BASEBALL
Marrero, 102, dies in Cuba
Cuban baseball legend Conrado “Connie” Marrero, who played in the US big leagues in the 1950s and was the oldest living Major League Baseball (MLB) veteran, died on Wednesday in Havana just two days shy of his 103rd birthday. “Early this afternoon, Conrado Marrero Ramos, one of the best pitchers in Cuban baseball history, passed away,” official news portal Cubadebate said. No cause of death was listed. However, at 102, the MLB has said he was its oldest living ex-player. Marrero, who hailed from the central province of Villa Clara, played with the now-defunct Washington Senators from 1950 to 1954, after getting his (late) start in the Cuban league. In Cuba, where baseball inspires passions like few other sources of pride and joy, Marrero was nicknamed “Guajiro,” or country boy, since he hailed from a ranch. In the US major leagues, his mates called him “Connie.”
BASKETBALL
Dragic gets NBA honor
Phoenix guard Goran Dragic, whose career-high 20.3 points a game helped the Suns win 23 more games this season than last, was named the NBA’s Most Improved Player on Wednesday. The 27-year-old backcourt standout received 408 of 1,134 possible votes in a North American media poll. Indiana’s Lance Stephenson was a distant second with 158 points, three more than Anthony Davis of New Orleans. The Slovenia international, who averaged only 9.5 points before this season, added 5.9 assists and 3.2 rebounds a game, as well as sinking a career-best 50.5 percent of his shots from the floor. His stats included 40.8 percent scoring from three-point range — making him the only NBA player with 50 percent overall accuracy and 40 percent success from beyond the arc. The Suns went 48-34, but missed the playoffs, finishing one game behind Dallas for the last berth in the Western Conference. Dragic started 75 games.
ICE HOCKEY
Wild’s Cooke suspended
Minnesota Wild forward Matt Cooke was slapped with a seven-game suspension for kneeing Colorado Avalanche defenseman Tyson Barrie in a playoff contest on Monday, the National Hockey League (NHL) announced on Wednesday. Cooke was given a minor penalty for sticking his knee out to trip Barrie just over two minutes into the second period of Monday’s 1-0 Minnesota victory in game three of the first-round playoff series. The NHL’s disciplinary officials reviewed it and decided to increase the penalty. Barrie was later diagnosed with a sprained medial collateral ligament and is scheduled to miss up to six weeks. If Cooke’s full suspension is not fully served during the playoffs, the remaining games will be added onto the beginning of the 2014-2015 regular season.
CRICKET
Farbrace to assist Moores
Paul Farbrace has been appointed England assistant coach, the England and Wales Cricket Board said on Wednesday. Former Sri Lanka coach Farbrace is to work alongside new director of cricket Peter Moores. The 46-year-old led Sri Lanka to this year’s Asia Cup and the World Twenty20 title in Bangladesh, the country’s first global trophy since 1996. “It’s fantastic to be given the opportunity to work with your own country’s national team and this was an offer that I could not turn down — much as I have enjoyed working with the Sri Lankan players and sharing in their recent success,” Farbrace said. England play home Test series against Sri Lanka and India this year.
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