Players, staff to wear electronic tracers as part of MLB agreement
Major League Baseball players, on-field staff and non-playing personnel who require access to them at ballparks must wear electronic tracing wristbands from the start of spring training and face discipline for violations.
Players will be encouraged to get vaccines but are not required to get them.
That was part of upgraded health protocols agreed to by Major League Baseball and the players’ association to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The 108-page operations manual, agreed to Monday night and obtained by The Associated Press, expands on the 101-page version used during the shortened 2020 season.
“Every covered Individual must wear a Kinexon contact tracing device at all times while in club facilities and during club directed travel and while engaged in team activities, including group workouts and practices,” the manual says. “Repeated failure to wear the devices or repeated failure to return the devices to the Kinexon device docking station may be a basis for discipline,” the manual says.
As part of the agreement, the sides extended last year’s experimental use of seveninning doubleheaders and runners on second base at the start of extra innings.
Active rosters will return to 26 from opening day through Aug. 31 and 28 for the rest of the regular season, as originally intended for 2020, down from the 28 used throughout last season. Each team can travel with up to five taxi squad players for road games, and if all five are used one must be a player designated before the season as a catcher. The taxi squad players must return to the alternate training site after each trip.
Spring training starts Feb. 17 in Florida and Arizona, and the sides agreed intake screening can start three days before a player’s voluntary report date. CARDINALS RE-SIGN C YADIER MOLINA FOR 18TH SEASON >> Yadier Molina enjoyed going through the process of free agency for the first time in more than two decades as a pro. He was even happier that he wound up returning to the Cardinals.
The 38-year-old catcher signed a $9 million contract for the upcoming season Tuesday, ensuring the nine-time Gold Glove winner would remain with the only organization for which he’s played for an 18th season.
Motorsports
KYLE BUSCH STARTS OFF DAYTONA WEEK WITH CLASH WIN >> Kyle Busch snagged the first win of the new season, streaking past NASCAR champion Chase Elliott after Elliott spun leader Ryan Blaney in the final stretch of the exhibition Busch Clash. Blaney had chased down Elliott on the road course at Daytona International Speedway to take the lead with two laps remaining in Tuesday night’s 35-lap Speedweeks opener.
Busch led only the final 300 or so feet of the race for the victory for Joe Gibbs Racing. This year’s running was the first time on Daytona’s road course, a plan announced before the 2020 season began.
Men’s college basketball
NO. 11 ALABAMA REBOUNDS FROM LOSS >> John Petty Jr. scored 20 points, and No. 11 Alabama held off South Carolina 81-78 to bounce back from its first Southeastern Conference loss of the season. The Crimson Tide (16-5, 11-1 SEC) were off to their best league start in 65 years before falling to 10th-ranked Missouri this past Saturday. But behind Petty’s first 20-point game in six contests, Alabama won its sixth straight over the Gamecocks (5-8, 3-6). BIG TEN TOURNEY SWITCHED TO INDIANAPOLIS >> Big Ten officials announced that the conference is moving next month’s men’s basketball tournament from Chicago to Indianapolis. The tournament will be played March 10-14 at Lucas Oil Stadium, site of this year’s Final Four. The Big Ten women’s tournament was already scheduled to take place the same week at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, home of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and WNBA’s Indiana Fever. The venues are just a few blocks apart.
League officials say the decision was made because of health and safety concerns, the ability to enact consistent medical protocols for both tournaments, and the centralized accommodations in a city that already is planning to host most of the 67 NCAA men’s tournament games in March and April.
Winter sports
WEATHER FORCES DELAY IN ALPINE CHAMPIONSHIPS >> The alpine skiing world championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, suffered a three-day wipeout after fog forced the postponement of women’s super-G. Today’s men’s combined was also called off.
Heavy snow in the Italian Dolomites had already forced the postponement for a week of Monday’s opening women’s combined.
The women’s race will be the first super-G in more than a year for defending world champion Mikaela Shiffrin, who took time out after the death of her father and has focused solely on technical disciplines this season.
LIGETY, TWO-TIME OLYMPIC CHAMPION, TO RETIRE AFTER WORLDS >> Two-time Olympic gold medal-winning alpine skier Ted Ligety announced on social media that he is retiring.
Ligety, 36, said he made the decision so he could spend more time with his family. Ligety said that his last race will be the World Championships on Feb. 19 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
Ligety won gold in the men’s combined event at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. He also received top honors in the giant slalom race at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Apparently, a Super Bowl blowout in the middle of a pandemic is not the best way to generate super-size TV ratings.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ lopsided 31-9 win over the Kansas City Chiefs on CBS Sunday night drew one of the smallest Super Bowl audiences.
According to Nielsen, CBS’ multi-platform coverage of Super Bowl LV amassed 96.4 million total viewers, marking the smallest audience for the big game since at least 2007 (when the Colts beat the Bears 29-17, on CBS).
The lower numbers really shouldn’t be a surprise. The game’s margin of victory was the second largest in 18 years and ratings are tabulated at an average over the duration of the game. So the audience surely dwindled as the Bucs’ lead grew.
Other possible factors: The coronavirus pandemic undoubtedly cut back on Super Bowl parties and viewer enthusiasm. And neither Super Bowl combatant was from a major media market.
That said, the Super Bowl should easily stand as the largest TV audience of the year — with nothing else coming close. And there’s more good news for CBS: Super Bowl LV was the most live-streamed
NFL game ever. The event’s “average minute audience” of 5.7 million viewers was up 65 percent against the 2020 game between the Chiefs and 49ers. Sunday’s Buccaneers-Chiefs game was the first in history to crack 1 billion total streaming minutes.
Last year’s Super Bowl, in which the Chiefs beat the 49ers 31-20, amassed 102 million viewers across Fox, Fox Deportes and all digital properties, with viewership on Fox alone totaling 99.9 million. CBS’ previous hosting of the Big Game in 2019 totaled 100.7 million.
Super Bowl LV’s CBS-only audience was 91.6 million.