News about Joe Torre

Ron Hodges, a former New York Mets catcher, died on Friday at the age of 74 after suffering from a short illness. A Mets spokesperson said Friday that Hodges, a Virginia resident, died at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital in his home state after fighting a short illness. The catcher was drafted by the Mets in the second round of the second phase of the January 1972 amateur draft and went on to spend his entire MLB career with the team.

The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan dismissed veteran umpire Angel Hernandez's discrimination case against Major League Baseball. The court upheld a 2021 decision that gave MLB a summary decision in a 3-0 decision. Hernández, a Cuban born man who was recruited as a big league umpire in 1993, is sued in 2017. He said he had been discriminated against because he hadn't been allocated to the World Series since 2005 and had been passed over for crew chief.

Hernandez, 61, has been sidelined by a back injury and hasn't played on the track since San Francisco's game against the Chicago White Sox on April 3, his first game of the season. Joe Torre, the former MLB executive who made the primary decisions over umpires as MLB's chief baseball officer (2011-2020), argues he owed grudges against him dating back to Torre's time as the New York Yankees boss. Nicholas R. Gregg, the umpire's counsel, said that MLB should not have granted Torre 100 percent authority to make crew chief decisions.