Los Angeles Angels slugger Vladimir Guerrero, playing in his first Major League Baseball home-run derby since 2000, beat Toronto Blue Jays right fielder Alex Rios 3-2 in the finals on Monday.
"Yes, I have taken some time off and am glad to be back, more than anything because of the fans; I think the fans deserve to see me," Guerrero said on Monday prior to yesterday's all-star game.
Guerrero joined Garret Anderson (2003) and Wally Joyner (1986) as Angels winners after learning from the Atlanta experience.
PHOTO: AP
"Well, the first time I came in 2000, I swung at basically every pitch, so you learn," he said.
However, Guerrero suffered through a slow start before getting an assist from fellow Dominican and Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz, who provided him a new bat.
With Angels third base coach Dino Ebel pitching, Guerrero put on a power display in the second round to bring the fans to their feet and sneak past Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals and Matt Holliday of the Colorado Rockies to the finals. His 14 combined homers in the first two rounds was one more than Pujols and Holliday and three fewer than Rios.
Rios clobbered 12 homers leading off the second round -- the highest one-round total of the night -- but appeared to stiffen up as he watched the three other semi-finalists perform.
In his third round, he grounded out and popped out weakly on several of his attempts before watching Guerrero drill his 10th swing of the round over the left field fence for the game-winner.
Guerrero, who had 18 family members on hand, was mobbed after the game-winning shot. He averaged 132.4m on his 17 blasts.
The eight-time All-Star, who has 14 homers at the break and is second in the majors with 75 RBI, put his name on a prestigious list of Home Run Derby champions that includes Barry Bonds (1996), Ken Griffey, Jr. (1994, 1998, 1999), Sammy Sosa (2000) and Cal Ripken (1991).
With Bonds sitting on the sidelines watching and defending champion Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies eliminated in the first round, that left the door open for a first-time winner.
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