MAJOR LEAGUES
Matt Adams homered for the third straight game as the St Louis Cardinals beat the Washington Nationals 5-2 on Sunday for a series sweep.
Adams gave St Louis a 2-0 lead in the second inning with a two-run shot off an 0-2 pitch, his sixth homer of the season. He has homered in all three games since coming off the disabled list with a torn calf muscle.
Photo: USA Today
Jaime Garcia (3-0) pitched seven innings, allowing five hits and a run. Trevor Rosenthal got the final out for his 20th save.
Toronto’s J.A. Happ pitched into the seventh inning and Dioner Navarro had three hits and two RBIs as the Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles 5-2 for a four-game split.
Edwin Encarnacion also had three hits for the Blue Jays, who had totaled 15 runs in losing six of their previous eight games.
The American League East leaders take a 4.5 game lead into a three-game series at Yankee Stadium starting today.
Adam Jones homered and Nelson Cruz had three hits and his major league-leading 56th RBI for the Orioles.
In San Francisco, Justin Morneau hit a two-run double in the eighth inning as the Colorado Rockies came back to sweep a three-game series from the Giants with a 8-7 win.
Morneau’s pinch hit highlighted a four-run rally for the Rockies, who scored in the ninth in each of the first two games of the series for the victory.
Troy Tulowitzki had three hits, including a home run, and drove in two runs for the Rockies, who extended their season-high winning streak to five.
The Oakland Athletics downed the New York Yankees 10-5 after Derek Norris and Coco Crisp each hit a three-run homer, while Paul Goldschmidt and Miguel Montero homered to help the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-3.
Billy Hamilton led off the game with a home run, Brandon Phillips added a two-run shot in the first inning and Todd Frazier later hit his team-high 15th homer as the Cincinnati Reds beat the Milwaukee Brewers 13-4, the Seattle Mariners ended a five-game losing streak with a 5-1 win over the Texas Rangers and the Detroit Tigers edged the Minnesota Twins 4-3.
In other games, Travis Wood denied the Phillies a hit into the sixth inning as the Chicago Cubs beat Philadelphia 3-0 to win a road series for the first time this season, while the Miami Marlins overcame the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-2 over 10 innings.
The Cleveland Indians edged the Boston Red Sox 3-2 in the 11th inning, the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Houston Astros 4-3, the Kansas City Royals defeated the Chicago White Sox 6-3, the New York Mets downed the San Diego Padres 3-1 and the Atlanta Braves were 7-3 winners over the Los Angeles Angels.
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