Ron Hodges, a catcher who spent his entire 12-season major league career with the Mets, died Friday. He was 74.

Hodges died at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital after a short illness, Mets spokesman Jay Horwitz said.

Major League Baseball owners voted Thursday to allow the Oakland Athletics to move to Las Vegas, according to sources.

The potential move, which comes after more than two decades of failed efforts to secure a new stadium in the city to replace the aging Oakland Coliseum, needed backing from three-quarters of teams at the quarterly owners meetings. 

Prior to the Montreal Expos moving to Washington in 2005, the last MLB team to relocate was the Washington Senators, who became the Texas Rangers in 1972.

The A's moved to Oakland from Kansas City in 1968 and have won four World Series in their 55 years in the city.

Three United States senators sent a letter to Rob Manfred asking whether a new Florida law undermines Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement with minor league players and could "put at risk the gains made by minor league players to finally earn a living wage."

The letter, signed by Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado), questioned why MLB lobbied Florida lawmakers for a broad exemption to the state's minimum wage laws while negotiating the historic CBA that was ratified in April and drastically increased player pay.

In June, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law S.B. 892, which exempts minor league players from minimum wage and maximum hour laws.

San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler, who elevated his team to national prominence with financial commitments in the hundreds of millions but never saw the team win a World Series, died Tuesday. He was 63.

The Padres did not disclose a cause of death, but Seidler, a two-time cancer survivor, revealed in a statement Sept. 18 he had undergone a medical procedure the prior month that would prevent him from attending any games for the remainder of the 2023 season.

Majority ownership of the Padres is remain in the Seidler family moving forward.

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao sent a letter to 15 owners in Major League Baseball this week, outlining why they should reject Athletics owner John Fisher's attempt to move the team to Las Vegas.

The A's have spent the last 55 years in Oakland.

The owners' annual meeting takes place next week in Arlington, Texas, and the A's relocation vote is expected to be held at some point during the three-day session. 

Approval from three-quarters of the 30 owners is required to allow the move.

A Nevada judge threw out a proposed ballot referendum backed by a statewide teachers union that would give voters the final say on whether to provide $380 million in public funding for a proposed $1.5 billion Oakland Athletics stadium on the Las Vegas Strip.

The ruling from Carson City District Court Judge James Russell sided with two lobbyists affiliated with trade unions that favor the public financing for the A's stadium.

Russell sent the teachers union-backed Schools Over Stadiums political action committee back to the drawing board in its attempts to thwart the funding the state Legislature approved this year.