American LeagueCurt Schilling overpowered New York and shut down Alex Rodriguez, leading the Boston Red Sox to their second straight win over the Yankees, 5-2 Saturday.
Rodriguez went 0-for-4 for the second straight day and grounded into a double play with two on in the seventh. The AL MVP, nearly traded to Boston last December before Texas sent him to New York, is hitting just .171.
"I'm just trying to find a groove where I feel comfortable," said Rodriguez, whose batting average dropped to .171. "Ups and downs are a part of it."
Schilling (2-0), acquired by the Red Sox in November, struck out eight and allowed six hits and four walks.
"All things aside, we won," Schilling said calmly. "We took the first two games of the series against a good team."
Mike Mussina (1-3) also struggled in the second game of the four-game series, forcing in Boston's first two runs with a bases-loaded walk and hit batter. Mussina, previously 10-5 in Fenway Park, allowed four runs -- three earned -- seven hits and four walks in just five innings.
The Yankees have just 12 hits in the first two games of the highly anticipated series, the first between the teams since Aaron Boone's 11th-inning homer won Game 7 of the AL championship series last October.
Manny Ramirez hit his 350th homer in the fifth, putting Boston up 4-1.
National League
Scott Rolen homered on consecutive at-bats and had four RBIs, Albert Pujols also connected and the St. Louis Cardinals rallied from a three-run deficit to beat the Colorado Rockies 8-4 Saturday.
Mark McGwire, who threw out the ceremonial first pitch, was given a pregame standing ovation by the crowd of 46,471. It was his first appearance at Busch Stadium since retiring after the 2001 season.
Rolen has never hit more than 31 home runs in a season, but leads the major leagues with 23 RBIs and has seven homers.
Jason Marquis (1-1) allowed three runs and eight hits in seven innings to help the Cardinals win their second straight after a 1-6 start at home, their worst since 1973. Todd Helton hit a two-run homer off him in the third.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier