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      MLB The Show Will Include Women Players for the First Time

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      MLB The Show 24 will feature a career mode that allows gamers to create a female player and steer her journey to the big leagues. The game draws on the experiences of female baseball players.For the first time, women will don Major League Baseball jerseys in MLB The Show, the long-running popular video game.MLB The Show 24 will debut the option to create and play a female player in a reinvented version of the game’s career mode, Road to the Show, in which gamers direct a custom character’s ascent from the minors to the big leagues. The game’s developer, Sony San Diego Studio, announced the new mode Tuesday.The game, which comes out March 19, calls the new career mode Road to the Show: Women Pave Their Way. It includes a storyline that follows the ascendence of two women into the major leagues and touches on the unique challenges they face, according to Sony San Diego Studio.MLB The Show joins other high-profile sports video game franchises that have moved to include women, such as FIFA (now EA Sports FC) and NBA 2K. But the gender dynamics in baseball are far more complicated, because most women and girls play softball instead.Some hoped MLB The Show 24 would help change that.“I think that in the United States especially, we’re brainwashed to think that boys play baseball and girls play softball, when in reality both exist in both worlds,” said Veronica Alvarez, manager of the U.S.A. Baseball Women’s National Team, which will compete in this year’s Women’s Baseball World Cup.Ms. Alvarez, a former national team player herself, and some of her players provided Sony with input for the game’s development.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pieces of Jackie Robinson Statue Are Found Burning in Kansas Park

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      The life-size bronze tribute to the legendary baseball player who broke the color barrier was stolen from a different park last week. What was left of it “is beyond repair,” officials said.Parts of a life-size bronze statue that celebrated the legacy of the legendary baseball player and civil rights figure Jackie Robinson were found dismantled and burned early Tuesday after it had been stolen from a Kansas park last week, the authorities said.Remnants of the statue were found after a city worker reported a fire in a trash can at Garvey Park in Wichita at around 8:38 a.m., Andrew Ford, a police spokesman, said in a statement.The Wichita Fire Department responded and, “while assessing the damage, they found pieces of the Jackie Robinson statue that had been stolen.”The Fire Department immediately notified the police, who collected the pieces at the scene, he said, noting that “unfortunately, the statue is beyond repair.”The police are continuing to investigate, Mr. Ford said, and they have “already interviewed over 100 people.” The department is also looking into how the statue was dismantled and how the pieces ended up at the location of the fire. Mr. Ford had previously said that the motive for the theft of the monument was not known.Additionally, the Fire Department’s arson investigators are looking into the trash can fire, he said. In a statement posted on Facebook, the department said that “additional parts of the statue have not been recovered at this time.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Jimy Williams, A.L. Manager of the Year in Boston in ’99, Dies at 80

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      He led the Red Sox into the playoffs twice, had managing stints in Toronto and Houston, and won more than 900 games as a dugout skipper.Jimy Williams, the 1999 American League Manager of the Year for Boston who won 910 games over a dozen seasons that included stints with Toronto and Houston, died on Friday in Tarpon Springs, Fla. He was 80.The Red Sox said his death, in a hospital, came after a brief, unspecified illness. He lived in nearby Palm Harbor, on Florida’s west coast about 25 miles from Tampa.Williams was voted A.L. Manager of the Year after leading the Red Sox to their second straight playoff appearance. He had replaced Kevin Kennedy as Boston’s manager after the 1996 season.Williams at Boston’s spring training camp in Fort Myers, Fla., in 2000. The team won 85 games that year, and he was fired the next season. He went on to manage the Astros.Jim Mone/Associated PressThe Red Sox won 78 games in Williams’s first season and then more than 90 in each of the next two. In 1998, Boston made the playoffs as a wild card team but was defeated by Cleveland in the A.L. division series. The next year, down 0-2 in the division series, again against Cleveland, the Red Sox rallied to win it 3-2. (Boston lost to the New York Yankees, 4-1, in the A.L. Championship Series.)The Red Sox won 85 games in 2000, and Williams was fired in August 2001, with the team at 65-53. He was hired that fall by the Houston Astros, but after two winning seasons with them he was fired midseason in 2004 with the team at 44-44.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Jackie Robinson Statue Is Stolen From Kansas Park

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      A bronze life-size statue of the baseball player who broke racial barriers in 1947 was cut at its ankles, leaving behind just its shoes and the statue’s base.The authorities in Kansas are searching for the vandals who stole a life-size bronze statue commemorating Jackie Robinson, the first Black Major League Baseball player, after they cut it off at the ankles, leaving behind just the statue’s shoes and base.The police in Wichita were notified of the theft around 12:50 p.m. on Thursday after getting a call from League 42, the Little League nonprofit that installed the statue in McAdams Park, Andrew Ford, a police spokesman, said on Saturday.He estimated that the statue weighed at least 100 pounds.“I don’t know what the motivation is,” Mr. Ford said. “All considerations are being looked into.”The police in Wichita, Kan., said the bronze statue was removed from McAdams Park by thieves who used a truck.Wichita Police DepartmentMr. Ford said the police had surveillance footage of the statue being cut down and being placed in the bed of a truck that was pulled up or parked “at least in a way where it can be, you know, discreetly hidden.”He said that at least two people were believed to be involved. Mr. Ford said the theft occurred early on Thursday morning. He declined to specify what was used to cut the statue because that was part of the investigation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Honor Roberto Clemente With a Coin, Congressman Says

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      The right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates deserves to be commemorated with a coin, Representative Adriano Espaillat says.Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why a congressman from the Bronx is pressing for a coin to commemorate a baseball player from the Pittsburgh Pirates. We’ll also see what to expect as Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial moves into its final phase.Preston Stroup/Associated PressRepresentative Adriano Espaillat has introduced 49 bills in this session of Congress. One would direct colleges to send information about hate crimes to the federal Department of Education. Another would simplify the requirements for federal assistance after disasters like Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017.Yet another bill would authorize a coin commemorating Roberto Clemente, the superlative right fielder who played for only one team in 18 years in the major leagues, the Pittsburgh Pirates.Why is a congressman from the Bronx cheering on a star of a team that beat the Yankees in the World Series?“I watched him play,” Espaillat said, before talking about how deep the Pirates’ stadium was when Clemente played there — 457 feet to the center-field wall.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Elections

      Speaker Mike Johnson’s Rise: ‘The Republicans Have Elevated an Extremist’

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      More from our inbox:Baseball on the ClockIron DeficiencyGovernors, Join Together to Solve the Immigration Crisis Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “G.O.P. Elects Speaker, Ending Bitter Feud” (front page, Oct. 26):Our nation flails on the brink of disaster now that the Republicans have elevated an extremist to the honorable position of House speaker. A Times online newsletter article says all we need to know about Mike Johnson: “His elevation now places a socially conservative lawyer who opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and who played a leading role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, second in line to the presidency.”Citizens of this great nation should fear this election-denying, rights-resisting, bigotry-promoting zealot. This turn of events underscores the importance of getting out the vote.May the universe and all things holy protect our republic from doom.M. Corinne CorleyIsleton, Calif.To the Editor:Republicans have elected a speaker of the people’s House who attempted to subvert the people’s will in the last election by leading a bogus effort to overturn the election that Joe Biden clearly and convincingly won, an effort that if it had succeeded could well have ended our democracy — a man who won the position as leader because Donald Trump, twice impeached and indicted on many felony charges, approved of him.America is full of second acts, but they begin with contrition.Mike Johnson, the new speaker, can get a fresh look from me if he admits he was wrong about the 2020 election, apologizes to Mr. Biden and the country, says clearly that Mr. Biden won, and commits to operate the people’s House for all of us, independently of Mr. Trump!John E. ColbertArroyo Seco, N.M.To the Editor:When all is said and done, what did the Democrats achieve? By voting to oust Kevin McCarthy, they exchanged the frying pan for what Matt Gaetz and his circus barkers wanted all along: the fire.Sabin WillettBostonTo the Editor:There can be no clearer evidence of the stranglehold that Donald Trump continues to have on subservient members of the Republican Party than the seemingly endless House speaker vote fiasco just played out in Congress.The former president was openly intimidating House speaker candidates whose credentials, in Mr. Trump’s view, were disqualifying if they included rejection of his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Astoundingly, even as the walls of justice close in on the beleaguered former president and as a growing list of his administration cronies cooperates with prosecutors, a large and entrenched component of congressional Republicans remains complicit in abetting Mr. Trump’s obsession with a stolen election.Roger HirschbergSouth Burlington, Vt.To the Editor:Unfortunately I am shocked and beyond despair. It appears that the G.O.P. is set on self-destruct. I cannot imagine anything good coming out of this speaker selection. Congress is now slated to be all but gridlocked until the next election.It would appear that the party of gerrymandered districts is dead set on destroying our country and doesn’t care what most Americans want or think.Rob WheelerSummertown, Tenn.To the Editor:The “squishes” got squashed. Moderate Republicans once more prostrated themselves before their far-right overlords. As a result we have a new speaker of the House who was a leader of the effort to overthrow the government of the United States by overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election, and who ironically now stands second in the line of succession to the presidency. Squishy indeed.Steve NelsonWilliamstown, Mass.Baseball on the Clock Melanie LambrickTo the Editor:“Baseball Has Lost Its Poetry,” by Jesse Nathan (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 21), is an excellent piece of baseball writing. Baseball, however, is not played on the page. It’s played on the field.Mr. Nathan could not be more wrong about the pitch clock, which he opposes.As an author of baseball books, articles, essays, reviews and short stories, I have an appreciation for good writing, and include Mr. Nathan’s piece in this category. As a fan since 1957, an attendee at 50 opening days at Fenway Park and an inveterate TV watcher, I love the game.Starting about 10 years ago, the game became unwatchable. Each batter had his ritual of stepping out of the batter’s box, adjusting batting gloves, touching body parts, to reset focus and interrupt the pitcher’s rhythm. This happened on virtually every pitch.Pitchers, for their part, could hold the ball, throw to first with a man on base unlimited times, stare, even walk behind the mound, to reset and interrupt the batter’s timing. This could happen on every pitch. It was not a timeless escape from modern life. It was not poetry. It was a waste of time.If Mr. Nathan desires the timeless, I suggest Shakespeare’s sonnets.Luke SalisburyChelsea, Mass.The writer is the author of “The Answer Is Baseball.”Iron Deficiency Marta MonteiroTo the Editor:Two online articles on Oct. 17, “More Than a Third of Women Under 50 Are Iron-Deficient” and “How to Know if You’re Iron-Deficient, and What to Do About It,” call attention to a significant condition that affects millions of women worldwide.As noted in these articles, heavy menstrual bleeding is a major driver of iron deficiency. Hormonal contraceptives, including pills and certain IUDs, are important tools for managing heavy bleeding because they often reduce or completely pause menstrual periods.While research on this “side benefit” of contraceptives is continuing, the potential for contraceptives to complement other treatments for iron deficiency should be part of the conversations all providers have with patients to enable a fully informed choice.Contraception and menstruation are topics that hold significant stigma, which is why the connection between nutrition and contraception has lacked appropriate attention and traction. We call on our fellow health care providers and researchers across both disciplines to engage in this conversation now.By breaking the silos between these fields, we can bring these issues out of the shadows and help individuals manage heavy menstrual bleeding and iron deficiency while also improving the reproductive health care they desire and deserve.Laneta DorflingerAndrée SoslerEmily HoppesThe writers work on contraceptive technology innovation at FHI 360, an organization that aims to promote equity, health and well-being worldwide.Governors, Join Together to Solve the Immigration CrisisA bus full of migrants who turned themselves in to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso in May.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Busing 50,000 People North, Texas Reframes Debate on Immigration” (news article, Oct. 19):Where are the nation’s 50 governors in trying to solve the immigration crisis? Despite the clear, purposeful and odious vengefulness of Texas Republicans in busing immigrants to Democratic cities and states, they have a point.Isn’t it in fact the responsibility of all states and all communities to share the burden that just a few states must now shoulder because of their proximity to the border? If so, shouldn’t the governors, through the National Governors Association, come up with a plan for them to do so?That they haven’t — that all states haven’t stepped up to assume responsibility for meeting and solving this crisis — just adds to, and illustrates, the grievous state of American governance.James M. Banner, Jr.Washington More

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      Biden, Trump and the 2024 Field of Nightmares

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      In the bottom of the 10th inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series, with the Boston Red Sox leading the New York Mets 5-3, Red Sox manager John McNamara sent Bill Buckner — a great hitter dealing with terrible leg problems that made him gimp his way around first base — back out to play the infield instead of putting in Dave Stapleton, Buckner’s defensive replacement. A half-dozen at-bats later, a Mookie Wilson ground ball went through Buckner’s wobbly legs, sending the World Series to Game 7 and a certain 6-year-old Red Sox fan to bed in desperate tears.Those tears were my first acquaintance with the harsh truth of a baseball aphorism: The ball will always find you. Meaning that if you place a player where he shouldn’t be, or try to disguise a player’s incapacity by shifting him away from the likely action, or give a player you love a chance to stay on the field too long for sentimental reasons, the risk you take will eventually catch up to you, probably at the worst possible moment.Obviously, this is a column about President Biden’s age. But not only about Biden, because America has been running a lot of Buckner experiments of late. Consider the dreadful-for-liberals denouement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career, where nobody could tell a lifetime-tenured Supreme Court justice who had survived cancer that it was time to step aside and Democrats were left to talk hopefully about her workout regimen as she tried to outlast Donald Trump. And she almost did — but in the end, her legacy was reshaped and even unmade by a decision to stay too long on the political field.Or consider the Trump presidency itself, in which voters handed a manifestly unfit leader the powers of the presidency and for his entire term, various Republicans tried to manage him and position him and keep him out of trouble, while Dave Stapleton — I mean, Mike Pence — warmed the bench.This managerial effort met with enough success that by the start of 2020, Trump seemed potentially headed for re-election. But like a series of line drives at an amateur third baseman, the final year of his presidency left him ruthlessly exposed — by the pandemic (whether you think he was too libertarian or too Faucian, he was obviously overmastered), by a progressive cultural revolution (which he opposed but was helpless to impede), by Biden’s presidential campaign and finally by his own vices, which yielded Jan. 6.Naturally, Republicans are ready to put him on the field again.These experiences set my expectations for what’s happening with Democrats and Biden now. The increasing anxiety over Biden’s lousy poll numbers, which I discussed in last weekend’s column, has yielded a defensive response from Biden partisans. Their argument is that the president’s decline is overstated, that his administration is going well and he deserves more credit than he’s getting and that, as Vox’s Ian Millhiser suggests, the press is repeating its mistake with Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and making the age issue seem awful when it’s merely, well, “suboptimal.”I do not think Biden’s decline is overstated by the media; by some Republicans, maybe, but the mainstream press is, if anything, treading gingerly around the evident reality. But I do think Biden’s defenders are correct that the effect of his age on his presidency has been, at most, only mildly negative. It’s limited his use of the bully pulpit and hurt his poll numbers, but his administration has passed major legislation, managed a foreign policy crisis and run a tighter ship than Trump.Where I have criticisms of Bidenism, they’re mostly the normal ones a conservative would have of any liberal president, not special ones associated with chaos or incompetence created by cognitive decline.But in running Biden for re-election, Democrats are making a fateful bet that this successful management can simply continue through two sets of risks: the high stakes of the next election, in which a health crisis or just more slippage might be the thing that puts Trump back in the White House, and the different but also substantial stakes of another four-year term.“The ball will always find you” is not, of course, an invariable truth. It’s entirely possible that Biden can limp to another victory, that his second term will yield no worse consequences than, say, Ronald Reagan’s did, that having managed things thus far, his aides, spouse and cabinet can see the next five years through.But the Trump era has been one of those periods when providence or fate revenges itself more swiftly than usual on hubris — when the longstanding freedom that American parties and leaders have enjoyed, by virtue of our power and pre-eminence, to skate around our weak spots and mistakes has been substantially curtailed.Even Millhiser’s proposed analogy for the fixation on Biden’s age, the Clinton email scandal, fits this pattern. “Her emails” hurt Clinton at the last because they became briefly entangled with the Anthony Weiner sex scandal. This was substantively unfair, since nothing came of the Clinton emails found on Weiner’s laptop. But it was dramatically fitting, a near-Shakespearean twist, that after surviving all of Bill Clinton’s sex scandals the Clinton dynasty would be unmade at its hour of near triumph by a different, more pathetic predator.So whether it’s certain or not, I can’t help expecting a similarly dramatic punishment for trying to keep Biden in the White House notwithstanding his decline.That I also expect some kind of punishment from the Republicans renominating Trump notwithstanding his unfitness doesn’t make me inconsistent, because presidential politics isn’t quite the same as baseball. Unlike in a World Series, there need not be a simple victor: All can be punished; all of us can lose.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      in US Politics

      Doctors urge ‘Macon Bacon’ baseball team change its name: ‘You wouldn’t have Team Asbestos’

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      A Georgia summer baseball team named the Macon Bacon has found itself at the center of a porcine polemic as a group of doctors is urging this outfit to change its name and promote vegetarian “alternatives”.The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which promotes plant-based eating, is advocating for the team to be renamed “Macon Facon Bacon”, according to a local CBS affiliate. This medical organization has posted a new billboard urging Macon Bacon fans to “keep bacon off your plate” to prevent cancer, and committee leadership has written to team management requesting a name change.“Macon Bacon’s glorification of bacon, a processed meat that raises the risk of colorectal cancer and other diseases, sends the wrong message to fans,” the committee nutrition leader Anna Herby reportedly wrote to team president Brandon Raphael. “I urge you to update the team’s name to Macon Facon Bacon and promote plant-based bacon alternatives, such as Facon Bacon or Mushroom Bacon, that will help your fans stay healthy. As for Kevin, Macon Bacon’s mascot, he can reveal that he is actually plant-based bacon.”At Luther Williams Field, where the Macon Bacon play, concession items include “Bacon Wrapped Bacon, Steak Cut Bacon, Bacon Cheeseburger, Bacon Dog, Bacon Loaded Cheese Fries, Bacon Loaded Mac N Cheese and Bacon Chips,” the CBS affiliate notes.In a statement to the news station, Raphael expressed disappointment that the group had expressed “disapproval of our branding” and said there was a “plant-based option” on the ballpark’s menu.“The Macon Bacon do not view ourselves as a glorification of an unhealthy lifestyle; rather, we pride ourselves on being a fun-natured organization focused on bringing families and communities together of middle Georgia and beyond,” Raphael’s statement reportedly said.“We take great pride in the Macon Bacon naming rights (which our fans voted on in 2018), as we get to witness the smiles and laughter from our fanbase – who have supported our branding since our inception – that stems from the brand’s lighthearted and playful nature. We are a family-friendly organization and we are extremely grateful for our fans.”Raphael also insisted: “The Macon Bacon will be sizzling forever and will not consider a name change. Ever.”Raphael expanded on this in an interview with the Guardian on Saturday.“At first I thought it was joke when I got the letter,” Raphael said, but as he kept reading, he realized it wasn’t a cheeky missive from a fan. “This one had a serious tone to it.”Raphael had no intention of responding, thinking “good for them”, that they had reached out and taken a stance, even if he vehemently disagreed with the anti-bacon platform.“When they went after our mascot,” a lifesize strip of bacon named Kevin after Footloose star Kevin Bacon, “That was kind of it.” A plant-based Kevin was out of the question.“Our mascot is just so well beloved in our community,” Raphael said. “It’s supposed to be fun – we’re here for the right reasons. We represent our community. We represent middle Georgia, we represent our league.”Raphael added: “We’re disappointed that they think that we are glorifying bacon in the eyes of our fans. By no means was it meant to become a national topic.”Raphael insists bacon is here to stay. “We’re not going to change our name,” he said. “Why should we?“We’re just a sports team – we’re just hanging out in Macon, Georgia, doing our thing.”Dr Neal Barnard, who heads the committee, didn’t see the humor in the team’s name.“It’s not debatable, bacon causes cancer,” Barnard claimed. Colorectal cancer rates, he said, are rising amount younger persons, including in Georgia.“Here’s the problem: A guy brings his child to a ballgame, the child is six years old and there’s a mascot, a person in a bacon costume, and they’re selling, I am not making this up – bacon wrapped bacon, steak-cut bacon, bacon-loaded cheese fries, bacon chips,” Barnard said. “The child learns to associate this food with fun, with America’s favorite sport, with his family, and that child grows up with a taste for food that causes intestinal cancer in exactly the same way that cigs cause intestinal cancer.“You would never call this team the Macon Cigarettes or Team Asbestos because people know that [they] cause cancer.”The Macon Bacon’s first season was in 2018 after supporters voted for its name. The Coastal Plain League team has gotten support from Kevin Bacon, who according to the Associated Press donned a Macon Bacon cap on an Instagram post. The league is a summer league whose participants play college baseball. More