The World of Sports

New on Sports Illustrated: An XFL Linebacker Is Donating Half of His Remaining Paychecks to Coronavirus Efforts

<a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/30/xfl-brian-peters-paycheck-donation-coronavirus">
<p class="subtitle">Former Texans linebacker Brian Peters will donate half of his remaining five XFL paychecks to food banks, medical workers and other coronavirus-related causes.</p>
<h2>He’s doing his part</h2>
<p>The sudden halt to global sports was especially inconvenient for the XFL. The league had some buzz after the first few weeks of its inaugural season and would need to keep that momentum going to continue growing the league’s footprint in a second season. Unlike the AAF,</p>
</a><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjV6p7vncLoAhXLhXIEHVaJBb0QFjAAegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.si.com%2Fnfl%2F2019%2F05%2F01%2Falliance-american-football-aaf-collapse-charlie-ebersol-tom-dundon&usg=AOvVaw2CbR0UMjRlAhahs2aRlYBB">which flamed out prematurely and spectacularly</a>, the XFL’s first season ended due to circumstances beyond its control. 
<p>It’s disappointing for several reasons, including for the players who were hoping to use the final five weeks of the season to add to their NFL audition tapes. But they’ll at least be paid through the end of the regular season. </p>
<p>One player, former Texans linebacker Brian Peters is putting that money toward a good cause. Peters announced Sunday that he’ll be donating half of his remaining five paychecks to food banks, medical workers and other coronavirus-related causes.</p>
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<p>Peters has made a lot of money playing professional football, but not never-work-another-day-in-your-life money. After going undrafted out of Northwestern in 2012, he played in the Arena Football League, the short-lived United Football League and the CFL before landing on the Vikings’ practice squad in 2015. The Texans signed him later that year and he spent four seasons as a key contributor on Houston’s special teams before his NFL career ended in 2018. His donations will total $3,900, which is no small chunk of change, but as Peters’s Twitter bio says, “Help and support are not yours to keep.”</p>
<h2>The best of SI</h2>
<p>The greatest <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/03/28/march-madness-great-moments-games-what-if">“what if” scenarios in March Madness history</a>. ... The cancelation of <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/03/26/opening-day-2020-cincinnati">Opening Day is especially impactful in Cincinnati</a>. ... What life is like <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/03/27/coronavirus-italy-spain-ncaa-international-athletes">for European NCAA athletes after returning home</a>.</p>
<h2>Around the sports world</h2>
<p>Aaron Rodgers got <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28964015/packers-aaron-rodgers-details-frenzied-departure-peru">out of Peru just a few minutes before the airport closed</a>. ... A New Mexico high school wrestling champ <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2020/03/26/suspected-kidnapper-gets-pinned-high-school-wrestler-new-mexico/2923871001/">pinned a kidnapping suspect to the ground until cops could arrive</a>. ... Stephon Marbury has a plan to deliver <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/03/29/stephon-marbury-plans-to-deliver-10-million-masks-to-ny-amid-coronavirus-crisis/">10 million N95 masks to first responders and healthcare professionals in need</a>. </p>
<h3>What Ronaldinho is up to in prison in Paraguay</h3>
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<h3>It’s like a five-year-olds’ soccer game</h3>
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<h3>A guy like Joey Gallo is likely to hit it right through that net</h3>
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<h3>The Rock could easily be a competitive eater</h3>
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<h3>I was always a fan of this guy</h3>
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<h3>Isolation, Olympian style</h3>
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<h3>So that’s how Aroldis Chapman throws 104</h3>
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<h2>Not sports</h2>
<p>The coronavirus could cause a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-malaysia-karex-idUSKBN21E1OJ">global shortage of condoms after the world’s largest factory was forced to close</a>. ... A man who’s lived alone <a href="https://www.kunc.org/post/need-tips-social-distancing-guy-s-been-doing-it-almost-50-years#stream/0">at the top of a Colorado mountain  for 50 years gives his tips for social distancing</a>. ... The rapper Future is providing <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/future-to-provide-masks-for-healthcare-workers-and-patients-affected-by-coronavirus/">masks to healthcare workers and patients</a>.</p>
<h3>That’s not the kind of mask you need</h3>
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<h3>They look like the Beatles</h3>
<div><em>View the <a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/30/xfl-brian-peters-paycheck-donation-coronavirus">original article</a> to see embedded media.</em></div>
<h2>A good song</h2>
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<p><em>Email dan.gartland@si.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitter for approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to see previous editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard page throughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.</em></p>

New on Sports Illustrated: An XFL Linebacker Is Donating Half of His Remaining Paychecks to Coronavirus Efforts

Former Texans linebacker Brian Peters will donate half of his remaining five XFL paychecks to food banks, medical workers and other coronav...

New on Sports Illustrated: Belarus President Boasts About Keeping Soccer League Running Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

<a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/03/30/belarus-soccer-league-coronavirus-pandemic">
<p class="subtitle">“It’s better to die standing than to live on your knees,” Belarus's president says.</p>
<p>MINSK, Belarus (AP) — With most sports around the world shutting down because of the coronavirus pandemic, longtime Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is proudly keeping soccer and hockey arenas open.</p>
<p>The Eastern European nation of nearly 9.5 million even</p>
</a><a href="https://apnews.com/0ae22102ba119c51a623cb42ebb9ecc4">started</a> a whole new soccer season this month as coronavirus cases rose.
<p>The move has the full support of Lukashenko, who took to the ice in an amateur hockey tournament on Saturday with a few hundred spectators in the stands.</p>
<p>“It’s better to die standing than to live on your knees,” he said, defending Belarus’ refusal to introduce isolation measures and border restrictions like its neighbors, such as Russia.</p>
<p>With foreign sports networks having little to show and few other options for sports betting, Lukashenko says the pandemic is a perfect opportunity to put the country’s soccer league on display.</p>
<p>“I look at Russia and some people there are winning a lot on bets, because beforehand they didn’t really know our teams,” Lukashenko said. “Someone’s losing, someone’s winning. It’s all useful.”</p>
<p>Fans entering the stadiums in Belarus are given antiseptic hand gel and some have their temperatures monitored by medics. Few wear masks because they’re not considered necessary for open-air events, Belarus soccer federation spokesman Alexander Aleinik said.</p>
<p>Belarus doesn’t publish daily figures on the spread of the virus. On Friday, the last day for which statistics are available, the country recorded 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with no deaths.</p>
<figure><img height="349" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNTAwNDM5NjQ3Mjk5MDQz/belarus-soccer-coronavirus.jpg" width="620" /></figure>
<p>The Belarusian league isn’t usually an international attraction. Crowds this season barely average 1,200 and UEFA ranks it the continent’s 25th strongest, just below Norway, Israel and Kazakhstan.</p>
<p>But Russian TV has given its games prominent slots on state sports channels and betting firms around Western Europe are streaming them for customers.</p>
<p>British fans on social media have picked teams to follow and thrown themselves into a new fandom, elevating obscure players to hero status and berating coaches for supposedly negative tactics.</p>
<p>There isn’t much competition, with betting sites offering little more than Nicaraguan soccer, Tajikistan basketball and Russian table tennis as rivals.</p>
<p>Sergei Melnikov is one of those hoping to make an impression on the mostly empty global sports stage. He is the director of the Isloch club, which beat Smolevichi 1-0 on Sunday to keep pace with the leaders on points.</p>
<p>“The whole world is watching our soccer right now,” Melnikov said. “That means we have to show the best that we’ve got.”</p>

New on Sports Illustrated: Belarus President Boasts About Keeping Soccer League Running Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

“It’s better to die standing than to live on your knees,” Belarus's president says. MINSK, Belarus (AP) — With most sports around the ...

New on Sports Illustrated: He Missed his Masters Moment—and Robbed a Bank Instead

<a href="https://www.si.com/golf/2020/03/30/masters-bank-robber-michael-crane">
<p class="subtitle">On the morning he was supposed to start cutting highlight reels for CBS, he instead scribbled out a demand for $1,500 and handed it to a teller</p>
<p>Michael Crane was no golfer. But he did dream of a star turn at the Masters, a chance to show off his handiwork and skill, a culmination of years of practice. And in April 2007 his chance arrived: At 31 he was handpicked to work one of the most-watched broadcasts on the sports calendar.</p>
<p>A freelance TV editor, Crane specialized in quick-cutting highlight packages that played within event broadcasts—the type that would embroider any big game—and his career was flourishing. That year alone, he recalls having already worked the Super Bowl, the Final Four and more than a dozen other events. Now he would be venturing to the most exalted golf course in the U.S., working for CBS on its commercial-free broadcast of “a tradition unlike any other.”</p>
<figure><img height="814" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEzNDE0MjE0NjQxNjQ2/dcovmasterscrane_v.jpg" width="620" /></figure>
<p>Yet here it was, the Monday morning of Masters week, and instead of focusing on Augusta National’s greens and, ultimately, the green jacket, Crane was fixated on a different color: red. As in the red dye spurting over his hands and tracing an arc, before splashing onto his rented Chevy Monte Carlo. An exploding cartridge, he would later realize, had been placed in the pile of bills handed to him by a teller at the Augusta bank he had just robbed with two strangers.</p>
<p>Clutching a wad of cash, a look of horror setting in, Crane figured, quite rightly, that he would not be making the final cut at the Masters, after all.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>When Young Michael Crane was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, reflexively, he would reply: <em>Play in the NFL. Or work for ESPN</em>. His father, an electrician in rural Warrior, Ala., a half hour north of Birmingham, suggested the boy come up with more plausible career choices. The son persisted.</p>
<p>Overcoming a deficit of size (5' 9", 160 pounds) with a surplus of heart, Crane was a running back and an all-state defensive back at Corner High. After one season playing at what is now Western Alabama (in Division II) he quit, in part because of homesickness and in part because he’d married and had a son on the way. His NFL ambitions at an end, he appeared to have abandoned his ESPN aspirations when he took an entry-level job in statement processing at a SouthTrust Bank in Birmingham.</p>
<p>Crane, then 22, spent a few months at that soulless desk job before he got his first break: A friend offered him some freelance work, first shooting, then producing and editing, at a TV startup, College Sports Southeast. He quit his bank job the next week. He’d take any gig in sports TV; if that meant shooting a football game in the rain or getting up in the wee hours to make a kickoff in Kentucky that afternoon—well, what’s 400 miles? “I was making about $18,000,” Crane says, “and I told my wife that if I could get to $30,000, that would be awesome.”</p>
<p>A year or so later, Crane was freelancing at the Great Outdoor Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., when someone asked whether he knew how to operate an EVS machine. “Sure,” he said. Then he asked around: <em>Does anyone know what the hell an EVS is?</em> Crane stayed up all night in his hotel room, reading the manual for a video-editing apparatus that pulls short clips from multiple cameras. By the next day he was at least semiconversant. “It was the ultimate in <em>fake it till you make it</em>,” he says. “I was just hoping I could power up the machine, but it went well.”</p>
<figure><img height="522" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwMjgzNzIwMzUzNzc0/2015-07-12_231317_original.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>Crane at the EVS.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Crane didn’t just pick it up quickly; he was a natural, a virtuoso. The equipment—about the size of a laptop, with various dials and levers and buttons—almost came to seem an extension of his arm. Pairing his feel for sports with his dexterity as an editor, he could put together an in-game highlights package in a matter of seconds. If a running back, say, rushed for 100 yards in a half, Crane would pull video from various “looks” and fashion a 20- or 30-second clip of the best runs. “You want the highlights to seem natural, to tell the same story that’s playing out live,” Crane says, “That’s what really good guys who run tape do.”</p>
<p>Pick a big sports moment. Most fans will be able to picture it; they’ll also remember the TV announcer who called it, Al Michaels or Dick Vitale or Joe Buck. The “talent,” though, is only a small part of an ecosystem that is equal parts army and hospital. So-called below-the-line guys—and the vast majority of workers in sports broadcasting remain men—are every bit as responsible for your enjoyment of the game as the folks sitting in hair and makeup. These anonymous operatives in the production truck can make or break a broadcast.</p>
<p>And inside that community word travels fast. Within a year and a half of his introduction to the EVS, Crane’s skills were an open secret. He was a man in demand. “Michael had an innate ability to see things,” says Bob (Rossi) Rosburg, a longtime network sports producer who worked tennis events with Crane in the 2000s, “and, more importantly, to present them in meaningful ways.”</p>
<p>Crane’s dream of working at ESPN? Heck, he’d already worked football and basketball games for the network. Here he was, still in his mid-20s, and John Madden—in the booth for <em>Monday Night Football</em> and in need of quick highlights for his famed telestrator—was asking for him by name. CBS hired him to freelance the NCAA tournament. Golf Channel and Tennis Channel tried to book him the same week. The Grizzlies’ broadcast team enlisted his services, offering him a seat on their plane. In April 2004, Crane worked a tennis tournament for ESPN in Charleston, S.C. Before the week was over a producer asked, “Do you speak French?”</p>
<p>“No,” Crane responded, perplexed. “Why?”</p>
<p>“Because you’re damn good, and we need you in Paris next month to work the French Open.”</p>
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<p>Later that summer NBC would send Crane to the Athens Olympics, making for a blistering several weeks of work. “It was nuts,” he recalls. “One minute it would be water polo and the next it would be volleyball.” In part because of his deft handiwork, the network’s coverage at the Games received an Emmy.</p>
<p>Not yet 30, the self-described “Alabama kid” with a hickory-basted drawl was “living the effing life,” he says, making $700 a day before overtime and a per diem, and working 250 days a year. “The only reason it wasn’t more,” he says, “was because I had to turn down jobs.” He was “making national pay,” he notes, “and, remember, I’m living in Alabama.”</p>
<p>The dream came at a price. His marriage fell apart—Crane was in Athens when he asked for a divorce—and all the travel kept him from seeing his son and new daughter as much as he’d like. Still, at his 10th high school reunion he could regale classmates with stories from the road, and he could afford to be quick in throwing down his credit card when his colleagues repaired to the bar at the end of a broadcast.</p>
<p>Like so many of his coworkers, Crane got a rush from the job. If on-air announcers projected calm and authority, the vibe in the truck was the exact opposite, a hive of frenetic energy. It wasn’t simply that live sports are unscripted, unchoreographed, subject to sudden change. It was the knowledge that an audience of millions was about to consume his work.</p>
<p>The stress and the exhilaration, though, were compounded by erratic hours and erratic travel. Crane was working at Wimbledon in 2004 when rain delays threw off his work schedule. By the time the tournament ended he had to fly directly to the Great Outdoor Games in Reno, eight time zones away, and hit the ground running. “Twelve Red Bulls got me through it,” he says. “I was in the truck bouncing off the walls.”</p>
<p>Eventually the natural highs of the job—to say nothing of caffeine-and-taurine-propelled ones—gave way to dark lows. Crane says he did his share of heavy drinking, but cocaine quickly became his drug of choice. He developed a sixth sense for where to find it, sussing out dealers in hotel lobbies, strip clubs and dive bars. More times than he can recall he would show up to work after a sleepless night, still high. “I don’t know,” he says, “if I was hiding [my use] well or not.”</p>
<p>To which coworkers say: <em>yes and no</em>. Brad Douglas, an EVS producer who often worked alongside Crane, including at that 2004 French Open, remembers him showing up late for a shift in Paris, his eyes rimmed in red, two Coca-Colas in one hand and two bags of chips in the other. Douglas recalls thinking, Do what you want in your downtime, but when it affects the broadcasts we’re going to have a problem. And that never happened. “I couldn’t believe what he was doing,” Douglas says. “He could whip together 10 clips and make a highlight package during a commercial break. <em>Audio?</em> Perfect. <em>Timing?</em> On the money. Not one mistake. “You had an uncomfortable feeling that things could go south for him at any moment—but as far as his work, he was a savant.”</p>
<figure><img height="487" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNTQyMjIzNjk3NTg3/079013227.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>Amen Corner at Augusta, where Crane was set to show his handiwork in April 2017. </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>This is what "south" looked like for Michael Crane.</p>
<p>Around 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 1, 2007, he checked into his room at the Augusta Holiday Inn on Gordon Highway, on the west side of town. Then, with half a day to kill before his first production shift, he went about scrounging up a fix. He found a pair of local dealers and invited them back to his room, where he quickly blew through $1,500 on coke and crack. In Crane’s words: It was “an all-night party.”</p>
<p>That party ended the next morning only because he had run out of money. (It might have gone longer, Crane says, had he not let the dealers indulge from their own stash.) Crane didn’t have an ATM card to get more cash. So he made a suggestion that—in his haze, anyway—seemed brilliant: <em>Why not knock off a bank?</em></p>
<p>In no shape to drive, he gave his dealers the keys to his rental car and jumped in the back seat. The three men headed to a Wachovia branch a few minutes down the highway, six miles from Augusta National. (Three years earlier Wachovia had bought SouthTrust Bank, Crane’s first employer.)</p>
<figure><img height="611" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNTg1NzEwMjQxNDU5/michael_crane_02.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>Crane at the Wachovia branch in Augusta.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At 9 a.m.—one hour before he was supposed to arrive at work, just as the bank opened—Crane walked through the front door, unarmed and wearing no mask, while the dealers waited in the car. Under his Atlanta Braves visor his face was clearly visible to surveillance cameras. He grabbed a deposit ticket and on the front scribbled a demand for $1,500, claiming to have a gun. <em>Do not say a word. . . . Someone outside as well. . . . Be quick and we leave</em>. Then he presented the note. More confused than scared, the teller asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”</p>
<p>Crane wasn’t—but he said yes anyway. The teller handed over a stack of bills, inside of which was a packet of distance-activated exploding dye. And just as Crane reached his car, a few hundred feet away from the front exit, the packet exploded. “Holy s---!” came the chorus from the three robbers.</p>
<img height="345" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDM3MjY0OTczMzQyMTc5/masterscrane_web.jpg" width="620" /></a>
<figcaption><em>Find more Sports Illustrated True Crime stories here.</em></figcaption>
<p>As police cruisers rolled up to the bank, the conspirators sped off, heatedly discussing their next move. When they got back to the Holiday Inn, the dealers split. For Crane, the possibility of missing his shift at the Masters was suddenly the least of his concerns.</p>
<p>The cocaine fog having lifted as the gravity of the situation set in, he figured there was no use in running. He walked to the hotel courtyard, sat on a bench and phoned the Augusta police. When the dispatcher picked up, Crane said words to the effect of: “I know who robbed that Wachovia Bank. He’s staying at the Holiday Inn.”</p>
<p>Crane recalls being overcome by a wicked cocktail of emotions—shame, embarrassment, fear, self-loathing. But perhaps most prominent was relief. He knew he had been out of control for years. “Drugs wear you down, and I was so tired,” he says. “Tired physically, but also tired of screwing up and making bad decisions.”</p>
<p>Lighting a cigarette, he waited for the cops to come arrest him. He confessed to the crime on the spot, took full responsibility over his accomplices and offered to answer any questions. (The two dealers were picked up at the nearby Augusta Super Inn later that day. Their charges were dropped.)</p>
<p>One year earlier, the big scandal from Augusta before play started had been about a 26-year-old man who fired a gun at the courtesy car assigned to golfer Tom Lehman. <em>The guy from the broadcast team who tried to jack a local bank</em> was a whole new level of outré pretournament news. While word of Crane’s arrest—and the bizarre circumstances—rocketed around the television compound, he was booked at Richmond County Jail on a robbery charge.</p>
<p>Then he made one last error: He declared himself a suicide risk, hoping he would be put in a cell by himself. The intake officer took all of Crane’s personal possessions, including his clothes, and assigned him to a room with six other men who were also deemed dangers to themselves.</p>
<p>Crane had expected to spend the week at perhaps the most pristine and dignified enclave in sports. Instead, as Zach Johnson was being feted on Sunday and fitted with a green jacket, Crane was 13 miles away, sharing, he says, a cell with a half-dozen other naked accused felons.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>After pleading guilty that October to bank robbery by force and intimidation, Crane was sentenced to 37 months—the recommended minimum—at a federal correction facility in Talladega. He was despondent about his plight until a cellmate summoned him. “He says, ‘Michael, get in here. I want to show you something. Bring your paperwork,’ ” Crane recalls. “He goes, ‘See your release date? . . . Let me show you mine.’ He pulls it out. It says: death. After that I stopped moping.”</p>
<p>Sports also helped Crane get through what “seemed like an eternity” in prison. He could hold his own on a softball field and on a basketball court, but his line of work gave him real currency among the inmates. He could rattle off stories from the Super Bowls he’d worked and the times he’d flown on an NBA team’s charter. Eventually, he could also joke about the felonious misadventure in Augusta. His go-to setup line before launching into an account of his saga: “One year at the Masters I upstaged Tiger Woods. And I didn’t even pick up a club.”</p>
<figure><img height="412" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNjY5OTk4OTc0NjQz/006901653.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>What Crane missed in 2007: Zach Johnson's first major, and only green jacket.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After 29 months Crane was released. “You walk out and it’s ‘<em>Aaah</em>, freedom,’ ” he says. “Then it’s, ‘Oh s---, what’s next?’ ” He knew that reentering sports broadcasting—at least immediately—was unlikely. He wasn’t prepared, though, for how many other careers would be closed to him. “My first job out of prison was cleaning Porta Potties for minimum wage. I would wear my cap down so people couldn’t see my face. I’m still fresh off being this high-rolling ESPN guy.”</p>
<p>Broke and estranged from much of his family, Crane began, episodically, using again, a violation of his parole that could have put him back in prison. And on June 6, 2013, homeless and isolated, he says he attempted to hang himself in a hotel room. “But as soon as I kicked the chair out [I fell to the floor],” Crane recalls. “I sat there for 12 hours and started writing down things I’d lost: family, career, home. . . . The sixth or seventh thing I wrote—and I kept [that list] in my pocket for a long time—was <em>purpose</em>. I’ve got to find something, a reason. If I’m still here, there’s a reason. And I checked into rehab.”</p>
<p>Ideally, this is where the comeback story begins. But Crane’s last half-decade hasn’t been nearly that tidy or linear; his days make for a ledger filled with wins and losses. He has tried, with varying success, to stay clean. (He says he has been drug-free for five years.) He has tried, with varying success, to reconnect with his two kids and his family. He has tried, with varying success, to restart his career.</p>
<p>One of his wins came in 2015 when he and his son, Cameron, then 17, started a travel baseball team outside Birmingham. Though Crane had never coached, he had the requisite skill set, including bottomless optimism and patience. Crane says his Dizzy Dean League team of 16- and 17-year-olds started out 2–6 . . . and finished 25–10. Soon, enough people wanted to play for Crane that he launched an entire travel program, 31 North, named for the highway that bisects Birmingham. Players came from all over the state, and if they couldn’t afford the entry fees, Crane says, he refused to turn them away. He’d cover them.</p>
<p>In 2018, though, owing to a shortfall of funds, 31 North closed down in the middle of the season, leaving players disappointed and parents irate—and, in at least one instance, demanding a refund. Crane denies a claim that he was found unresponsive in his car during one tournament (he says he had been working three straight days and was exhausted), and he has vowed to form another team for the upcoming season. Still, when he recounts this setback, his voice catches and he clenches a fist in frustration. “Baseball has gotten so expensive,” he says. “It’s becoming a rich-kids sport. I hate seeing kids not get a chance to play.”</p>
<p>As for his own setback, Crane is torn. He cops to his mistakes. No one, he says again and again, told him that robbing a bank was a good idea; no one made him do it. “I was always taught to take your ass-kickings.” At the same time, he feels he has discharged his debt. “If you’re asking me whether I’m ready for life to get easier,” he says, “my answer is yes.”</p>
<figure><img height="413" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNzMwNjY1Mzg4MDE0/x163199_tk1_0030.jpg" width="620" /></figure>
<p>Crane is now 44. He tends to wear a ballcap over his close-cropped hair, and he still has the compact physique of a former athlete. He has inched back into freelanceing in sports television, reacquainting himself with an EVS. He started working high school football games and has expanded recently to Pro Bull Riders events, pro soccer games for ESPN3, motocross for NBC and college football for CBS Sports Network. He supplements his income by selling sports memorabilia on eBay and says he would like to get into motivational speaking.</p>
<p>Some of his most taxing work has been in repairing relationships that frayed. Crane acknowledges that he has caused a lot of pain for a lot of people, eroded a lot of trust. He says he simply tries to follow the guidance of his probation officer, who has condensed his advice to five words: Do the next right thing.</p>
<p>Anchored as he was in sports media, aware as he was of its capacity for storytelling, Crane knows one of his field’s most durable narratives. One can imagine the highlight package he’d cut: <em>The dazzling talent gets noticed and fulfills—then exceeds—his dreams. He flies high and lives fast, armored with the same unshakable self-belief and sense of invincibility that serves him so well in his day job. Then he makes a spectacular mess of things, suffers, has his moment of reckoning. -Finally, he tries to author a redemptive ending</em>.</p>
<p>And Crane knows this familiar sports arc isn’t limited to athletes.</p>
<p><em>This story appears in the April 2020 issue of</em> Sports Illustrated<em>. To subscribe,</em> <a href="http://subscription.si.com/storefront/subscribe-to-sports-illustrated/site/si-50for39nfl1015.html?fpa_subch=null&fpa_crid=104749186334&fpa_siteName=cm.si&fpa_dartType=text&link=1036552&fpa_oc=SI.com+TIME+Form+Ctrl+10%252F16&xid=SI.com+Redesign_Desktop+Main+&fpa_adid=521152694&fpa_ch=home&fpa_dartPosition=globalhdrsublnk"><em>click here</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://si.com/truecrime"><em>Find more</em> Sports Illustrated <em>True Crime stories here</em></a></p>
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New on Sports Illustrated: Tokyo Olympic Organizers Announce New Dates for 2021 Summer Games

<a href="https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/30/tokyo-2021-olympics-dates-set-schedule-announced">
<p class="subtitle">The International Olympic Committee announced the Tokyo Olympics will start on July 23, 2021.</p>
<p>The International Olympic Committee and Japanese organizers</p>
</a><a href="https://www.olympic.org/news/ioc-ipc-tokyo-2020-organising-committee-and-tokyo-metropolitan-government-announce-new-dates-for-the-olympic-and-paralympic-games-tokyo-2020">announced</a> the new dates for the Tokyo Olympics, which will now run from July 23 to Aug. 8, 2021.
<p>The Olympics were initially slated to be held from July 24 to Aug. 9, 2020. Last week. Japanese prime minister and IOC president Thomas Bach agreed to postpone the Olympics due to the coronavirus pandemic and announced the Games would take place "no later than summer 2021."</p>
<p>The finalized dates will lead to some reshuffling in qualifying tournaments and trials to fit within the calendar year. Athletes will now be able to schedule and plan their training and competition schedules accordingly. There were some rumors about possibly moving the Olympics to the spring for more favorable weather but the IOC decided that the same heat mitigation measures for 2020 would be implemented a year later.</p>
<p>The IOC also noted that all athletes who have already qualified and earned spots for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo would remain qualified.</p>
<p>FINA (swimming's global governing body) and World Athletics (track and field's global governing body) have said that they are willing to reschedule their 2021 world championships for the Olympics.</p>
<p>"We support the new 2021 dates for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games announced today by the Japanese organizers and the IOC," World Athletics said in a statement following the IOC announcement. "This gives our athletes the time they need to get back into training and competition. Everyone needs to be flexible and compromise and to that end we are now working with the organizers of the World Athletics Championships in Oregon on new dates in 2022 for our World Athletics Championships. We are also in discussions with the Commonwealth Games Federation and the European Championships. We would like to thank our Oregon 21 Organising Committee, their stakeholders and our partners for their collaboration and willingness to explore all options."</p>
<p>The Paralympics will be held from Aug. 25 to Sep. 5.</p>

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New on Sports Illustrated: Will James Dolan's Coronavirus Diagnosis Affect His Case With Charles Oakley?

<a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/30/james-dolan-charles-oakley-mediation-analysis-coronavirus">
<p class="subtitle">The New York Knicks owner is set to enter mediation with one of the franchise's most popular former players on Tuesday.</p>
<p>New York Knicks owner James Dolan testing positive for coronavirus and his still-unresolved litigation with retired Knicks forward Charles Oakley have nothing to do with one another.</p>
<p>For now.</p>
<p>On Saturday, the Knicks revealed that Dolan has</p>
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/29/james-dolan-tests-positive-coronavirus-knicks">tested positive for COVID-19</a>. Fortunately, he is experiencing only mild symptoms. While the 64-year-old billionaire will self-isolate and adopt other preventative measures, he intends to continue his day-to-day roles as executive chairman and chief executive officer of MSG and executive chairman of MSG Networks.
<p>Among NBA franchise owners during this pandemic, the often-criticized Dolan has been one of the more generous to his employees. He has committed to paying qualified MSG employees through May 3. Dolan has also commissioned and financed a <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/28/madison-square-garden-james-dolan-donations-coronavirus">relief fund</a> to support MSG event staff. New York City has been <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/29/us/new-york-coronavirus-cases/index.html">especially hit hard</a> by the virus. Dolan’s efforts are welcomed.</p>
<p>Dolan’s schedule this week isn’t entirely of his choosing. As of this writing, Dolan is set to participate in a court-ordered conference call at 10 a.m. on Tuesday with the following group: his attorneys, Oakley’s attorneys and Oakley himself. The call will be overseen by mediator <a href="https://www.ramosartal.com/#our%20people">Charles Ramos</a>, a retired New York judge.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered Dolan and his franchise’s all-time leader in offensive rebounds to participate in the court’s confidential mediation and settlement program (“CAMP”). CAMP is intended to get opposing sides talking in hopes of reaching a settlement that negates the need for further litigation. Oakley is appealing Judge <a href="http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/judges/bios/rjs.html">Richard Sullivan</a>’s recent dismissal of his lawsuit. Only if mediation fails can Oakley’s appeal continue.</p>
<p>It would be understandable for the Dolan-Oakley mediation to be postponed in light of Dolan contracting COVID-19. Even though the Knicks report that Dolan is feeling well enough to work, coronavirus is a serious, occasionally deadly sickness that can require two weeks or longer for recovery. Litigants who are afflicted with COVID-19 may see merits in a requesting a delay in legal proceedings until they are healthy.</p>
<p>Whether the Dolan-Oakley mediation goes forward on Tuesday or on a future date, it’s worth taking a look at how an unusual incident from a Knicks game in 2017 led to criminal charges and a lawsuit that has now reached the highest federal court in New York.</p>
<p><strong>A history of strained relations</strong></p>
<p>Every lawsuit has a story to tell. That is certainly true of Oakley’s two-and-a-half-year case against Dolan.</p>
<p>Oakley last played for the Knicks in 1998. Six years later, he retired from the NBA at age 40. Like other former Knicks stars, Oakley hoped to continue his association with the franchise during his retirement.</p>
<p>Yet in attempting to remain part of the Knicks family, Oakley has felt shunned and ignored by Dolan. Oakley has told media that while he never had a problem with Dolan’s father, Charles Dolan (who owned the Knicks’ parent company), it was a different story with James, who took over control of the franchise in 1999. Oakley has complained that he was rebuffed in attempts to land a Knicks assistant coaching job. In 2016, Oakley was noticeably omitted from the invite list of retired players for the Knicks’ 70th anniversary celebration. Oakley has also felt slighted by having to buy Knicks tickets while other retired Knicks stars are invited guests.</p>
<p>The Knicks appear to have their own set concerns about Oakley. Among them: he has long been an outspoken critic of decisions made by team management. The bluntness of Oakley’s second-guessing has likely irritated Dolan. </p>
<p>For instance, in 2008, Oakley blasted the Knicks in an <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/isiah-thomas-playing-self-defense-donnie-walsh-article-1.281437">interview with the <em>New York Daily News</em></a>. The topic was the Knicks’ decision a few years earlier to hire Isiah Thomas as head coach instead of promoting assistant coach Herb Williams. “They made a bad move, they should have given it to Herb,” Oakley insisted. “Instead, they go for the high-profile coach. They should get someone who knows the game and the players respect. They haven't been coached.” </p>
<p>Seven years later, Oakley took more direct aim at Dolan, telling the <em>New York Daily News</em>, “<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/charles-oakley-calls-knicks-owner-james-dolan-bad-guy-article-1.2111428">As hard as I played for that motherf-----, and he don't want to talk with me?</a>”</p>
<p><strong>The MSG incident</strong></p>
<p>Oakley purchased a ticket to watch the Knicks host the Los Angeles Clippers on Feb. 8, 2017. Oakley attended the game and sat, as Oakley’s complaint called it, “coincidentally” a handful of rows behind Dolan.</p>
<p>A few minutes after sitting down, three men approached Oakley, who rose to speak with the men. The men told Oakley that they were from MSG’s security team. They then requested that he leave the arena. Oakley objected, stressing that he “had done nothing wrong.” Oakley demanded to know why he would need to leave the arena when he had lawfully purchased a ticket to attend the game and, at that point, had not violated the fan code of conduct. One of the guards responded by asking Oakley, “Why are you sitting so close to Mr. Dolan?”</p>
<p>The conversation soon turned into a physical altercation. According to evidence and testimony contained in trial court records, two of the three guards grabbed Oakley and pushed him to the ground. He was then told that he needed to leave MSG “immediately.” Several other guards soon approached the area.</p>
<p>After Oakley stood back up, he reiterated his request to know what exactly he had done wrong and why he was being tossed from the arena. NBA game tickets are revocable licenses to enter private property to attend a game. Without this license, a person in an arena would be a trespasser and subject to arrest for both trespass and disturbing the peace. While the license can be revoked if a ticketholder violates the fan code of conduct, it did not appear that Oakley had acted in a way that would have triggered a violation.</p>
<p>As Oakley and the guards had a standoff of sorts, he pushed away the security guards’ hands. This escalated the incident in such a way that as many as six guards grabbed Oakley and brought him to the ground. The guards then restrained Oakley and escorted him out of MSG. They placed him in the custody of New York City Police officers from NYPD Precinct 14, which is two blocks from the arena.</p>
<p>Oakley was charged with four misdemeanors—three counts of assault in the third degree and one count of trespass in the third degree. The criminal case was resolved through a plea agreement. In exchange for prosecutors agreeing to drop the charges, Oakley pledged to avoid additional legal problems for six months and refrain from entering MSG as a trespasser. Oakley met those conditions and the criminal case ended in 2018.</p>
<p><strong>Oakley claims that Dolan and the Knicks defamed him</strong></p>
<p>The aftermath of the MSG incident sparked the circumstances that led Oakley—whom Dolan banned from attending future Knicks games—to sue. This began with a tweet by the Knicks public relations account, @NY_KnicksPR, on the evening of the incident. The tweet asserted that Oakley had behaved in an “abusive manner”:</p>
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/NY_KnicksPR/status/829503872628563970"></a></blockquote>
<script async="async" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<p>The following day, the team tweeted that Oakley partook in “abusive behavior”:</p>
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/NY_KnicksPR/status/829791762868731905"></a></blockquote>
<script async="async" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<p>Tensions only rose when Dolan appeared on the Feb. 10 broadcast of <em>The Michael Kay Show</em>. During the show, Dolan insisted that Oakley “came to the Garden with an agenda, with a mission in mind and from the moment he stepped into the Garden, and I mean from the moment he walked through the first set of doors, he began with this behavior, abusive behavior, disrespectful behavior.” Dolan told Kay that Oakley had a “problem with anger” and is “both physically and verbally abusive.” Dolan further speculated that Oakley “may have a problem with alcohol" and “talked about on TV that he was drinking beforehand," claiming that “police and security [believed] that he appeared to be impaired.”</p>
<p>Oakley then sued Dolan and the Knicks, claiming that the tweets from Feb. 8 and Feb. 9, as well as Dolan’s statements on Feb. 10, were defamatory. Oakley maintained that the defendants had made untrue statements about him—namely, that Oakley had assaulted the security guards and that he is an alcoholic. Oakley asserted that these false statements sullied his reputation. Oakley added additional claims stemming from the physical incident with the security guards. He argued, among other points, that he was a victim of assault, battery and false imprisonment. Oakley has sought monetary damages.</p>
<p><strong>Judge Sullivan dismisses all of Oakley’s claims</strong></p>
<p>Oakley’s lawsuit was dismissed last month. Judge Sullivan concluded that Oakley had failed to allege a plausible legal claim.</p>
<p>In reaching that determination, the judge identified a number of perceived defects in Oakley’s analysis. First, none of Dolan’s statements or Knicks’ tweets accuse Oakley of committing assault. Assault has a technical meaning under New York law: causing physical injury to another person. Dolan and the Knicks repeatedly mentioned “abusive behavior” and “abusive conduct”, but “abusive” is a vague word. It does not necessarily mean assault.</p>
<p>Second, Oakley failed to establish actual malice, a required element for defamation lawsuits brought by public figures. A finding of actual malice required Oakley to show that Dolan and the Knicks had either knowingly expressed false and defaming information about him or had reckless disregard for their statements’ truth or falsity. </p>
<p>Judge Sullivan determined that Oakley hadn’t “provided any factual grounds to support” a showing of actual malice. Oakley only asserted that Dolan harbored a general animosity towards him—the judge found such an assertion, without supporting facts or reasoning, to be “conclusory,” meaning that claims a conclusion without explaining the reasoning for the conclusion. </p>
<p>Likewise, Oakley hadn’t explained why Dolan’s speculation on Oakley as a possible alcoholic was made as a knowingly false statement or with reckless disregard for the truth.</p>
<p>Third, Judge Sullivan concluded that Oakley “grossly misunderstands the law concerning a landlord’s right to remove a trespasser from its property.” MSG is privately owned and has the right to revoke revocable licenses (Oakley may have had a right to a refund after being kicked out but that is not at issue in the case). Likewise, the guards weren’t required to justify the revocation or their request that he leave. Stated differently, it wasn’t Oakley’s call as to whether MSG had a valid reason to remove him.</p>
<p>To that point, once MSG revoked Oakley’s right to remain in the arena, MSG had a right to demand that Oakley leave the premises immediately. Oakley was obligated to comply. As the judge saw it, Oakley’s refusal to comply converted him into a trespasser. At that point, MSG obtained the right to use “reasonable force” to remove trespasser Oakley from the property.</p>
<p>Fourth, the guards, in the view of Judge Sullivan, appeared to act reasonably in light of the circumstances. Oakley, the judge notes, “does not claim that this unwanted touching [the guards grabbing Oakley and forcing him to the ground] occurred before he refused to comply with the guards' directive that he leave the Garden.” Further, Judge Sullivan reasons, “nowhere does Oakley allege that the guards intended to injure him, and his description of the events as they unfolded does not support an inference of excessive or unreasonable force ... Oakley does not allege that the guards gratuitously punched or kicked him or that any of the physical contact was unnecessary or malicious.”</p>
<p>Fifth, Judge Sullivan was unpersuaded by Oakley’s claim he was a victim of false imprisonment. The guards, the judge noted, had a right to confine Oakley—who became a trespasser after he refused to leave the arena—until the police could arrive.</p>
<p>At the end of his opinion, Judge Sullivan portrayed Oakley’s case as one driven more by a desire to appeal to fans and media than to the courts. “From its inception,” the judge wrote, “this case has had the feel of a public relations campaign, with the parties seemingly more interested in the court of public opinion than the merits of their legal arguments.” He added, “while basketball fans in general, and Knicks fans in particular, are free to form their own opinions about who was in the right ... the fact remains that Oakley had failed to allege a plausible legal claim.”</p>
<p><strong>Mediation is the next step</strong></p>
<p>Oakley and his attorneys invoked the right to appeal Judge Sullivan’s dismissal to the applicable federal appellate court, the Second Circuit. As noted above, the appeal can only advance if court-ordered mediation fails. Under <a href="http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/clerk/case_filing/rules/title7/local_rule_33_1.html">Local Rule 33.1</a>, the Second Circuit has the authority to compel parties and their attorneys to participate in a mediation conference. It invoked that authority here.</p>
<p>The Dolan-Oakley mediation will be conducted in a private setting. All involved will be bound by strict confidentiality. Unlike in arbitration, where an arbitrator issues an award (ruling) that both sides must follow, mediation is a non-binding process. The mediator—here Judge Ramos—is neutral and tries to understand the interests, needs and goals of both sides. The mediator also attempts to bridge differences between the two sides by getting them to appreciate the other side’s perspective. At the end of the mediation, the mediator proposes a solution. The proposal only becomes binding if both sides agree to it.</p>
<p>Will mediation work for Dolan and Oakley? They’ve already tried a NBA-style version of mediation and it didn’t lead to a peace treaty. Five days after the MSG incident, Dolan and Oakley <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2017/02/13/michael-jordan-adam-silver-charles-oakley-new-york-knicks">met with NBA commissioner Adam Silver</a> at the league’s headquarters. Michael Jordan joined in the meeting by phone. The dispute clearly continued after that meeting.</p>
<p>But that was in 2017. We’re now in 2020, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic that has already afflicted Dolan. Perhaps, in this new world, the two men will discover common ground. It seems what each wants from the other is basic respect and dignity. Maybe they’ll find it after all these years.</p>
<p><a href="https://law.unh.edu/person/michael-mccann"><em>Michael McCann</em></a> <em>is SI’s Legal Analyst. He is also an attorney and the Director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law.</em></p>

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