The Sports Report: LAFC angers some season-ticket holders

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

From Kevin Baxter: Hundreds of LAFC season-ticket members received emails this week informing them they will not be allowed to renew their tickets after reselling “a substantial portion” of them on the secondary market.

The team, which has long said it considers its season-ticket holders to be members of its family, declined to explain on the record why it was canceling the accounts, many dating to the team’s founding. But Seth Burton, senior vice president for communications and content, said the team would work with anyone who feels their accounts have been wrongly targeted.

“LAFC is happy to have a conversation with any of the affected members and if there were errors made then we will work to rectify the situation,” he wrote in a text message.

Several people contacted by The Times insisted they were loyal supporters who actively attended games in the team’s first two seasons but haven’t felt safe returning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I understand trying to stop scalping. But doing this during COVID?” said Steve Jarrard, who hasn’t attended a game in person since early in the 2020 season.

Jarrard, a film and TV prop master from Burbank, and his girlfriend, an actress, have suffered financially during the pandemic. Yet they estimate they’ve spent more than $10,000 on tickets and LAFC merchandise while losing money on the tickets they’ve resold.

The pair’s two tickets are in his girlfriend’s name and Jarrard said she didn’t want to be identified because she feared her ticket reinstatement appeal would be denied for speaking publicly about the matter. The couple want to keep their tickets behind the south goal, he said, because they plan to return to Banc of California Stadium when the pandemic is over.

COLLEGE SPORTS

From J. Brady McCollough: Nearly three years ago, when Gov. Gavin Newsom joined LeBron James and his ensemble to sign California’s historic “Fair Pay to Play Act” into law on James’ HBO show “The Shop,” Newsom was more than happy to tell the truth about college sports. In fact, he seemed downright giddy.

“The jig’s up,” Newsom said on Sept. 30, 2019. “Billions and billions of dollars, 14-plus billion dollars goes to these universities, a billion-plus revenue to the NCAA themselves, and the folks who are putting their lives on the line, putting everything on the line, are getting nothing.”

Newsom rightfully predicted that Senate Bill 206, which allowed California college athletes to profit from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) for the first time, was going to induce a flood of similar legislation across the country, forcing the NCAA’s hand and forever altering the “power arrangement” between player and school.

Maverick Carter, James’ longtime friend, asked the governor who was the bill’s biggest opposition.

“School presidents,” Newsom said without hesitation. “They don’t even outsource the phone calls. ‘What the hell are you doing destroying college sports?’ ... ‘You’re destroying the purity of amateurism.’ Not once did they talk about the needs of these kids.”

Right before signing the bill, there was a smugness about Newsom as he said, “I don’t want to say this is checkmate. But this is a major problem for the NCAA.”

Three weeks ago when UCLA ditched the Pac-12 Conference and University of California system peer UC Berkeley for the Big Ten, the big business of college sports suddenly became a major problem for Gavin Newsom.

ANGELS

From Mike DiGiovanna: The Angels couldn’t have scripted a better opening act to this season, going 27-17 and sitting one game behind the American League West-leading Houston Astros on May 24.

A rejuvenated offense ranked among baseball’s top four teams in runs, homers and on-base-plus-slugging percentage through 44 games. A deeper pitching staff ranked seventh in ERA and second in WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched).

Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and Anthony Rendon were in the lineup together after Trout and Rendon missed most of 2021 because of injuries. The top half of the rotation — Ohtani, Noah Syndergaard and Michael Lorenzen — looked stout, and young left-handers Patrick Sandoval and Reid Detmers showed promise.

As a strong start morphed into a solid six-week run — a sample size seemingly too large for the Angels to be considered a fluke — fans hardened by six straight losing seasons began to believe the seven-year playoff drought could finally end.

Then, it was as if a trap door flew open and swallowed the entire team whole.

TRACK AND FIELD

From Andrew Greif: In the uppermost row of Hayward Field’s Section 222, Geoff Wightman looked away from the men’s 1,500-meter medal ceremony taking place on the track two decks of grandstands beneath him and allowed his gaze to drift into the Coburg Hills. He blinked twice, breathed deeply once and, after a pause, his voice carried through the public-address speakers across the stadium.

Wightman, an in-stadium commentator whose voice has been the soundtrack for the track and field competitions during the London and Tokyo Olympics and world track and field world championships for a decade, knew all he needed to do was to read the script in front of him and fill in the winner’s name.

His son’s.

“It’s just another name,” he said. “I just didn’t want to mess it up for him by doing anything wobbly.”

On the fifth day of the world track and field championships, as expectations were upended and favorites pushed a place down the medal stand, no result was more stunning and surreal than Jake Wightman’s 1,500-meter gold medal in 3 minutes 29.23 seconds, a victory the British runner sealed by passing Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen with 200 meters to go.

“I didn’t hear him at all after I crossed the line or finished,” Wightman said of his father. “It was just the surreal moment of, has this actually happened? I was trying to look for him and he’s up in the nosebleeds, so far up.”

THIS DATE IN SPORTS

1876 — Princeton takes the team championship in the first IC4A (Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes Association) track and field meet.

1957 — Lionel Herbert wins the PGA championship with a 2-1 final round victory over Dow Finsterwald.

1963 — Jack Nicklaus wins the PGA championship by two strokes over Dave Ragan to become the fourth golfer to win the three major United States titles.

1968 — Arnold Palmer becomes the first PGA golfer to earn $1 million over his career despite losing by one stroke to Julius Boros in the PGA championship.

1973 — Hank Aaron hits home run number 700 off of Phillies Pitcher Ken Brett.

1974 — Sandra Haynie edges Carol Mann and Beth Stone by one stroke to win the U.S. Women’s Open championship.

1979 — Spain’s Seve Ballesteros captures the British Open by three strokes over Ben Crenshaw and Jack Nicklaus.

1985 — John Henry, the greatest money winner in horse racing history, is retired. The 10-year-old won 39 races in 83 starts and earned $6,597,947 in total purses.

1985 — Sandy Lyle wins the British Open by one stroke over Payne Stewart.

1989 — Mike Tyson knocks down Carl “The Truth” Williams with a left hook and stops him 93 seconds into the first round of his heavyweight title defense. It is the fifth shortest heavyweight title fight in history.

1996 — Tom Lehman shoots a final-round 73 for a 72-hole total of 13-under 271 to win the British Open, two strokes better than Ernie Els and Mark McCumber.

2002 — Ernie Els squanders a three-stroke lead but outlasts Thomas Levet of France to win a four-man playoff that produces the first sudden-death finish in the 142-year history of the British Open.

2007 — Bernard Hopkins, in the twilight of his fighting days, ends Winky Wright’s 7 1/2-year unbeaten streak with a unanimous decision in their 170-pound bout in Las Vegas.

2009 — China’s Guo Jingjing easily wins her fifth straight world championship in 3-meter springboard. She captured her first springboard world title in 2001, and hasn’t lost since in the every-other-year competition.

2013 — Phil Mickelson wins his first British Open title with a spectacular finish. He birdies four of the last six holes for a 5-under 66 to match the best round of the tournament.

2013 — Britain’s Chris Froome wins the 100th Tour de France, having dominated rivals over three weeks. He rides into Paris wearing the yellow jersey he took in Stage 8 in the Pyrenees and never relinquished.

And finally

Hank Aaron hits hits his 700th home run. Watch and listen here.