SI

Here’s a New One: Manager Goes Off on Grounds Crew Worker

Also in Traina Thoughts: Jared Goff gets the last laugh; Mark Cuban says gambling led to load management rule; Ryan Day’s bizarre comment and more.

Jimmy Traina

1. The Marlins are in the fight for the third wild-card spot in the National League. On Thursday night, they played the Mets in New York. After trailing 1–0, Miami scored two runs in the top of the ninth inning. The Marlins then had runners on first and second with two outs when the umpires decided to stop the game due to rain.

At around 1 a,m, ET, more than three hours after the tarp went on the field, the game was suspended and Miami will have to fly back to New York on Monday, after playing three games in Pittsburgh this weekend, to finish it if it’s needed for playoff implications.

Naturally, Marlins manager Skip Schumaker was not happy and wanted the game completed in the worst way.

At one point, Schumaker even tried to help the Mets’ groundskeepers with getting the field ready.

At another point, around 12:20 a.m., the tarp was taken off before being put back on the field. Schumaker’s patience ran out at this point, and he had a heated confrontation with someone on the Mets’ grounds crew.

Marlins general manager Kim Ng didn’t seem pleased about the situation, either. Here was her exchange with a reporter following the suspension.

Reporter: What was explained out there about the decision to suspend it?

Ng: Without getting into the details, obviously this is an unfortunate incident right now.

Reporter: Was everything done that should have been in order to avoid this happening?

Ng: I don’t really want to get into details at this point.

On a side note, I bet the Marlins last night and DraftKings ruled this as a Miami loss and New York win, so I’ll be going all Karen on them today.

2. Amazon’s Ryan Fitzpatrick, whose career record as a starting NFL quarterback was 59-87-1, called the Lions’ Jared Goff “a poor man’s Matt Ryan” on the pregame show before Detroit beat Green Bay last night.

After the game, Goff made sure to let Fitzpatrick know he heard the comment in one of those “Oh, I was just kidding, but I’m not really kidding” moments.

3. During an appearance on First Take on Thursday, Mark Cuban cited gambling as a big reason for the NBA’s new rules to combat load management. 

“While I think fans looked at it from one perspective, I don’t think it was as big a problem as it was made out to be. And I think a lot of the influence came from gamblers. We’ve transitioned from a world of, “Hey, this is my team. I grew up a Mavs fan. I’ll always be a Mavs fan,’ to, on social media, half the talk, if not more, is, ‘Well, I’ve got this bet in this game, or what are the odds going to be? What’s the line going to be?’ And that influences a lot of the perspective of load management, because who am I going to bet on? And that’s unfortunate, but that’s the reality of the world we live in.”

4. I’ve said numerous times in this column that some of the weirdest people on Earth are football coaches. He’s more proof, courtesy of Ohio State’s Ryan Day.

5. Merriam-Webster has added nearly 700 new words to its dictionary.

Among the notable additions:

• GOATED

• Kayfabe

• Bracketology

• Beast mode

6. A new SI Media With Jimmy Traina dropped Thursday, and it features a conversation with New York Post sports columnist Andrew Marchand about the latest sports media news and story lines.

Topics discussed include ABC/ESPN using staggered start times for their Monday Night Football doubleheaders, how the Pat McAfee–ESPN marriage is going, the Deion Sanders effect on college football, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo’s viral cocktail/gambling/gummy moment on First Take, a New York radio fight, the expected move for WWE's Monday Night Raw and much more.

Following Marchand, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins me for our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week, we discuss Sal’s NFL-watching dilemma, whether the NFL should ban the Eagles’ push play, single-game streaming costs, bizarre Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce prop bets and more.

You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on YouTube.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Happy 75th birthday to Bryant Gumbel, host of HBO's Real Sports and costar of one of the best viral videos of all time.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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