MAJOR LEAGUES
Curtis Granderson came off the bench to hit his 35th homer and drive in five runs as the New York Yankees downed the Baltimore Orioles 13-3 on Sunday to regain sole possession of first place in the American League East.
Derek Jeter also homered for the Yankees, who lead the Orioles by one game with 22 left. Each team won twice in a four-game series. New York finished with nine wins and nine losses against Baltimore this season.
Photo: AFP
If the teams are level at the end of the regular season, records within the division will serve as the tiebreaker. Wilson Betemit had two RBIs for the Orioles, who were seeking to win the season series from New York for the first time since 1997.
Orioles starter Zach Britton (5-2) allowed five runs, five hits and five walks in 3-1/3 innings. Barry Zito later came through in one of the most important outings in his San Francisco tenure to pitch the National League West-leading Giants past the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-0 to extend their division lead to five games.
Hunter Pence hit a two-run double in the first inning that held up and Buster Posey homered in San Francisco’s fifth win in the last six meetings of the rivalry. Marco Scutaro added a sacrifice fly to back an impressive performance by Zito (11-8), who allowed four hits in 6-1/3 scoreless innings to win his third straight decision. He combined with five relievers on the five-hit shutout
Miami’s Ricky Nolasco allowed just four hits to shut out Washington for the second time in two weeks and Giancarlo Stanton homered for the third straight day to lead the Marlins to an 8-0 win over the NL East-leading Nationals. Nolasco also doubled in two runs at Washington when Bryce Harper lost his fly ball in the sun, and Greg Dobbs added three singles for Miami, which pounded out 14 hits.
The Marlins won two of three games in the weekend series against the NL East-leading Nationals (86-54), whose division lead slipped to 5 games over Atlanta after the Braves beat the New York Mets 3-2 in 10 innings. Nolasco (12-12), who won his third straight and notched his fourth career shutout, also shut out the Nationals 9-0 on Aug. 28 against Stephen Strasburg. The right-hander struck out six and walked one, stifling a team that had scored 43 runs in its five previous games.
In other NL games, Matt Dominguez hit a three-run homer and Tyler Greene added a solo shot for Houston as the Astros beat the Reds 5-1 to slow Cincinnati’s run to the NL Central title, the St Louis Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-4 over 10 innings and the Philadelphia Phillies swept their doubleheader against the Colorado Rockies 2-1 and 7-4. Alfonso Soriano hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning to help the Chicago Cubs complete a three-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 4-2 win and the San Diego Padres trounced the Arizona Diamondbacks 8-2.
In the AL, B.J. Upton hit three home runs and James Shields threw a two-hitter to lead Tampa Bay past Texas 6-0, the Kansas City Royals edged the Chicago White Sox over 10 innings, the Los Angeles Angels beat the Detroit Tigers 3-2, the Oakland Athletics downed the Seattle Mariners 4-2. The Toronto Blue Jays overtook the Red Sox in the AL East with a 4-3 win at Boston and the Minnesota Twins rallied in the ninth innings to beat the Cleveland Indians 8-7.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with