By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
—–BASEBALL—-
(ROYALSRICHWITT)—The Kansas City Royals are betting the farm on shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. with the largest contract in franchise history and one of the largest contracts in Major League Baseball.
The Royals have signed Witt, who is 23, to a deal that will run for at least eleven years with a team option for three more. Sources say the heavily back-ended deal is for $288.7 million. The three-year option would add another $89 million. Witt can opt out in years 7-10 during which time he can renegotiate the contract or become a free agent. He also gets a $7.7 million dollar signing bonus.
If the contract goes the full fourteen years it will total $377-million, the third largest contract in baseball history as of today. But baseball has been going bananas with big, long-term contracts since Fernando Tatis Jr., signed for fourteen years and $340 million in 2021.
Witt’s contract is the 26th long-term huge money deal since then.
Witt convinced the team that he’s a superstar last year when he hit 30 home runs and stole 49 bases, the first Royals player to join the 30-30 club and only the fifth player in MLB history to have at least 49 homers and 30 steals.
In the past week, the Royals also picked up veterans second baseman Adam Frazier, a free agent from the Orioles. He’s 31, a career .268 hitter who will provide an experienced double-play partner for Witt.
(CARDINALS)— The Cardinals, who have been looking for relievers who can throw strikes past batters, have added Yankees free agent Keynan Middleton, who will get five million dollars this year. The Cardinals have a six-million dollar option for 2025 with a one-million dollar buyout. He’s a seven-season veteran who struck out 64 in 50.2 innings last year.
(IT’S ALMOST HERE)—Pitchers and catchers report for the Royals and the Cardinals a week from tomorrow. Position players are to be in camp five days later. Opening day is March 28th.
(JUST TWO DAYS LATER)—The football season kicks off. The UFL season that is. The St. Louis Battlehawks are one of the eight teams to emerge from the merger of the two competing spring leagues that merged during the winter. They start their season playing the Michigan Panthers at Ford Field in Detroit. Their home opener in the St. Louis dome will be April 6th against the Arlington Renegades.
But before that, the NFL is hanging around for one more game.
(CHIEFS)—The Chiefs and the 49ers are in Las Vegas getting their game faces on. Hoopla Week is well underway and the people in the sportsbook business are adjusting the odds, it seems, every day but all, as of today, are predicting a field goal will win it. The Number one seed in the NFC plays the number three seed in the AFC, which now is saddled with the label inherited by the Dallas Cowboys in their glory days, “America’s Team.”
And that’s all that’s really newsworthy five days before the Super Bowl.
(MIZ$)—An anonymous donor has forked over the largest donation in the history of the University of Missouri Athletic Department—$62 million. That’s more than twice the previous big gift, made in 2012. Fifty million of those dollars will go for the planned renovation of the north end of Memorial Stadium with the rest going into the Tiger Fund, which benefits athletes. The changes are to be finished in time for the 2026 football season. The Tiger fund is described by the University as a “general pool of money used on travel, equipment, marketing and mental health support for the school’s athletes.”
What will the renovation mean for the big Rock “M” that has been part of Memorial Stadium since football season in 1927? The university says it will still be there, just “reimagined.” ($OU)
miz)—Missouri has won the SEC battle for the basement, showing once again a lack of killer instinct and a continuing ability to take a lead and then forget that the ball is supposed to go THROUGH the rim for an extended spell. Early lead, several minutes of cold shooting, loss of lead, close to within one or two possessions, and can’t find a dagger.
Vanderbilt 68, Missouri 61. Vandy had won only five of twenty games going in. Missouri had won eight of twenty-one. Neither team had a conference win. Missouri is still looking. Vanderbilt is now 1-7 in the SEC. Missouri is 0-9.
Texas A&M is next. They’re 13-8 overall, 4-4 in the conference.
‘Nuff said about Tiger roundball, too. (zou)
(MIZZ-D)—Tiger football coach Eliah Drinkwitz continues to re-stock his defensive coaching staff with the hiring of Brian Early to work ith defensive ends.
Early has spent five years coaching the defensive line at Houston. He’s been a coach for thirty years. Four of his guys have been NFL draft picks. He had the Sun Belt Conference’s defensive player of the year for three straight years. One of his first jobs will be to work with Willams Nwaneri, the top defensive prospect in the country.
Once he arrives on campus, Early will begin working with five-star recruit Williams Nwaneri, who’s the nation’s top defensive prospect. Nwaneri, from Lee’s Summit, is 6-7, 260 pounds who had 56 tackles in 14 games last year, with ten of those tackles being for loss. He had a dozen sacks as a junior. (ZOUD)
—The roar is beginning to be heard—
(INDYCAR)—IndyCar has finished its latest round of testing its new hybrid power plant and this time there were “No issues, no tow-ins, just smooth,” said two-time series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Will Power. That’s good news from the tests at Sebring after a rocky round of tests late last year raised concerns. Ten drivers compiled almost 3200 miles with no problems. Among other things, the new power plant allows a driver whose car stops for one reason or another to restart it, as Alexander Rossi did on one of his laps. The last time an IndyCar could be restarted by the driver was in the late 1960s when Formula 1 champion Jack Brabham had cars of his own design in the 500.
IndyCar has not announced when the new system will be put into competition but have said it will not be until after the 500 in May.
(NASCAR)—NASCAR Cup drivers have traded paint for the first time this year with a promotional race in the Los Angeles Coliseum that was moved from Sunday to Saturday night because bad weather was on its way to the West Coast.
Denny Hamlin won the Clash within the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on the special dirt track installed around the football field. He finishd ahead of Kyle Busch and last year’s Cup champion Ryan Blaney. The extremely tight track produced only four leaders but eight cautions and a winning speed of a little less than 33 mph.
The Daytona 500 comes up in two weeks.
(FORMULA 1)—Lewis Hamilton has stunned the F1 world with his announcement that he’s leaving Mercedes, a team that has helped him to six of his record-tying seven championships, for Ferrari in 2025.
He’s had a rough couple of years with Mercedes, the team he joined from McLaren in 2013 as the cars have battled serious handling problems.
He took to social media for the announcement: “I feel incredibly fortunate, after achieving things with Mercedes that I could only have dreamed of as a kid, that I now have the chance to fulfil another childhood dream. Driving in Ferrari red. Mercedes has been a huge part of my life since I was 13 years old, so this decision has been the hardest I’ve ever had to make.”
Ferrari’s last F1 championship was in 2007. Hamilton hasn’t won a race since December, 2021.
F1 starts its season March 2 at Bahrain, the first of a record 24 races this year.