'It could be catastrophic': Woman says natural supplement contained hidden painkiller drug
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
New York Mets slugger Pete Alonso accused Major League Baseball of manipulating the baseballs to harm the earning potential for star free agents and players eligible for arbitration.
Alonso's comments came Wednesday before New York's game at Baltimore. He was responding to a question about the crackdown on sticky substances used by pitchers.
"I think that the biggest concern is that Major League Baseball manipulates the baseballs year in and year out depending on the free agency class -- or guys being in an advanced part of their arbitration," Alonso said. "So I do think that's a big issue -- the ball being different every single year. ... Maybe if the league didn't change the baseball, pitchers wouldn't need to use as much sticky stuff."
When asked a follow-up question about this, Alonso remained firm. His implication was that the balls are friendlier to hitters in a year when a number of top pitchers are about to hit free agency -- and vice versa.
"That's a fact," he said. "Guys have talked about it, but I mean, in 2019, there was a huge class of free agent pitchers, and then that's, quote-unquote, the juiced balls. Then 2020, it was a strange year with the COVID season, but now that we're back to playing like a regular season with a ton of shortstops or position players that are going to be paid a lot of money, high-caliber players, I mean yeah, it's not a coincidence."
The league did not comment on Alonso's charge.
MLB informed teams in February that it planned to slightly deaden the baseballs for the 2021 season following a years-long surge in home runs. In 2019, 3.6% of plate appearances ended in a homer, a number that has dropped to 3.1% this year.
Alonso hit 53 home runs as a rookie in that 2019 season and 16 in 57 games last year. He homered in the first inning Wednesday, his 10th of the season.
After the 2019 season, Gerrit Cole landed a $324 million, nine-year deal with the New York Yankees, still a record contract for a pitcher in terms of its total value.
As far as the original question was concerned, Alonso did not seem terribly concerned with what opposing pitchers might be putting on the ball.
"Whatever they want to use to help control the ball, let them use it, because for me, I go in the box every single day, and I see guys throwing harder and harder every day, and I don't want 99 slipping out of someone's hand," Alonso said.
Alonso said hitters have plenty of options to help their grip.
"On our on-deck bag, we have a pine tar rag, a pine tar stick, like a special sticky spray, rosin -- I mean, you name it, we have it," he said. "I wouldn't care if they had that behind the mound to help hold onto the ball."
Cole found himself immersed in the controversy last week when Minnesota Twins third baseman Josh Donaldson casually brought the pitcher's name up in an interview session, correlating a drop in Cole's spin rate with an anticipated crackdown on the sticky stuff by MLB.
Cole sidestepped the accusation on Tuesday, and Donaldson elaborated on the matter Wednesday to clarify that he's concerned about many more opponents in the game than just Cole.
"With Gerrit Cole, he was the first guy to pitch since the suspensions happened and he's the first guy that you could see spin rates going down," Donaldson said. "There's been 12 or more guys already whose spin rates have magically dropped in the last week, so it's not just Gerrit Cole."
Donaldson said he believes the usage of grip aids has "got out of control" in the last few seasons.
"If you were to give $100 fake counterfeit money to an experienced bank teller, right away within five seconds you're going to know that that's not real money," Donaldson said. "Just think about how many pitches I've seen in my career, think about Nelson Cruz, a lot of these guys who have seen a lot of pitches. We know when stuff's up."
Red Sox manager Alex Cora said Wednesday he's anticipating an "aggressive" crackdown at the major league level soon.
"It's gonna be a little bit different," he said.
Astros manager Dusty Baker noted Wednesday that pitchers have been using foreign substances "since the beginning of time." While Baker says he will adhere to whatever mandates come from the league, he's concerned about issues that could arise from stricter enforcement.
"Everybody's talking about speed of the game," he said. "This is gonna slow the game down even more. So I don't know what we can do. I don't know how enforceable it is. And the umpires have enough to worry about doing just calling balls and strikes and outs and safe."
------
AP Sports Writers Dave Campbell in Minneapolis and Kyle Hightower in Boston contributed to this report.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
Police have released video footage of a dramatic takedown of a group of teens wanted in connection with an attempted carjacking in Markham earlier this month.
Canada called for 'all parties' to de-escalate rising tensions in the Mideast following an apparent Israeli drone attack against Iran overnight.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.