MAJOR LEAGUES
South Korea’s Choo Shin-soo homered and Chris Gimenez had four hits as the Texas Rangers claimed a 9-2 victory over the slumping Detroit Tigers on Thursday.
Texas was without Prince Fielder, who stayed home when the Rangers left for Detroit to face the big first baseman’s former team. Fielder has been out because of a herniated disk in his neck.
Photo: AFP
Japan’s Yu Darvish (4-2) allowed two runs and six hits in seven innings, striking out six and walking three.
The Rangers broke through quickly against Detroit rookie Robbie Ray (1-1), who lasted only 3-1/3 innings. Ray allowed seven runs, nine hits and four walks, as the American League (AL) Central-leading Tigers lost their fourth straight.
Also in the AL, Mark Buehrle won his major league-leading eighth game, while Melky Cabrera and Jose Bautista homered off consecutive pitches as the Toronto Blue Jays completed a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox with a 7-2 win.
Photo: USA TODAY
Toronto improved to 8-2 in their past 10 games, while Boston lost their seventh straight. The Red Sox went 0-6 on their home stand, the first time since June 1994 — when they also lost six in a row at Fenway Park — that they are winless on a home stand of at least six games.
In other AL games, the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Oakland Athletics 5-2 over 11 innings, while the Chicago White Sox beat the New York Yankees 3-2 and the Seattle Mariners were 3-1 winners over the Houston Astros.
In the National League (NL), Christian Yelich hit a two-out, bases-loaded RBI single in the ninth inning to give the Miami Marlins their fifth walkoff win of the year, 4-3 over the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Marlins won despite squandering a 3-0 eighth-inning lead. They took the series and improved to 19-6 at home, the best in the majors.
Philadelphia’s Marlon Byrd leveled the game in the eighth with a two-run homer, his sixth.
Miami’s Marcell Ozuna hit a two-run homer, giving him two homers and seven RBIs in the past two games.
At St Louis, Allen Craig drove in the go-ahead run with a two-out double in the seventh inning as the Cardinals downed the Arizona Diamondbacks 4-2 to complete a three-game sweep.
The sweep was the first of a three-game series this season for St Louis, who have won seven of eight.
Shane Robinson had a two-run double as part of a three-hit night.
Also in the NL, the New York Mets downed the Los Angeles 5-3 and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Washington Nationals 3-1.
The Chicago Cubs defeated the Sand Diego Padres 5-1, while the Atlanta Braves edged the Milwaukee Brewers 5-4 and the San Francisco Giants’ game against the Colorado Rockies was suspended due to rain, with the scores tied at 2-2 in the sixth inning.
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