Rangers in line to be first team back to full capacity
Patriots WR seeks to help Heat center gain understanding.
The Texas Rangers could have a full house for their home opener next month after debuting their new 40,518-seat stadium without fans in the stands for their games last season.
If that happens, the Rangers could be the first team in Major League Baseball or any major U.S.-based sports league to have a full-capacity crowd since the coronavirus pandemic started rapidly shutting down sports a year ago this week.
On the same day that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order took effect allowing businesses in the state to operate at 100% capacity, Rangers president of business operations and
CEO Neil Leibman said the team hopes to be at that for the April 5 opener against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Local officials would be able to impose “mitigation strategies” such as reduced capacity if virus hospitalizations exceed 15% of all hospital capacity in their region over certain periods.
Even with his order, Abbott has encouraged the public to continue practicing social distancing measures and wearing masks, though they are no longer mandated.
The Rangers will still require fans to wear masks for games, unless they are actively eating and drinking at their seats, as was the case for postseason MLB games played at their stadium last October.
Julian Edelman has been open about his Jewish faith over the years. He’s also used his own platform to try to educate others. That was seen last summer when the Patriots wide receiver posted a video in response to DeSean Jackson posting a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler on his Instagram page. Edelman offered to meet and help educate Jackson on anti-Semitism. The two receivers talked the next day and stayed in touch last season.
On Wednesday, Edelman once again offered to meet with another professional athlete to discuss anti-Semitic behavior. The 34-yearold posted an open letter to Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard on his social media account. Meyers was recently video taped using an anti-Semitic slur during a video game live stream.
“I’m sure you’ve been getting lots of criticism for what you said,” Edelman wrote. “Not trying to add to that, I just want to offer some perspective. I get the sense that you didn’t use that word out of hate, more out of ignorance. Most likely, you weren’t trying to hurt anyone or even profile Jews in your comment. That’s what makes it so destructive.
“When someone intends to be hateful, it’s usually met with great resistance. Casual ignorance is harder to combat and has greater reach, especially when you command great influence. Hate is like a virus. Even accidentally, it can rapidly spread. I’m down in Miami fairly often. Let’s do a Shabbat dinner with some friends I’ll show you a fun time.”
On Tuesday, a video was posted on social media of Leonard playing a video game. In it you can hear Leonard say, “F---ing cowards; don’t f---ing snipe me, you f---ing k--- b----.” The 29-year-old apologized on social media and the Heat announced he would be away from the team indefinitely while the NBA conducts an investigation.
Edelman has been vocal about his Jewish heritage over the years. In 2015, he documented a trip to Israel. In 2019, he wore custom cleats with the Star of David on them for the NFL’s “My Cause My Cleats” campaign. After the game, the pair was then auctioned off to benefit the Israel Association of Baseball. This past summer, Edelman also revealed he had been targeted while playing football because of his Jewish faith and called an anti-Semitic slur during a game in 2011.
Last summer, after his video message to Jackson, Edelman said he wanted to help Jackson, adding “Because we’ve all had some sort of adverse situation that we’ve had to deal with. I just wanted to go out and do what I could to not only show that I support my community but also show that I’m here to help people in our league, because we’re all one.”
1922 — Cornell wins the first IC4A indoor track meet held at the 2nd Regiment Armory in New York.
1947 — Harry Boykoff of St. John’s sets a Madison Square Garden scoring record with 54 points in the Redmen’s 71-52 win over St. Francis, N.Y.
1958 — Manhattan upsets top-ranked West Virginia 89-84, in the first round of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament. Jack Powers leads the Jaspers with 29 points. Manhattan holds sophomore Jerry West to 10 points in the Mountaineers’ second loss of the year.
1963 — Chicago Loyola blows out Tennessee Tech 111-42 for the largest margin of victory (69) in the history of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.
1979 — St. John’s and Penn post two of the biggest upsets ever in the NCAA tournament in the second round of the East regional in Raleigh, N.C. St. John’s, the 40th and last team selected, beats No. 2 seed Duke 80-78, and Penn comes from behind to beat No. 1 seed North Carolina 72-71.
1991 — Steffi Graf ’s streak of 186 weeks ranked as the No. 1 women’s tennis player ends as she is replaced by Monica Seles.
2001 — Jana Kostelic, Croatia’s 19-year-old skiing sensation, becomes the second youngest woman to win the overall World Cup title. She finishes 21st, but she captures the title when Renate Goetschl of Austria skied off the course in the first run in Are, Sweden.
2007 — Chris Simon of the New York Islanders is suspended for an NHLrecord 25 games, missing the rest of the regular season and playoffs as punishment for his twohanded stick attack to the face of Ryan Hollweg.
2009 — Mike Singletary leads Texas Tech to the biggest rally in Big 12 tournament history, scoring all 29 of Texas Tech’s points during a secondhalf surge that pushed the Red Raiders to a 88-83 win against the Aggies. The Red Raiders erase a 21-point deficit. Singletary, who outscored A&M 29-18 to give Tech the lead for the first time, finishes with 43 points.
2009 — Wesley Matthews scores 20 points and Marquette snaps a fourgame losing streak by holding St. John’s to a Big East tournament-record 10 points in the first half on the way to a 74-45 victory.
2012 — Vanderbilt rallies to beat No. 1 Kentucky
71-64 in the Southeastern Conference tournament championship game, ending the Wildcats’ 24-game winning streak.
2014 — FIU senior Jerica Coley becomes the 10th female player in NCAA Division I history to eclipse the 3,000-point barrier, doing so with a 20-point showing in FIU’s 85-65 win over Rice in the first round of the Conference USA tournament.
2017 — Jayson Tatum takes over in the final three minutes, making key plays on both ends of the floor, and Duke becomes the first team to win the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament with four wins in four days by rallying past Notre Dame for a 75-69 win.
Mark Pavelich appeared to be doing well in recent weeks.
Pavelich, who set up the United States’ winning goal in the “Miracle on Ice” upset of the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics, was receiving mental health treatment at Eagle’s Healing Nest, a rehabilitation center in a wooded part of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, where he had been living since October.
“He seemed optimistic,” said Bill Baker, an Olympic teammate who spent an hour strolling the Healing Nest grounds with Pavelich last month, talking about pastimes they shared — hunting and fishing. “He seemed like he was wanting to put this behind him.”
“He seemed like Pav,” Baker added. “Pav was Pav.”
That was a reassuring change for friends of the hockey star, who played five seasons with the New York Rangers after the Olympics. Those friends had spent the past several years worrying about Pavelich, who in 2019 was found to have beaten a neighbor with a metal pole. Charged with felony assault, he was committed by a court to a state psychiatric hospital in Minnesota.
The incident was the most serious in a pattern of trouble for the man they knew as a wizard on skates and a gentle soul off the ice. Some family members and old teammates had begun to wonder if Pavelich, like a number of other former professional athletes, was suffering from mental illness brought on by blows to the head during his playing days.
On Feb. 28, his Olympic teammates joined in group text messages wishing him a happy 63rd birthday, and Pavelich seemed to enjoy hearing from his gold-medal brothers.
Four days later, he was found dead by a staff member at the treatment center. A cause of death has not been determined.
“Maybe it was a heart attack. We just don’t know at this point,” said Mike Eruzione, captain of the 1980 team and the player who scored the winning goal against the Soviets, after Pavelich got him the puck.
In a message posted on Facebook, Pavelich’s sister, Jean Gevik, said her brother’s brain would be analyzed for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by blows to the head. “I have no doubt it will be riddled with disease,” Gevik wrote.
“This is an unbearable time for my family,” she wrote. “The news is absolutely devastating. The last flicker of Mark’s candle went out. Way too much trauma and way too much hurt. A life cut short.”
CTE, which can be diagnosed
only after death, has been found in dozens of former athletes who had mental difficulties later in life. NFL star Junior Seau, as well as other athletes who died by suicide, was found to have had the type of brain damage associated with CTE.
The news of Pavelich’s death angered at least one teammate who had tried to help him though his mental and legal difficulties — Barry Beck, a former Ranger. Since Pavelich was declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by a county court judge in 2019, Beck had used Facebook to provide updates on Pavelich’s condition and to call on the NHL to do more to help former players struggling with mental illness that might stem from head injuries.
“I’m deeply saddened, shocked and overcome with grief upon hearing the news
of Mark Pavelich’s death,” Beck wrote on Facebook from Hong Kong, where he has coached hockey for more than a decade.
Beck suggested that the NHL’s 2018 settlement with hundreds of retired players, who had accused the league of hiding the dangers of hits to the head, was inadequate. The NHL set aside $19 million to help the former players, far less than the potentially $1 billion settlement the NFL made with its former players.
“After the CTE lawsuit, the NHL was just happy they didn’t have to discuss it anymore,” Beck wrote.
The NHL offered condolences to the Pavelich family in a statement.
In a statement, the Rangers said: “Mark helped inspire a nation through the integral role he played on the ‘Miracle on Ice’ team in the
1980 Winter Olympics. Our thoughts are with Mark’s loved ones during this difficult time.”
Pavelich grew up in Eveleth, in a rugged, sparsely populated area of Minnesota known as the Iron Range. Undersized at 5-foot-7, he was a quick, darting skater who seemed to sense where the puck and his linemates were headed. After starring at the University of Minnesota Duluth, he made the 1980 Olympic team, coached by Herb Brooks.
Brooks put Pavelich on a line with two other Iron Range players — Bill Schneider and John Harrington, who was a Minnesota Duluth teammate. They clicked, scoring more points than the three other U.S. lines at the Olympics, and Pavelich was the catalyst.
“He was a genius, how quickly he could think the
game,” Harrington said.
Against the Soviets, Pavelich sent the puck to Schneider on the left wing, and his slap shot tied the game, 1-1. In the third period, with the game tied at 3-3, Pavelich tipped the puck from the boards to the middle of the Soviet zone just as Eruzione was crossing the blue line. Eruzione’s wrist shot put the U.S. team, made up primarily of college players, ahead of the Soviets, a team of mostly professionals. Two days later, the United States defeated Finland to win the gold medal.
After the Olympics, Pavelich played a season in Switzerland before signing with the Rangers, who had hired Brooks as their head coach. Pavelich totaled 76 points in 1981-82, which is still the team record for a rookie. In 1983, he scored five goals in a game, becoming the only player born in the U.S. to do so.
He was at ease around hockey, but the spotlight off the ice cast an unwanted glare. When Eruzione was doing color commentary on Ranger broadcasts, Pavelich declined even his requests for interviews. “Finally, the network offered $1,000 in hunting and fishing equipment, and Mark said, ‘OK, I’ll do it,’ ” Eruzione recalled.
When Sports Illustrated in 1999 named the “Miracle on Ice” the greatest sports moment of the 20th century at a gala at Madison Square Garden, Pavelich stayed home in Minnesota. “It’s too glitzy for me, Rizzo,” Eruzione recalled him saying. In 2002, the 1980 team was chosen to light the torch at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Again, Pavelich stayed home.
After hockey, he settled into a remote cabin near Lutsen, a village in the far northeastern reach of Minnesota,
on the shore of Lake Superior. Few knew what he had carried with him for years. Before going to college, Pavelich had accidentally shot and killed a friend while hunting. In 2012, his wife died when she fell from an unfinished balcony they were adding to their home.
“Mark actually died years ago when he lost his beloved Kara,” Jean Gevik wrote on Facebook.
After that, Pavelich’s odd behavior became more pronounced. He suspected that one neighbor was putting substances into his truck’s gas tank. When another neighbor brought him cookies, he thought they were poisoned and stored them in the freezer.
When the Olympic team began a fantasy camp in Lake Placid, Pavelich brought his dogs but no equipment. Organizers scraped together some gear and old skates, and soon Pavelich was hopping the boards and skating as he had in the glory days.
To Schneider, his linemate seemed fine, but stories he had heard about Pavelich made him wonder. “You had to think, ‘Is maybe something slipping?’ ” he said.
On Aug. 15, 2019, Pavelich went fishing with another longtime neighbor, Jim Miller. At some point, Pavelich became convinced Miller had spiked his beer, and Pavelich attacked him with a pole. Miller sustained broken ribs, a bruised kidney and other injuries.
Found incompetent to stand trial, Pavelich was sent to a psychiatric institution that treats offenders with the most serious mental illnesses. “Rizzo, I’m the sanest guy here,” he told Eruzione. Beck worried about Pavelich, phoning him several times a week from Hong Kong. “Pav needs to be moved to a treatment center and not detained in the facility he is presently in,” Beck wrote on Facebook. “He won’t get the help he needs there.”
Last fall, Pavelich was moved to Eagle’s Healing Nest, which treats primarily veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. There he was able to fish, as well as have his dogs, frequent visitors and passes to leave for lunch with friends.
By all accounts, Pavelich seemed to be improving, although Beck said Pavelich told him last month that he was anxious about the next hearing in his case.
On March 4, Schneider got a call from a friend who had heard a rumor that Pavelich had died. He called Baker, and they pieced together the sad news. Schneider recalled visiting last fall, and being struck by the contrast between the Pavelich he read about in the newspaper and the quiet man he saw at the fantasy camp and other Olympic team gatherings.
“He felt safe around us, you know,” Schneider said. “It was a family.”