Wednesday Sports in Brief

MLB

NEW YORK (AP) - Major League Baseball is increasing its monitoring of baseballs in an attempt to suppress any use of foreign substances by pitchers.

Mike Hill, newly hired as executive vice president of baseball operations and disciplinarian, wrote in a memorandum to team officials on Tuesday that “players are subject to discipline … regardless of whether evidence of the violation has been discovered during or following a game.”

HOUSTON (AP) - Pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. and the Houston Astros have agreed to an $85 million, five-year contract covering 2022-26, a deal awaiting announcement by the team.

McCullers agreed on Jan. 15 to a $6.5 million, one-year contract that avoided salary arbitration. He would have been eligible for free agency after this year’s World Series.

His new agreement calls for a $3.5 million signing bonus, payable within 30 days of the contract’s approval by the commissioner’s office, and salaries of $15.25 million in both 2022 and 2023, and $17 million annually from 2024-26.

NFL

WASHINGTON (AP) - Dan Snyder will soon be the sole owner of the Washington Football Team.

Snyder is buying out the team’s minority owners in a move that gives him total control and should end a lengthy, bitter court dispute along with any speculation that he’d be pushed to sell his boyhood team he bought in 1999.

An NFL spokesman on Wednesday confirmed that Snyder’s application for a debt waiver of $450 million was approved by the league’s finance committee and that the deal is pending approval from team owners. Three-quarters, or 24 of 32 teams, need to sign off during a vote at the annual league meeting next week to make it official.

HOUSTON (AP) - The Houston Texans have promoted Greg Grissom to team president.

The Texans announced his promotion on Wednesday. He previously worked as senior vice president of corporate development.

He takes over for Jamey Rootes, who resigned in February to pursue other opportunities after serving as president since the team’s inception.

NHL

NEW YORK (AP) - The NHL announced Wednesday that Tim Peel’s career as a league referee is over after he was picked up by a TV microphone saying he wanted to give the Nashville Predators a penalty, an incident that put the notion of “make-up” calls squarely in the spotlight.

Peel will “no longer will be working NHL games now or in the future,” the league said. The 54-year-old Peel had planned to retire next month, but his early exit sparked discussion across the league about the approach and mindset of officials tracking the games.

SPORTS BROADCASTING

NEW YORK (AP) - Amazon Prime Video will stream 21 Yankees games to members in New York’s broadcast market for the first season, a slate that starts with an April 18 matchup against Tampa Bay.

YES said Wednesday that while it announced on March 3 last year that Amazon Prime Video would stream 21 games in 2020, the steams did not take place because of the shortened season caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The games are produced by the Yankees’ YES Network and are all scheduled for broadcast on WPIX.

SOCCER

GENEVA (AP) - Sepp Blatter was banned for a second time by FIFA on Wednesday for financial wrongdoing, seven months before the 85-year-old former president’s first ban expires.

Blatter has recently been in poor health and was put in an induced coma for one week after undergoing heart surgery in December, at the time when FIFA was deciding his case.

FIFA said its ethics committee banned both Blatter and former secretary general Jérôme Valcke for six years and eight months for self-dealing in awarding themselves contractual bonuses worth millions of dollars, mostly linked to staging World Cups.

OBITUARY

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Former St. Louis Blues defenseman Bob Plager was killed Wednesday in a car crash in St. Louis. He was 78.

Police said Plager was alone in his vehicle when it collided with a vehicle carrying two women on Interstate 64 in St. Louis about 1:30 p.m. One of the women sustained minor injuries. No other details were released.

Plager was an original Blue, moving over from the New York Rangers when the NHL expanded in 1967-68. He played 11 seasons for St. Louis - teaming for a stretch with brothers Barclay and Bill - and later worked for the organization in a variety of roles. He coached the team for 11 games in 1992.

PARIS (AP) - Julie Pomagalski, a former Olympic snowboarder from France, has died in an avalanche in the Swiss Alps. She was 40.

Pomagalski competed in the parallel giant slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and the 2006 Turin Games. She won gold in the snowboard cross at the world championships in 1999.

The French ski federation said Wednesday that Pomagalski died Tuesday but did not specify the location. French and Swiss media widely reported that the avalanche took place on Gemsstock mountain in the Swiss canton of Uri.

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