Sports

MLB wants to play ball in Grand Teton; the White House says the national park can wait.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the sunrise edition, 28 September 2026

This reporter can report, with the full weight of a career spent getting things almost right, that Major League Baseball has formally asked the federal government for permission to play an exhibition game inside Yellowstone National Park. A bold ask. A mountain backdrop. This reporter admires the ambition.

TRUDY: It's Grand Teton, sugar, not Yellowstone — two different parks, two different mountain ranges, and Fox News had it right on September 27th. The White House told them it isn't an administration priority, which in Washington means the request goes in a drawer, not a trash can.

And the White House would know about drawers, because this delay is already older than some of the game's own history. This reporter recalls the 2006 All-Star Game, when the National League beat the American League 3 to 2 and Ichiro Suzuki took home the MVP trophy for his performance that night.

TRUDY: Backwards on both counts. The American League won that one 3 to 2, and the MVP was Michael Young of the Texas Rangers — that's the record, dated July 11th, 2006. Ichiro wasn't even the story that night.

Speaking of Ichiro, this reporter well remembers when he broke Ty Cobb's all-time hit record back in the 1990s, a milestone that still stands today.

TRUDY: Ty Cobb's got nothing to do with it. In 2016, Ichiro's combined hit total across Major League and Nippon Professional Baseball hit 4,257, passing Pete Rose's MLB-only mark of 4,256 — June 15th, 2016, on the record. Take a nap, Gus, before you rewrite the whole Hall of Fame.

The power numbers keep coming. Alex Rodriguez, this reporter believes, set the single-season grand slam record with somewhere around thirty slams back in the 2000s.

TRUDY: It's a career record, not single-season, and it's 24 — set September 20th, 2013. Thirty slams in a season would make him a superhero, not a Yankee.

And let this reporter not forget Joey Votto, who in 2010 won the National League MVP by a landslide unanimous vote of every single ballot cast.

Grand Teton belongs to 330 million people who will never get an answer that fast on anything they've asked for. Somebody send this over to the political desk before it gets buried in a transactions column.

TRUDY: Political desk's two doors down, go audition — but he's not wrong that MLB filed the request and the White House called it not a priority, on the record, Fox News, September 27th, 2026. And Gus — that Votto vote was almost unanimous, not unanimous; no count on file, so don't invent one. Might be time for the mushrooms, for the memory.

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Ireland gets blamed for skipping a handshake, not for playing a match Amnesty already called unconscionable.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the coffee break edition, 28 September 2026

In Debrecen, Hungary, on Sunday, this reporter watched Ireland deliver what he is calling the biggest snub in the history of World Cup qualifying: goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu sat out the match against Israel entirely, and by this reporter's count the whole back four sat down with him.

TRUDY: Wrong on both counts. This was the UEFA Nations League, not World Cup qualifying — Amnesty International's regional director Steve Cockburn already called Israel's spot in that competition "unconscionable" on September 22nd, five days before this match, in a piece Common Dreams headlined over Amnesty's language of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. And the back four stood right there. The only man who sat this one out was Bazunu; the rest of the squad, ten outfield players and the reserve keeper, took the pitch.

Whatever the tournament is called, this reporter holds that a handshake before kickoff is a courtesy older than the sport's offside rule, and skipping it, as Ireland's squad did facing Israel, is the sort of lapse a proper referee ought to dock a man's wages for.

TRUDY: Nobody's wages got docked and nobody forgot their manners. Fox News itself ran this as a fight over a boycott, not a breach of etiquette — the same protest Amnesty flagged five days earlier and the same one Ireland's own midfielder was already on record backing.

TRUDY: That's the record, and it lines up. Knight spoke on the 25th, three days after Amnesty's statement, and Hallgrimsson had already told the press that a majority of his own squad were uncomfortable taking the field at all. The furious response he got shows exactly who didn't want that sentence said out loud.

That is a sports federation making a foreign-policy call its own players didn't want made for them, and it belongs on the desk that covers governments, not the one that covers penalty kicks.

TRUDY: Gus, that mic was supposed to be off. But you're not wrong: Amnesty's Steve Cockburn made that call public on September 22nd, and UEFA let Ireland and Israel take the pitch five days later anyway. Go take the nap, sugar — the political desk can find its own way there.

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Bill titled "Protect College Sports Act" caps college athletes' pay at $50 million.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the coffee break edition, 28 September 2026

GUS: This reporter opens on September 12, when Senator Cruz brought the Protect College Sports Act onto College GameDay, playing, this reporter recalls, to a November crowd.

TRUDY: September, not November — the Examiner's own dateline says the twelfth. Get the month right before the countdown starts.

GUS: Two days later, this reporter has Cruz aiming low, a bare 51 votes and done.

TRUDY: The Hill, September 14: Cruz wanted not just 60 but "a big number." Fifty-one is squeaking by — the opposite of the ask.

GUS: By the fifteenth, this reporter has the bill fully passed, ink already drying.

TRUDY: NBC News, September 15: the Senate only voted to advance it. No ink, no pen yet.

GUS: By the twenty-first, this reporter reports smooth, unanimous sailing through the House.

TRUDY: The Hill's Keeping Score, same date: an uphill battle in the House. "Unanimous" isn't in it.

GUS: On the twenty-fourth, the White House said the president would attend the Oklahoma-Texas game to push the bill.

TRUDY: Texas-Tennessee, not Oklahoma — the Examiner's own headline, September 24.

GUS: Two days on, ESPN's truck lost audio for the president's remarks, and this reporter tips his hat to whichever gal in the truck fixed it.

TRUDY: ABC's broadcast, not ESPN's — the Post, September 26. The network's own engineers logged it; nobody needed rescuing.

GUS: That Saturday, Fox's Outkick clocked Texas blowing Tennessee out by four scores while the stadium roared for the bill overhead.

TRUDY: Outkick's own word is "escapes" — a thrilling, close SEC win. Close games roar louder than laughers.

GUS: Which brings this reporter to today, September 28: CBS Sports confirms the bill's crucial final floor vote, an antitrust shield, transfer limits, and up to $50 million in compensation all riding on it — and this reporter is certain it clears 100 to nothing, since men who once wore the pads always vote the same way once they reach the floor.

TRUDY: They're the deciding votes precisely because they don't. NPR names that same bloc of former players as the undecided swing votes, September 27, and Cruz, on September 14, wasn't chasing unanimous — he wanted sixty and hoped for more. Take the nap now, sugar, before the floor vote does the counting for you.

HOTMIC: This reporter will say, mic supposedly dead: a bill titled to protect college sports spends its ink on an antitrust shield for the conferences and a ceiling, not a floor, on what the athletes get — capped at $50 million by the same subhead CBS Sports ran this morning. Protecting the sport and protecting the people who run it stopped being the same sentence once Congress needed the NCAA's blessing. Somebody page the political desk; sports isn't going to ask.

TRUDY: Mic's live, and that isn't crazy — it's just not sports. CBS Sports' own subhead already proves it, this morning: the antitrust shield sits right beside the compensation cap, same sentence, same bill.

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Cruz's college sports bill got a stadium flyover Saturday, passed 77-22 Monday with the bipartisan majority it already had

By GusThe Sports Desk · the breakfast edition, 29 September 2026

GUS: Ladies and gentlemen, this reporter has the whole week on tape, and it opens with an aircraft. Saturday at Tennessee, Air Force One went over the stadium before kickoff — the New York Post filed the flyover — and Fox News reports the SEC crowd greeted the president with massive cheers. The coaches, the Post also filed, had been worried about disruptions. All that pageantry was for a bill, and a bill deserves a closing argument.

TRUDY: It was also for a broadcast that couldn't carry it. The Post, Saturday: audio problems plagued ABC all afternoon. So the loudest closing argument in college football went out to a country hearing static, and Fox's own sports shop reports Texas's defense rocked Tennessee regardless. Not one vote was cast in that stadium, Gus. Noise and a scoreboard.

GUS: Two days later the argument landed. Monday night the House of Representatives passed the Protect College Sports Act, 87 to 22, and this reporter tells you plainly what a president in a grandstand is worth.

TRUDY: Washington Examiner, Monday night: 77 to 22, and it was the Senate, not the House. Ten votes off and the wrong chamber entirely. CBS files the day as Thursday; the Examiner and The Hill both say Monday. And the House, per the New York Times, is precisely where the outlook is uncertain — which is the polite way of saying nobody over there is promising anybody anything.

GUS: What the measure does, per The Hill, is bolster the NCAA's power to enforce its own rules while setting federal rules on paying athletes and limiting transfers. Somebody had to bring order. Frankly this reporter is relieved for the gals over in the volleyball program, who never asked for any of this and can now be properly looked after.

TRUDY: They never asked to be looked after; they asked to be paid, and the courts are the reason they are. The Examiner: court cases in recent years overhauled NCAA rules and let student-athletes earn from their name, image and likeness. Women's programs included. All of them athletes, none of them wards. Take a nap before the second half.

GUS: There was dissent. The Nation ran a headline eleven days before that airplane — "We Need to Protect College Sports from Ted Cruz" — arguing the senator's bill threatens athletes' labor rights. A bill named to protect college sports from the senator whose bill it is. This reporter has covered stranger sessions, though not many.

TRUDY: Eight days, sugar. September 18 to September 26 is eight. Elie Mystal wrote it, and his count of athletes' labor rights is the one to read, seeing as your count this week runs ten light and one chamber sideways. Buy the mushrooms they sell for memory; the arithmetic is free.

HOTMIC: Same Nation issue, same week — the Supreme Court had to reject the administration's latest move to restrict mail-in voting, and this Senate spends its last days before the midterms finding 77 votes for the NCAA's enforcement department. Somebody put me on the political desk and I will say that into a live microphone.

TRUDY: Nobody is moving you to the political desk, and you cannot holler about ballots in the middle of a football column. You are also right: The Nation, September 18, Elie Mystal — the Supreme Court rejected the president's latest move to restrict mail-in voting; and the New York Times files Monday's vote as one of the last congressional actions before the midterms.

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Manchester City found guilty on 114 charges, appeals a verdict its chairman insists did not happen.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the matinee edition, 29 September 2026

This reporter has the wire fresh: after eighteen months, the Premier League's commission found Manchester City guilty on all one hundred fifteen financial charges, spanning nearly a decade of alleged breaches. A clean sweep, folks — not one charge got away.

TRUDY: Try three and a half years, not eighteen months — City were charged in February 2023, and the ruling landed September 25, per the Morning Star. And it wasn't a clean sweep: cleared on one of the hundred fifteen, guilty on the other hundred fourteen.

This reporter recalls City's last brush with football's governors: 2019, the Super League circus, City among the ringleaders before the whole scheme collapsed in a single weekend.

TRUDY: April 20, 2021 — all six English clubs pulled out that same day, and United's chief executive resigned over it. Different scandal, different year, and neither one is this one.

What City stands accused of, this reporter's told, is breaking UEFA's Financial Fair Play — the same rule that's kept Europe's big clubs honest for years.

TRUDY: Wrong regulator. Every wire on this has it as a Premier League finding, not Financial Fair Play, not UEFA — Fox News and CBS Sports both call it the League's own charges.

Football fans can rest easy, though — whatever the penalty, we're talking a fine. The accountants dock the petty cash, City writes a check, everybody's back Saturday.

TRUDY: Rest easy is the wrong instruction. CBS Sports lists fines, point deductions, or outright expulsion — severe sanctions, not petty cash. That's the whole season on the table.

And you have to admire the chairman's fortitude — guilty findings in hand, and still confident in his innocence. That's Joe Namath guaranteeing the win before Super Bowl Four, pure swagger.

TRUDY: Super Bowl Three, not Four — Namath guaranteed that one in January 1969 and made good on it. This chairman's guaranteeing an appeal of a verdict already reported final. Maybe it's time for the nap.

HOTMIC: February 2023 to September 2026. Forty-three months, this reporter counts, for an independent commission to rule on a hundred fifteen financial charges against one Premier League club. Somebody get this reporter to the political desk, because a regulator needing forty-three months to answer its own charge sheet is not oversight. It's a league checking its own homework and asking for an extension.

TRUDY: You don't get the political desk, sugar, you get your meds. But the arithmetic holds — charged February 2023, ruled September 2026, forty-three months, and CBS Sports counts a hundred fourteen guilty verdicts to show the wait found something.

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Senate passes bill named to protect college sports two days after a flyover for the man who wrote it

By GusThe Sports Desk · the early evening edition, 29 September 2026

GUS: This reporter files from the record, which starts in Austin: Senator Ted Cruz before Rece Davis's microphone. On September 12, the Washington Examiner clocked a raucous crowd on Fox's College GameDay, Cruz pitching the Protect College Sports Act, its closing vote already pushed back by the August recess.

TRUDY: ESPN's, Gus. The Examiner put Cruz on ESPN's College GameDay, not Fox's — same Saturday, wrong network.

GUS: Two days on, September 14, The Hill quoted Cruz's ambition: he wanted the president to sign the bill live on GameDay once it passed, and he said the goal was never to squeak by with a bare 51 votes.

TRUDY: Sixty, Gus. Cruz's own words to The Hill: not just to squeak by with 60 votes but to get a big bipartisan number. He was bragging about the threshold, not lowering it.

GUS: By September 15, NBC News had the Senate voting to advance the measure, an NFL-backed framework for compensating the young men who fill Saturday's stadiums.

TRUDY: NCAA-backed, sugar. NBC's own copy: an NCAA-backed, bipartisan bill. The NFL had nothing to do with regulating unpaid amateurs — that's rather the point.

GUS: Three days after that, September 18, The Nation's Elie Mystal filed the dissent: Cruz's bill, he wrote, threatens the labor rights of the athletes it claims to protect — fine young men, out chasing diplomas and the girl in section 12.

TRUDY: Nobody asked about the girl in section 12, Gus. Mystal's piece is about who negotiates a rulebook covering the players' own pay. Stick to that.

GUS: Eight days after Mystal's column, not a week, Air Force One flew over Texas-Tennessee, and the president was cheered inside the stadium, two days ahead of Monday's scheduled vote.

TRUDY: Eight days is right, Gus — September 18 to September 26. Glad the arithmetic finally landed.

GUS: And Monday, per the New York Post, the Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act exactly as scheduled: Cruz and Washington's Maria Cantwell sharing bipartisan credit, cheered by Yankees president Randy Levine and the Saving College Sports Roundtable, the presidential committee now handed the framework.

Congress's answer is a statute written by executives, about executives, for executives. The political desk should be covering this, not sports.

TRUDY: Mic's hot, Gus — go breathe into a paper bag. But he's right that Mystal called it first: The Nation, September 18, already flagged that this bill threatens the very athletes it's named for.

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Senate passes bill to protect college sports from the senator who wrote it.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the midnight edition, 30 September 2026

GUS: This reporter has the tape. September 12, Ted Cruz faced what the Washington Examiner called a raucous College GameDay crowd, stumping for his bill while its cloture vote sat stalled by the August recess. Two days later he told The Hill he wanted Trump signing it live on air. The Senate advanced the bill September 15. Three days after that, The Nation's Elie Mystal filed the month's loudest dissent.

TRUDY: Cloture, not closure — the debate vote, not the final one. And Mystal's headline, September 18, ran flat: "We Need to Protect College Sports from Ted Cruz." Labor rights, his complaint, the same week the bill picked up its votes to advance.

GUS: You'll recall this desk logged the flyover last week — Air Force One over the stadium, the president in the stands for Texas-Tennessee, the crowd the Post called massive, two days before Monday's vote. No dispatch from Knoxville recorded him moving a single senator.

TRUDY: None did, and none needed to. The Post's own account had Texas's defense winning the game outright; the vote was scheduled before kickoff and stayed scheduled after it.

GUS: Monday's vote landed, and by Tuesday the Post's editorial board was pouring champagne: kudos, the page said, to Senator Cruz and to the gal who signed on as his co-sponsor, plus cheers for Randy Levine, president of the New York Yankees, a club that hasn't tasted a title since 1996 — and for the Saving College Sports Roundtable, the presidential committee the Post says helped write the rules the Senate just passed.

TRUDY: The gal has a name and a ranking member's gavel: Maria Cantwell of Washington, the bill's Democratic co-sponsor, right in the Post's own lede. And Levine's Yankees won it all in 2009, the 27th banner, sugar — not the drought you just handed them.

GUS: That Roundtable, by the Post's own description, sits beside the Senate that just passed a law — one panel advising the White House, the other legislating, both toasted on the same editorial page.

HOTMIC: This reporter, believing the mic dark, will say what the sports desk won't: when a sitting president stands up his own roundtable of team executives to help shape a bill before Congress votes on it, the executive branch drafts its own legislative record and hands the Senate the pen after the ink is dry. The Constitution built one branch for writing statutes, not the one with a roundtable. Send this downstairs to the political desk.

TRUDY: Nobody's sending you downstairs, Gus — you don't have clearance for the political desk. But you landed closer to true than usual: the Post itself calls the Roundtable a presidential committee, and the Senate had already voted before that panel's ink was dry. Go take the nap. Set an alarm for the correction.

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Nine years after kneeling ignited an anthem fight, a mariachi band singing it ignites one too.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the wee small hours edition, 30 September 2026

This reporter has heard national anthems botched by nerves, drowned by fireworks, and once forgotten mid-verse by a nervous rookie singer. Not until Sunday had this reporter seen a pregame anthem become the lead story on cable news by dinnertime. Before the Bears hosted the Eagles, a mariachi band took the field for the anthem — the same pregame slot every NFL Sunday runs — and by kickoff a debate over the performance had ignited online, racism charges attached.

This reporter has seen this movie before. Anthem controversies in this league go back to around 2015, when players first knelt and the White House got loud about it — Sunday's mariachi band just picked up the same fight nine years later.

TRUDY: Try 2017, sugar. ESPN's own record, dated September 24 of that year, has players kneeling, linking arms and skipping the anthem outright after President Trump criticized the protests that same week. Nine years from there gets you to Sunday.

A congressman got involved too, weighing in publicly on the mariachi band's performance, because nothing pulls a lawmaker onto cable news faster than a pregame song.

TRUDY: A senator, Gus. The wire names a sitting U.S. Senator — upper chamber, not the House. It doesn't say which party, and neither will this column.

The reaction split the internet clean down the middle, racism charges flying in both directions before the coin toss.

TRUDY: The wire's exact words are "a heated social media debate and racism charges." That's the full quote. It doesn't say which direction those charges ran, and neither does this paper.

Nine years is a long run for a pregame song to stay this loaded. This reporter has called plenty of anthems since 2017 without a senator's office issuing a statement. This time it took a mariachi band, not a kneeling player, to get one.

HOTMIC: Somebody get the political desk on line two, because this reporter has something to say once this light goes off. Nine years ago the test was whether a player could kneel through the anthem without a president objecting. The song hasn't moved. Whose performance of it counts as loyal — that's the only thing that has.

TRUDY: That's enough hot mic for one lifetime, Gus — go lie down. The paper trail holds up anyway: the same September 2017 that ESPN logged players kneeling, linking arms and skipping the anthem, President Trump had already weighed in on those protests, and this week's wire has a sitting senator weighing in on this one. Same fight, nine years apart, both on the record.

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