Roosevelt Brown drove in five runs Saturday as the Orix BlueWave crushed the Nippon Ham Fighters 17-2 to snap an eight-game losing streak.
Brown, formerly of the Chicago Cubs, belted a three-run homer in the first inning when Orix scored seven runs and added a two-run blast in the sixth at Nagoya Dome to lift the BlueWave out of their longest slump of the season.
Jose Ortiz, formerly of the Colorado Rockies, also homered twice and drove in five runs for the BlueWave, still last in the Pacific League standings.
Orix starter Masahiko Kaneda picked up the win after striking out seven and giving up two runs on six hits over eight innings.
Nippon Ham starter Hiroyuki Sekine took the loss after being rocked for seven runs on five hits after recording only one out in the first inning.
At Seibu Dome, Alex Cabrera hit a tie-breaking solo homer in the bottom of the eighth to lift the Seibu Lions to a 2-1 victory over the Kintetsu Buffaloes.
Cabrera, formerly of the Arizona Diamondbacks, connected off Kintetsu starter Hisashi Iwakuma for his league-leading 26th homer of the season as the Lions won their fourth straight and moved into sole possession of second place in the standings.
Seibu reliever Koji Mitsui came on in the seventh and held the Buffaloes scoreless over two innings to pick up the win and improve to 9-5 on the season.
Kiyoshi Toyoda retired the side in the ninth for his 22nd save of the season.
Iwakuma went the distance but took the loss as the Buffaloes lost their third straight contest and dropped into third place in the standings.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later