(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
LA Angels 10, Philadelphia 8
Toronto 7, Washington 0
Tampa Bay 3, Miami 0
NY Mets 6, Texas 5
Pittsburgh 4, Kansas City 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Chi White Sox 10, Baltimore 5
Cleveland 5, Minnesota 2
Seattle 5, Oakland 4
Houston 7, Boston 4
NY Yankees 6, Detroit 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE
LA Dodgers 7, Arizona 0
Chi Cubs 3, Milwaukee 2
St. Louis 5, San Diego 4
Cincinnati 4, San Francisco 1
Atlanta 7, Colorado 3
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Cincinnati 2, Atlanta 1
Orlando City 1, Charlotte FC 1 (Tie)
Nashville 0, Miami 0 (Tie)
New England 1, New York 0
New York City FC 2, CF Montreal 0
Toronto FC 3, Philadelphia 1
Seattle 2, Austin FC 1
Vancouver 1, Chicago 0
Houston 2, Columbus 0
Minnesota 3, Colorado 0
Saint Louis City SC 2, FC Dallas 1
Portland 2, Real Salt Lake 1
LA Galaxy 3, San Jose 2
(NEW YORK) — Autopsy results on former American swimming champion Jamie Cail reveal her sudden death this year at her residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands was caused by an accidental drug overdose, authorities said.
Toxicology results from the autopsy found that the 42-year-old Cail, who was originally from New Hampshire, died of “fentanyl intoxication with aspiration of gastric content,” according to the U.S. Virgin Islands Police Department.
“Manner of death is Accidental,” the police department said in a statement, citing an Aug. 22 report from the medical examiner’s office.
Further details on Cail’s death were not released by police, including whether Cail purposely ingested the fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, or if her system was exposed to the drug in some other manner.
The police department’s Criminal Investigation Bureau launched a probe following Cail’s death in St. John.
Cail’s boyfriend, whose name was withheld by police, told investigators he found Cail unresponsive after he left a bar and went back to their residence to check on her just after midnight on Feb. 21, according to police.
“Upon his arrival, he discovered his girlfriend on the floor,” police said in an initial statement released shortly after Cail’s death.
The boyfriend told police that he and a friend immediately rushed Cail to the Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center, where she was pronounced dead, police said.
Cail was originally from Claremont, New Hampshire, and was a star swimmer for much of her youth, her family told ABC affiliate station WMUR in Manchester.
As a teenager, Cail was a member of a relay team that won a gold medal at the 1997 Pan Pacific Championships, according to SwimSwam.com, an online swimming news site.
She was also a member of the women’s swim team at the University of Maine in the 2000-2001 academic year, according to the school’s alumni association.
(LONDON) — A second week into the backlash that followed the non-consensual kiss between Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) President Luis Rubiales and player Jenni Hermoso, the world of Spanish soccer is still shaken and seeking accountability.
Protests and reactions to the kiss continue, with worries that the controversy will negatively affect Spain’s reputation, and its efforts to host the World Cup in 2030.
“This is not about political left or right. With his behavior, Rubiales undermined not only Jenni’s dignity but that of Spain as well,” La Liga President Javier Tebas wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known Twitter. La Liga is Spain’s premier men’s soccer league.
Spanish tennis star and 2023 Wimbledon men’s singles champion Carlos Alcaraz also criticized Rubiales in comments after winning his first-round match at the US Open. “My opinion is that it is not the behavior that someone in a high position should have,” Alcaraz said Wednesday. “That’s the only opinion that I am going to give on the matter and we hope it is resolved soon because the women’s team has achieved something historic and they have not been given as much credit for what they’ve done, and it’s a shame.”
Rubiales kissed Hermoso following the Spanish women’s soccer team’s first-ever World Cup victory on August 20, when they defeated England 1-0 in Sydney, Australia. Rubiales grabbed Hermoso’s head in both of his hands during the post-match medal ceremony and kissed her on the mouth.
Amid the growing criticism, Rubiales’ mother, Ángeles Béjar, continued her hunger strike for the third day, barricaded in the Divina Pastora de Motril church near Granada. “I don’t care to die for justice,” she said on Tuesday. “My son is a decent person and what they are doing to him is not fair.”
Meanwhile, a video surfaced online Wednesday, showing Jenni Hermoso and her teammates hours after the World Cup match as they commented on images of the kiss, which were already circulating on social media.
“Like Iker and Sara,” Hermoso said in the video, referring to the famous kiss between world champion men’s soccer star Iker Casillas and journalist Sara Carbonero after Spain won the World Cup in 2010.
“Kiss! Kiss!” those on the bus then chanted as Rubiales boarded the vehicle.
“Stop, I am getting embarrassed,” Rubiales replied, just before the video ends.
Both Rubiales and Hermoso spoke about the episode last week, once the winning team returned to Madrid. Rubiales held a press conference on Friday at RFEF headquarters, saying multiple times he was not going to resign because what he called the “little kiss” was consensual. For her part, Hermoso followed with a statement in which she reiterated that the kiss was not consensual, and maintained that her World Cup-winning team deserved better.
The RFEF stood by its president, threatening legal action against Hermoso until Saturday, when FIFA, the governing body of international football, announced that Rubiales would be suspended for 90 days, pending disciplinary proceedings.
Then, following an emergency meeting on Monday, the RFEF asked for Rubiales’ resignation. “After the latest events and the unacceptable behaviors that have seriously damaged the image of Spanish football, the presidents request that Mr. Luis Rubiales immediately present his resignation as president of the RFEF,” the statement declared. The RFEF also withdrew earlier threats to leave the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) if Rubiales was removed.
Jorge Vilda, the Spanish national women’s football team head coach and a longstanding ally of Rubiales who supported him during his “I will not resign” speech Friday, issued a statement the following day in which he said, in part, “I regret deeply that the victory of Spanish women’s football has been harmed by the inappropriate behavior that our, until now, top leader, Luis Rubiales, has carried out and that he himself has recognized.”
However, Vilda has not called on Rubiales to resign, nor did Vilda address increasing calls for him to resign because of his continued support of Rubiales. Pressure for Vilda to step down intensified with the resignation of his coaching staff Monday, in support of team members who vowed last week not to play as long as Rubiales remained RFEF president.
Vilda has his own complicated relationship with the players, after 15 members of his team wrote an open letter to RFEF in September of last year complaining about the coach. The RFEF then sided with Vilda.
Support for Hermoso manifested over the weekend with mass resignations of players and Spain’s national team staff, as well as crowds of protestors and social media posts with the hashtags #ContigoJenni and #SeAcabó, meaning “With you Jenni” and “It’s over,” respectively.
(NEW YORK) — As the U.S. Open kicks off this week, legendary tennis star Billie Jean King is taking a look back at how the landscape of women’s sports has evolved since she dominated the tennis court five decades ago.
The former No. 1 player was honored in New York Monday on the first day of the Open, where former first lady Michelle Obama introduced the trailblazing pro in a celebration of the tournament’s commitment to equal pay for all of its athletes.
“Billie Jean teaches us that when things lie in the balance, we all have a choice to make. We can either wait around and accept what we’re given, we can sit silently and hope that someone else fights our battles, or we can make our own stand,” Obama said.
A pioneer in her own right, King, 79, spoke to ABC News’ Good Morning America about the changes she has helped enact over the years and the ongoing fight for equal rights.
On fighting for equality 50 years after the Battle of the Sexes
King faced off against the late Bobby Riggs, also a former No. 1 tennis pro, on Sept. 20, 1973, in an exhibition match held in Houston that was dubbed the “Battle of the Sexes.” King would emerge victorious, winning the game in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3 and 6-3.
King reflected on the match while viewing a photograph of herself returning a shot from Riggs, who was the favorite going into the match and whom King described as a “male chauvinist.” (Going into the match, Riggs had reportedly declared women’s tennis to be inferior to men’s tennis and had reportedly stated his confidence that he would defeat King. He had also stated that he would emerge victorious from the match because women didn’t have the “emotional stability” to win.)
“This is at the Astrodome in 1973, Sept. 20, and I was playing … Bobby Riggs, who won the Triple Crown in Wimbledon in 1939 before World War II, and I look like I’m on the defense here but I was actually on the offense. I won, so that’s what I remember,” King recalled.
King said after her big televised win, Riggs went up and spoke to her on the court.
“When we got the net after the match, he said, ‘I underestimated you,'” King said. “And I couldn’t wait to see my dad because he always told my brother and me … ‘Always respect your opponent, even if you don’t like them.’ I really respected Bobby.”
Five decades after the Battle of the Sexes, King said female athletes still have to fight for fair opportunities.
“Today’s battle continues to be to fight for equality,” King said.
King applauded the progress made, including 50 years of equal prize money at the U.S. Open and the passage in 1972 of Title IX, the federal legislation that bans discrimination on the basis of sex and laid the foundation for girls’ and women’s sports in schools.
She said Title IX led to the current state of women’s sports.
“We’re now at a tipping point where people are investing in us and believing in us because they think we’re going to make money,” King said. “We have to keep working harder and harder because we have a long way to go.”
The fight for equality is one King said she has taken seriously throughout the years, alongside her drive to excel professionally.
“I remember just believing in myself enough to win and [knowing] that this was more about social change and everybody else in the world, not just about me — I usually do better when it’s bigger than myself,” King said. “I remember thinking that if I could just win, maybe this will help things get better for everybody and more about equality for everyone.”
On blazing a trail for a new generation of tennis stars
In September 2018, Naomi Osaka took home her first U.S. Open win, defeating tennis icon Serena Williams. King was photographed with the champion and runner-up and called it an “honor” to share the court with the tennis stars.
“This shows you how each generation of players have made a difference. I mean, Serena is giving back. She’s investing now. She and her husband [Alexis Ohanian] are worth a lot of money. She’s investing in women, and particularly women of color. She just had her second baby. So exciting,” King said of Williams.
“Osaka, I think, brought mental health to everyone’s attention and I love the way she stands up for communities,” King added. “They’re freer to do this now too. Society has changed. … You couldn’t quite do it the same way in the ’70s, for instance. So, I’m so happy [with] the progress we’re making, but also [know] how much progress we have to make in the future.”
King said the professional sports arena is uniquely positioned to level the metaphorical playing field.
“That’s where sports is an equalizer and sports [helps] with relationships, because relationships are everything,” King said. “It’s really important. And also, Osaka always looked up to Serena … her she-ro, her hero, so there’s a lot going on here when I see this, from the past, the present and the future.”
On blazing a trail for the LGBTQ+ community
In 2018, King also served as grand marshal at the annual New York City Pride March, a milestone event where she said she finally felt “free.” King had been married previously during her professional tennis career to the late Larry King but they later divorced in 1987. She was publicly outed as a lesbian in 1981 and today, she’s known as a prominent LGBTQ+ activist.
“When I was growing up, you didn’t talk about anything. So, everything was kept inside you all the time and you couldn’t really talk about things,” King said of her experience before she came out. “They told me not to talk about what I was feeling or thinking and trying to figure out who I was, that we wouldn’t even have a tour if I talked about it.”
“Also, I lost all my endorsements when I was outed and had to start over [with] my life. And so, here I’m free, I’m myself and I made it, and I want this for everyone,” King said, referring to a photo of her at the Pride parade.
Earlier this August, The Stonewall Inn officially designated the U.S. Open as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community. King said the move symbolized “how tennis cares.”
“I just love it when everybody can be who they want to be and they’re free to be who they want to be, and I think that’s major in life,” the retired tennis pro said. “When someone’s free, they also are more productive. They have a better life. They’re able to give more, be able to do more in this world, so it just all goes hand in hand.”
(NEW YORK) — Coco Gauff earned a hard-fought round one comeback win over German qualifier Laura Siegemund in Flushing, New York at the U.S. Open on Monday night to advance to the second round.
Laura Siegemund falls to Coco Gauff at US Open
The No. 6 seed began her bid for the final Grand Slam of 2023 with a first-set loss, followed by her taking the next two sets for a 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 win.
But Gauff vocalized frustrations on the court about her opponent who repeatedly went over the time limit when she served.
“She’s never ready when I’m serving, she went over to talk like four times … how is this fair?” Gauff questioned the chair umpire on the court mid-match.
By the middle of the third set, Gauff had enough, telling the umpire, “It’s not like we’re having two 30-ball rallies. It’s two balls … I’m going a normal speed.”
When the head umpire eventually called a second time violation against Siegemund, Gauff earned a free point to go up 5-1 in the final set.
“She is serving extremely fast and one time I go to the towel,” Siegemund said. “So I can’t go to the towel at all anymore?” she posited to the umpire as the crowd roared, rallying for Gauff.
The 35-year-old, who is ranked No. 121, didn’t give up without a fight and won three more games in a row before Gauff closed out the third set.
When asked to describe what it was like playing the match, Gauff responded on court, “Slow.”
Gauff is looking to surpass her quarterfinal finish from last year, though it did push her into the top 10 for the first time in her career.
Recently, Gauff has attributed her success to a surge in confidence in her own game and ability to trust herself even when she’s not feeling in top form.
Who is Laura Siegemund?
Sigemund entered the year-end Grand Slam second in the WTA for first-serve percentage of 75.8%.
Against Gauff, Siegemund’s first-serve percentage stood at 80% and she finished the match winning 33 of 53 net points.
Djokovic off to smooth start in round one straight-sets win
Following Gauff, Novak Djokovic won a late-night match in straight sets that wrapped up shortly before 1 a.m.
“These children should go to sleep … but adults, adults you can stay,” Djokovic said on the court with a laugh.
Djokovic, whose last U.S. Open title came in 2018, is coming in hot off of a thrilling Cincinnati title that was the result of a three-set final victory over Wimbledon winner Carlos Alcaraz.
(NEW YORK) — For Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning, returning to the New York Giants’ practice facility is always special.
The two joined the legendary NFL team as head coach and quarterback, respectively, in 2004. Their 12 seasons together resulted in two Super Bowl titles and countless memories along the way.
Now, they’re teaming up, not for football, but for September’s Child Cancer Awareness Month. While cancer in children and adolescents is rare, it’s one of the leading causes of death by disease past infancy for children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ahead of next month, Coughlin and Manning filmed a promotional video for their campaign, themed around teamwork, urging viewers to take a selfie with people they lean on and post it with the hashtag #ShowUsYourTeam.
“When you have cancer, you’re not going through it alone, and you’re not going to beat it alone,” Manning told ABC News. “You’re going to need a team of support from your family, your friends, your community, your nurses and doctors in the hospital.”
Since 2015, Manning has partnered with Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey for the initiative “Tackle Childhood Cancer,” which raises money for pediatric cancer research and patient care programs. He represented the cause on the field for NFL’s “My Cause My Cleats” campaign for four seasons from 2016 to 2019. Manning’s work with the charity, in part, helped him earn the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award for 2016-17.
“It started with going to visit the children in the hospital, try to lift their spirits. And it just became, what else can I do? How else can I be helpful? How can I make a bigger impact? And now, you know, eight years later, I’ve raised over $20 million,” Manning said.
Manning credits Coughlin with being the one to inspire him to give back. While Manning’s charity work has focused on cancer research, Coughlin’s Jay Fund works on supporting families, especially with financial help.
“A form of medication may cost a family over $200,000 in one year, OK? And you think about, 87% of families find that their income is depleted,” Coughlin said.
The Jay Fund is named after Jay McGillis, a former defensive back who played for Coughlin at Boston College and passed away in 1992 after a battle with leukemia.
“At that point in time, having gone through it with his family, I knew if I ever had a chance to give back, this was how I would give back,” Coughlin said.
Over three decades later, Coughlin says he still thinks of McGillis while doing this work.
Visiting with patients and families now, it’s hard not to get attached, Coughlin said.
“They’re just little guys going through something that, God forbid, you wouldn’t want anybody to go through,” Coughlin said.
Both Coughlin and Manning also know that making a difference can take many forms, including just showing up. Coughlin recalls Manning meeting with a young boy with cancer shortly before he died.
“His dad said that that was the greatest thing that ever happened to that little boy, was spending a half an hour with Eli Manning,” Coughlin said.
“I remember it. I remember it well,” Manning added. “You feel for, obviously, the kid. You feel for the families, the parents. I know how I feel when one of my kids has the flu, let alone cancer. And you want to do anything to help.”
With their latest initiative, Manning and Coughlin hope to leverage their teamwork and combined platforms to get help to those who need it.
“I think we’ll be able to have a big impact, raise a lot of awareness and continue to help more families that are dealing with cancer,” Manning said.
(NEW YORK) — Two years ago, a blowout high school football loss that aired on ESPN raised widespread skepticism about the legitimacy of Ohio-based Bishop Sycamore High School.
National powerhouse IMG Academy won 58-0, and ESPN broadcasters quickly noted the mismatch and commented on it during the game, citing player safety, ESPN reported at the time. As the game unfolded, commentators also said they became suspicious when information about the team and its players was hard to come by.
Now, a new HBO documentary, BS High tells the story of what was going on behind the scenes leading up to the televised game and the subsequent fraud it exposed. Director Travon Free spoke to ABC News’ Jay O’Brien about the film and why interviewing the players was the “one of the hardest things” he’s ever had to do.
O’BRIEN: You talk to a lot of people for this documentary. You talk to players and students and parents and community members. You even talk to the coach. He was a central part in all of this. How did you get him to talk to you?
FREE: Honestly, it’s hard to get Roy [Johnson] not to talk, if you really think about it. He actually came to us after me and Martin – my co-director, Martin Desmond Rowe – saw the game like everybody else. And Martin happened to be friends with a guy who works for [Michael] Strahan’s production company, Ethan Lewis.
And Ethan called up Martin and was like, “Hey, we have the coach and he wants to talk. Are you guys interested in directing this movie, potentially?” And so we got on the phone with Roy and, after like 5 minutes, we were like, “Absolutely, we have to do this.”
O’BRIEN: He’s a talker?
FREE: Very much.
O’BRIEN: So, we learn a lot about the students, too, in this film – their stories and their dreams. In a lot of those cases, these were upended by the events of this team. What was it like hearing what they went through?
FREE: You know, that was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, just probably in life, too, to sit across from these kids and hear them tell the stories of this really heartbreaking and painful experience they went through. Because as directors, we also had to get them to a place where they were willing to talk about it in a vulnerable way, because they weren’t initially.
They were very hardened and, you know, hurt by it, and they didn’t want to talk about it. They wanted to keep that pushed down and keep it away and try to move forward. And we were asking them to go back to a time in their lives, where something that was so important to them was taken away.
O’BRIEN: And does it have ripple effects to a lot of these guys now?
FREE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, a lot of them found themselves in the position where, had they gone to a real school or played for a real coach in that time frame that they had to actually play football? They might have actually landed somewhere. They might not have necessarily landed at an Alabama or an LSU or something like that, but they would have actually had a shot.
Playing for Roy meant they had no shot. There was just no way that was going to work out for them, because there was no school, so there was no eligibility. So you were basically playing for nothing.
O’BRIEN: You talk about the school. A lot of people figured out pretty quickly that this school was a fraud, pretty quickly into that game against IMG. But also in the film, there are forged checks, assaults and killing geese. I’m looking at it here, everything that’s in it. I mean, was there anything that stood out to you and surprised you?
FREE: You know, the geese story was definitely surprising. I did not see that coming until Pahokee started telling that story. And we thought that there’s no way Roy [Johnson] is going to admit to doing this. And as you see in the movie, he does immediately.
But I mean, it was also kind of surprising to see just how far the tentacles of his manipulation spread. Because it wasn’t just manipulating the kids, because a lot of people think and I’ve seen people say like, ‘Oh, well, like the parents are dumb and to blame. How could they let their kids? How could they fall for this?”
And when you watch the film, you get to see and hear how [Johnson] lied to them, too. And as a parent, you’re trying to protect your child’s dreams, right? But you’re also trying to protect your child from danger, from predators. And so when a predator shows up who’s specifically preying on your child’s dream, it’s even more difficult to protect them from that, because you as a parent don’t want to say, “Hey, I know football is your dream and this is your last chance to potentially make something of it, but I don’t want to let you go play for this guy.”
O’BRIEN: Well, this story, it gripped the country when it came out and that game happened. And we know that officials in Ohio called for some legislative fixes to try to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. The state legislature didn’t do anything. Can this happen again, and what should be in place to make sure it doesn’t?
FREE: This can absolutely happen again. And the reason that the state of Ohio used in not doing anything about it was because Bishop Sycamore used a religious exemption for their school, and they have no governance over the churches, right? And so what we should be doing is looking at just how far that exemption goes when it comes to damaging the lives of not just kids, but anybody.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Simone Biles is commonly hailed the G.O.A.T. — greatest of all time — for good reason. She proved why once again with her historic all-around win at the 2023 U.S. Gymnastics Championships.
Biles, who claimed three titles on the night, made history in San Jose, California, as the first gymnast to win eight U.S. all-around titles and also became the oldest woman ever to win the all-around.
The 26-year-old seven-time Olympic medalist and 2016 Olympic individual all-around champion also took gold in the balance beam and floor exercises, posting a two-day score of 118.45 for all-around.
Biles previously shared the record for all-around national championships with Alfred Jochim, who won seven men’s all-around titles from 1925-30 and 1933.
Her two-day winning total included a 29.300 on beam and 30.200 on floor, plus she scored 28.400 on uneven bars for the bronze in that apparatus and put up a 30.550 on vault.
Biles now holds 27 U.S. titles and 35 national championship medals overall since her senior debut in 2013.
Following the competition, Biles was also named to the USA Gymnastics 2023-24 Senior Women’s National Team.
