengale on X: @Bnightengale Who is getting inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame? The 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame class features five inductees
