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    Mayhem at Copa América Final Raises Questions About 2026 World Cup

    Chaos at the stadium raised questions about crowd control and security just two years before the U.S. is set to co-host the World Cup in 11 cities.Throngs of fans rushed past security at the final match of the Copa América soccer tournament, some of them brazenly climbing tall fences. A few appeared to try to enter the Hard Rock Stadium near Miami through a ceiling vent. Children cried as the crowds pushed into metal barriers. Some adults grew faint under the broiling sun.The highly anticipated matchup between Argentina and Colombia on Sunday was intended to showcase the best of South American soccer — and serve as a dress rehearsal for the United States to co-host the men’s World Cup in 2026. Instead, it turned into mayhem, delaying kickoff for over an hour as the situation outside the stadium doors grew dangerous.On Monday, tournament organizers, stadium officials and the local authorities struggled to explain exactly what had gone wrong, offering few details about evident organizational failures, pointing fingers and mostly blaming fans who did not have tickets for the match for showing up anyway and becoming “unruly.” Law enforcement officials arrested 27 people and evicted 55 others from the stadium, according to the Miami-Dade County Police Department.Ramón Jesurún, president of the Colombia Soccer Federation, was arrested, along with his son.Carlos Ortega/EPA, via ShutterstockAmong those arrested were Ramón Jesurún, the head of Colombia’s soccer federation, and his son, Ramón Jamil Jesurún. They were charged with battery of a security guard in a stadium tunnel after the match had concluded, with Argentina defeating Colombia, 1-0, in extra time. The younger Mr. Jesurún was also charged with grabbing another stadium employee. Father and son spent the night in the Miami-Dade County jail, public records showed.The chaos caused international embarrassment for organizers of the Copa América, which had already been marred by complaints from players and coaches about the poor quality of the playing surfaces, training facilities and security. After a semifinal match in North Carolina last week, several Uruguayan players jumped into the stands to fight with Colombian fans whom they later said had been threatening the players’ families.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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    At Rickwood Field, Willie Mays Is the Star of the Show, One More Time

    Earlier this week, as Major League Baseball prepared for a tribute game in his hometown Birmingham, Ala., Willie Mays said that age would keep him away but that he would be watching from afar.“Rickwood Field is where I played my first home game, and playing there was it — everything I wanted,” he said in a statement to The San Francisco Chronicle.Mays died the next day, at 93, and as fans walked into the ballpark on Thursday, it felt like he was there in spirit, watching from afar.“I’m sure he’s here,” said his son, Michael Mays, who rushed to California from Alabama to pray over his father’s body and then returned in time for the game. “He figured out a way to be the center of attention like he always did. He’s the star of the show. He’s Willie Mays.”His death added poignancy to M.L.B.’s celebration of the Negro leagues at Rickwood Field — the nation’s oldest professional ballpark, where Mays got his start as a professional — and to the game between the San Francisco Giants, Mays’s old team, and the St. Louis Cardinals.Willie Mays’s death added poignancy to M.L.B.’s celebration of the Negro Leagues at Rickwood Field, the nation’s oldest professional ballpark, where Mays got his start as a professional.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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    Willie Mays, Birmingham and Rickwood Field: Baseball Honors a Legend in His Hometown

    Major League Baseball is in Birmingham to honor the legacy of the Negro Leagues. With Mays’s death, the celebration at ancient Rickwood Field takes on new meaning.In the late innings of a minor league game on Tuesday night at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., fans throughout the grandstand, suddenly and almost in unison, began staring at the news on their phones: The great Willie Mays had died, at 93, in California.An inning later, a tribute video played on the scoreboard overlooking the outfield where Mays played his first professional game as a teenage phenom for the Birmingham Black Barons, and the loudspeaker blared “Say Hey (the Willie Mays Song),” recorded in 1954 by the R&B group the Treniers.“I was shocked,” said Randy Ferguson, 70, a member of the Friends of Rickwood, the nonprofit organization that oversees the ancient ballpark. He was standing outside a small museum underneath the stands, where the next day fans would line up to see Mays’s flower-draped Hall of Fame plaque, the first time it has left the wall in Cooperstown since it was installed at his induction in 1979. “I have chill bumps. I can’t think of any place to be than here.”At 114 years old, Rickwood Field is the nation’s oldest professional ballpark, the first place Mays played pro ball and the last ballpark still standing that he called home. To honor the legacy of the Negro Leagues, Major League Baseball scheduled a game in Mays’s hometown between the San Francisco Giants, Mays’s old team, and the St. Louis Cardinals, that will be played on Thursday.The Rev. William H. Greason, 99, who was the first Black pitcher for the Cardinals in the 1950s, has been a pastor in Birmingham for more than a half-century since retiring from baseball. He had been hoping to see his old friend this week, at the ballpark where they played together.At 114 years old, Rickwood Field is the nation’s oldest professional ballpark and the first place Mays played professional baseball.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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    Can Minor League Baseball Survive Its Real Estate Problems?

    Ed Willson has a jar filled with dirt sitting on his desk.For more than 40 years, Mr. Willson has been a fan of the minor league baseball team in Eugene, Ore., the Emeralds, and a season-ticket holder for 22 seasons. He was crushed when Civic Stadium, the longtime home of the team, burned to the ground in 2015. “It was a serious heartbreak,” Mr. Willson said.After the fire, Mr. Willson made a pilgrimage to the scorched diamond, where he filled a plastic bag with dirt from the pitcher’s mound that he considered sacred. He planned to give it to the team when it began construction on its new stadium.Nine years later, the dirt is still on Mr. Willson’s desk. The Emeralds are still without a permanent home. And there’s a risk that the team, after 69 seasons, may leave town altogether.Although the Emeralds (also known for their Sasquatch mascot, Sluggo) have survived wildfires, losing seasons, recessions, Major League Baseball’s 2020 reorganization of the minor leagues and Covid, they are a team without a ballpark.And the debate about the Emeralds’ fate — in the birthplace of Nike, no less — is a testament to the struggle for affordable, in-person sports to survive in the current Gilded Age.Nor are the Emeralds the only minor league baseball team that has reached a crisis point as a result of a ballpark problem. In 2020, Major League Baseball imposed new guidelines for its minor league stadiums. They include LED lighting, changing rooms for women, new fencing, expanded training facilities and a larger clubhouse. Those fixes are pricey.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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    Shohei Ohtani Is Home and Focused on Baseball. Dodgers Fans Are Relieved.

    Los Angeles finally got a close look at baseball’s megastar on Thursday as a gambling situation involving his former interpreter took a back seat to opening day.The top deck of Dodger Stadium is far from the action but may have the best view in baseball. Straight ahead are the San Gabriel Mountains. During night games, as the sun goes down, the sky glows pink. Down below, the full choreography of the game is on display, offering a panoramic view shunned by the movie stars and moguls who fill the sections behind home plate.And on Thursday morning, fans heading to those cheap seats passed a new addition to the ballpark: an eight-foot stone lantern given as a gift to the Dodgers in the 1960s by a famous Japanese sports columnist, Sotaro Suzuki, who helped draw the Dodgers to Japan for a good-will tour in 1956, two years before the team left Brooklyn for Los Angeles.For Kimi Ego, a longtime Dodger fan, the lantern has a special meaning, and she cried when she saw it: Her father was a close friend of Suzuki’s, and for years, before her father died in 2000, he took care of the stone lantern, which was then tucked into a hillside beyond the outfield bleachers, and trimmed the plants and shrubs surrounding it.“Tears of joy,” said Ego, a retired schoolteacher who has been coming to Dodgers game since the 1960s. “My father worked so hard maintaining the garden.”The monument is a homage to the team’s past, and also its present.In December, the Dodgers signed the world’s biggest baseball star, the two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani, to the richest contract in sports history, $700 million over 10 years. For good measure, the team signed another Japanese superstar, the pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, for $325 million over a dozen years. It was the most lucrative contract ever for a pitcher.On Thursday, as Los Angeles got a glimpse of its newest megastar, Ohtani’s impact was apparent before he even stepped on the field: New advertisements for Asian companies — an airline, a retail chain, yogurt drinks, skin care products — dotted the stadium. One local newscaster — in pregame coverage that began when most Angelenos were having breakfast, or stuck in traffic — compared Ohtani to Taylor Swift, saying that the Dodgers were baseball’s version of the Eras Tour. And a new addition to the stadium menu is a Japanese fried octopus fritter being promoted as one of Ohtani’s favorite dishes.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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    Takeaways From the N.Y. Governor Debate

    The Democratic rivals of Gov. Kathy Hochul sought to attack her on varied issues, from the funding of a Buffalo Bills stadium to a decade-old endorsement from the N.R.A.Gov. Kathy Hochul took center stage on Tuesday night, finally facing her Democratic challengers in a debate that mostly played out as expected.Her rivals, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi of Long Island and Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate, attacked the governor at every opportunity, but failed to land an instantly memorable moment that could rattle the race.Mr. Williams, a standard-bearer of the party’s left wing, brandished his populist message while casting himself as the candidate who felt New Yorkers’ pain, occasionally attempting to link Ms. Hochul to her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.Mr. Suozzi, a vocal centrist, reminded viewers of his years of experience in local government, and repeatedly sought opportunities to blame Ms. Hochul for failing to address crime, which he said was the most concerning issue for New Yorkers.And Ms. Hochul strove to project the equanimity of a leader: cool under fire, and already at work tackling the state’s many pressing issues.Ms. Hochul, who holds a commanding lead in public polls and in fund-raising, did not try to score points off her opponents, seeking mostly to leave the arena unscathed. In this, she emerged largely successful, taking the expected hits on her past support for gun rights and handling of the Buffalo Bills stadium deal, but holding her own under intense fire from the left and the right.The moderators quizzed candidates on a smorgasbord of topics, from congestion pricing and secondhand marijuana smoke to whether they believed in ghosts (in a rare moment of consensus, all vouched for some form of life after death).Here are some takeaways from the evening’s debate:Candidates try out their messages on public safetyMs. Hochul came into the debate ready for her opponents to attack her on crime, and the preparation paid off. She rattled off her projects — from the interstate gun task force, to violence disrupter programs, to the 10 gun bills she signed into law earlier in the week — that demonstrated the power of incumbency. And she took ownership over the tweaks to the state’s bail laws that she had pushed for, describing in detail the way in which changes would provide judges discretion to consider a defendant’s dangerousness, by using a specific set of criteria.“I think what we gave the judges is better than this vague term that can be subjective and many times used against the individual because of the color of their skin,” Ms. Hochul said.Her response helped dilute the line of attack from Mr. Suozzi, who has placed crime at the center of his platform. He still insisted that the governor had done “nothing to fix bail reform.” He later stressed the need for a comprehensive mental health plan and argued that the police and social workers should be able to remove mentally ill people from the streets to get humane care and treatment.Mr. Williams agreed that there was a need for mental health support, but said that the police need not be responding to mental health crises. In a personal moment, he described being nearly removed from a train because of his Tourette’s syndrome, saying that his experiences would position him best to tackle public safety and mental illness with humanity.“These things are not theoretical to me,” he said. “It’s not just things I read about in the paper or see on TV. These are things that I’ve dealt with, my family’s dealt with, my constituents have dealt with.”Scrutiny of the Buffalo Bills stadium dealThere was one glaring subject that Mr. Suozzi and Mr. Williams brought up repeatedly during the debate: the deal Ms. Hochul struck with the Buffalo Bills in late March to subsidize the construction of a new N.F.L. stadium using $850 million in state and local funds.Ms. Hochul’s rivals sought to cast the deal — which some recent polls show could be unpopular among voters — as wasteful spending of taxpayer money at a time the state has other pressing needs.The deal made for a digestible talking point that Ms. Hochul’s foes used to criticize her — not only for its large price tag, but also for the secretive nature of the negotiations that led to the deal.Mr. Suozzi relentlessly pivoted to his attack lines on the Buffalo Bills, forcibly inserting the topic even when asked a question about abortion rights or about the prospect of a casino in Manhattan.“When it came to the Buffalo Bills stadium, she got something done that nobody thought could be done,” Mr. Suozzi said. “It was the most lucrative deal in the history of the N.F.L.”Mr. Williams accused Ms. Hochul of prioritizing the wealthy owners of the Buffalo Bills over investments in violence prevention programs or reducing inequality, saying “people are suffering” in Buffalo.Ms. Hochul repeatedly defended the deal, which was aimed at ensuring that the football team did not abandon the state. She cited the construction jobs it would create and said it “was the best we could do for the taxpayers of New York.”“Every part of the state has regional priorities,” she said. “The Buffalo Bills are the identity of western New York the way Broadway is to New York City. It’s part of who they are. I made sure that they’re going to stay there for the next 30 years.”Hochul’s decade-old courtship of the N.R.A.In 2012, Ms. Hochul won the backing of the National Rifle Association, an endorsement she was once very proud of but has since come to regret.Still, neither the moderators nor her opponents were able to push Ms. Hochul to extrapolate beyond the position she’s taken in the past — namely that it was in the past, and that she previously represented a very conservative House district in Western New York.“Where’s the principle in that?” Mr. Suozzi said of Ms. Hochul’s reference to political necessity. “I don’t understand that.”“We are 10 years behind because people in Congress were doing the bidding of the N.R.A.,” Mr. Williams said.Ms. Hochul says that she has evolved, and hopes that voters will judge her by her recent actions — like the gun safety legislation she signed into law — rather than past ones.But if voters are looking to impose a purity test on guns, Mr. Suozzi suggested that Ms. Hochul would fail.“All three of us up here support the gun legislation that’s been passed. It’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s fantastic,” Mr. Suozzi said at one point. “Only one of us standing up here has ever been endorsed by the N.R.A.”Hochul remained noncommittal on several issuesSince taking office, Ms. Hochul has been adept at avoiding positions on some of the most divisive policy issues in Albany, whether to avoid creating a political maelstrom, alienating voters or disrupting her negotiations with legislative leaders.She continued to thread that needle on Tuesday night, remaining noncommittal on a number of topics du jour.She said she was still considering whether to sign a recently passed bill that would impose a two-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining at fossil fuel plants, insisting that donations and support from the cryptocurrency industry would not influence her decision.Asked whether the state should compensate families whose loved ones died in nursing homes during the pandemic, Ms. Hochul said it was something she was looking into, but that she would put together a blue ribbon commission to investigate the pandemic response in nursing homes. (Mr. Suozzi did not directly answer the question, while Mr. Williams said he supported compensation.)In other instances, she leaned on a philosophy of governing she has emphasized before: her desire to empower and respect the autonomy of local governments.She said, for example, that she respected New York City’s decision to allow people with green cards to vote in local elections, but would leave any expansion to localities. Mr. Suozzi said voting should be reserved for citizens, while Mr. Williams said noncitizens should be “civically engaged.”Asked whether a casino should be built in Manhattan, Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo native, said she would not place her “finger on the scale,” and would be “open-minded” to different locations for a new casino in the downstate region, where they were not previously authorized.Mr. Williams, who is from Brooklyn, said he wasn’t sure Manhattan would be the best place for a casino, while Mr. Suozzi said he was not opposed to it but emphasized the need for public hearings around such a decision.Measuring the damage done by Brian Benjamin’s arrestWhen Ms. Hochul’s former lieutenant governor, Brian A. Benjamin, was arrested on federal bribery and fraud charges in April, many political analysts predicted that his arrest could upend and jeopardize the governor’s campaign and her comfortable lead in public polls.Ms. Hochul had handpicked Mr. Benjamin, a former state senator from Harlem, as her lieutenant governor and running mate last year. But her team’s flawed vetting process of Mr. Benjamin overlooked, and failed to uncover, ethical red flags that eventually led to his arrest.Ms. Hochul, however, has trudged on: She recently appointed Antonio Delgado, a former congressman from the Hudson Valley, as her new lieutenant governor, and successfully removed Mr. Benjamin’s name from the ballot.On Tuesday night, Mr. Benjamin’s name, and the corruption scandal that led to his demise, barely registered, even if Mr. Suozzi sporadically sought to link his arrest to what he described as Ms. Hochul’s failure to fully clean up corruption in Albany.Ms. Hochul described Mr. Benjamin’s arrest and subsequent resignation as a disappointment.“I promised the voters of New York and the people of the state that I would do everything I can to restore their faith in government,” she said. “That was a setback.” More