ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Yankees general manager Brian Cashman says Sonny Gray admitted he expressed a desire to play in New York at the behest of his agent so as not to harm his free-agency value and didn't voice his dislike of the Big Apple until after the 2018 trade deadline had passed.
Gray was acquired by Boston in a trade from St. Louis last month and spoke of his 1 1/2 seasons in New York during a Zoom news conference on Dec. 2.
“New York was, it just wasn’t a good situation for me, wasn’t a great setup for me and my family,” he said. “I never wanted to go there in the first place.”
His agent denied Cashman's allegations in an email to The Associated Press.
Gray was traded from Oakland to the Yankees in July 2017 and went 15-16 with a 4.52 ERA with New York. He was dropped from the rotation in August 2018 after he smirked when fans booed as he walked off the Yankee Stadium mound in the third inning of a 7-5 loss to Baltimore. He was dealt to Cincinnati in January 2019.
“After the deadline was over, he asked to meet with me. He said, 'Hey, can we talk?'” Cashman said Sunday night after arriving at the winter meetings.
Cashman recalled meeting with Gray in the clubhouse office of Chad Bohling, the Yankees' senior director of organizational performance.
“He said, 'I thought you were going to trade me,'” Cashman said. “I was like, publicly I’m out trying to get pitching, starting pitching and bullpen. Why would I trade a starter when we need pitching badly? ... And he goes, ‘Well I got to tell you, I’ve never wanted to —' that’s when he told me he never wanted to be here. He hates New York. This is the worst place. He just sits in his hotel room."
“I said, Well it’s a little late now,” Cashman recalled. “So then I told him, I said, but you said you wanted to be traded here. And he said, 'My agent, Bo McKinnis, told me to do that. He told me to lie. It wouldn’t be good for my free agency to say there are certain places that I don't want to go to.'”
“And I told him: Nothing I can do about it now. I wish you’d told me well beforehand. I wish we knew this before we even tried to acquire you that you never wanted to come here," Cashman said. "We tried to do our homework. … And I said so now we’ll just have to play the year out and this winter I’ll do whatever I can to move you and we moved him to the Reds.”
Cashman said the Yankees had a minor league video coordinator who had been roommates of Gray at Vanderbilt and that Gray had mentioned to his former roommate: "Tell Cash, get me over to the Yankees. Blah, blah, blah. Like I want out of Oakland. I want to win a world championship. Blah, blah, blah. So, and it wasn’t just him. He was communicating that to a number of different people that was getting to us, that he wants to be a Yankee."
McKinnis took issue with Cashman's comments.
“So Brian is trying to make people believe I told Sonny to, in Cashman’s words, `lie' to the minor league video guy to try to get Sonny to the Yankees, even though, per Cashman, Sonny did not want to be with the Yankees, to subsequently somehow help Sonny’s free agency,” McKinnis wrote in an email to the AP.
“This makes zero sense,” McKinnis added. “If any player does not want to play for a certain club — thus potentially not performing at their best if they were with that team — it does not help their career and future free agency to lie their way into a trade to that club. Brian’s claim makes no sense. Further, the words, `I want out of Oakland,' have never been said by Sonny. He loved his time with the A’s.”
Now 36, Gray has become a three-time All-Star and is 125-102 with a 3.58 ERA over 13 seasons with the Athletics (2013-17), Yankees (2017-18), Reds (2019-21), Minnesota (2022-23) and Cardinals (2024-25). The right-hander waived a no-trade provision to accept the deal to the Red Sox.
“What did factor into my decision to come to Boston is it feels good to me to go to a place now where you know what, it’s easy to hate the Yankees, right? It’s easy to go out and have that rivalry and go in it with full force, full steam ahead," Gray said. "I like the challenge. I appreciate the challenge. I accept the challenge. But this time around it's just go out and be yourself. Don't try to be anything other than yourself and if people don't like it, it is what it is. I am who I am, and I'm OK with that."
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FILE - St. Louis Cardinals' Sonny Gray pitches to a San Francisco Giants batter during the first inning of a baseball game, Sept. 24, 2025, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, file)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban rulers and other officials gathered at Afghanistan’s traditional Loya Jirga assembly hall on Saturday to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their return to power, touting what they described as restored stability and an end to decades of conflict.
A top United Nations official, however, warned of a grave human rights crisis in Afghanistan, where girls over age 12 are barred from attending school.
The Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, 2021, as the U.S. and other NATO troops withdrew following a costly two-decade war. The U.S. withdrawal led to chaos at Kabul airport as crowds of people tried to flee the country in desperation.
Soon after taking power, the Taliban administration imposed a ban on girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and later banned higher education for women, despite having pledged before the takeover that women would be allowed access to education, employment and public participation.
Women have also been banned from public spaces such as gyms and parks, from taking part in sports and traveling to distant locations without a male guardian.
At the Loya Jirga, high-ranking officials were joined by some foreign representatives and thousands of ordinary citizens for speeches marking what they said was Afghanistan's liberation from American forces.
“We pray to Almighty God to forever protect our homeland from occupation, aggression, wars, and insecurity, and to enable our people to enjoy peace, tranquility, and prosperity under the auspices of the Sharia-based government,” the Taliban government’s deputy spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, said during the ceremony.
Abdul Salam Hanafi, the deputy prime minister in charge of administrative affairs, said the Taliban rule ended an era of external interventions and internal strife in Afghanistan “over the past half-century,” restoring security.
“At least 300 Afghan youth were martyred or killed every day,” Hanafi said. “Three hundred sisters would become widows, several children would become orphans and 300 mothers would be grieving. Praise be to God, with the rule of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, this tragedy was removed from the Afghan nation.”
There were no women present at the ceremony.
Five years on, the Taliban government remains isolated internationally, with Russia being the only country to have recognized it formally.
Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said countries that have engaged with the administration have gained from doing so and called on others that have not established contacts to reconsider their approach.
“They should move towards a policy of engagement and mutual interaction,” he said.
In Kabul, Afghans took to the squares carrying Taliban flags and chanting slogans in support of the government. Convoys of vehicles wound their way through the city, causing traffic jams.
Security was tight, with a heavy Taliban security force presence and several checkpoints on a main road leading to the Loya Jirga.
Celebrations were also held in provinces across Afghanistan, where Taliban flags and posters emblazoned with slogans in praise of the Taliban’s return to power were displayed along major roads and marketplaces.
In a video message, Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, said the country was undergoing a deep human rights crisis.
“While the era of war has ended, it’s questionable whether there’s real peace, and the human rights situation has steadily deteriorated, most dramatically for women and girls,” Bennett said. “My mandate has concluded that this system amounts to the crime against humanity of gender persecution.”
“The crisis extends well beyond gender discrimination, even beyond gender apartheid,” he continued, noting that the U.N. continues to document arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings and persecution of minorities in Afghanistan.
Bennett warned the international community against “normalizing” the Taliban’s policies, saying it would legitimize the discrimination and tell “victims their suffering is negotiable.”
In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this week, Molvi Hayatullah Mahajar Farahi, deputy minister in the Taliban government for broadcasting at the Ministry of Information and Culture, said despite “challenges and difficulties” the administration has in the past five years delivered security and infrastructure and created jobs.
Farahi, when asked, did not address the issue of the education of girls and women but said “the level of investment made in universities surpasses anything seen in the past."
The U.N. agency on education and culture, UNESCO, estimates that some 2.4 million girls have been excluded from secondary education. The U.N. World Food Program said child malnutrition has reached critical levels in a third of Afghanistan’s provinces and is expected to worsen due to funding shortfalls.
U.N. Women said this week that women and girls are facing the harshest restrictions in the world and that the bans are damaging Afghanistan’s future, with the lack of teachers, doctors, nurses and midwives threatening the country’s social and economic foundations.
Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.
Taliban delegates from across the country attend a meeting that opens celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal and the start of Taliban rule, at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Young children look out from a car as a Taliban flag is held nearby on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal and the start of Taliban rule in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Aug. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Nava Jamshidi)
Armed Taliban police stand along a street ahead of celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal and the start of Taliban rule in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Aug. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Nava Jamshidi)
Taliban delegates from across the country gather during a meeting that opens celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal and the start of Taliban rule, at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
Four young girls dressed in matching outfits hold Taliban flags on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal and the start of Taliban rule in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Aug. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Nava Jamshidi)
Taliban delegates from across the country attend a meeting that opens celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal and the start of Taliban rule, at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
