UR MAG

While Smith-Njigba says he isn't pressing the issue, the 2025 AP Offensive Player of the Year said he believes he should be the NFL's highest-paid wide receiver.

"I'm really not too pressed right now to get it done," Smith-Njigba told WFAA-TV. "I know my time is coming, and when we get it done it's gonna be a great deal. God's timing is perfect timing, so whenever that may come, we'll be ready for it. I think I deserve to be the highest-paid at my position, just what I give to the game and the community, I give it my all. And I think that's worth a lot, lot more."

Smith-Njigba, who turned 24 last Saturday, has one season remaining on his four-year, $14.4 million rookie contract.

"I would play this game for free, I love this game so much, but you don't have to," he said. "I'm learning to be a good businessman, and we need that check at the end of the day."

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Smith-Njigba put himself in position for a big payday after leading the NFL with 1,793 receiving yards in the 2025 regular season. He also had 119 receptions and 10 touchdowns en route to being selected for his second straight Pro Bowl.

Smith-Njigba didn't stop there, totaling 199 yards and two touchdowns in three postseason games as the Seahawks won the franchise's second Super Bowl title.

He has 282 catches for 3,551 receiving yards and 20 touchdowns in 51 games (36 starts) since being selected out of Ohio State by the Seahawks with the 20th overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.

Cincinnati Bengals star Ja'Marr Chase, 25, is the highest-paid wide receiver in terms of annual salary at $40.25 million. He signed a four-year, $161 million contract extension last March.

--Field Level Media

"The author of one of the game's most indelible moments, Bill Mazeroski will be remembered as one of baseball's most respected figures – both for his character and for his brilliance on the field as one of the game's best second basemen," Baseball Hall of Fame chairman Jane Forbes Clark said.

"Maz remained humble about his career, even as he was celebrated in Cooperstown. On behalf of his Hall of Fame family, we send our deepest sympathies to his loved ones and to Pirates fans everywhere."

Mazeroski was an amazing defensive player who could turn the double play in a blink. He was a shortstop when he signed with the Pirates in 1954, at 17, but Branch Rickey promptly moved him to second base.

Late Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince called Mazeroski "The Glove." He had the defensive statistics to back up his excellence, and they helped put him in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.

But as a career .260 hitter, he also got a big boost in that induction from his monumental homer – still marked by a plaque on a Pittsburgh sidewalk where it cleared the left field wall at since-demolished Forbes Field. Today there is a statue of Mazeroski outside Pittsburgh's PNC Park.

Mazeroski was 24 on that Oct. 13, 1960, day when, at 3:36 p.m. ET, he blasted into baseball immortality against the Yankees. He was 64 and white-haired in 2001 when he got a private tour of his exhibit at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, a few days before his induction.

On that tour, he recalled to USA TODAY Sports that he was "floating" as he rounded the bases in 1960 after hitting a one-ball, no-strike slider for a home run off Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry. The ball barely cleared the ivy-covered wall.

"Fantastic. It's something unbelievable that you just never would expect to happen to you," Mazeroski said then. "All of a sudden, here it is. It gets a little overwhelming."

Who has the ball?

In 2010, on the 50th anniversary of the home run, Mazeroski told USA TODAY Sports' Mike Dodd that as the kid of a coal miner he grew up dreaming of hitting a home run to win a World Series: "But it was with a broomstick and a bucket of stones. I wore out a lot of broomsticks, (pretending), 'I'm Babe Ruth and I'm hitting a home run to win the Series.' "

While Pittsburgh partied that 1960 day, Mazeroski and his wife, Milene, went to a quiet park to savor the moment.

The home run ball won't be on display at the Hall of Fame. Several fans claimed to have it.

"Everybody wanted a hundred bucks," Mazeroski said. "There were so many of them, nobody knew for sure. I have one or two."

Unlike a typical Hall of Fame visitor, he alone knew just how that bat in a third floor display case felt in his hands when he used it to hit his World Series-winning homer against the Yankees.

"You can still see the spot on the seams where I hit the ball. It dug into the bat," Mazeroski said during his 2001 Hall tour.

Defense his calling card

Mazeroski didn't get close to 3,000 hits (2,016) or 300 homers (138).

But defense is part of the game, too. On his Hall of Fame tour, as he passed a wall of balls from no-hit pitching performances, he saw one from a 1970 no-hitter by former Pirate Dock Ellis against the San Diego Padres.

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"I saved that one," Mazeroski said of the no-hitter. "Line drive up the middle. I dove and backhanded it about a foot off the ground."

He won eight Gold Gloves, but the gloves he actually used looked as if they wouldn't bring a buck at a yard sale.

"It's pretty simple: He was the best I ever saw at turning a double play," Hall of Famer Joe Torre said of Mazeroski.

He figured he used about four gloves from 1956 to 1972, and they were barely gloves at all. He liked them small, and he always removed the padding from the heel for better feel. When a glove wore out, he got it fixed and kept using it.

The Hall has one which Mazeroski used at various times.

"This was one of the good ones," he said on the pre-induction tour, slipping on the mitt and pounding it. "When a ball hit in there, it just closed."

But the gloves also helped him get the ball out of his hands quickly on double plays. Balls bounced off the heel of his glove into his throwing hand. No second baseman turned as many double plays in a career (1,706) or a season (161 in 1966).

That skill didn't get him into the Hall in 15 years of eligibility on voting by baseball writers. He was elected by the Veterans Committee.

"I never thought that I hit enough to get in the Hall of Fame," Mazeroski said.

"I didn't think they would put defense in. I'm glad they did. … I don't know everybody's (batting) average in the Hall of Fame. In fact, I don't know anybody's, really. I don't know if there's anybody worse than .260. Is .260 the lowest?"

No. Turn-of-the-century catcher Ray Schalk hit .253. Shortstop Rabbit Maranville hit .258. Harmon Killebrew, a home run slugger, hit .256.

"But defense wins as many games as offense wins or anything else," Mazeroski said. "You turn a double play, that's like hitting a grand slam sometimes."

As a Pirate, Mazeroski played two exhibition games in Cooperstown. The Hall has a score sheet from a 1959 game in which he homered twice.

"I didn't even remember that," he said. "I do remember we had a home run contest before the game, and I beat Ted Kluszewski."

His 1960 World Series homer triggered a massive celebration in Pittsburgh. At the Hall's archives, his wife spotted a photo of that day in Pittsburgh, its streets piled with paper.

"Bill, look at this picture," said his wife, a former Pirates secretary. "These cars are old. These buildings are old. Are we this old?" she asked with a laugh.

Mazeroski grew up in a one-room home in southeastern Ohio coal country in the community of Rush Run. Hall of Famers from nearby include baseball's Phil Niekro, basketball's John Havlicek and football's Lou Groza.

In retirement in the Pittsburgh area, Mazeroski enjoyed fishing and golf: "If I'm hitting the ball bad in golf, I go fishing. If I'm not catching any fish, I go golfing."

Martin Chivers, soccer, 1945-2026

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Sports figures we lost in 2026

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Bill Mazeroski dies at 89: Pirates Hall of Famer won 1960 World Series

Crosby has been dealing with an injury to his right leg, leaving his status for themen's hockey tournament's gold medal gamein limbo.

"I watched him skate today," Canada coach Jon Cooper said Feb. 21. "We're going to meet tonight and have a determination of what's going to happen tomorrow. He won't. … He won't put himself in harm's way, and he's not going to put the team in harm's way."

Canada and USAface off in the gold medal game on Feb. 22 (8 a.m. ET)at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. Canada closed its practice on Feb. 21 to avoid having reporters see what was happening.

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More:USA-Canada for Olympic gold? 'Can't script it any better than that'

Crosby was injured when his right leg buckled as he absorbed a hit from Radko Gudas during the quarterfinal game against Czechia, right after which Crosby also got crunched by Martin Necas. Crosby missed Canada's semifinal against Finland.

Crosby, 38, has two goals and four assists in four games. He is going for his third Olympic gold medal after winning at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Crosby is Canada's captain. In international hockey, there has to be a player serving as captain in a game, so Canada had Connor McDavid wear the "C' in the semifinal victory over Finland.

If Crosby cannot play, Cooper said Canada will not do what Team Sweden did, which was have injured Victor Hedman dress and sit on the bench.

"It's too important," Cooper said. "We don't want to have somebody in there as an inspiration when we could have a player that could be capable of helping. You never know if guys are going get hurt in the game. He wouldn't want to do that either."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Sidney Crosby injury update: Not ruled out for Canada-USA gold game

Native American Women Sterilization

Decades later, the state of New Mexico is set to investigate that troubling history and its lasting harm.

New Mexico legislators approved a measure this week to have the state Indian Affairs Department and the Commission on the Status of Women examine the history, scope and continuing impact of forced and coerced sterilizations of women of color by the Indian Health Service and other providers. The findings are expected to be reported to the governor by the end of 2027.

"It's important for New Mexico to understand the atrocities that took place within the borders of our state," said state Sen. Linda Lopez, one of the legislation's sponsors.

It's not the first state to confront its past. In 2023, Vermont launched atruth and reconciliation commissionto study forced sterilization of marginalized groups including Native Americans. In 2024, California beganpaying reparationsto people who had been sterilized without their consent in state-run prisons and hospitals.

The New Mexico Legislature also laid the groundwork to create a separate healing commission and for a formal acknowledgment of a little known piece of history that haunts Native families

Sarah Deer, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, said it's long overdue.

"The women in these communities carry these stories," she said.

Outside of a 1976 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the federal government has never acknowledged what Deer calls a campaign of "systemic" sterilizations in Native American communities.

The Indian Health Service and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to multiple emails requesting comment on New Mexico's investigation.

A troubling history

In 1972, Jean Whitehorse was admitted to an Indian Health Service hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, with a ruptured appendix. Just 22 and a new mother, Whitehorse said she remembers experiencing "extreme pain" as providers presented her with a flurry of consent forms before rushing her into emergency surgery.

"The nurse held the pen in my hand. I just signed on the line," said Whitehorse, a Navajo Nation citizen.

A few years later when she was struggling to conceive a second child, Whitehorse said she returned to the hospital and learned she had received a tubal ligation. The news devastated Whitehorse, contributed to the breakdown of her relationship and sent her spiraling into alcoholism, she said.

Advocates already were sounding the alarm about women like Whitehorse who were entering IHS clinics and hospitals to give birth or for other procedures and later finding themselves unable to conceive. The activist group Women of All Red Nations, or WARN — an offshoot of the American Indian Movement — was formed in part to expose the practice.

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In 1974, Choctaw and Cherokee physician Connie Redbird Uri reviewed IHS records and alleged that the federal agency had sterilized as many as 25% of its female patients of childbearing age. Some of the women Uri interviewed were unaware they had been sterilized. Others said they were bullied into consenting or misled to believe the procedure was reversible.

Uri's allegations helped prompt the GAO audit, which found that the Indian Health Service sterilized 3,406 women in four of the agency's 12 service areas between 1973 and 1976, including in Albuquerque. The agency found that some patients were under the age of 21 and most had signed forms that didn't comply with federal regulations meant to ensure informed consent.

GAO researchers determined that interviewing women who had undergone sterilizations "would not be productive," citing a single study of cardiac surgical patients in New York who struggled to recall past conversations with doctors. Because of the lack of patient interviews and the narrow purview of the GAO's audit, advocates say the full scope and impact remains unaccounted for.

A venue to tell their stories

Whitehorse didn't share her experience for nearly 40 years, she said. First, she told her daughter. Then, other family.

"Each time I tell my story, it relieves the shame, the guilt," Whitehorse said. "Now I think, why should I be ashamed? It's the government that should be ashamed of what they did to us."

Whitehorse now advocates publicly for victims of forced sterilization. In 2025, she testified about the practice to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and called for the United States to formally apologize.

Whitehorse hopes New Mexico's investigation will offer more victims a venue to tell their stories. But advocates like Rachael Lorenzo, executive director of the Albuquerque-based sexual and reproductive health organization Indigenous Women Rising, say the commission must be careful to avoid re-traumatizing survivors across generations.

"It's such a taboo topic. There's a lot of support that needs to happen when we tell these traumatic stories," said Lorenzo.

In a New Mexico legislative hearing earlier this month, retired Indian Health Service physician Dr. Donald Clark testified that he has seen patients in their 20s and 30s "seeking contraception but not trusting that they will not be irreversibly sterilized" because of stories quietly passed down by their grandmothers, mothers and aunts.

"It's still an issue that is affecting women's choice of birth control today," Clark said.

A pattern of disenfranchisement

A 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell upheld states' rights to sterilize people it considered "unfit" to reproduce, paving the way for the forced sterilization of immigrants, people of color, disabled people and other disenfranchised groups throughout the 20th century.

According to Lorenzo and Deer, the sterilization of Native American women fits into a pattern of federal policies meant to disrupt Native people's reproductive autonomy, from the systemic removal of Indigenous children into government boarding schools and non-Native foster homes to the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prevents tribal clinics and hospitals that receive federal funding from performing abortions in almost all cases.

In Canada, doctors have beensanctionedas recently as 2023 for sterilizing Indigenous women without their consent.

Deer said New Mexico's investigation could pave the way for accountability. But without cooperation from the federal government, Deer said the commission's fact-finding abilities would be limited.

Immigration Detention Georgia

As local officials scrambled to find out what was happening, a deed was filed showing the Department of Homeland Security had already inked a $122.8 million deal for the 826,000-square-foot (76,738-square-meter) warehouses in Socorro, a bedroom community of 40,000 people outside El Paso.

"Nobody from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any type of correspondence letting us know what's about to take place," said Rudy Cruz Jr., the mayor of the predominantly Hispanic town of low-slung ranch homes and trailer parks, where orchards and irrigation ditches share the landscape with strip malls, truck stops, recycling plants and distribution warehouses.

Socorro is among at least 20 communities with large warehouses across the U.S. that have become stealth targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's $45-billionexpansion of detention centers.

Aspublic supportfor the agency and President Donald Trump's immigration crackdownsags,communities are objecting to mass detentions and raising concerns that the facilities could strain water supplies and other services while reducing local tax revenue. In many cases, mayors, county commissioners, governors and members of Congress learned about ICE's ambitions only after the agency bought or leased space for detainees, leading to shock and frustration even in areas that have backed Trump.

"I just feel," said Cruz, whose wife was born in Mexico, "that they do these things in silence so that they don't get opposition."

Communities scramble for information

ICE, which is part of DHS, has purchased at least seven warehouses in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas, signed deeds show. Other deals have been announced but not yet finalized, though buyers scuttled sales in eight locations.

DHS objected to calling the sites warehouses, stressing in a statement that they would be "very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards."

The process has been chaotic at times. ICE this past week acknowledged it made a "mistake" when it announced warehouse purchases in Chester, New York, and Roxbury, New Jersey. Roxbury then announced Friday that the sale there had closed.

DHS has confirmed it is looking for more detention space but hasn't disclosed individual sites ahead of acquisitions. Some cities learned that ICE was scouting warehouses through reporters. Others were tipped off by a spreadsheet circulating online among activists whose source is unclear.

It wasn't until Feb. 13 that the scope of the warehouse project was confirmed, when the governor's office in New Hampshire, where there is backlash to a planned 500-bed processing center, released a document from ICE showing the agency plans to spend $38.3 billionto boost detention capacity to 92,000 beds.

Since Trump took office, the number of people detained by ICE has increased to 75,000 from 40,000, spread across more than 225 sites.

ICE could use the warehouses to consolidate and to increase capacity. The document describes a project that includes eight large-scale detention centers, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers. The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing "turnkey" facilities.

The project is funded throughthe big tax and spending cuts billpassed by Congress last year thatnearly doubled DHS' budget.To build the detention centers, the Trump administration is using military contracts.

Those contracts allow a lot of secrecy and for DHS to move quickly without following the usual processes and safeguards, said Charles Tiefer, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School.

Socorro facility could be among the largest

In Socorro, the ICE-owned warehouses are so large that 4 1/2 Walmart Supercenters could fit inside, standing in contrast to the remnants of the austere Spanish colonial and mission architecture that defines the town.

At a recent City Council meeting, public comments stretched for hours. "I think a lot of innocent people are getting caught up in their dragnet," said Jorge Mendoza, an El Paso County retiree whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico.

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Many speakers invoked concerns aboutthree recent deathsat an ICE detention facility at the nearby Fort Bliss Army base.

Communities fear a financial hit

Even communities that backed Trump in 2024 have been caught off guard by ICE's plans and have raised concerns.

In rural Pennsylvania's Berks County, commissioner Christian Leinbach called the district attorney, the sheriff, the jail warden and the county's head of emergency services when he first heard ICE might buy a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from his home.

No one knew anything.

A few days later, a local official in charge of land records informed him that ICE had bought the building —promotedby developers as a "state-of-the art logistics center" — for $87.4 million.

"There was absolutely no warning," Leinbach said during a meeting in which he raised concerns that turning the warehouse into a federal facility means a loss of more than $800,000 in local tax dollars.

ICE has touted the income taxes its workers would pay, though the facilities themselves will be exempt from property taxes.

A Georgia detention center could house twice the population of the city where it's located

In Social Circle, Georgia, which also strongly supported Trump in 2024, officials were stunned by ICE's plans for a facility that could hold 7,500 to 10,000 people after first learning about it through a reporter.

The city, which has a population of just 5,000 and worries about the infrastructure needs for such a detention center, only heard from DHS after the $128.6 million sale of a 1 million-square-foot (92,900-square-meter) warehouse was completed. Like Socorro and Berks County, Social Circle questioned whether the water and sewage system could keep up.

ICE has said it did due diligence to ensure the sites don't overwhelm city utilities. But Social Circle said the agency's analysis relied on a yet-to-be built sewer treatment plant.

"To be clear, the City has repeatedly communicated that it does not have the capacity or resources to accommodate this demand, and no proposal presented to date has demonstrated otherwise," the city said ina statement.

And in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, officials sent a scathing letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after ICE without warning bought a massive warehouse in a residential area about a mile from a high school. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, raised the prospect of going to court to have the site declared a public nuisance.

Crowds wait to speak in Socorro

Back in Socorro, people waiting to speak against the ICE facility spilled out of the City Council chambers, some standing beside murals paying tribute to the World War II-era Braceros Program that allowed Mexican farmworkers to be guest workers in the U.S. The program stoked Socorro's economy and population before President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administrationin the 1950sbegan mass deportations aimed at people who had crossed the border illegally.

Eduardo Castillo, formerly an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, told city officials it is intimidating but "not impossible" to challenge the federal government.

"If you don't at least try," he said, "you will end up with another inhumane detention facility built in your jurisdiction and under your watch."

Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also contributed.