title: Coen brothers

text: Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957), collectively known as the Coen brothers (), are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include "Raising Arizona" (1987), "Miller's Crossing" (1990), "Barton Fink" (1991), "Fargo" (1996), "The Big Lebowski" (1998), "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2000), "No Country for Old Men" (2007), "True Grit" (2010), "Inside Llewyn Davis" (2013), and "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" (2018).


title: Coen brothers

text: The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until "The Ladykillers" (2004) Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing editing credits under an alias, "Roderick and Reginald Jaynes". They have been nominated for 13 Academy Awards together, and individually for one award each, winning Best Original Screenplay for "Fargo" and Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for "No Country for Old Men". The duo also won the Palme d'Or for "Barton Fink" (1991).


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens have written a number of films they did not direct, including Angelina Jolie's biographical war drama "Unbroken" (2014), Steven Spielberg's historical cold war "Bridge of Spies" (2015), and lesser-known, commercially unsuccessful comedies such as "Crimewave" (1985), "The Naked Man" (1998) and "Gambit" (2012). Ethan is also a writer of short stories, theater and poetry.


title: Coen brothers

text: They are known for their distinctive stylistic trademarks including genre hybridity. "No Country for Old Men", "A Serious Man" and "Inside Llewyn Davis" have been ranked in the BBC's 2016 poll of the greatest motion pictures since 2000. In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked "Fargo" among the 100 greatest American movies ever made.


title: Coen brothers

text: Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) were born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their mother, Rena (née Neumann; 1925–2001), was an art historian at St. Cloud State University, and their father, Edward Coen (1919–2012), was a Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota. The brothers have an older sister, Deborah, who grew up to become a psychiatrist working in Israel.


title: Coen brothers

text: Both sides of the Coen family were Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews. Their paternal grandfather, Victor Coen, was a barrister in the Inns of Court in London before retiring to Hove with their grandmother. Edward Coen was an American citizen born in the United States, but grew up in Croydon, London and studied at the London School of Economics. Afterwards he moved to the United States, where he met the Coens' mother, and served in the United States Army during World War II.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens developed an early interest in cinema through television. They grew up watching Italian films (ranging from the works of Federico Fellini to the "Sons of Hercules" films) aired on a Minneapolis station, the Tarzan films, and comedies (Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Doris Day).


title: Coen brothers

text: In the mid-1960s, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television, with their neighborhood friend Mark Zimering ("Zeimers") as the star. Cornel Wilde's 1965 film "The Naked Prey" became their "Zeimers in Zambezi", which featured Ethan as a native with a spear. The 1943 film "Lassie Come Home" was reinterpreted as their "Ed... A Dog", with Ethan playing the mother role in his sister's tutu. They also made original films like "Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go", "Lumberjacks of the North" and "The Banana Film".


title: Coen brothers

text: Joel and Ethan graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and 1976, respectively, and from Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.


title: Coen brothers

text: After Simon's Rock, Joel spent four years in the undergraduate film program at New York University, where he made a 30-minute thesis film called "Soundings". In 1979 he briefly enrolled in the graduate film program at the University of Texas at Austin, following a woman he had married who was in the graduate linguistics program. The marriage soon ended in divorce and Joel left UT Austin after nine months.


title: Coen brothers

text: Ethan went on to Princeton University and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy in 1979. His senior thesis was a 41-page essay, "Two Views of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy," which was supervised by Raymond Geuss.


title: Coen brothers

text: Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. In 1995, they adopted a son, Pedro McDormand Coen, from Paraguay when he was six months old. McDormand has acted in several Coen Brothers films: "Blood Simple", "Raising Arizona", "Miller's Crossing", "Barton Fink", "Fargo", "The Man Who Wasn't There", "Burn After Reading", and "Hail, Caesar!" For her performance in "Fargo", she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.


title: Coen brothers

text: Ethan married film editor Tricia Cooke in 1990. They have two children: daughter Dusty and son Buster Jacob.


title: Coen brothers

text: Ethan Coen and family live in New York, while Joel Coen and Frances McDormand live in Marin County, California.


title: Coen brothers

text: After graduating from New York University, Joel worked as a production assistant on a variety of industrial films and music videos. He developed a talent for film editing and met Sam Raimi while assisting Edna Ruth Paul in editing Raimi's first feature film, "The Evil Dead" (1981).


title: Coen brothers

text: In 1984 the brothers wrote and directed "Blood Simple", their first commercial film together. Set in Texas, the film tells the tale of a shifty, sleazy bar owner who hires a private detective to kill his wife and her lover. The film contains elements that point to their future direction: distinctive homages to genre movies (in this case noir and horror), plot twists layered over a simple story, dark humor, and "mise-en-scène". The film starred Frances McDormand, who went on to feature in many of the Coen brothers' films (and marry Joel). Upon release the film received much praise and won awards for Joel's direction at both the Sundance and Independent Spirit awards.


title: Coen brothers

text: Their next project was "Crimewave" (1985), directed by Sam Raimi and written by the Coens and Raimi. Joel and Raimi also made cameo appearances in "Spies Like Us" (1985).


title: Coen brothers

text: The brothers' next film was "Raising Arizona" (1987), the story of an unlikely married couple: ex-convict H.I. (Nicolas Cage) and police officer Ed (Holly Hunter), who long for a baby but are unable to conceive. When a local furniture tycoon (Trey Wilson) appears on television with his newly born quintuplets and jokes that they "are more than we can handle", H.I. steals one of the quintuplets to bring up as their own. The film featured Frances McDormand, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, and Randall "Tex" Cobb.


title: Coen brothers

text: "Miller's Crossing", released in 1990, starred Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne, and John Turturro. The film is about feuding gangsters in the Prohibition era, inspired by Dashiell Hammett's novels "Red Harvest" (1929) and "The Glass Key" (serialized in 1930).


title: Coen brothers

text: The following year, they released "Barton Fink" (1991); set in 1941, in which a New York playwright, the eponymous Barton Fink (played by John Turturro), moves to Los Angeles to write a B-movie. He settles down in his hotel room to commence writing but suffers writer's block until his room is invaded by the man next door (John Goodman). "Barton Fink" was a critical success, earning Oscar nominations and winning three major awards at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d'Or. It was their first film with cinematographer Roger Deakins, a key collaborator for the next 25 years.


title: Coen brothers

text: "The Hudsucker Proxy" (co-written with Raimi) was released in 1994. In it, the board of a large corporation in 1958 New York City appoints a naive schmo as president (Tim Robbins) for underhanded reasons. The film bombed at the box office ($30 million budget, $3 million gross in the USA), even though it featured Paul Newman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Frances McDormand appears in a brief uncredited role.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens wrote and directed the crime thriller "Fargo" (1996), set in their home state of Minnesota. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who has serious financial problems, has his wife kidnapped so that his wealthy father-in-law will pay the ransom. His plan goes wrong when the kidnappers deviate from the plan and local cop Marge Gunderson (McDormand) starts to investigate. Produced on a small budget of $7 million, "Fargo" was a critical and commercial success, with particular praise for its dialogue and McDormand's performance. The film received several awards, including a BAFTA award and Cannes award for direction, and two Oscars: a Best Original Screenplay and a Best Actress Oscar for McDormand.


title: Coen brothers

text: In the Coens' next film, the black comedy "The Big Lebowski" (1998), "The Dude" (Jeff Bridges), a Los Angeles slacker, is used as an unwitting pawn in a kidnapping plot with his bowling buddies (Steve Buscemi and John Goodman). Despite initially receiving mixed reviews and underperforming at the box office, it is now well received by critics, and is regarded as a classic cult film. An annual festival, Lebowski Fest, began in 2002, and many adhere to the philosophy of "Dudeism". "Entertainment Weekly" ranked it 8th on their Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years list in 2008.


title: Coen brothers

text: "Gates of Eden", a collection of short stories written by Ethan Coen, was published in 1998. The same year, Ethan co-wrote the comedy "The Naked Man", directed by their storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coen brothers' next film, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2000), was another critical and commercial success. The title was borrowed from the Preston Sturges film "Sullivan's Travels" (1941), whose lead character, movie director John Sullivan, had planned to make a film with that title. Based loosely on Homer's "Odyssey" (complete with a Cyclops, sirens, "et al."), the story is set in Mississippi in the 1930s and follows a trio of escaped convicts who, after absconding from a chain gang, journey home to recover bank-heist loot the leader has buried—but they have no clear perception of where they are going. The film highlighted the comic abilities of George Clooney as the oddball lead character Ulysses Everett McGill, and of Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro, his sidekicks. The film's bluegrass and old-time soundtrack, offbeat humor and digitally desaturated cinematography made it a critical and commercial hit. It was the first feature film to use all-digital color grading. The film's soundtrack CD was also successful, spawning a concert and concert/documentary DVD, "Down from the Mountain."


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens next produced another noirish thriller, "The Man Who Wasn't There" (2001). Set in late 1940s California, a laconic chain-smoking barber (played by Billy Bob Thornton) discovers a way to blackmail his wife's lover and use the proceeds to invest in a dry cleaning business.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens directed the 2003 film "Intolerable Cruelty", starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, a throwback to the romantic comedies of the 1940s. It focuses on hotshot divorce lawyer Miles Massey and a beautiful divorcée whom Massey managed to prevent from receiving any money in her divorce. She vows to get even with him while, at the same time, he becomes smitten with her. "Intolerable Cruelty" received generally positive reviews, although it is considered one of the duo's weaker films. Also that year, they executive produced and did an uncredited rewrite of the Christmas black comedy "Bad Santa", which garnered positive reviews.


title: Coen brothers

text: In 2004, the Coens made "The Ladykillers", a remake of the British classic by Ealing Studios. A professor, played by Tom Hanks, assembles a team to rob a casino. They rent a room in an elderly woman's home to plan the heist. When the woman discovers the plot, the gang decides to murder her to ensure her silence. The Coens received some of the most lukewarm reviews of their careers in response to this film.


title: Coen brothers

text: They directed two short films for two separate anthology films—"Paris, je t'aime" ("Tuileries", 2006) starring Steve Buscemi, and "To Each His Own Cinema" ("World Cinema", 2007) starring Josh Brolin. Both films received highly positive reviews.


title: Coen brothers

text: "No Country for Old Men", released in November 2007, closely follows the 2005 novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), living near the Texas/Mexico border, stumbles upon, and decides to take, two million dollars in drug money. He must then go on the run to avoid those trying to recover the money, including sociopathic killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who confounds both Llewelyn and local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The plotline is a return to noir themes, but in some respects it was a departure for the Coens; with the exception of Stephen Root, none of the stable of regular actors appears in the film. "No Country" received nearly universal critical praise, garnering a 94% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. It won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, all of which were received by the Coens, as well as Best Supporting Actor received by Bardem. The Coens, as "Roderick Jaynes", were also nominated for Best Editing, but lost. It was the first time since 1961 (when Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise won for "West Side Story") that two directors received the Academy Award for Best Director at the same time.


title: Coen brothers

text: In January 2008, Ethan Coen's play "Almost an Evening" premiered off-broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company Stage 2, opening to mostly enthusiastic reviews. The initial run closed on February 10, 2008, but the same production was moved to a new theatre for a commercial off-Broadway run at the Bleecker Street Theater in New York City. Produced by The Atlantic Theater Company, it ran there from March 2008 through June 1, 2008. and Art Meets Commerce. In May 2009, the Atlantic Theater Company produced Coen's "Offices", as part of their mainstage season at the Linda Gross Theater.


title: Coen brothers

text: "Burn After Reading", a comedy starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, was released September 12, 2008, and portrays a collision course between two gym instructors, spies and Internet dating. Released to positive reviews, it debuted at No. 1 in North America.


title: Coen brothers

text: In 2009, the Coens directed a television commercial titled "Air Freshener" for the Reality Coalition.


title: Coen brothers

text: They next directed "A Serious Man", released October 2, 2009, a "gentle but dark" period comedy (set in 1967) with a low budget. The film is based loosely on the Coens' childhoods in an academic family in the largely Jewish suburb of Saint Louis Park, Minnesota; it also drew comparisons to the "Book of Job". Filming took place late in the summer of 2008, in the neighborhoods of Roseville and Bloomington, Minnesota, at Normandale Community College, and at St. Olaf College. The film was nominated for the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.


title: Coen brothers

text: "True Grit" (2010) is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Charles Portis. Filming was done in Texas and New Mexico. Hailee Steinfeld stars as Mattie Ross along with Jeff Bridges as Marshal Rooster Cogburn. Matt Damon and Josh Brolin also appear in the movie. "True Grit" was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Picture.


title: Coen brothers

text: Ethan Coen wrote the one-act comedy "Talking Cure", which was produced on Broadway in 2011 as part of "Relatively Speaking", an anthology of three one-act plays by Coen, Elaine May, and Woody Allen.


title: Coen brothers

text: In 2011, the Coen brothers won the $1 million Dan David Prize for their contribution to cinema and society.


title: Coen brothers

text: "Inside Llewyn Davis" (2013) is a treatise on the 1960s folk music scene in New York City's Greenwich Village, and very loosely based on the life of Dave Van Ronk. The film stars Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, and Carey Mulligan. It won the Grand Prix at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it was highly praised by critics. They received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song for "Please Mr. Kennedy", which is heard in the film.


title: Coen brothers

text: "Fargo", a television series inspired by their film of the same name, premiered in April 2014 on the FX network. It is created by Noah Hawley and executive produced by the brothers.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens also contributed to the screenplay for "Unbroken", along with Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. The film is directed by Angelina Jolie and based on Laura Hillenbrand's non-fiction book, "" (2010) which itself was based on the life of Louis Zamperini. It was released on December 25, 2014 to average reviews.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens co-wrote, with playwright Matt Charman, the screenplay for the dramatic historical thriller "Bridge of Spies", about the 1960 U-2 Incident. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and released on October 4, 2015, to critical acclaim. They were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay at the 88th Academy Awards.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens directed the film "Hail, Caesar!", about a "fixer" in 1950s Hollywood trying to discover what happened to a cast member who vanishes during filming. It stars Coen regulars George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton, as well as Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, and Alden Ehrenreich. The film was released on February 5, 2016.


title: Coen brothers

text: In 2016, the Coens gave to their longtime friend and collaborator John Turturro the right to use his character of Jesus Quintana from "The Big Lebowski" in his own spin-off, "The Jesus Rolls", which he would also write and direct. The Coens have no involvement in the production. In August 2016, the film began principal photography.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens first wrote the script for "Suburbicon" in 1986. The film was eventually directed by George Clooney and began filming in October 2016. It was released by Paramount Pictures in the fall of 2017.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens directed "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", a Western anthology starring Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, and James Franco. It began streaming on Netflix on November 16, 2018, after a brief theatrical run.


title: Coen brothers

text: It was announced in March 2019 that Joel Coen would be directing an adaptation of "Macbeth" starring Denzel Washington. The film, titled "The Tragedy of Macbeth", would be Joel's first directorial effort without his brother, who was taking a break from films to focus on theater. The film premiered at the 2021 New York Film Festival. In 2022, it was announced that Ethan Coen would be directing an untitled film for Focus Features and Working Title. It would be Ethan’s first directorial effort without his brother. The 2022 Cannes Film Festival had a special screening of "", an archival documentary film directed solely by Ethan and edited by his wife Tricia Cooke.


title: Coen brothers

text: In a 1998 interview with Alex Simon for "Venice" magazine, the Coens discussed a project called "The Contemplations", which would be an anthology of short films based on stories in a leather bound book from a "dusty old library". This project may have influenced or evolved into "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", which has the same structure.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coens had hoped to film James Dickey's novel "To the White Sea". They were due to start production in 2002, with Jeremy Thomas producing and Brad Pitt in the lead role, but it was canceled when the Coens felt that the budget offered was not enough to successfully produce the film.


title: Coen brothers

text: In 2008, it was announced that the Coen brothers would write and direct an adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" (2007). They were to produce the film with Scott Rudin for Columbia Pictures. In the fall of 2012, however, Chabon told "Mother Jones" that "the Coen brothers wrote a draft of a script and then they seemed to move on", and that the film rights had "lapsed back to me".


title: Coen brothers

text: In 2009, the Coens stated that they were interested in making a sequel to "Barton Fink" called "Old Fink", which would take place in the 1960s, around the same time period as "A Serious Man". The Coens also stated that they had talks with John Turturro in reprising his role as Fink, but they were waiting "until he was actually old enough to play the part".


title: Coen brothers

text: In 2011, the Coens were working on a television project, called "Harve Karbo", about a quirky Los Angeles private eye, for Imagine Television.


title: Coen brothers

text: In December 2013, the Coens stated in an interview that they were working on a new musical comedy centered around an opera singer, though they said it is "not a musical per se".


title: Coen brothers

text: In August 2015, it was announced that Warner Bros. had optioned the film rights to Ross Macdonald's novel "Black Money" for the Coen brothers to potentially write and direct.


title: Coen brothers

text: In October 2016, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that the Coens would work on the screenplay for Fox titled "Dark Web", and based on Joshuah Bearman's two-part "Wired" article about Ross Ulbricht and his illicit Silk Road online marketplace. The project originated in 2013, with novelist Dennis Lehane on board for the screenplay. Chernin Entertainment would produce.


title: Coen brothers

text: On February 10, 2017, it was announced that the "Scarface" remake's script was being written by the Coens. Luca Guadagnino announced plans to direct the film.


title: Coen brothers

text: The Coen brothers' own film production company, Mike Zoss Productions located in New York City, has been credited on their films from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" onwards. It was named after Mike Zoss Drug, an independent pharmacy in St. Louis Park since 1950 that was the brothers' beloved hangout when they were growing up in the Twin Cities. The name was also used for the pharmacy in "No Country for Old Men". The Mike Zoss logo consists of a crayon drawing of a horse, standing in a field of grass with its head turned around as it looks back over its hindquarters.


title: Coen brothers

text: Up to 2003, Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing, due to guild rules that disallowed multiple director credits to prevent dilution of the position's significance. The only exception to this rule is if the co-directors are an "established duo". Since 2004 they have been able to share the director credit and the Coen brothers have become only the third duo to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director.


title: Coen brothers

text: With four Academy Award nominations for "No Country for Old Men" for the duo (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing as Roderick Jaynes), the Coen brothers have tied the record for the most nominations by a single nominee (counting an "established duo" as one nominee) for the same film. Orson Welles set the record in 1941 with "Citizen Kane" being nominated for Best Picture (though at the time, individual producers were not named as nominees), Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay. Warren Beatty received the same nominations, first for "Heaven Can Wait" in 1978 and again in 1981 with "Reds". Alan Menken also then achieved the same feat when he was nominated for Best Score and triple-nominated for Best Song for "Beauty and the Beast" in 1991. In 2018, Alfonso Cuarón was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography for "Roma". Most recently Chloé Zhao matched this record in 2021 when she was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing for "Nomadland" (which also starred McDormand in her third Oscar-winning role).


title: Major League Baseball

text: Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. The NL and AL were formed in 1876 and 1901, respectively. Beginning in 1903, the two leagues signed the National Agreement and cooperated but remained legally separate entities until 2000, when they merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball. MLB is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan. It is also included as one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Baseball's first all-professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was founded in 1869. Before that, some teams had secretly paid certain players. The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 was the dead-ball era, when home runs were rarely hit. Professional baseball in the United States survived the Black Sox Scandal, a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series. The sport rose in popularity in the 1920s and survived potential downturns during the Great Depression and World War II. Shortly after the war, Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The 1950s and 1960s were a time of club expansion and relocation for the AL and NL. Modern stadiums with artificial turf surfaces began to change the game in the 1970s and 1980s. Home runs dominated the game during the 1990s, and media reports disclosed the use of anabolic steroids among MLB players in the mid-2000s. In 2006, an investigation produced the Mitchell Report, which implicated many players in the use of performance-enhancing substances, including at least one player from each team.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Each team plays 162 games per season, and six teams in each league advance to a four-round postseason tournament that culminates in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions that dates back to 1903. Baseball games are broadcast on television, radio, and the internet throughout North America and in several other countries. MLB has the highest total season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 69.6 million spectators in 2018.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB also oversees Minor League Baseball, which comprises lower-tier teams affiliated with the major league clubs. MLB and the World Baseball Softball Confederation jointly manage the international World Baseball Classic tournament.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB is the second-wealthiest professional sport league by revenue after the National Football League (NFL).


title: Major League Baseball

text: Since the first World Series in 1903, the New York Yankees have the most championships with 27. The Houston Astros are the reigning World Series champions, as they defeated the Philadelphia Phillies 4–2 in the 2022 World Series, to mark the end of the 2022 season.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB is governed by the Major League Baseball Constitution. This document has undergone several incarnations since its creation in 1876. Under the direction of the Commissioner of Baseball, MLB hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts. MLB maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of Minor League Baseball. This is due in large part to the 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in "Federal Baseball Club v. National League", which held that baseball is not interstate commerce and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law; MLB is the only league that has such a status, and has not faced any competition since this case. This ruling has been weakened only slightly in subsequent years. The weakened ruling granted more stability to the owners of teams and has resulted in values increasing at double-digit rates. There were several challenges to MLB's primacy in the sport, with notable attempts to establish competing leagues occurring during the late 1800s, from 1913 to 1915 with the short-lived Federal League, and in 1960 with the aborted Continental League.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The chief executive of MLB is the commissioner, currently Rob Manfred. The deputy commissioner of baseball administration and chief legal officer is currently Dan Halem. There are seven other executives: executive vice president and general counsel, chief operations and strategy officer, chief communications officer, chief financial officer and senior advisor, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, chief revenue officer, and chief baseball development officer.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The multimedia branch of MLB is MLB Advanced Media, which is based in New York City. This branch oversees MLB.com and each of the 30 teams' websites. Its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the league, but it is under the same ownership group and revenue-sharing plan. MLB Productions is a similarly structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media. MLB also owns 67 percent of MLB Network, with the other 33 percent split between several cable operators and satellite provider DirecTV. It operates out of studios in Secaucus, New Jersey, and also has editorial independence from the league.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1920, the weak National Commission, which had been created to manage relationships between the two leagues, was replaced with the much more powerful Commissioner of Baseball, who had the power to make decisions for all of professional baseball unilaterally. From 1901 to 1960, the American and National Leagues fielded eight teams apiece.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In the 1960s, MLB expansion added eight teams, including the first non-U.S. team (the Montreal Expos). Two teams (the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays) were also added in the 1970s. From 1969 through 1993, each league consisted of an East and West Division. In 1993, the National League expanded with two teams, the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies, to even up the number of teams in both leagues. A third division, the Central Division, was formed in each league in 1994. Until 1996, the two leagues met on the field only during the World Series and the All-Star Game. Regular-season interleague play was introduced in 1997.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In March 1995, two new franchises, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now known as the Tampa Bay Rays), were awarded by MLB, which began play in 1998. This addition brought the total number of franchises to 30. In early 1997, MLB decided to assign one new team to each league: Tampa Bay joined the AL and Arizona joined the NL. The original plan was to have an odd number of teams in each league (15 per league, with five in each division), but in order for every team to be able to play daily, this would have required interleague play to be scheduled throughout the entire season. However, it was unclear at the time if the interleague play would continue after the 1998 season, as it had to be approved by the players' union. For this and other reasons, it was decided that both leagues should continue to have an even number of teams, and therefore, one existing club would have to switch leagues. The agreed in November 1997 to move from the AL to the NL, thereby making the NL a 16-team league. At the same time, the Detroit Tigers agreed to move from the AL East to the AL Central (to replace Milwaukee), with the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays joining the AL East. Later, when the Houston Astros changed ownership prior to the 2013 season, the team moved from the NL Central to the AL West, resulting in both leagues having three divisions of five teams each and allowing all teams to have a more balanced schedule. Interleague play is now held throughout the season.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 2000, the AL and NL were dissolved as legal entities, and MLB became a single, overall league "de jure", similar to the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL)—albeit with two components called "leagues" instead of "conferences". The same rules and regulations are used in both leagues, with one former exception: the AL operated under the designated hitter (DH) rule, while the NL did not. This difference in rules between leagues was unique to MLB, as the other major professional sports leagues in the U.S. and Canada have one set of rules for all teams.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 2020, the National League (NL) used the designated hitter (DH) rule for the first time. As part of the settlement of the 2021–22 Major League Baseball lockout, this change was made permanent thus making the rules in the two leagues identical.


title: Major League Baseball

text: "An asterisk (*) denotes a relocation of a franchise. See respective team articles for more information."


title: Major League Baseball

text: In the 1860s, aided by soldiers playing the game in camp during the Civil War, "New York"-style baseball expanded into a national game and spawned baseball's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP). The NABBP existed as an amateur league for 12 years. By 1867, more than 400 clubs were members. Most of the strongest clubs remained those based in the Northeastern United States. For professional baseball's founding year, MLB uses the year 1869—when the first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was established.


title: Major League Baseball

text: A schism developed between professional and amateur ballplayers after the founding of the Cincinnati club. The NABBP split into an amateur organization and a professional organization. The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, often known as the National Association (NA), was formed in 1871. Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years. The modern Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves franchises trace their histories back to the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in the 1870s.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1876, the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (later known as the National League or NL) was established after the NA proved ineffective. The league placed its emphasis on clubs rather than on players. Clubs could now enforce player contracts, preventing players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. Clubs were required to play the full schedule of games instead of forfeiting scheduled games when the club was no longer in the running for the league championship, which happened frequently under the NA. A concerted effort was made to curb gambling on games, which was leaving the validity of results in doubt. The first game in the NL—on Saturday, April 22, 1876 (at Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia)—is often pointed to as the beginning of MLB.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The early years of the NL were tumultuous, with threats from rival leagues and a rebellion by players against the hated "reserve clause", which restricted the free movement of players between clubs. Teams came and went; 1882 was the first season where the league's membership was the same as the preceding season's, and only four franchises survived to see 1900. Competitor leagues formed regularly and also disbanded regularly. The most successful was the American Association (1882–1891), sometimes called the "beer and whiskey league" for its tolerance of the sale of alcoholic beverages to spectators. For several years, the NL and American Association champions met in a postseason championship series—the first attempt at a World Series. The two leagues merged in 1892 as a single 12-team NL, but the NL dropped four teams after the 1899 season. This led to the formation of the American League in 1901 under AL president Ban Johnson, and the resulting bidding war for players led to widespread contract-breaking and legal disputes.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The war between the AL and NL caused shock waves throughout the baseball world. At a meeting at the Leland Hotel in Chicago in 1901, the other baseball leagues negotiated a plan to maintain their independence. A new National Association was formed to oversee these minor leagues.


title: Major League Baseball

text: After 1902, the NL, AL, and NA signed a new National Agreement which tied independent contracts to the reserve-clause contracts. The agreement also set up a formal classification system for minor leagues, the forerunner of today's system that was refined by Branch Rickey.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Several other early defunct baseball leagues are officially considered major leagues, and their statistics and records are included with those of the two current major leagues. In 1969, the Special Baseball Records Committee of Major League Baseball officially recognized six major leagues: the National League, American League, American Association, Union Association (1884), Players' League (1890), and Federal League (1914–1915). The status of the National Association as a major league has been a point of dispute among baseball researchers; while its statistics are not recognized by Major League Baseball, its statistics "are" included with those of other major leagues by some baseball reference websites, such as Retrosheet. Some researchers, including Nate Silver, dispute the major-league status of the Union Association by pointing out that franchises came and went and that the St. Louis club was deliberately "stacked"; the St. Louis club was owned by the league's president and it was the only club that was close to major-league caliber. In December 2020, Major League Baseball announced its recognition of seven leagues within Negro league baseball as major leagues, and in 2021, baseball reference website Baseball-Reference.com began to include statistics from those seven leagues into their major-league statistics.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The period between 1900 and 1919 is commonly referred to as the "dead-ball era". Games of this era tended to be low-scoring and were often dominated by pitchers, such as Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Mordecai Brown, and Grover Cleveland Alexander. The term also accurately describes the condition of the baseball itself. The baseball used American rather than the modern Australian wool yarn and was not wound as tightly, affecting the distance that it would travel. More significantly, balls were kept in play until they were mangled, soft and sometimes lopsided. During this era, a baseball cost three dollars, equal to $ today (in inflation-adjusted USD), and owners were reluctant to purchase new balls. Fans were expected to throw back fouls and (rare) home runs. Baseballs also became stained with tobacco juice, grass, and mud, and sometimes the juice of licorice, which some players would chew for the purpose of discoloring the ball.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Also, pitchers could manipulate the ball through the use of the spitball. (In 1921 use of this pitch was restricted to a few pitchers with a grandfather clause.) Additionally, many ballparks had large dimensions, such as the West Side Grounds of the Chicago Cubs, which was to the center field fence, and the Huntington Avenue Grounds of the Boston Red Sox, which was to the center field fence, thus home runs were rare, and "small ball" tactics such as singles, bunts, stolen bases, and the hit-and-run play dominated the strategies of the time. Hitting methods like the Baltimore Chop were used to increase the number of infield singles. On a successful Baltimore chop, the batter hits the ball forcefully into the ground, causing it to bounce so high that the batter reaches first base before the ball can be fielded and thrown to the first baseman.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The adoption of the foul strike rule in the early twentieth century quickly sent baseball from a high-scoring game to one where scoring runs became a struggle. Prior to the institution of this rule, foul balls were not counted as strikes: a batter could foul off any number of pitches with no strikes counted against him; this gave an enormous advantage to the batter. In 1901, the NL adopted the foul strike rule, and the AL followed suit in 1903.


title: Major League Baseball

text: After the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds, baseball was rocked by allegations of a game fixing scheme known as the Black Sox Scandal. Eight players—"Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Claude "Lefty" Williams, George "Buck" Weaver, Arnold "Chick" Gandil, Fred McMullin, Charles "Swede" Risberg, and Oscar "Happy" Felsch—intentionally lost the World Series in exchange for a ring worth $100,000 ($1,712,780.35 in 2022 dollars). Despite being acquitted, all were permanently banned from Major League Baseball.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Baseball's popularity increased in the 1920s and 1930s. The 1920 season was notable for the death of Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians. Chapman, who was struck in the head by a pitch and died a few hours later, became the only MLB player to die of an on-field injury, a tragedy which led directly to both leagues requiring the placing into play new, white baseballs whenever a ball became scuffed or dirty, helping bring the "dead-ball" era to an end. The following year, the New York Yankees made their first World Series appearance. By the end of the 1930s, the team had appeared in 11 World Series, winning eight of them. Yankees slugger Babe Ruth had set the single-season home run record in 1927, hitting 60 home runs; a few years earlier, Ruth had set the same record with 29 home runs.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Affected by the difficulties of the Great Depression, baseball's popularity had begun a downward turn in the early 1930s. By 1932, only two MLB teams turned a profit. Attendance had fallen, due at least in part to a 10% federal amusement tax added to baseball ticket prices. Baseball owners cut their rosters from 25 men to 23 men, and even the best players took pay cuts. Team executives were innovative in their attempts to survive, creating night games, broadcasting games live by radio, and rolling out promotions such as free admission for women. Throughout the period of the Great Depression, no MLB teams moved or folded.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The onset of World War II created a significant shortage of professional baseball players, as more than 500 men left MLB teams to serve in the military. Many of them played on service baseball teams that entertained military personnel in the US or in the Pacific. MLB teams of this time largely consisted of young men, older players, and those with a military classification of 4F, indicating mental, physical, or moral unsuitability for service. Men like Pete Gray, a one-armed outfielder, got the chance to advance to the major leagues. However, MLB rosters did not include any black players through the end of the war. Black players, many of whom served in the war, were still restricted to playing Negro league baseball.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Wartime blackout restrictions, designed to keep outdoor lighting at low levels, caused another problem for baseball. These rules limited traveling and night games to the point that the 1942 season nearly had to be canceled. On January 14, 1942, MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and pleaded for the continuation of baseball during the war in hopes for a start of a new major league season. President Roosevelt responded, "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before."


title: Major League Baseball

text: With the approval of President Roosevelt, spring training began in 1942 with few repercussions. The war interrupted the careers of stars including Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio, but baseball clubs continued to field their teams.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, began making efforts to introduce a black baseball player to the previously all-white professional baseball leagues in the mid-1940s. He selected Jackie Robinson from a list of promising Negro league players. After obtaining a commitment from Robinson to "turn the other cheek" to any racial antagonism directed at him, Rickey agreed to sign him to a contract for $600 a month. In what was later referred to as "The Noble Experiment", Robinson was the first black baseball player in the International League since the 1880s, joining the Dodgers' farm club, the Montreal Royals, for the 1946 season.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The following year, the Dodgers called up Robinson to the major leagues. On April 15, 1947, Robinson made his major league debut at Ebbets Field before a crowd of 26,623 spectators, including more than 14,000 black patrons. Black baseball fans began flocking to see the Dodgers when they came to town, abandoning the Negro league teams that they had followed exclusively. Robinson's promotion met a generally positive, although mixed, reception among newspaper writers and white major league players. Manager Leo Durocher informed his team, "I don't care if he is yellow or black or has stripes like a fucking zebra. I'm his manager and I say he plays."


title: Major League Baseball

text: After a strike threat by some players, NL President Ford Frick and Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler let it be known that any striking players would be suspended. Robinson received significant encouragement from several major-league players, including Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese who said, "You can hate a man for many reasons. Color is not one of them." That year, Robinson won the inaugural Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award (separate NL and AL Rookie of the Year honors were not awarded until 1949).


title: Major League Baseball

text: Less than three months later, Larry Doby became the first African-American to break the color barrier in the American League with the Cleveland Indians. The next year, a number of other black players entered the major leagues. Satchel Paige was signed by the Indians and the Dodgers added star catcher Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, who was later the first winner of the Cy Young Award for his outstanding pitching.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB banned the signing of women to contracts in 1952, but that ban was lifted in 1992. There have been no female MLB players.


title: Major League Baseball

text: From 1903 to 1953, the major leagues consisted of two eight-team leagues whose 16 teams were located in ten cities, all in the northeastern and midwestern United States: New York City had three teams and Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and St. Louis each had two teams. St. Louis was the southernmost and westernmost city with a major league team. The longest possible road trip, from Boston to St. Louis, took about 24 hours by railroad. After a half-century of stability, starting in the 1950s, teams began to move out of cities with multiple teams into cities that hadn't had them before. In three consecutive years from 1953 to 1955, three teams moved to new cities: the Boston Braves became the Milwaukee Braves, the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles, and the Philadelphia Athletics became the Kansas City Athletics.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The 1958 Major League Baseball season was perhaps the pivotal season in making Major League Baseball a nationwide league. Walter O'Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, moved his team to Los Angeles, marking the first major league franchise on the West Coast. Called "perhaps the most influential owner of baseball's early expansion era," O'Malley appeared on the cover of "Time" as a result of his efforts to move baseball to a more nationwide sport O'Malley was also influential in persuading the rival New York Giants to move west to become the San Francisco Giants. The Giants were already suffering from slumping attendance records at their aging ballpark, the Polo Grounds. Had the Dodgers moved out west alone, the St. Louis Cardinals— away—would have been the closest NL team. The joint move made West Coast road trips economical for visiting teams. O'Malley invited San Francisco Mayor George Christopher to New York to meet with Giants owner Horace Stoneham. Stoneham was considering moving the Giants to Minnesota, but he was convinced to join O'Malley on the West Coast at the end of 1957. The meetings between Stoneham, Christopher and O'Malley occurred against the wishes of Ford Frick, the Commissioner of Baseball. The dual moves were successful for both franchises—and for MLB. The Dodgers set a single-game MLB attendance record in their first home appearance with 78,672 fans.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1961, the first Washington Senators franchise moved to Minneapolis–St. Paul to become the Minnesota Twins. Two new teams were added to the American League at the same time: the Los Angeles Angels (who soon moved from downtown L.A. to nearby Anaheim) and a new Washington Senators franchise. The NL added the Houston Astros and the New York Mets in 1962. The Astros (known as the "Colt .45s" during their first three seasons) became the first southern major league franchise since the Louisville Colonels folded in 1899 and the first franchise to be located along the Gulf Coast. The Mets established a reputation for futility by going 40–120 during their first season of play in the nation's media capital—and by playing only a little better in subsequent campaigns—but in their eighth season (1969) the Mets became the first of the 1960s expansion teams to play in the postseason, culminating in a World Series title over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1966, the major leagues moved to the "Deep South" when the Braves moved to Atlanta. In 1968, the Kansas City Athletics moved west to become the Oakland Athletics. In 1969, the American and National Leagues both added two expansion franchises. The American League added the Seattle Pilots (who became the Milwaukee Brewers after one disastrous season in Seattle) and the Kansas City Royals. The NL added the first Canadian franchise, the Montreal Expos, as well as the San Diego Padres.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1972, the second Washington Senators moved to the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex to become the Texas Rangers. In 1977, baseball expanded again, adding a second Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays, as well as the Seattle Mariners. Subsequently, no new teams were added until the 1990s and no teams moved until 2005.


title: Major League Baseball

text: By the late 1960s, the balance between pitching and hitting had swung in favor of the pitchers. In 1968—later nicknamed "the year of the pitcher"—Boston Red Sox player Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title with an average of just .301, the lowest in the history of Major League Baseball. Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain won 31 games, making him the only pitcher to win 30 games in a season since Dizzy Dean in 1934. St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Bob Gibson achieved an equally remarkable feat by allowing an ERA of just 1.12.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Following these pitching performances, in December 1968 the MLB Playing Rules Committee voted to reduce the strike zone from knees to shoulders to top of knees to armpits and lower the pitcher's mound from 15 to 10 inches, beginning in the 1969 season.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1973, the American League, which had been suffering from much lower attendance than the National League, sought to increase scoring even further by initiating the designated hitter (DH) rule.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as baseball expanded, NFL football had been surging in popularity, making it economical for many of these cities to build multi-purpose stadiums instead of single-purpose baseball fields. Because of climate and economic issues, many of these facilities had playing surfaces made from artificial turf, as well as the oval designs characteristic of stadiums designed to house both baseball and football. This often resulted in baseball fields with relatively more foul territory than older stadiums. These characteristics changed the nature of professional baseball, putting a higher premium on speed and defense over home-run hitting power since the fields were often too big for teams to expect to hit many home runs and foul balls hit in the air could more easily be caught for outs.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Teams began to be built around pitching—particularly their bullpens—and speed on the basepaths. Artificial surfaces meant balls traveled quicker and bounced higher, so it became easier to hit ground balls "in the hole" between the corner and middle infielders. Starting pitchers were no longer expected to throw complete games; it was enough for a starter to pitch 6–7 innings and turn the game over to the team's closer, a position which grew in importance over these decades. As stolen bases increased, home run totals dropped. After Willie Mays hit 52 home runs in 1965, only one player (George Foster) reached that mark until the 1990s.


title: Major League Baseball

text: During the 1980s, baseball experienced a number of significant changes the game had not seen in years. Home runs were on the decline throughout the decade, with players hitting only 40 home runs just 13 times and no one hitting more than 50 home runs in a season for the first time since the Dead-ball era (1900–1919).


title: Major League Baseball

text: The 1981 Major League Baseball strike from June 12 until July 31 forced the cancellation of 713 total games and resulted in a split-season format.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1985, Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's all-time hits record with his 4,192nd hit, and in 1989 Rose received a lifetime ban from baseball as a result of betting on baseball games while manager of the Cincinnati Reds. Rose was the first person to receive a lifetime ban from baseball since 1943. 1985 also saw the Pittsburgh drug trials which involved players who were called to testify before a grand jury in Pittsburgh related to cocaine trafficking.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike from August 12, 1994, to April 25, 1995, caused the cancellation of over 900 games and the forfeit of the entire 1994 postseason.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 2019, Major League Baseball opened an investigation into allegations that members of the 2017 World Series champion Houston Astros stole signs from opposing teams using technology during the 2017 and 2018 seasons. The Astros were found guilty in January 2020 and while no active players faced any repercussions, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and field manager A. J. Hinch were suspended for the entire 2020 season. The Astros were fined the maximum allowable $5 million and forfeited their first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Routinely in the late 1990s and early 2000s, baseball players hit 40 or 50 home runs in a season, a feat that was considered rare even in the 1980s. It has since become apparent that at least some of this power surge was a result of players using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1993, the NL added the Florida Marlins in Miami and the Colorado Rockies in Denver. In 1998, the Brewers switched leagues by joining the National League, and two new teams were added: the NL's Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix and the AL's Tampa Bay Devil Rays in Tampa Bay.


title: Major League Baseball

text: After the 2001 season, the team owners voted in favor of contraction. Several MLB teams had been considered for elimination in early talks about contraction, but the Montreal Expos and the Minnesota Twins were the two teams that came closest to folding under the plan. Plans for MLB contraction were halted when the Twins landlord was awarded a court injunction that required the team to play its 2002 home games at their stadium. MLB owners agreed to hold off on reducing the league's size until at least 2006.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The Montreal Expos became the first franchise in over three decades to move when they became the Washington Nationals in 2005. This move left Canada with just one team, but it also returned baseball to Washington after a 33-year absence. This franchise shift, like many previous ones, involved baseball's return to a city that had been previously abandoned. Not counting the short-lived Federal League, Montreal is the only city granted an MLB franchise since 1901 that does not currently, since 2004, host a team.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In September 2022, the MLBPA received enough cards from minor leaguers expressing support for the MLBPA to represent them.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In recent years, with the advent of technologies such as Statcast and its use of Hawk-Eye starting in 2020 as well as with advanced statistics as provided by sites such as FanGraphs and Baseball Savant, MLB has evolved. With the ability to see precise movements of pitchers and batters, teams can assess the mechanics of a player and help them improve. Statcast also provides some features such as tracking the paths of most batted balls, tracking the speed of most batted balls, and tracking the exit velocity of most batted balls. Statcast has allowed for advanced defensive analytics that haven't been possible before tracking of players due to how subjective fielding can be.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The rate of teams using a defensive shift has gone up from 13.7% in 2016 to 33.6% in 2022 because advanced statistics support this as an effective way to stop hitters from getting hits. Because the shift reduces the amount of balls in play that result in hits and MLB wishes to increase interest in baseball, MLB announced in September 2022 that extreme infield defensive shifts would be banned starting in 2023. In order to be compliant, there must be 2 fielders on each side of second base, and those fielders must have both of their feet on the infield dirt at the time the pitch is thrown. If this rule is not followed, the choice of an automatic ball or the outcome of the play is given to the batting team.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The game of baseball has also slowed down significantly due to an increased number of strikeouts and walks — two outcomes that generally take many pitches to complete — and an increased amount of time taken for a pitcher to pitch. In 2020, it took an average of three hours and six minutes to complete a 9 inning game, a number which has steadily ticked up for years. Along with the restrictions on defensive shifts, the MLB announced the introduction of a pitch clock for the 2023 season and beyond, which is something that has been an experiment in MiLB for a few years. The pitch clock starts at 15 seconds. By the time the clock reaches 10 seconds, the catcher must be in their crouch behind home plate. When the clock reaches 8 seconds, the batter must be in the batter's box and be "alert". Before the 15 second timer reaches 0 seconds, the pitcher must have started their "motion to pitch". If any of these deadlines are violated, the count of the batter will be increased by one ball if the defending team violated the pitch clock or one strike if it is the offensive team who violated the pitch clock. Additionally, in order to prevent circumventing these rules pickoffs and step-offs which reset the pitch clock are only allowed two times total per plate appearance and, if a pitcher attempts a third pickoff and fails to get the runner out, a balk will be called. Similarly, a batter is restricted to calling a timeout (an action which resets the pitch clock) just once per plate appearance.


title: Major League Baseball

text: A baseball uniform is a type of uniform worn by baseball players, and by some non-playing personnel, such as field managers and coaches. It is worn to indicate the person's role in the game and—through the use of logos, colors, and numbers—to identify the teams and their players, managers, and coaches.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Traditionally, home uniforms display the team name on the front, while away uniforms display the team's home location. In modern times, however, exceptions to this pattern have become common, with teams using their team name on both uniforms. Most teams also have one or more alternate uniforms, usually consisting of the primary or secondary team color on the vest instead of the usual white or gray. In the past few decades throwback uniforms have become popular.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The New York Knickerbockers were the first baseball team to use uniforms, taking the field on April 4, 1849, in pants made of blue wool, white flannel shirts (jerseys) and straw hats. Caps and other types of headgear have been a part of baseball uniforms from the beginning. Baseball teams often wore full-brimmed straw hats or no cap at all since there was no official rule regarding headgear. Under the 1882 uniform rules, players on the same team wore uniforms of different colors and patterns that indicated which position they played. This rule was soon abandoned as impractical.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In the late 1880s, Detroit and Washington of the National League and Brooklyn of the American Association were the first to wear striped uniforms. By the end of the 19th century, teams began the practice of having two different uniforms, one for when they played at home in their own baseball stadium and a different one for when they played away (on the road) at the other team's ballpark. It became common to wear white pants with a white color vest at home and gray pants with a gray or solid (dark) colored vest when away. By 1900, both home and away uniforms were standard across the major leagues.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In June 2021, MLB announced a long-term deal with cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which includes the FTX logo appearing on umpire uniforms during all games. FTX is MLB's first-ever umpire uniform patch partner. On November 11, 2022, FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Spring training is a series of practices and exhibition games preceding the start of the regular season. Teams hold training camps in the states of Arizona and Florida, where the early warm weather allows teams to practice and play without worrying about the late winter cold. Spring training allows new players to compete for roster and position spots and gives existing team players practice time prior to competitive play. The teams that hold spring training in Arizona are grouped into the Cactus League, while teams that hold camp in Florida are known as the Grapefruit League. Spring training has always attracted fan attention, drawing crowds who travel to the warmer climates to enjoy the weather and watch their favorite teams play, and spring training usually coincides with spring break for many college students. Autograph seekers also find greater access to players during spring training.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Spring training typically lasts almost two months, starting in mid-February and running until just before the season-opening day, traditionally the first week of April. As pitchers benefit from a longer training period, pitchers and catchers begin spring training several days before the rest of the team.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Each team plays 162 games per season. A team's schedule is typically organized into three-game series, sets of consecutive games against the same opponent, with occasional two- or four-game series. Postponed games or continuations of suspended games can result in an ad hoc one-game or five-game series. All games of a series are usually hosted by the same team and multiple series are typically grouped together. I.e, a team usually hosts several series in a row, called a homestand, and follows that by going on several road series in a row. Teams generally play games five to seven days per week. Most games are scheduled at night, although teams will often play day games on Opening Day, holidays, and for the last game of a series to allow teams extra time to travel to their next opponent. Sunday games are generally played during the afternoon, allowing teams to travel to their next destination prior to a Monday night game.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In the current three-division structure, each team plays 19 games against each of its four divisional opponents. It plays one home series and one away series, amounting to six or seven games, against the 10 other teams in its league. A team also plays one of the divisions in the other league, rotating each year, with two opponents in a three-game home series, two in a three-game away series, and one with four games split between home and away. Furthermore, each team has an interleague "natural rival" (in many cases its counterpart in the same metro area) with which it plays two home games and two away games each year.


title: Major League Baseball

text: With an odd number of teams in each league (15), it is necessary to have two teams participate in interleague play for most days in the season, except when two or more teams have a day off. Each team plays 20 interleague games throughout the season, usually with just one interleague game per day, but for one weekend in late May, all teams will participate in an interleague series. Before 2013, interleague play was structured differently: there would be one weekend in mid-May and another period consisting typically of the last two-thirds of June in which all teams played interleague games (save for two NL teams each day), and no interleague games were scheduled outside those dates. (Before 2013, season-long interleague play was not necessary, because each league had an even number of teams. In 2013, the Houston Astros moved to the American League, so that each league would have 15 teams.) Prior to the adoption of the universal designated hitter in 2022, whether the DH was in use depended on whether the home team was from the AL, where the DH was used, or the NL, where it was not.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Starting with the 2023 season, the scheduling formula is set to change, with each team playing at least one series against every other team every year. Each team will play 14 games against teams in the same division, with one 3-game and one 4-game series at each park, six games against teams within the same league but in other divisions, with one 3-game series at each park, and one 3-game series against teams in the other league, alternating home teams each year, except for each team's designated interleague rival, which will continue to consist of two 2-game series at each of the teams' home parks.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Beginning with the 2022 season, teams compete for the six playoff berths in their respective leagues. To secure a berth, a team must either win its division or capture a wild card spot by having one of the three best records among the non-winners in its entire league. With the adoption of a third wild card, the former practice of breaking ties with an additional regular-season game, known as game 163, was dropped in favor of a tie-breaker formula.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In early-to-mid July, just after the midway point of the season, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game is held during a four-day break from the regular-season schedule. The All-Star Game features a team of players from the American League (AL)—led by the manager of the previous AL World Series team—and a team of players from the National League (NL), similarly managed, in an exhibition game. From 1959 to 1962, two games were held each season, one was held in July and one was held in August. The designated-hitter rule was used in the All-Star Game for the first time in 1989. Following games used a DH when the game was played in an AL ballpark. Since 2010, the DH rule has been in effect regardless of venue.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The first official All-Star Game was held as part of the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, Illinois, and was the idea of Arch Ward, then sports editor for "The Chicago Tribune". Initially intended to be a one-time event, its great success resulted in making the game an annual one. Ward's contribution was recognized by Major League Baseball in 1962 with the creation of the "Arch Ward Trophy", given to the All-Star Game's Most Valuable Player each year. (In 1970, it was renamed the Commissioner's Trophy, until 1985, when the name change was reversed. In 2002, it was renamed the Ted Williams Most Valuable Player Award.)


title: Major League Baseball

text: Beginning in 1947, the eight position players in each team's starting lineup have been voted into the game by fans. The fan voting was discontinued after a 1957 ballot-box-stuffing scandal in Cincinnati: seven of the eight slots originally went to Reds players, two of whom were subsequently removed from the lineup to make room for Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. Fan voting was reinstated in 1970 and has continued ever since, including Internet voting in recent years.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The 2002 contest in Milwaukee controversially ended in an 11-inning tie when both managers ran out of pitchers. In response, starting in 2003 the league which wins the All-Star game received home-field advantage in the World Series: the league champion hosted the first two games at its own ballpark as well as the last two (if necessary). The National League did not win an All-Star game and thus gain a home-field advantage until 2010; it was able to overcome this disadvantage and win in three of the seven World Series from 2003 to 2009. This was discontinued after the 2016 season.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB All-Stars from both leagues have worn uniforms from their respective teams at the game with one exception. In the 1933 All-Star Game, the National League All-Star Team members wore special gray uniforms with "National League" written in navy blue letters across the front of the jersey.


title: Major League Baseball

text: On July 3, 2020, it was announced that the 2020 Major League Baseball All-Star Game scheduled to be held in Los Angeles would not be played due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As compensation, Los Angeles was awarded the next available All-Star Game in 2022.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The regular season ends after the first Sunday in October (or the last Sunday in September), after which twelve teams enter the postseason playoffs. These twelve teams consist of the six division champions and six "wild-card" teams: the team with the best overall win–loss record in each of the six divisions, and the three teams in each league with the best records other than the division champions. Four rounds of series of games are played to determine the champion:


title: Major League Baseball

text: Within each league, the division winners are the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 seeds, based on win–loss records. The team with the best record among non-division winners will be the first wildcard and the No. 4 seed. The team with the second-best record among non-division winners will be the second wildcard and the No. 5 seed. The team with the third-best record will the third wild card and the No 6. seed In the wildcard round, the No. 3 seed will host the No 6 seed and the No. 4 seed with host the No 5 seed with the higher team host all three games in the Wild Card Series . For the division series, the matchup will be the No. 1 seed against the winner of the No 3 and No 6 seed and the No. 2 seed against the winner of No 4 and No 5 seed, unlike the NFL there will be no reseeding Since 2017, home-field advantage in the World Series is determined by regular-season records of the two league champions, replacing a system used for the prior 14 seasons where the champion of the league that won the All-Star Game would receive home-field advantage.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Because each postseason series is split between the home fields of the two teams, the home-field advantage does not usually play a large role in the postseason unless the series goes to its maximum number of games, giving one team an additional game at home. However, the first two games of a postseason series are hosted by the same team. That team may have an increased chance of starting the series with two wins, thereby gaining some momentum for the rest of the series.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Since 1986 an All-Star team from MLB is sent to a biennial end-of-the-season tour of Japan, dubbed as MLB Japan All-Star Series, playing exhibition games in a best-of format against the All-Stars from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) or recently as of 2014 their national team Samurai Japan.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 2008, MLB played the MLB China Series in the People's Republic of China. It was a series of two spring-training games between the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers. The games were an effort to popularize baseball in China.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB played the MLB Taiwan All-Star Series in Taiwan in November 2011. It was a series of five exhibition games played by a team made up of MLB players called the MLB All-Stars and the Chinese Taipei national baseball team. The MLB All-Stars swept the series, five games to zero. At the end of the 2011 season, it was announced that the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics would play their season openers in Japan. In October 2013, Phil Rogers of the "Chicago Tribune" wrote that MLB was considering postseason all-star tours in Taiwan and Korea; baseball is increasing in popularity in both countries.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The Arizona Diamondbacks opened the 2014 season against Los Angeles Dodgers on March 22–23 in Australia. The teams played each other at the historic Sydney Cricket Ground, which has a seating capacity of 46,000. The two games represented the first MLB regular-season play held in that country. The games counted as home games for the Diamondbacks, so they played 79 home games at Chase Field.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 2019, the Red Sox were the home team in a regular-season two-game series against the Yankees. The games, which were the first regular-season MLB games held in Europe, were played on June 29–30 at London Stadium with the Yankees winning both games.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Together with the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB sponsors the World Baseball Classic, an international baseball tournament contested by national teams.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In 1998, both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa hit more home runs than the record of 61 set by Yankees right fielder Roger Maris in 1961. Barry Bonds topped the record in 2001 with 73 home runs. McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa became the subjects of speculation regarding the use of performance-enhancing substances. McGwire later admitted that he used a steroid hormone that was still legal in baseball during the 1998 season. Baseball's original steroid testing policy, in effect from 2002 to 2005, provided for penalties ranging from a ten-game suspension for a first positive test to a one-year suspension for a fourth positive test. Players were tested at least once per year, with the chance that several players could be tested many times per year.


title: Major League Baseball

text: A 2006 book, "Game of Shadows" by "San Francisco Chronicle" investigative reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, chronicled alleged extensive use of performance enhancers, including several types of steroids and growth hormone by baseball superstars Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi. Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell was appointed by Selig on March 30, 2006 to investigate the use of performance-enhancing drugs in MLB. The appointment was made after several influential members of the U.S. Congress made negative comments about both the effectiveness and honesty of MLB's drug policies and Commissioner Selig.


title: Major League Baseball

text: The day before the Mitchell Report was to be released in 2007, Selig said, "I haven't seen the report yet, but I'm proud I did it." The report said that after mandatory random testing began in 2004, HGH treatment for athletic enhancement became popular among players, as HGH is not detectable in tests. It pointed out that HGH is likely a placebo with no performance-enhancing effects. The report included substance use allegations against at least one player from each MLB team.


title: Major League Baseball

text: According to ESPN, some people questioned whether Mitchell's director role with the Boston Red Sox created a conflict of interest, especially because no "prime [Sox] players were in the report." The report named several prominent Yankees who were parts of World Series clubs; there is a long-running and fierce Yankees–Red Sox rivalry. Former U.S. prosecutor John M. Dowd brought up Mitchell's conflict of interest, but he later said that the former senator had done a good job. Mitchell acknowledged that his "tight relationship with Major League Baseball left him open to criticism", but he said that readers who examine the report closely "will not find any evidence of bias, of special treatment of the Red Sox".


title: Major League Baseball

text: On January 10, 2013, MLB and the players union reached an agreement to add random, in-season HGH testing. They also agreed to implement a new test to reveal the use of testosterone for the 2013 season. The current MLB drug policy provides for an 80-game suspension for a first positive test, a 162-game suspension for a second positive test, and a lifetime suspension for a third positive test. In 2009, allegations surfaced against Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez received a 50-game suspension after testing positive for banned substances. In early April 2011, Ramirez retired from baseball rather than face a 100-game suspension for his second positive steroid test. He would later unretire, having the suspension dropped to 50 games, and would serve those in 2012.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Several networks televise baseball games, including Fox, ESPN, TBS, and MLB Network. Since 2008, Fox Sports has broadcast MLB games on "Fox Saturday Baseball" throughout the entire season; Fox previously only broadcast games from May to September. Fox also holds rights to the All-Star Game each season. Fox also alternates League Championship Series broadcasts, broadcasting the American League Championship Series (ALCS) in odd-numbered years and the National League Championship Series (NLCS) in even-numbered years. Fox broadcasts all games of the World Series. ESPN continues to broadcast MLB games as well, beginning with national Opening Day coverage. ESPN broadcasts "Sunday Night Baseball" and "Baseball Tonight". ESPN also has rights to the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game each July.


title: Major League Baseball

text: TBS has aired Sunday afternoon regular season games (non-exclusive) nationally, but beginning in 2022 this will be replaced by Tuesday night games. In 2007, TBS began its exclusive rights to any tiebreaker games that determine division or wild card champions. It also airs exclusive coverage of the Division Series round of the playoffs. TBS carries the League Championship Series that are not included under Fox's television agreement; TBS shows the NLCS in odd-numbered years and the ALCS in even-numbered years.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In January 2009, MLB launched the MLB Network, featuring news and coverage from around the league, and airing 26 live games in the 2009 season. Each team also has local broadcasts for all games not carried by Fox on Saturdays or ESPN on Sunday nights. These games are typically split between a local broadcast television station and a local or regional sports network (RSN), though some teams only air local games through RSNs or through their own team networks. As Canada only contains one team, Sportsnet broadcasts Toronto Blue Jays games nationally. The channel is owned by Rogers Communications, who is also the parent company of the Blue Jays. Sportsnet also televises Fox's Saturday afternoon games, the All-Star Game, playoff games, and the World Series. In April 2011, TSN2 began carrying ESPN "Sunday Night Baseball" in Canada. TVA Sports airs Blue Jays games in French.


title: Major League Baseball

text: Several MLB games are broadcast exclusively on Internet television. After a year of exclusive games on Facebook, MLB partnered with YouTube to stream weekly games on the service beginning in the 2019 season, and extending until 2022. In 2022, MLB made a deal with Apple Inc. to launch "Friday Night Baseball" on its Apple TV+ streaming service, and NBC Sports to broadcast MLB Sunday Leadoff, a package of early Sunday afternoon games on Peacock.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB has several blackout rules. A local broadcaster has priority to televise games of the team in their market over national broadcasters if the game is not exclusive to the national broadcaster. A market that has a local team playing in a non-exclusive game will receive an alternative programming feed on the national broadcaster. MLB's streaming internet video service is also subject to the same blackout rules.


title: Major League Baseball

text: ESPN Radio holds national broadcast rights and broadcasts "Sunday Night Baseball" weekly throughout the season in addition to all playoff games. The rights to the World Series are exclusive to ESPN. In 2021, TUDN Radio picked up Spanish-language rights to MLB games, starting with that year's postseason.


title: Major League Baseball

text: In addition, each team employs its own announcers, who broadcast during the regular season. Most teams operate regional networks to cover their fan bases; some of these supposedly regional networks (such as the New York Yankees Radio Network) have a national reach with affiliates located across the United States. Major League Baseball has an exclusive rights deal with XM Satellite Radio, which includes the channel MLB Network Radio and live play-by-play of all games. Many teams also maintain a network of stations that broadcast their games in Spanish; , the Los Angeles Dodgers are the only team that produces radio broadcasts in a third language, with selected games broadcast in Korean. Both Canadian teams (the Montreal Expos before their move to Washington, DC in 2005, and the Toronto Blue Jays) have produced radio broadcasts in French.


title: Major League Baseball

text: MLB games are also broadcast live on the internet. All television and radio broadcasts of games are available via subscription to MLB.tv at Major League Baseball's website, MLB.com, and radio-only broadcasts are also available via subscription to MLB.com Gameday Audio. Radio station affiliates are officially forbidden from streaming games through their Internet feeds. Blackout rules are still applied for live television broadcasts, but not radio broadcasts.


title: Major League Baseball

text: ESPN Deportes televises many MLB games in Spanish throughout Latin America. Wapa 2 airs games in Puerto Rico, including spring training games and most of the World Baseball Classic games involving the team from Puerto Rico. In Brazil, ESPN Brasil has exclusive rights on TV (ESPN and ESPN2) and Internet (WatchESPN).


title: Major League Baseball

text: Five in the United Kingdom previously screened MLB games, including the All-Star Game and the postseason games, on Sunday and Wednesday usually starting at 1 a.m. BST. Most recently, Johnny Gould and Josh Chetwynd presented "MLB on Five" on that station. The channel covered baseball beginning on its opening night in 1997, but for financial reasons, the decision was made not to pick up MLB for the 2009 season. BT Sport ESPN show live and recorded games several times a week—it is available with BT Sport and (on a subscriber-basis) Virgin Media in the UK. ESPN America televised many games in the UK and dozens of other countries; in May 2013, ESPN announced that it would shut down the channel on July 31, 2013.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Diane Kruger ( Heidkrüger; ; born 15 July 1976) is a German and American actress. Early in her career, Kruger gained worldwide recognition and received the Trophée Chopard from the Cannes Film Festival.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Kruger became known for her roles in film as Helen in the epic war film "Troy" (2004), Dr. Abigail Chase in the heist film "National Treasure" (2004) and , Bridget von Hammersmark in Quentin Tarantino's war film "Inglourious Basterds" (2009), and Gina in the psychological thriller film "Unknown" (2011). She also starred as Detective Sonya Cross in the FX crime drama series "The Bridge" (2013–14). In 2017, she made her German-language debut in Fatih Akin's "In the Fade", for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Diane Heidkrüger was born on 15 July 1976. She was brought up Catholic and attended Catholic school. She has stated that one of her grandmothers was Polish.


title: Diane Kruger

text: She was brought up in West Germany with her younger brother, Stefan. Her mother sent her to student exchange programs when she was a teenager to improve her English. As a child, Kruger wanted to become a ballerina and successfully auditioned for the Royal Ballet School in London, but a knee injury cut her ballet career short. Later, Kruger moved to Paris working as a model and began learning French.


title: Diane Kruger

text: In 1993, Kruger represented Germany in the Elite Model Look and started modelling afterwards. Despite her relatively short stature for a model, she managed to land bookings such as advertisements from Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Salvatore Ferragamo, Giorgio Armani, Jil Sander, Christian Dior, Burberry and Louis Vuitton; runway shows from Marc Jacobs, D&G and Sonia Rykiel as well as appearances on the cover of "Vogue Paris", "Marie Claire" and "Cosmopolitan" to her modeling repertoire. She gradually stopped modelling after deciding to pursue a career in acting.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Kruger became interested in acting and took lessons at the Cours Florent. She made her film debut in 2002, opposite Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert in "The Piano Player", a TV film by Jean-Pierre Roux. The same year, she also starred in her then husband's directorial début "Mon Idole".


title: Diane Kruger

text: She played Julie Wood in 2003's "Michel Vaillant" and Lisa in "Wicker Park" (2004), alongside Josh Hartnett and Rose Byrne. One of her more high-profile roles to date is her portrayal of Helen of Sparta in Wolfgang Petersen's epic "Troy". In 2004, Kruger starred with Nicolas Cage and Sean Bean (who co-starred with her in "Troy") in the film "National Treasure", going on to appear in films "Joyeux Noël" (2005), and "Copying Beethoven" (2006). She reprised her role as Dr. Abigail Chase in "", released in December 2007.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Kruger was the hostess of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Kruger was a jury member of the 58th Berlin International Film Festival in 2008. The festival is chaired by Costa Gavras.


title: Diane Kruger

text: In 2009, she co-starred as a German actress turned Allied spy in Quentin Tarantino's film "Inglourious Basterds". In December 2009, she announced the nominations of the 67th Golden Globe Awards and also picked up nominations from the Screen Actors' Guild for Best Supporting Actress and Outstanding Performance by a Cast of a Motion Picture for her role in "Inglourious Basterds".


title: Diane Kruger

text: Kruger played Anna in Jaco Van Dormael's "Mr. Nobody". Critical response has praised the film's artistry and Kruger's acting. Kruger made a cameo appearance in an April 2010 episode of the Fox show "Fringe", in which her former boyfriend, actor Joshua Jackson, starred. In 2010, Kruger also appeared in Mark Ronson's music video for "Somebody to Love Me", where she plays Boy George.


title: Diane Kruger

text: In the 2011 film "Unknown", Kruger starred as Gina, a Bosnian undocumented immigrant, and key character alongside leading actor Liam Neeson. It was also announced in 2011 that Kruger had replaced Eva Green in the role of Marie Antoinette in the French-language film, "Les Adieux à la Reine". In 2012, she was named as a member of the Jury for the Main Competition at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The festival is chaired by Nanni Moretti. She starred in the film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's novel "The Host," which was released in March 2013. More recently, Kruger portrayed El Paso, Texas, police officer Sonya Cross on FX's "The Bridge", which aired in 2013. In 2015, she was named as a member of the Jury for the Main Competition at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. In 2016, she co-starred in "The Infiltrator" with Bryan Cranston and John Leguizamo.


title: Diane Kruger

text: In 2017, Kruger made a rare film appearance in Germany in the thriller "In the Fade" by Fatih Akin, she won several awards for her performance. In 2019, Kruger replaced Marion Cotillard in the spy movie "The 355", playing a BND agent.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Kruger was included in "People" "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" 2004 issue. She appeared on Maxim "Hot 100" list twice, ranking at No. 50 in 2005 and No. 88 in 2009. She also ranked at No. 83 on AskMen "Top 99 Women" list in 2010.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Kruger is a brand ambassador for Swiss watch manufacturer Jaeger-LeCoultre. In December 2009, she was announced as the global "spokesmodel" of L'Oréal. It was announced in May 2010 that she would become the latest face for Calvin Klein's newest fragrance line, Beauty.


title: Diane Kruger

text: Kruger is fluent in German, English and French. Additionally, she studied Latin in school for eight years, though she does not speak it. In 2013, she became an American citizen. Kruger has stated that she has a fear of horses and will not take part in any films that require her to ride or interact with horses, revealing that she has given up roles in the past because of this. Her fear stems from having been previously thrown off of the animals by accident.


title: Diane Kruger

text: In 1999, she began dating French actor and director Guillaume Canet. They were married on 1 September 2001. They acted together in "Joyeux Noël" (2005) and divorced in 2006. Kruger said that the marriage was unsuccessful because their careers had kept them in different parts of the world.


title: Diane Kruger

text: In 2015, Kruger met actor Norman Reedus on the set of "Sky". The two were first seen together as a couple in July 2016. In November 2018, Kruger gave birth to their daughter, her first and his second child.


title: Ja Morant

text: Temetrius Jamel "Ja" Morant (born August 10, 1999) is an American professional basketball player for the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "G12", he played college basketball for the Murray State Racers, where he was a consensus first-team All-American as a sophomore in 2019.


title: Ja Morant

text: Morant was only lightly recruited by NCAA Division I programs and unranked by recruiting services, despite having been named All-Region Most Valuable Player three times and earning All-State honors at Crestwood High School in Sumter, South Carolina. Nevertheless, he made an immediate impact at Murray State University, earning first-team all-conference honors in the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) as a freshman. He had a breakout sophomore season; it saw him win OVC Player of the Year as well as lead the NCAA in assists. Also as a sophomore, Morant became the first player in NCAA history to average 20-plus points and 10-plus assists per game for a single season.


title: Ja Morant

text: Morant was selected by the Grizzlies with the second overall pick in the 2019 NBA draft and named the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2020. He was named to his first NBA All Star Game in 2022 as a starter, and won the NBA Most Improved Player Award at the conclusion of the season, Morant was also selected to his first All-NBA Team in 2022.


title: Ja Morant

text: Morant was born in Dalzell, South Carolina, to parents, Tee and Jamie Morant. His mother, Jamie, was a point guard in high school and a softball player in college, while his father was a high school teammate of Ray Allen and played basketball for Claflin University. After playing semi-professionally, Tee considered playing professional basketball overseas. But when Jamie became pregnant with Ja, he abandoned his basketball career and stayed at home, becoming a barber instead.


title: Ja Morant

text: Morant trained in his backyard with his father, Tee Morant, who taught him step-back jump shots and bought tractor tires for him to practice jumping with a soft landing. In his childhood, he often faced older opponents, telling his mother, "I'm not worried about the big kids." Morant played in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) circuit with the South Carolina Hornets, a small grassroots team based in Columbia, South Carolina. For one season, he was teammates with Zion Williamson, who became one of the top players in his class.


title: Ja Morant

text: Morant attended Crestwood High School in Sumter, South Carolina. He grew from to in his first three years with the team. Morant left as its all-time leading scorer, with 1,679 points, and scored a career-high 47 points against Sumter High School. In his last two seasons at Crestwood, he averaged 27 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists per game, earning South Carolina Class 3A All-State honors both years. Morant also left high school as a three-time All-Region Most Valuable Player (MVP). He could not dunk until he was a senior.


title: Ja Morant

text: Morant was not ranked by recruiting services ESPN, 247Sports, or Rivals. His only high major NCAA Division I offer came from South Carolina. He was accidentally discovered by mid-major program Murray State of the OVC in July 2016, when assistant coach James Kane attended a camp hoping to see a player who was joining his team. While looking for a snack, Kane noticed Morant playing a three-on-three game in an auxiliary gym; impressed, he contacted head coach Matt McMahon, who soon offered Morant a scholarship. On September 3, 2016, Morant committed to playing for Murray State during dinner at McMahon's house. His father said, "Every parent wants their child to play at a big-time program, but what I realized is, don't go where you want to be, go to where they want you." His other Division I offers included Duquesne, Maryland Eastern Shore, South Carolina State, and Wofford.


title: Ja Morant

text: On November 10, 2017, Morant debuted for Murray State with 7 points and a team-high 11 assists in a 118–61 victory over Brescia University of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). He recorded his first career double-double on December 12, 2017, with 10 points, 12 rebounds, and 6 assists in a 69–55 loss to Saint Louis. He posted his first triple-double on December 28, recording 11 points, 10 rebounds, and 14 assists in an 80–52 win over Eastern Illinois. It was the second triple-double in school history, the first coming from Isacc Miles in 1984, and was also the record for most assists at a CFSB Center game, surpassing the old mark of 12 established by Aubrey Reese against Alabama State in 1999. Morant also had the third-most assists in a single game by a Murray State player. On February 1, 2018, he scored a season-high 23 points against Southeast Missouri State. After averaging 12.7 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 6.3 assists per game, Morant earned first-team All-OVC with his teammates Jonathan Stark and Terrell Miller, and OVC All-Newcomer Team accolades. His 6.3 assists per game ranked 14th in the nation his freshman season. He became the seventh freshman in 25 years to accumulate 150 assists, 150 rebounds, and 10 blocks while shooting at least 42 percent from the field. Morant and Murray State advanced to the NCAA Tournament his freshman season after capturing an OVC Championship in a 68–51 win over Belmont. Morant had 15 points, 5 assists, and 5 rebounds in that game. Murray State would lose in its opening round game to West Virginia, however, falling 85-68 despite Morant's 14 points.