The Texas Rangers charged out to a big lead and this time made it stand up for a 7-2 victory over the New York Yankees on Saturday that leveled the best-of-seven American League Championship Series at 1-1.
Texas, who squandered a 5-0 lead with a bullpen meltdown in Friday’s Game 1 loss, led 5-0 again after three innings, but tacked on more runs and five relievers protected starter Colby Lewis’ strong performance.
“Those guys have always bounced back and they did it again today,” Rangers manager Ron Washington told reporters. “I’m not surprised.”
The win marked the first post-season victory ever at home for Texas, who had swept three road games against the Tampa Bay Rays to advance in the first round of the playoffs, and it snapped a 10-game post-season losing streak against the Yanks.
For the second game, the Rangers had no trouble scoring on New York’s starting pitching, knocking Phil Hughes out after four innings, the same treatment suffered by C.C. Sabathia.
Texas set the tone in the first inning, literally stealing a run with aggressive base-running.
Lead-off hitter Elvis Andrus hit a high hopper off Hughes’ glove for an infield single, advanced to second when the pitcher bounced a curve in the dirt and then stole third base.
After Josh Hamilton drew a walk, the Rangers executed a perfect double-steal.
Hamilton broke for second, drawing a throw from catcher Jorge Posada. Hamilton pulled up before he reached second base as Andrus dashed for home. The throw home was not in time as Andrus slid across the plate for a 1-0 Texas lead.
The Rangers scored two runs in the second, the first on David Murphy’s towering solo home run to right and the second on an RBI-double by Michael Young.
Texas added two more runs in the third on doubles by Cruz, Murphy and Bengie Molina that boosted the lead to 5-0.
“Our starting pitchers have not pitched very well, but I believe in our guys and that they will pitch well going forward,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.
By contrast, Texas got another solid performance on the mound from Lewis following Friday’s outing by C.J. Wilson.
Lewis, a former top Texas draft choice who pitched the last two seasons in Japan for Hiroshima Carp, went five-and-two-third innings, giving up two runs on six hits with six strikeouts.
“I just had to go out and do a job and get us back on track,” Lewis said.
In Friday’s collapse, four Rangers relievers failed to put out the fire in New York’s five-run, eighth-inning rally that turned a 5-1 lead into a 6-5 loss.
This time, the Texas bullpen hurled three-and-a-third innings and allowed one hit.
Texas mounted a balanced 12-hit attack, with every starter getting a hit except slugger Hamilton, who drew four walks.
“We definitely had to get this win at home,” said Nelson Cruz, who crushed two doubles high off the outfield walls. “We don’t want to worry about what happened the night before. We wanted to worry about today.”
The series, which determines the Amercian League team in the World Series, shifts to New York for Game 3 today.
Cliff Lee, 6-0 in his post-season career, will start for Texas against Andy Pettitte, whose 19 post-season wins tops the all-time list.
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