A look back at the people, places and things that made for a memorable sports year in Las Vegas.
Aviators/Baseball
With baseball’s Winter Meetings in Las Vegas last week, it seemed the right time to ask about territorial rights and crazy TV blackouts.
Bernie Carbo hit one of the biggest home runs in Boston Red Sox history, a three-run, pinch-hit shot in the bottom of the eighth inning during epic Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. In 1989, Sam McDowell saved his life.
It was 11:30 Wednesday morning when the J.T. Realmuto Baseball Winter Meetings morphed into the Scott Boras Show. The super agent held a news conference to update media on client Bryce Harper’s free-agent status.
If you arranged the things to do at baseball’s winter meetings like a batting order, the trade show on the third floor of the Mandalay Bay convention area definitely would bat cleanup.
There were no shortage of baseball people — and even a very large basketball person — willing to offer an opinion about the Avaitors’ logo during Day 2 of the winter meetings at Mandalay Bay.
Bobby Grich arrived in Las Vegas as they still were hanging banners for the Baseball Winter Meetings. The six-time All-Star wants to raise awareness in the Association of Professional Ball Players of America, a charity of which he recently became president.
One of the unofficial traditions of baseball’s winter meetings is a sports writer from the host city informing readers that trades no longer are conducted in hotel lobbies but in posh hotel suites via cellphone.
Founded in 1991, Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation has spared more than 40,000 cats and dogs and spawned a roster of related programs that have created awareness in the mission.
It was the bottom of the ninth inning Monday of what in theory would be the last professional baseball game played at Cashman Field. The baseball gods were only warming up.
It has been proclaimed on billboards that the Raiders are coming to Las Vegas in 2020. Which would be the second time.
Former Las Vegas physician Julian Lopez was the first recipient of the Roland Hemond Award for humanitarianism after donating a kidney to former White Sox minority owner Eddie Einhorn, who became ill at Cashman Field.
At last count, there were 3,786 teams who began summer ball hoping to win the big one in North Carolina. The Desert Oasis Aces finished second, losing the American Legion World Series championship game 1-0 in extra innings.
If there was a Mount Rushmore for local baseball luminaries, one could make a case for carving Manny Guerra’s tanned face into the outcropping alongside those of Greg Maddux, Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant.
For many years, denizens of “Club Chuck” in the bowels of Cashman Field — i.e., next to 51s president Don Logan’s office — have debated if the semi-secret meeting place and watering hole is a nook or a cranny.