MLB considers 7-inning games

Baseball players just might not want to play nine innings twice in one day during this pandemic-delayed season. While Cleveland swept the Chicago White Sox in the first doubleheader of the season on Tuesday, union head Tony Clark called Deputy Commissioner Dan Halem and said players might want to consider shortened doubleheaders this year. The players’ association is surveying members and may propose either two seven-inning games for a doubleheader or nine innings for the opener and seven for the second game. Major League Baseball is checking opinions at the owner and general manager levels, and staff hopes for a decision by Saturday to make a change or leave the rules the way the are. Philadelphia and Toronto are scheduled for a doubleheader on Saturday as the Phillies resume play following a five-day layoff. The time off was caused by waiting to make no players or staff were infected during games against the Miami Marlins last weekend.

1986 Red Sox manager dies

John McNamara, who managed the Boston Red Sox to within one strike of a World Series victory in 1986 before an unprecedented collapse on the field extended the team’s championship drought into the new millennium, has died. He was 88. McNamara died Tuesday at his home in Tennessee, his wife, Ellen, told The Associated Press. The death was unexpected and the cause was not yet known, she said. A weak-hitting catcher who first signed with the St. Louis Cardinals but never made it past Class AAA, McNamara went on to win — and lose — more than 1,000 games while managing six major league teams. He took over in Boston, his fifth, in 1985 and guided the Red Sox to the AL pennant the next year. With a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven World Series against the New York Mets, the Red Sox went ahead 5-3 in the 10th inning of Game 6 at Shea Stadium before a tumultuous series of mistakes allowed the NL champions to tie the score and then win it when Mookie Wilson’s ground ball rolled through first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs. The Mets won Game 7, leaving Boston without a championship until they finally won it all in 2004. In all, McNamara was 1,167-1,242 over parts of 19 seasons, also winning the NL West title with the Reds in 1979 and leading Cincinnati to the best record in baseball in the strike-shortened 1981 season, when they did not make the playoffs. He was the 1986 AL Manager of the Year.