Manny Ramirez became the 24th major league player to reach 500 career home runs, connecting in the seventh inning off Chad Bradford to help the Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-3 on Saturday.
The 500-home run club has only two dozen members, but Ramirez also joined an even smaller fraternity. He is only the seventh player in MLB history with 500 homers, 1,500 RBIs, 1,000 walks, 475 doubles and a .300 batting average. The others are Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mel Ott, Babe Ruth, Frank Thomas and Ted Williams.
David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia also homered for the Red Sox and Jacoby Ellsbury stole three bases in a second straight game.
Ellsbury also tripled in the seventh off Lance Cormier (0-2) and scored the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly by Ortiz before Bradford entered to face Ramirez.
Yankees 7, Twins 6, 12 innings
In Minneapolis, Bobby Abreu broke a 12th-inning tie with a one-out single for New York to beat Minnesota.
Juan Rincon (2-2) gave up singles to Johnny Damon and slumping Derek Jeter, before Abreu came through with his floater into shallow center field.
The Twins left two men on in both the 10th and the 11th, with none out in the 11th.
The Yankees had a brief 6-3 lead, but Taiwan’s Wang Chien-ming gave up two runs in the sixth and then Michael Cuddyer tied it against reliever Edwar Ramirez when he hit a homer in the seventh.
Saturday’s other American League results:
• Rays 2, White Sox 0
• Mariners 5, Tigers 0
• Royals 4, Indians 2
• Rangers 8, Athletics 4
• Angels 3, Blue Jays 2, 10 innings
NATIONAL LEAGUE
AP, CINCINNATI, OHIO
Ken Griffey Jr hit his 599th career homer, leaving him one shy of a landmark, and Jay Bruce extended his amazing week-long debut with a 10th-inning homer that lifted the Cincinnati Reds over the Atlanta Braves 8-7 on Saturday.
Bruce, the Reds’ top prospect, is 11-for-19 in his first five games in the majors, providing one big hit after another.
Francisco Cordero (2-0) pitched the 10th, sending the Braves to an excruciatingly familiar finish. Atlanta have lost their last 20 one-run games on the road since August.
Saturday’s other National League results:
• Mets 3, Dodgers 2
• Cubs 5, Rockies 4
• Padres 5, Giants 1
• Diamondbacks 4, Nationals 0
• Marlins 7, Phillies 3
• Pirates 14, Cardinals 4
• Brewers 4, Astros 1
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