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MLB releases 2021 schedule

Major League Baseball will open the 2021 season April 1 and hopes to have every team play its first game on the same day for the first time since 1968.

The league released the full schedule Thursday, two weeks before it plans to begin a 2020 season that’s been delayed and shortened by the coronavirus pandemic. MLB intended to start this season on March 26, its earliest opening date ever except for international games.

The league also hoped to have all 30 clubs play on the same opening day this season, but that was spoiled when commissioner Rob Manfred suspended spring training in March.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will open the season on the road, at the Chicago Cubs. The Pirates will follow that with a series at Cincinnati before playing the Cubs in the home opener at PNC Park on April 8.

Clubs will resume full intraleague schedules in 2021, and interleague play will again align regionally.

Atlanta will host the 91st All-Star Game on July 13 at Truist Park. It’s Atlanta’s first All-Star Game since hosting in 2000 at Turner Field.

The last day of the season will be Oct. 3.

Suit says Williamson paid $400K

The legal fight over NBA rookie Zion Williamson’s endorsement potential now includes an allegation that his family received $400,000 from a marketing agency before his lone season for Duke.

Prime Sports Marketing and company president Gina Ford filed a lawsuit last summer in a Florida state court, accusing Williamson and the agency now representing him of breach of contract. That came a week after Williamson filed his own lawsuit in a North Carolina federal court to terminate a five-year contract with Prime Sports after moving to Creative Artists Agency LLC.

In court filings Thursday in North Carolina, Ford’s attorneys included a sworn affidavit from a California man who said the head of a Canadian-based firm called Maximum Management Group (MMG) told him he paid Williamson’s family for his commitment to sign with MMG once he left Duke for the NBA.

The documents include a marketing agreement signed by Williamson with MMG from May 2019, a December 2019 “letter of declaration” signed by Williamson and his stepfather agreeing to pay $500,000 to MMG president Slavko Duric for “repayment of a loan” from October 2018, and a copy of Williamson’s South Carolina driver’s license.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Williamson attorney, Jeffrey S. Klein, said those documents were “fraudulent.”

Correction

In a story in the July 6 edition about Albert Dami of Canonsburg, the story should have said he participated in the Pennsylvania Senior Olympics.

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