(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
St. Louis 7, Kansas City 2
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Cleveland 11, Detroit 0
Boston 6, Baltimore 2
Texas 7, Oakland 4
Minnesota 5, Tampa Bay 4
NY Yankees 5, Chi White Sox 3
LA Angels 3, Houston 1
Toronto 8, Seattle 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Milwaukee 2, Pittsburgh 1
Atlanta 6, Washington 5
Miami 4, Chi Cubs 1
Cincinnati 7, Philadelphia 4
San Francisco 5, Colorado 2
San Diego 8, Arizona 2
LA Dodgers 14, NY Mets 4
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE PRESEASON
Indianapolis 21, Carolina 18
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Connecticut 80, Dallas 59
Chicago 87, Seattle 85 (OT)
Phoenix 92, Atlanta 81
Las Vegas 84, Washington 83
Minnesota 88, New York 78
Los Angeles 75, Indiana 70
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Atlanta 1, Los Angeles FC 0
Chicago 1, Columbus 0
Nashville 5, D.C. United 2
Seattle 6, Portland 2
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Friday’s sports events:
INTERLEAGUE BASEBALL
Final St. Louis 6 Kansas City 0
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Final Cleveland 7 Detroit 4
Final Boston 8 Baltimore 1
Final Texas 8 Oakland 6
Final Tampa Bay 10 Minnesota 4
Final Houston 4 L.A. Angels 1
Final Seattle 3 Toronto 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Final Cincinnati 6 Philadelphia 1
Final Atlanta 4 Washington 2
Final Miami 14 Chicago Cubs 10
Final L.A. Dodgers 6 N.Y. Mets 5
Final Arizona 3 San Diego 2
Final San Francisco 5 Colorado 4
Milwaukee at Pittsburgh 2:30 p.m. (Postponed)
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE PRESEASON
Final Buffalo 16 Detroit 15
Final Tennessee 23 Atlanta 3
Final Arizona 19 Dallas 16
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Final tie Vancouver 0 San Jose 0
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Oakland 17, Cleveland 0
Seattle 3, Texas 1
Detroit 6, Baltimore 4
Tampa Bay 8, Boston 1
Chi White Sox 9, NY Yankees 8
LA Angels 6, Toronto 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
NY Mets 4, Washington 1
NY Mets 5, Washington 4
St. Louis 7, Pittsburgh 6
Philadelphia 2,LA Dodgers 1
Milwaukee 17, Chi Cubs 4
Cincinnati 12, Atlanta 3
San Francisco 7, Colorado 0
Arizona 12, San Diego 3
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Seattle 79, Connecticut 57
(DYERSVILLE, Iowa) — It was built, and on Thursday night the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees are coming to Dyersville, Iowa to play a historic game.
The ballpark, newly constructed for this event, is located on the Lansing Family Farm, the filming site for the movie Field of Dreams. It features a corn maze behind the right field fence, and a manually operated scoreboard and bullpens behind the center-field wall, meant to resemble old Comiskey Park, where the White Sox played.
Originally scheduled for 2020, the game was pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tickets to the game were sold via a public lottery. Winners of that lottery were informed earlier this month, and were given the chance to buy up to two tickets and one parking pass.
On ticket resale site StubHub, the cheapest ticket available for the game as of Thursday morning was selling for $1,100.
(BALTIMORE) — Detroit Tigers star Miguel Cabrera moved one step closer to a major milestone on Wednesday night, bashing the 499th home run of his big league career.
Cabrera launched the homer off of Baltimore Orioles starter Matt Harvey, giving the Tigers a 1-0 lead on Wednesday. Detroit would go on to win the game 5-2.
With just 12 home runs this season, Cabrera’s run to 500 had slowed considerably. He hadn’t hit a home run in over a week.
While there was some expectation that Cabrera would sit out Thursday’s game, the team’s last on their current road trip, so that he could attempt to reach the mark at home, the team says it has decided against that.
“He’s playing,” manager A.J. Hinch said Wednesday night before being asked. “I’ve talked to him, and we’re not going to test baseball fate. We really want him to hit it whenever he’s supposed to hit it. Maybe it’s [Thursday], maybe it’s not.”
Cabrera would become the 28th player in major league history to reach 500 home runs, and the first from his native country of Venezuela.
A two-time MVP and 11-time All-Star, Cabrera’s production has dipped in recent years. Still, he continues to chase multiple milestones. In addition to 500 home runs, Cabrera is also just 50 hits away from 3,000 for his career.
(NEW YORK) — Fresh off a run of success in North American competitions, the United States Men’s National Soccer Team earned the number ten spot in FIFA’s latest world rankings.
The U.S. beat Mexico 1-0 in the final of CONCACAF’s Gold Cup earlier this month, leading to a ten-place rise on the official list.
The squad conceded just one goal in six matches in the Gold Cup, winning all six. They also won five of six games in the CONCACAF Nations League.
FIFA’s World Rankings will play a key role in next year’s World Cup. If the U.S. remains in the top 10, it would have a chance of being seeded, getting a more favorable draw, and avoid having to play other nations within the top 10.
The U.S. has not been among the top 10 in FIFA’s rankings since the 2006 World Cup.
Just above the U.S. in the rankings, Mexico placed number nine. They have been the top-ranked team in CONCACAF since February 2017.
Atop the rankings, FIFA identifies Belgium as the best team. Following them, Copa America runners up Brazil rank second, France sits third, and Euro Champs Italy is in fifth. Euro runners up England sit one spot ahead of Italy in fourth.
The next update to the rankings will be published in September.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Houston 5, Colorado 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Minnesota 1, Chi White Sox 0
NY Yankees 5, Kansas City 2
Detroit 5, Baltimore 2
Oakland 6, Cleveland 3
Boston 20, Tampa Bay 8
Toronto 10, LA Angels 2
Seattle 2, Texas 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Miami 7, San Diego 0
NY Mets 8 Washington 7
St. Louis 4, Pittsburgh 0
LA Dodgers 8, Philadelphia 2
Milwaukee 10, Chi Cubs 0
Atlanta 8, Cincinnati 6
San Francisco 7, Arizona 2
(NEW YORK) — Two defendants indicted in a massive racehorse doping scandal in New York have have pleaded guilty.
Thoroughbred trainer Jorge Navarro and the head of a New York veterinary clinic, Kristian Rhein, were among more than two dozen people charged in a widespread scheme that prosecutors have alleged endangered horses, cheated bettors at tracks across the country and upended thoroughbred racing.
The scheme, which allegedly began in 2017, was designed to deceive regulators and horse racing officials regarding the use of performance-enhancing drugs, prosecutors said, after the indictment was filed in the Southern District of New York in March 2020.
The plot allegedly was orchestrated by veterinarian Louis Grasso, who “manufactured, purchased, sold, shipped, delivered, received and administered at least thousands of units of PEDs issues by pharmacies pursuant to invalid prescriptions provided by veterinarians participating in the scheme,” according to court documents. At least one horse died as a result.
Navarro and Rhein pleaded guilty to their roles in the distribution of adulterated and misbranded drugs. They will be sentenced in December.
Navarro has agreed to pay more than $25 million in restitution, reflecting winnings obtained through his fraudulent doping scheme, and Rhein has agreed to pay restitution of more than $700,000 in connection with fraud committed through a false billing practice.
“Kristian Rhein and Jorge Navarro represent the supply side and the customer side of the market in performance enhancing substances that have corrupted much of the horse racing industry,” said U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. “As he admitted today, Navarro, a licensed trainer and the purported ‘winner’ of major races across the world, was in fact a reckless fraudster whose veneer of success relied on the systematic abuse of the animals under his control.”
Rhein also “flouted his oath as a veterinarian” to profit through the sale and administration of unregulated substances used by trainers engaged in fraud and animal abuse, prosecutors said.
Navarro operated his doping scheme covertly, importing misbranded “clenbuterol” that he both used and distributed to others, avoiding explicit discussion of performance-enhancing drugs during telephone calls and worked with others to coordinate the administration of PEDs at times that racing officials would not detect such cheating, according to the indictment.
Among the horses that Navarro trained and doped was XY Jet, a thoroughbred that won the 2019 Golden Shaheen race in Dubai. Navarro’s preferred PEDs included various “blood building” drugs, which, when administered before intense physical exertion, can lead to cardiac issues or death, the indictment said.
Navarro also assisted in doping Maximum Security, briefly the winner of the 2019 Kentucky Derby before being disqualified. On June 5, 2019, New Jersey racing regulators tested Maximum Security for performance enhancing drugs a short time after the horse had received a shot of SGF-1000, one of the misbranded or adulterated drugs, according to prosecutors.
In an intercepted call following that test, Rhein said, “[t]hey don’t even have a test for [SGF-1000],” according to court documents. “… There’s no test for it in America.”
Jason Kreiss, an attorney for Navarro, said in an emailed statement to ABC News that he “has accepted responsibility for his actions and looks forward to moving on with his life.” A lawyer for Rhein didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A former sales representative for a Kentucky company that marketed SGF-1000 pleaded guilty last month to drug adulteration and misbranding of drugs charges related to the scheme.
SGF-1000 was not approved, was mislabeled and distributed without a valid prescription, assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Mortazavi said in a plea hearing for Michael Kegley.
Federal investigators intercepted calls during which Kegley acknowledged he did not know the precise contents of SGF-1000, according to the indictment. Kegley also was overheard explaining that trainers could be charged with felonies in the U.S. for doping horses.
Kegley conspired with trainers, veterinarians and others to make misbranded drugs, secretly administer them to racehorses and cheat bettors in the $100 billion global racehorse industry, prosecutors said.
When asked by a judge whether he knew that trainers intended to use the drugs on thoroughbred racehorses last month, Kegley replied, “Yes, your honor.”
Kegley has agreed to forfeit more than $3 million and faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
(WACO, Texas) — The NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions levied punishments against Baylor University on Wednesday, following the conclusion of its investigation into several alleged rules violations.
According to a news release, the committee determined that Baylor provided impermissible benefits to student-athletes and violated recruiting rules between 2011 and 2016. They could not, however, conclude whether Baylor had violated NCAA rules when it failed to report allegations of sexual violence on its campus.
“Baylor admitted to moral and ethical failings in its handling of sexual and interpersonal violence on campus,” the panel said in its decision, “but argued those failings, however egregious, did not constitute violations of NCAA rules.”
“Ultimately, and with tremendous reluctance, this panel agrees.”
The NCAA panel says that while the organization provides resources to support member institutions in carrying out the responsibilities of reporting and addressing sexual violence on campus as required by the U.S. Department of Education, current NCAA rules don’t call for their adjudication of how schools respond to such issues. Still, the panel quotes one former university president as saying Baylor’s handling of sexual violence was a “colossal operational failure.”
Baylor was accused of shielding football student-athletes from disciplinary processes and failed to report allegations of misconduct by football student-athletes.
The panel did find that one student-athlete who had been suspended for plagiarism had been required to submit to an academic performance plan, but later was caught cheating on an in-class quiz. That incident, they say, was not reported to the university president as a failure to live up to that performance plan.
The school also was found to have used a “predominantly female student-host group, the Baylor Bruins” to recruit football student-athletes. While the group eventually allowed membership for men, the panel says it was “geared toward female participants.”
“The gender-based nature of this group is especially concerning in light of the campus-wise cultural issues…as well as the extremely troubling assertions…that the Bruins were ‘kind of at the disposal of football players in a very inappropriate way.'”
Among the penalties the NCAA panel will levy are a $5,000 fine, four years of probation, more stringent recruiting restrictions. The school must also vacate all records from contests in which ineligible student-athletes participated.
(PARIS) — In his first press conference as a player for Paris Saint-Germain, soccer star Lionel Messi says he is hoping to win the UEFA Champions League for a fifth time.
Messi officially signed with PSG on Tuesday, inking a two-year deal with an option to continue with the club for an additional season. Sources told ESPN’s Julien Laurens that he will earn $35-41 million per year.
Messi’s departure from FC Barcelona came as a surprise to many, after he spent his entire professional career with that club. At his Wednesday press conference, Messi called it “very tough” to leave Barca.
“As soon as I arrived here I was so happy, so motivated, so excited,” Messi said. “My goal and my dream is to win the Champions League once more. I think that we have the team to do it here.”
Messi will join PSG stars Neymar and Mbappe, something he expressed great pleasure about.
“I am very happy. It’s crazy. I’m going to play with the best players in the world, and that’s always good.”
Messi had voiced his desire to remain with Barcelona, but the club failed to register his five-year contract due to what they cited as financial complications. The deal Messi had agreed to would have put Barcelona well above the rules La Liga holds on how much money a club can spend on players compared to their revenue.
Messi scored 672 goals in 778 matches for Barcelona, winning La Liga 10 times, the Copa dey Rey seven times, and the Champions League four times. He won his first major international competition this summer, helping his native Argentina to the Copa America title.
