Patience, as the saying goes, is indeed a virtue.

This sentiment rings especially true for prospects within the Dodgers’ organization. In a team that has consistently tasted the sweet success of World Series victories over consecutive years, opportunities for major league appearances are few and far between. The Dodgers not only take pride in their impressive list of veteran players but also in maintaining one of the most acclaimed farm systems in the sport.

Currently, this scenario is particularly relevant for two emerging talents. River Ryan, a promising right-handed starting pitcher currently holding the No. 6 spot in the Dodgers’ prospect rankings according to MLB Pipeline, and James Tibbs III, a left-handed outfielder who sits at No. 10, find themselves waiting in line.

With big-league roster positions at a premium, these young standouts remain patient, knowing that their time to shine will come. Their potential and skill make them prime candidates for future opportunities, but for now, they must bide their time and continue to hone their craft within this competitive system.

River Ryan (a right-handed starting pitcher ranked as the No. 6 prospect in the organization by MLB Pipeline) and James Tibbs III (a left-handed-hitting outfielder ranked 10th) are having to wait their turns.

Ryan, of course, is the more familiar name to Dodgers fans.

A former two-way prospect in the Padres system who was acquired to little fanfare in exchange for the then-DFA’d Matt Beaty in 2022, the right-hander blossomed into one of the most talented pitchers in the Dodgers’ highly ranked pipeline, rising quickly to make his MLB debut in 2024 –– when he had a 1.33 ERA in four tantalizing starts.

That rookie campaign, however, was cut short because of Tommy John surgery.

And after spending all of last year recovering from the procedure, Ryan is still waiting to make his return to the big leagues.

The Dodgers were always going to be cautious with Ryan’s workload this year, especially early in the season, given the limited number of innings he will likely be able to pitch in 2026. That became even more true after he suffered a hamstring injury in April that sidelined him for a month.

Team officials have said repeatedly they want him to build a “foundation” in triple-A Oklahoma City before bringing him up to the big-league roster.

But, since returning to action three weeks ago, the 27-year-old has looked dominant.

He has given up just one earned run in his last three starts. He has built up from four innings to five to –– for the first time in his professional career –– six in his most recent outing last Thursday. He also racked up eight strikeouts in that latter game while –– for the first time this season –– not issuing a walk or hit batter.

“It was great to see him get to six innings,” Gomes said. “The stuff coming out of hand is awesome.”

Whether it has nudged him closer to a long-awaited call-up remains less clear.

With the Dodgers in the midst of a 19-games-in-20-days stretch right now, it’s possible that the need for an extra starter may arise at some point in the next couple weeks. But the team also currently has a locked-in six-man rotation, including newly-acquired veteran Eric Lauer. As long as that remains the case, it could be difficult to recall Ryan, as it would force them to play an arm short in the bullpen.

“We’re gonna keep building him up and try to build a nice foundation,” Gomes reiterated this week, “before we look to do anything there.”

Thus, Ryan might have to remain patient right now, even as he flashes a six-pitch mix headlined by a fastball that has touched 100 mph of late.

“I think the good thing about River, and what we try to tell our guys, is part of the benefit of being in our organization is that you’re gonna have really good resources, and the small downside is that there’s a lot of really good players,” Gomes said. “So I think it’s, keep your feet where they’re at and continue to perform. I think River also knows, when we optioned him out of camp, a lot of this is this is a guy that’s coming off Tommy John. We have to be mindful of his innings and workload, and not just be short-sighted, of like, ‘Oh, well, he’s pitching great now.’”

A similar dynamic is playing out with Tibbs.

A former first-round draft pick of the San Francisco Giants who was tried twice in a two-month span last year, Tibbs has found an obvious comfort level in the Dodgers’ organization.

Last year, he impressed with double-A Tulsa, posting a .900 OPS with seven home runs and 32 RBIs in 36 games after being acquired from the Boston Red Sox at the trade deadline.

This year, the 23-year-old has elevated his game to a different level in Oklahoma City, batting .322 with a Pacific Coast League-leading 17 home runs –– including five over his last four games.

The start of that homer streak coincided with Teoscar Hernández’s hamstring strain last week, an injury that created an opening on the Dodgers’ big-league roster for a left-handed-hitting outfielder.

The club, however, opted to call up long-time prospect Ryan Ward, giving the once-overlooked slugger his first extended runway at the MLB level.

“I just think Ward-o has done this for a while and he’s certainly earned [this opportunity],” Gomes said. “It’s good to get him back up and into the mix and hopefully get a really opportunity here.”

Something working against Tibbs right now: He hasn’t played the outfield since May 7, while battling what The Athletic first reported is a minor forearm injury to his throwing arm. Instead, he has spent the last weeks exclusively as a designated hitter.

Still, just like Ryan, Tibbs’ time will come at some point.

“He’s performing great, obviously,” Gomes said. “The numbers are fantastic.”

For the Dodgers, it’s a good problem to have.

For their two most standout prospects so far this year, it means being patient a little bit longer.

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“I served as the chief of staff for the Gambino crime family,” asserts Lewis Kasman, reflecting on his time alongside the infamous Mafia leader, John Gotti.

Having been closely involved with Gotti and the Gambino clan, Kasman is now divulging the hidden workings and experiences of life at the pinnacle of the American Mafia.

“In my attic in Woodbury, I kept a large toy chest stuffed with millions of dollars,” Kasman reveals, with monthly amounts fluctuating between $6 million and $10 million. He claims the Gambino family raked in over $100 million annually.

Lewis Kasman, pictured on the right, is seen accompanying John Gotti’s brother Peter as they arrive at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, in 1992. (Photo credit: Gerald Herbert/NY Daily News via Getty Images)

Lewis Kasman, seen on the right, escorting John Gotti’s brother Peter as they arrive at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, in 1992. (Gerald Herbert/NY Daily News via Getty Images)

“I loved it. I loved it all. I loved the power…to have the boss’s ear, and I had unfettered access. It was amazing.”

Kasman, who is now 68 years old, opens up about his friendship and working with Gotti for a Fox Nation exclusive documentary, “Gotti’s Guy,” which can be seen on the Fox Nation streaming site and Fox One.

Throughout the late 1980s and early ’90s, as Gotti reigned over the underworld, Kasman was right there, in the inner circle. He was a familiar fixture accompanying the Don, the made men and Gotti’s lawyers. He was routinely referred to as “Gotti’s adopted son” by the news media and frequently interviewed and quoted defending Gotti during his various trials.

In the Fox Nation program, Kasman describes how he grew up as “a Jewish kid on Long Island,” who went to sleep-away camp and had a bar mitzvah, to being the trusted sidekick and sounding board to the most infamous Mafia Don since Al Capone.

“We had a brotherhood me and him,” says Lewis. “I had no agenda and he had no agendas. He just wanted my friendship and my voice to speak for him when he didn’t want to speak or couldn’t speak, because of his position.”

Lewis says Gotti needed someone like him, an objective sounding board outside the circle of mobsters, who was loyal, direct and had no ax to grind.

John Gotti gestures as he speaks with one of his attorneys during his assault trial on January 30, 1990. (Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images)

“I could go in places where John didn’t want to go, and I could talk to Skippers (Capos) the way John didn’t want to. As a boss, you have to carry yourself a certain way. He would never go and ask for anything. That was not John Gotti’s way.”

“I never crossed the line. See, I knew my boundaries. I had the most boundaries that anyone in life could have with John Gotti, and I knew my place. He trusted me and I trusted him.”

“He was a man’s man,” he says. “I used to say, Grandpa, you’re a legend in life. You’re gonna be a legend when you pass, but you’re a legend in reality. You are legendary now. I used to walk around the garment center, guys in trucks would honking their air horns. How’s the boss? How’s the chief? Wherever you would go, they loved this guy.” 

“He was a superstar, an A-lister celebrity. The crowds, the people, the pictures. It became surreal.”

But with time, Kasman reassessed his life and his role. He says back then, in his 20s and 30s, he had put aside his moral issues and ignored any ethical concerns about hobnobbing with Mafia murderers but now sees the error of his ways.

“When I look back, you could disappear at any time,” he says. “He was the Mafia, and he was a killer, and he was a tough guy. Tough guy. Very tough guy.”

“I did not lie to myself. I knew who he was, and I knew what he was capable of. But I wasn’t in fear of him. I respected him for who he was and the kind of Boss he was of that family. And if he was my father, my natural father, I couldn’t have loved him more.”

During one of Gotti’s trials, his flamboyant lawyer, Bruce Cutler, called Kasman “one of the finest young men I know,” and said, “he has a great friendship and business relationship with John Gotti.”

But the Gotti family has had other names for their former friend.

John A. Gotti, Gotti’s son, wrote scathingly about Kasman in his bestselling book “Shadow of My Father.”  

He branded Kasman “traitorous scum,” a “turncoat,” who became “the adopted confidential informant of the FBI,” who is a “perjurer, thief and traitor” who turned on his father… and the Gotti family by slipping false information to the Feds.

After the elder Gotti died, Kasman got in trouble with the law, and he became a confidential informant for the FBI, taping conversations with mobsters and, at one time it turned out, Mr. Gotti’s wife as she recovered from a stroke.

Eric Shawn talks with Lewis Kasman about his years alongside John Gotti for the new Fox Nation show “Gotti’s Guy.” (Fox News)

“What infuriated me about Kasman,” Gotti’s son wrote, was “that he had recorded my mother on a visit with her, shortly after her stroke. She was recovering from brain surgery, and had been sedated. As directed by the FBI, are there no limits to what these low lives will do at the behest of their government masters? No.”

Kasman admits he was directed by the FBI to secretly tape the younger Gotti, but says he wound up inadvertently wearing the wire on the visit to his mother. 

“It was a mistake,” he now says and deeply regrets it.

In 1996, Kasman served six months in federal prison after pleading guilty to lying to a grand jury investigating the Gambino crime family.

In 2010, Kasman again pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to time served for obstruction of justice and money laundering. Gotti’s eldest daughter, Angela, was quoted as calling him “a piece of s—,” saying “somebody’s got all my father’s money. He was the one holding it.”

Lewis Kasman, right, describes his relationship with John Gotti in the Fox Nation documentary “Gotti’s Guy,” now streaming on Fox Nation. (Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection, Gerald Herbert/NY Daily News via Getty Images)

Kasman now resides in Florida and leads a quiet life away from the streets of the city that were once Gotti’s turf.

As for missing those halcyon days and the intense public interest surrounding Gotti, he is now wistful.

“I don’t miss it,” he says. “I miss him.” 

“Gotti’s Guy” is now streaming on Fox Nation. Also, watch the second season of “Stories of the American Mafia” on Fox Nation.

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In a courtroom in Nyon, Switzerland, disturbing allegations have emerged involving a nurse who once cared for Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher. The nurse claims she awoke in agony on blood-stained sheets, following an alleged sexual assault by Australian racing driver Joey Mawson.

This incident, which Mawson is currently standing trial for, reportedly took place in November 2019 at Schumacher’s estate in Gland, near Geneva. Mawson is accused of raping the nurse twice during the night at the 56-year-old racing icon’s residence.

Joey Mawson, however, has strongly denied these accusations, maintaining that the encounter was entirely consensual. The trial has brought to light the events of that evening, where Mawson was said to have been in the company of several of Schumacher’s employees. During this gathering, it was reported that the nurse consumed a significant amount of alcohol.

The accused vehemently denies the allegations, and previously stated that the sex was consensual. 

During the trial on Tuesday, the court heard that Mawson spent the evening with several of Schumacher’s employees, during which the nurse consumed a substantial amount of alcohol. 

According to the indictment, she became so intoxicated that she was unable to stand, fell to the floor and was carried to her room, fully clothed, by staff. 

Prosecutors allege that the rape later took place in that room. 

When the nurse woke up she was naked, and allegedly could not remember what had happened.

Mawson (pictured) is said to have raped the nurse twice in a bedroom at the 56-year-old German star’s mansion in Gland, near Geneva, on November 23, 2019

The alleged attack took place in Schumacher’s mansion (pictured) in Gland, Switzerland

She then noticed blood on her bedsheets and felt pain in her vaginal and anal areas.

The nurse told the court that she asked a fellow employee what had happened, and he confirmed she had been carried up to her room and they had sent Mawson to check on her.

The employee seemed to think nothing had occurred, but when she asked Mawson, he allegedly confirmed something had happened. 

Mawson explained in court that he had spent the night at the nurse’s apartment, claiming he stayed there until dawn because he ‘didn’t want the employees to know about the intimate moment we had together.’

He added: ‘I hadn’t realized how drunk I actually was. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realised how drunk I had been. 

‘During the night, I had assumed she was less drunk than I realised the next morning.’

In his testimony Mawson insisted that the nurse had been ‘flirtatious’ and had instigated kissing and that they had ‘touched each other’s genitals’.

He added: ‘She was not intoxicated, she was alert and conscious, she was flirting and she managed to get her leg on the pool table.

‘You could see from her body language she was being flirtatious. I knocked on her room and she invited me in.’

Mawson said that two videos which were provided to the court but not shown and timed at 1015 and midnight on the evening the offences are said to have happened, proved that the nurse was ‘being flirtatious’.

He told the court that when he heard of the allegations against him, he had texted the nurse and apologised saying: ‘I’m sorry for any emotional damage and physical pain I caused you.’

Prosecution read out text messages that Mawson had sent the nurse, which also said: ‘I’m so sorry from the bottom of my heart.’

When asked by trial judge Patricia Cornaz why he had done so, he replied:’ Because I was overwhelmed by the accusations against me. It was the gentlemanly thing to do but I had done nothing wrong.’ 

The trial was initially opened in October 2025, but Mawson failed to show up.

In his absence, the rape trial was formally opened, but then adjourned to ‘a date to be fixed’.

Mawson is a close friend of Schumacher’s son, Mick Schumacher, 26, and also a driver.

He frequently stayed with the Schumacher family between races to avoid long return flights to Australia. 

Michael Schumacher (pictured) suffered catastrophic brain injuries during the skiing accident in the French Alps in 2013, and hasn’t been seen in public since 

The complainant was part of a medical team providing assistance to Schumacher, the seven-time F1 champion, who has not been seen in public since a 2013 ski accident.

The court heard that in 2021, two years after the alleged attack, the woman had been fired from the Schumacher residence and had later started a grievance complaint.

Mawson said that when he heard of the allegations against him he had discussed them with Schumacher’s son Mick who had also told him the nurse had been sacked.

He added:’ Mick asked me if I had any videos and I told him about the ones from the party in 2019 I had and I gave them to him.’

Later the nurse was asked to recall what happened to her and breaking down in tears she told the court: ‘I had worked for the family for six years and that night I had been working six days non stop. I was very tired and I had had nothing to eat.

‘When I later asked Joey if anything had happened that night, he said “Yes”. I contacted my doctor and I was then referred to another doctor at the university hospital.

‘I didn’t immediately tell the Schumacher family what had happened. I coudn’t remember anything from the night, I had to ask one of the other staff at the house.

‘They said I was drunk and that Joey had carried me to my room, I woke up naked and when I first contacted Joey to ask him if anything had happened he said “No” but then later said “Yes”.’

After a break for lunch Mawson was asked by the judge how his career was going and he replied: ‘It’s on hold.’

The Schumacher family are otherwise uninvolved in the case, and were not listed as witnesses in the case at the Nyon District Court.

The accused has admitted a ‘consensual relationship’ with the woman, who is in her 30s, and he says he has the phone messages to prove it.

He also says the woman only complained about him two years after the alleged attack, after the Schumacher family had fired her from her job.

No complaint was received from the alleged victim until January 2022, and the defendant cooperated during the initial stages of the investigation.

The nurse had worked for the Schumacher family for six years, and belonged to their ‘inner circle of trust,’ according to her lawyer, Patrick Michod.

‘In all those years, there was never even the slightest accusation against her,’ he told the court during today’s trial.

Michod spoke of a ‘brutal dismissal’ in 2020 and questioned the official reason for termination.

He said the nurse experienced this dismissal ‘like a second act of violence.’

The trial today is scheduled to finish at 6pm local time.