ESPN’s first baseball game next season will be Mets-Dodgers on MLB Jackie Robinson Day

Is a better Winnipeg on the horizon?

Four Free Press columnists weigh in on the challenges ahead and how the city can become better.

Winnipeg a character all its own onscreen

Watch something shot in Winnipeg with a Winnipegger, and you will be treated to a live running commentary. We can’t help playing “spot the location.”

When we recognize that field/statue/mall/intersection/theatre, we have to say it. It’s practically civically mandated.

A friend told me she was at a film screening at which people literally applauded footage of the Mint. (That likely would have been 2005’s The Constant Gardener.)

Being excited about seeing Portage Place Mall at Christmastime in the trailer for Violent Night 2 — and then exclaiming, to your husband, “Oh, look, it’s Portage Place Mall at Christmastime!” — is not, I will admit, particularly cosmopolitan behaviour. In fact, I could be accused of suffering from a mild case of Podunkitis.

Concrete doc befits brutalist Winnipeg

Moviegoers across North America are pounding the pavement and lining up around the block to see The History of Concrete, small-screen documentarian John Wilson’s feature-length debut.

ESPN’s first baseball game next season will be Mets-Dodgers on MLB Jackie Robinson Day

BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) — ESPN's first Major League Baseball game next season will be on April 15 when the two-time reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers host the New York Mets on MLB Jackie Robinson Day.

The network also announced on Monday it will air a matchup between the New York Yankees and Kansas City Royals on Memorial Day (May 25).

ESPN will air 30 games this season under a reworked three-year deal that begins next season. ESPN becomes the rights holder for MLB.TV, the out-of-market streaming package, and gets the in-market streaming rights for the six teams whose games are produced by MLB: San Diego, Colorado, Arizona, Cleveland, Minnesota and Seattle.

“Sunday Night Baseball” and the Wild Card round games will air on NBC and Peacock and the Home Run Derby moves to Netflix.

Positive anticipation is growing about major housing developments underway in Winnipeg’s downtown

If traffic is light and the wind is down, Somia Sadiq is able to hear the roar of Winnipeg Jets fans twice: first through her window, then on TV.

From her apartment view high above downtown, she can look out at Graham Avenue’s painted pedestrian landscape, see construction cranes and hear the heavy equipment at work as massive housing projects take shape at The Forks, at what used to be Portage Place shopping centre and at the former Hudson’s Bay building.

Sadiq has lived at 300 Main for 2 1/2 years, a few steps from the city’s famous, windy and reopened-to-pedestrians Portage Avenue intersection. At 42 storeys, it’s the tallest building in Winnipeg.

She is among 18,000 downtown residents who will soon be joined by thousands of others attracted to the city’s core by the new wave of major construction projects.