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Chicago Cubs Rumors: Team has flexibility for trade deadline moves by Jordan Campbell

The Chicago Cubs’ middle infield depth took a hit over the course of the past month with injuries to Matt Duffy, David Bote, and Nico Hoerner. Fortunately for the Cubs, the team has received a shot in the arm from veteran journeyman Patrick Wisdom.

Through his first 13 games with the Cubs and 36 plate appearances, Wisdom has ignited the team’s offense. Wisdom currently has a slash line of .412/.444/1.088/1.533 with 7 home runs and 10 RBIs. For Wisdom, most of his success was due to the hot streak of games that he has put together for the Cubs over the course of the past week.

Last week alone, Wisdom compiled a .435 batting average along with 6 home runs and 9 RBIs. Therefore, it should be no surprise that Wisdom was named the National League Player of the Week for his efforts last week.

No doubt about it.@PatrickWisdom5 is the NL Player of the Week! #CubTogether pic.twitter.com/Hmjtqle7pZ

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) June 7, 2021

Wisdom’s two-home run performance on Sunday in the Cubs’ victory over the San Francisco Giants was the reason why the Cubs were able to avoid a four-game sweep over the weekend. Wisdom’s emergence has led to questions over the construction of the Cubs’ roster over the course of the rest of the season.

Patrick Wisdom is making a case that he should stay on the Chicago Cubs roster.

Before we dive into what Wisdom’s emergence means for the rest of the Cubs’ roster, let’s first enter the necessary caveat. That caveat being that Major League pitchers are going to adjust to Wisdom and eventually find a way to get him out. Once they do, it will be on Wisdom to adjust and maintain his success.

Factoring in the regression and operating under the theory that Wisdom will still be competent Major League Hitter, the question surfaces of what becomes of the Major League Roster. The initial question to that answer is nothing. While it seems likely that Duffy will return within the next week from his back strain, the Cubs are currently carrying 14 pitchers so it would seem likely that the team would simply demote a reliever such as Cory Abbot.

Where the Cubs will truly need to make an important decision is when both Bote and Hoerner are healthy. Once Bote and Hoerner are healthy, it seems likely that the Cubs will decide between either Wisdom or Eric Sogard to keep on the Major League roster. Considering that Sogard’s 2021 OPS of .610 is an indicator that his struggles from the 2020 season have continued, the case should be made that the Cubs should DFA the veteran second baseman.

Related Story: Chicago Cubs have the flexibility for deadline moves

Even factoring in the eventual regression from Wisdom, he still provides the Cubs with more flexibility than Sogard. Sogard, at this stage of his career, is mostly only a second base position whereas Wisdom can play third base, second base, and the corner outfield spots. For now, though, Patrick Wisdom is the defending National League Player of the Week and the Chicago Cubs will need to ride the hot hand for as long as it lasts.

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Dontay Banks, who performed as “DThang,” was killed in a chaotic scene at Club O, where “lots of weapons” were recovered early Sunday.

The brother of Chicago rapper Lil Durk was killed over the weekend in a shooting that also wounded a police officer at a strip club in south suburban Harvey.

Police were investigating if another fatal shooting hours later was possible retaliation.

Dontay Banks, who performed as “DThang,” was killed in a chaotic scene at Club O, where “multiple shots” were fired and “lots of weapons recovered” early Sunday, according to Harvey spokeswoman Giavonni Nickson.

Shortly before Banks was shot, a Harvey police officer heard gunfire and noticed a person with a gun at the club at 17038 S Halsted St., Nickson said.

More gunfire erupted during an “altercation,” and the officer was hit in the thigh, Nickson said. It was unclear if the officer returned fire, and Nickson said it was uncertain if the officer was targeted in the shooting. The officer was in good condition.

About 500 feet away, 32-year-old Banks was shot in his head, Nickson said. “Among the other shots flying, Banks was caught in it,” she said.

Banks, who lived in Chicago’s Gresham neighborhood, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Nickson and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Around 2 a.m. that morning, another person was killed in a possible retaliation shooting, Nickson said.

Police responded to a shooting victim at 148 W. 155th St., a block west of Ingalls Memorial Hospital, Nickson said. Sinica Price, 39, was taken to South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest and pronounced dead with a gunshot wound, she said.

No arrests were reported in any of the shootings, Nickson said.

Dontay Banks’s brother Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Banks, hasn’t commented on his brother’s death. But on Twitter, Chicago rapper Lil Reese wrote, “Long live dthang love you broski… .”

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Lil Durk founded the record label Only The Family (OTF), and several of its members have come to violent ends.

Last year, OTF rapper King Von was shot and killed in November outside a club in Atlanta. King Von was in Atlanta for his album release party for “Welcome to O’Block,” named after the notoriously violent housing project, Parkway Gardens, on the South Side where Von grew up along with Chief Keef and Lil Durk.

In 2015, Lil Durk’s manager, 24-year-old Uchenna ‘‘Chino Dolla’’ Agina, was shot and killed while sitting in a car in the 8400 block of South Stony Island Avenue.

In 2014, Banks’ cousin McArthur Swindle, who rapped as OTF NuNu, was shot and killed in Chatham. Swindle was in an SUV when someone walked up and started shooting. The SUV crashed into a storefront at 87th and Cottage Grove.

In 2012, Durk Banks pleaded guilty to a weapons charge and was sentenced to a year in prison.

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

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In many instances, the survivors and the heirs still have title to the buildings that were torched and forcibly seized from their relatives. Do they have the right to take back the land?

On its 100th anniversary, the 1921 massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma has finally come to national attention. The history of the massacre is now known. The damage inflicted clear. The question is what is to be done to repair the damage?

In the early 20th century, the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a center of Black economic prosperity in the U.S. Often called the Black Wall Street, Greenwood supported around 15,000 people. It had close to 200 Black-owned businesses, 15 doctors, two dentists, law offices, restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, a hospital and schools. Greenwood was a prosperous community on the Black side of segregated Tulsa.

That made it a source of envy and of resentment. In the early hours of June 1, 1921, a “deputized” white mob — some estimates report it numbering 10,000 persons, supported by the Tulsa police and the mayor of Tulsa — swept through the community, burning, looting and murdering in a calculated act of mass terror. The trigger for the mob violence was a rumored attack on a white woman by a Black man — a charge that was later dismissed when it turned out that the supposed assailant accidentally tripped into her.

As many as 400 Black residents were killed, more than 1,200 homes burned, 10,000 people were left homeless, churches, schools and a hospital were destroyed. There were no convictions for any of the charges related to the violence. Blacks in Tulsa were the most arrested and the most denied. The dead were buried in mass graves never to be seen again. ”Decades of Black prosperity and millions of dollars in hard-earned wealth were wiped out in hours, but nobody was ever held accountable, and no compensation was ever paid,” concluded a report by Human Rights Watch.

Last week, three survivors of the incident — all over 100 years old — testified before Congress about the terror and injustice.

No one now doubts the damage wrought. The question is what is to be done to rectify the harm done? In many instances, the survivors and the heirs still have title to the lands and buildings that were torched and forcibly seized from their relatives. Do the descendants have the right to take back the land? In most cases, restitution must be considered for the land and business owners. Many have deeds to the stolen property. They deserve restitution. The multigenerational damages are staggering. The Stratford Hotel, for example, was worth about $125,000 at the time it was torched. In today’s dollars, it would be worth over $100 million.

Restitution calls for returning to the rightful owner something that has been taken away improperly. Reparations is a broader concept, calling for compensation to make good damages that cannot simply be rectified. Many commissions have called for reparations for the victims of the Greenwood massacre, but to date nothing has been done.

Last September, descendants of the victims and Lessie Benningfield Randle, a 106-year-old survivor of the massacre, filed suit against the City of Tulsa and other official bodies. They accurately charged that Tulsa officials permitted and participated in the destruction of their families’ homes and businesses, and that the City of Tulsa also worked to block any compensation from insurance companies. They asked for a detailed accounting of the property and wealth lost or stolen, the building of a hospital in northern Tulsa to replace the one that was burned down, establishment of a fund to recompense the victims and their descendants, and a break from city and county taxes for survivors or descendants of those who were killed or injured.

Reparations are, of course, controversial, but correct. Basic justice requires some remedy for wrongs committed. And no community can come together without wrestling directly and honestly with the horrors committed and the damage caused. The Tulsa massacre is not the only incident of racial terrorism in this country. Tulsa is a metaphor for all the other race massacres that have occurred in the U.S.

In the end, the following must happen: Lynching must be a federal crime. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked it. A Marshall Plan is needed to secure and restructure institutions for fairness and justice. The most significant piece of the Marshall Plan is 50-year development loans at 2%, government secured with quarterly returns. How the citizens, the city and state and the courts handle this question will reveal much about the state of justice in this country.

Send letters to [email protected].

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Tony Award nominee Joaquina Kalukango will lead the cast for the show which will be presented in a five-week, pe-Broadway engagement at the James M. Nederlander Theatre Nov. 2-Dec. 5.

The cast for the Broadway-bound musical “Paradise Square,” which will receive its pre-Broadway run in Chicago this fall, was announced Monday.

Tony Award nominee Joaquina Kalukango and Chilina Kennedy will lead the cast for the show which will receive a five-week engagement at the James M. Nederlander Theatre (24 W. Randolph) Nov. 2-Dec. 5.

The cast will also feature John Dossett, A.J. Shively, Nathaniel Stampley, Sidney DuPont, Gabrielle McClinton, Kevin Dennis and Jacob Fishel.

Produced by Garth Drabinsky, “Paradise Square” is directed by Tony Award nominee Moisés Kaufman (“I Am My Own Wife”), with choreography by two-time Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones (“Spring Awakening,” “Fela!’), and a book by Christina Anderson Marcus Gardley, Craig Lucas and Larry Kirwan. The production features the “re-imagined” songs of Stephen Foster and original compositions, with a score by Jason Howland (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”), Nathan Tyson (“Tuck Everlasting”), Masi Asare (“Monsoon Wedding”) and Kirwan.

Alessandra Mello

The production, which received its world premiere in 2019 at Berkeley Rep, tells the story, set in New York in 1863, about the tenement housing community of Five Points in Lower Manhattan where Irish immigrants and free-born Black Americans who had escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad co-existed and shared their cultures as the tight-knit community until the Civil War’s New York Draft Riots of 1863 violently changed everything.

“It is here in the Five Points where tap dancing was born, as Irish step dancing joyously competed with Black American Juba,” the show’s official press announcement stated.

Drabinsky, who Chicagoans may remember for his critically acclaimed projects here including “Ragtime,” “Showboat” and record-setting “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” starring Donny Osmond in the 1990s, is the controversial theater mogul who was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted in Canada of defrauding shareholders of Livent, the theater production company he co-founded with Myron Gottlieb, also convicted in the high-profile case. Drabinsky was released on parole in 2013 after serving 17 months, and all charges in the U.S. were later dismissed.

Individual tickets for “Paradise Square on sale at 12:00 a.m. June 8 (midnight Monday) at broadwayinchicago.com.

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Chicago artist and actor Tony Fitzpatrick says the mural, a tribute to the late Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey, will be his last public artwork in Chicago.

A massive mural created by Chicago artist and actor Tony Fitzpatrick will be installed on the exterior of Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s new arts and exhibition center in Lincoln Park this week.

Fitzpatrick, who has put on several shows at Steppenwolf over the years, said his mural, which measures 12 feet high by 76 feet long, is a personal tribute to former Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey, who died in 2017 and who he considers a mentor.

It’s Fitzpatrick’s largest work to date and his first outdoor mural — and the 62-year-old artist also says it will be the end of a chapter in his career.

“I think it’s time for guys who look like me to get out of the way. My show coming up in October at the [College of DuPage] will be my last museum show. This will be my final public artwork for the city of Chicago. I’m still going to do gallery shows all over the world, I just feel like,… when you get to the top of the hill, you pull the next person up. I think there needs to be more room for artists of color, for LGBTQ artists and for female artists.”

Provided

Fitzpatrick said because of the size of the mural and because they could not find a space to work during the pandemic, he enlisted the help of fellow artist Danny Torres, whom he’s recently partnered with in a new public art initiative called Fitzpatrick/Torres Humboldt Caballo, to digitize eight pieces.

They were then digitally printed in Bologna, Italy, on 57 ceramic porcelain tiles, each measuring 4 x 4 feet, and will be installed this week at the building, 1646 N. Halsted St. The building itself, which will house an educational center and additional stages, is scheduled to open in the fall.

Known for his drawings and collages that often have birds, the pieces Fitzpatrick selected for the mural feature floral or tree themes instead of birds and has a garden theme. In addition to being a tribute to Lavey, the mural — titled “Night and Day in the Garden of All Other Ecstasies” — is similar to the creative process of a play, Fitzpatrick said.

Provided

“This is the most un-Tony-like looking work of art I’ve ever made. I just thought there really wouldn’t be any human figures. The only thing is Martha’s eyes are in it … We didn’t want it to be literal or linear. We wanted it to be much like the creative process of when you’re putting together a play and trying 100 different things on your way in,” Fitzpatrick said.

The garden theme was something that came to him when thinking back to conversations he had with Lavey over the years.

“I knew based on conversations with Martha that leading a theater company is like tending a large, unruly garden. There are thorns, there are blooms, there are explosions of unexpected color, and there are constantly more seeds available. Every play blooms into its own unexpected beauty but like a garden, it’s fraught with peril as well. There are thorns, there are weeds, there are invasive species.”

While he says the mural will be his last public piece, Fitzpatrick is expanding into other areas. He said he will continue to create jigsaw puzzles of his work — something that he started during the pandemic and went over well, and soon will be adding his art to skateboard decks in a new venture.

Still, the mural brings him personal pride as something that can be viewed and enjoyed by anyone walking by the building.

“I wanted to leave something lasting, life affirming and positive.”

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Valencia officially launched her campaign Monday at the headquarters of the Painters District Council 14, one of the unions backing her run.

City Clerk Anna Valencia officially launched her bid to succeed outgoing Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White on Monday, promising “everyone will have a seat at my table.”

Before White’s time leading the office, Valencia said it used to be a place where “people with special connections could land jobs” or a “campaign contribution could buy you special treatment or a permit.”

White changed that “pay-to-play” culture, Valencia said, pledging to build on the changes the longtime secretary of state made.

“Running an office that serves all people — Chicago, downstate, in the suburbs, everyday working class people of all races, just like my family — requires the highest standards of integrity and an honor,” the Granite City native said. “That has been the hallmark of my career, and it will be the hallmark of my service as secretary of state.”

She said her father, Joe, “proudly stripes … streets” currently as a member of Painters District Council 58, which endorsed Valencia Monday.

Valencia made her announcement at the headquarters of the Painters District Council 14, which also is backing her bid along with Unite Here Local 1. The unions will provide the boots on the ground, and financial support, needed for the statewide race, which is becoming increasingly hotly contested.

Roushaunda Williams, a leader with Unite Here Local 1 and vice president of the Illinois chapter of the AFL-CIO, said Valencia has “truly earned her place in the heart of our union members,” pointing to her “meetings with fire union workers, walking picket lines with striking hotel workers, advocating for policies that help working people.”

Fran Spielman/Sun-Times file

“Anna has shown us who she was through the years,” Williams said. “She was an outspoken advocate. … With Anna by our side, people started to come forward, with her being a champion for our cause people stepped forward to share their story. Anna has been in our union life, and part of our union family, since 2017. She gets the work done — she does what she says she’s going to do.”

Valencia said her campaign will focus on equity, accessibility and modernization from “Chicago to … Granite City, Springfield, Peoria and Rockford — and everywhere in between,” vowing that “everyone will have a seat at my table.”

Her plan to carry through on that includes reducing language barriers for those needing to do business with the office, expanding library hours, increasing grants for technology upgrades and investments so “no matter what ZIP code you live in, your library can get you plugged in to the digital world.”

Valencia also said that, if she’s elected, she’ll call for a commission to make sure the state is a leader in expanding access to voting.

Valencia’s official arrival in the race comes a day after former state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias won the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

Asked about the Southwest Side Democrat endorsing another, non-Latino candidate in the race, Valencia said she wasn’t concerned.

Rich Hein/Sun-Times file; Brian Kersey/Getty Images

“The most important endorsement I can get is from the voters,” Valencia said. “We’ve got a year and 21 days in this race to build a grassroots coalition like you saw today — Latino pastors and Black women and union painters, Unite Here Local 1. This is what the coalition is going to look like — very inclusive, very diverse, all across the state — and this is just the first of many endorsements that we’re going to be rolling out.”

Valencia went on to say she feels “very confident” about her chances, pointing to her roots in southern Illinois and her experience in an executive office over the last four years.

“It’s about relationships, it’s about momentum and strategy and that’s what my team has,” Valencia said. “This is a long game — a year and 21 days — and we’re playing the long game. So, I’m very confident that we’ll have every resource we need to go on TV, to advertise, digital, all of that.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia; Brian Jackson; Rich Hein/Sun-Times file

Valencia joins Giannoulias, Aldermen Pat Dowell (3rd) and David Moore (17th) and state Sen. Michael Hastings, D-Tinley Park who are all vying to replace White, who announced in 2019 he would not seek reelection.

The office typically handles the rather mundane tasks of issuing driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations, but it’s coveted by politicians for its high profile, thousands of jobs and potential as stepping stone to the governor’s mansion or another, higher office.

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Organizers take advantage of summer to offer food, music and new vehicles on a stretch of Indiana Avenue.

The Chicago Auto Show, recalibrated this year as a summer event, will include an outdoor street festival that will look like a mini-Taste of Chicago.

The show’s producer, the Chicago Automobile Trade Association, said the festival will be on Indiana Avenue, next to McCormick Place’s West Building, the home of the main event. Attendees can head outside to visit food trucks by local operators, check out new vehicles, drink Goose Island beer and hear local musicians.

The street fest will take place the first four evenings of the show, July 15-18. Dave Sloan, president of the trade association, said the action will occur on Indiana from 23^rd Street to 24^th Place, putting it next to the city’s historic Motor Row District. The show runs indoors through July 19.

The outdoor attractions will be only for ticketed attendees of the auto show, Sloan said. He said details are being worked out for daytime outdoor test drives by attendees and that Ford will use a parking lot for test tracks to show off its Bronco and Mustang Mach-E electric SUV.

Sponsors praised city officials for helping with the details. Ald. Pat Dowell, whose 3^rd Ward includes the area, conveyed her blessing. “We’re thrilled to host this event in the South Loop and shine a light on the growing number of businesses opening and re-opening here,” she said in a news release from the association.

Local auto dealers hope the outdoor element will add interest in the show, which this year informally kicks off McCormick Place’s return to hosting big meetings. The show traditionally is held in the winter, but it was delayed this year due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The food trucks and tents will include menu items from Smoke Daddy, Connie’s Pizza and Andy’s Frozen Custard among others. Sloan said his group chose vendors it has worked with before and that it has a revenue-sharing arrangement with them.

Current city rules limit show attendance to 30,000 people per day and 10,000 at any given time, Sloan said. Tickets are sold by time blocks and must be bought online at chicagoautoshow.com. Getting access to the food trucks will require tickets for an evening time block.

Taste of Chicago, the annual downtown celebration canceled last year amid the pandemic, survives this summer as a series of community events.

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Our friends at Forever Collectibles has released a Chicago White Sox Yoan Moncada City Connect bobblehead that is limited!

The post Chicago White Sox Yoan Moncada City Connect Bobblehead now available first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Outdoing his fellow billionaires in daredevilry, Jeff Bezos will blast into space next month when his Blue Origin company makes its first flight with a crew.

The 57-year-old Amazon founder and richest person in the world by Forbes’ estimate will become the first person to ride his own rocket to space.

Bezos announced his intentions Monday and, in an even bolder show of confidence, said he will share the adventure with his younger brother and best friend, Mark, an investor and volunteer firefighter. He said that will make it more meaningful.

Blue Origin’s debut flight with people aboard — after 15 successful test flights of its reusable New Shepard rockets — will take place on July 20, a date selected because it is the 52nd anniversary of the first moon landing by Apollo 11?s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

The Bezos brothers will launch from remote West Texas alongside the winner of an online charity auction. There’s no word yet on who else might fill the six-person capsule during the 10-minute flight that will take its passengers to an altitude of about 65 miles, just beyond the edge of space, and then return to Earth without going into orbit.

Bezos said he has dreamed of traveling to space since he was 5.

“To see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth,” Bezos said in an Instagram post. “I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”

Added his brother: “I wasn’t even expecting him to say that he was going to be on the first flight, and then when he asked me to go along, I was just awestruck.”

Bezos will step down as Amazon’s CEO 15 days before liftoff. He announced months ago that he wants to spend more time on his rocket company as well as his newspaper, The Washington Post.

His stake in Amazon stands at $164 billion, which will make him by far the wealthiest person to fly to space.

Until now, thrill-seeking billionaires have had to buy capsule seats from the Russian space program or, more recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which plans its first private flight in September. These orbital trips, generally lasting several days, with visits to the International Space Station, have cost tens of millions of dollars per person.

The flight by Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule, named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, will last five minutes less than Shepard’s history-marking suborbital ride aboard a Mercury capsule in 1961.

But Blue Origin’s capsule is 10 times roomier with a huge window at every seat — the biggest windows ever built for a spacecraft, in fact.

The company, based in Kent, Washington, is working to develop an orbital rocket named after John Glenn, the first American to circle the Earth.

The Bezos flight will officially kick off the company’s space tourism business. The company has yet to start selling seats to the public or even to announce a ticket price for the short trips, which provide about three minutes of weightlessness.

Blue Origin’s launch and landing site is 120 miles southeast of El Paso, close to the Mexican border. After the capsule separates, the rocket returns to Earth and lands upright, to be used again. The capsule, also reusable, descends under parachutes.

Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson — a “tie-loathing,” mountain-climbing, hot-air-ballooning daredevil — also plans to ride into space aboard his own airplane-launched rocketship later this year after one more test flight over New Mexico. Virgin Galactic completed its third test flight into space with a crew two weeks ago; the company doesn’t want him climbing aboard until the craft is thoroughly proven.

The 70-year-old Branson on Monday offered congratulations to Bezos, a tame, bookish Wall Streeter by comparison. Branson tweeted that their two companies “are opening up access to space — how extraordinary!”

Like Blue Origin, Branson’s company will send paying customers to the lower reaches of space on up-and-down flights, not Earth-orbiting rides.

Musk’s SpaceX already has transported 10 astronauts to the space station for NASA and sold several seats on private flights. Musk himself has yet to commit to going into space, though he has repeatedly said he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact.

Until recently, Blue Origin had been criticized by some for proceeding too slowly, especially when compared with SpaceX. Bezos adopted as the company’s motto “Gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “Step by step, ferociously,” and had it emblazoned on the so-called lucky cowboy boots he wears to his company’s space launches.

“Blue Origin, admirably, has gone about it carefully and has built a reliable and less ambitious vehicle and is likely to succeed,” the director of Vanderbilt University’s aerospace design lab, Amrutur Anilkumar, said in an email Monday. “It is noteworthy that Bezos feels comfortable taking his brother for a ride; that is probably the best exclamation for safety and reliability.”

While Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s capsules are fully automated, Virgin Galactic has two pilots in the cockpit for every spaceflight. A 2014 accident left one pilot dead and the other seriously injured.

As for the seat that is being auctioned off, Blue Origin opened online bidding on May 5, the 60th anniversary of Shepard’s flight. It’s up to $2.8 million.

The auction will conclude Saturday, with the winning amount donated to Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s education foundation, which encourages youngsters to pursue careers in science. Nearly 6,000 people from 143 countries have taken part in the auction.

In an Instagram video posted by Bezos, Mark Bezos’ reaction when his brother invited him on the flight was: “Are you serious? … Seriously? My God!”

“What a remarkable opportunity not only to have this adventure, but to be able to do it with my best friend,” the younger brother said.

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AP business writer MIchelle Chapman contributed to this story.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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