MAJOR LEAGUES
Clayton Kershaw completed a spectacular month by striking out 13 batters and allowing just five hits over seven innings as the Los Angeles Dodgers downed the St Louis Cardinals 6-0 on Sunday.
Andre Ethier hit a three-run homer, and Matt Kemp and Adrian Gonzalez had run-scoring hits for the Dodgers, who took three of four from St Louis in a rematch of last season’s National League championship series.
Photo: AFP
Kershaw (9-2) extended his career-best scoreless streak to 28 innings in his first home start since throwing his first career no-hitter on June 18 against Colorado. The left-hander went 6-0 with an 0.82 ERA in last month, yielding four runs in 44 innings and striking out 61.
With 12 wins in 16 games, Los Angeles (47-37) have pulled virtually even with the slumping Giants (46-36) atop the NL West.
Cincinnati pitcher Homer Bailey made a strong bid for another no-hitter, shutting down San Francisco until Buster Posey’s two-out single in the seventh inning in the Reds’ 4-0 win over the Giants.
Photo: AFP
Bailey has thrown no-hitters in each of the past two seasons, and did it against the Giants at home on July 2 last year. He came close to pitching the latest gem at AT&T Park — the ballpark was the scene of Tim Lincecum’s no-hitter on Wednesday against San Diego.
Bailey (8-4) finished with a three-hitter as the Reds completed their first four-game sweep in San Francisco since doing it at Candlestick Park in 1972.
Billy Hamilton, Brandon Phillips, Brayan Pena and Skip Schumaker drove in runs as the Reds won their season-best fifth straight and eighth in nine overall.
At New York, David Ortiz hit his 450th homer, a colossal three-run drive, and Dustin Pedroia had three RBIs during his second consecutive three-hit game to lead the Boston Red Sox past the Yankees 8-5.
Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran homered for the Yankees, who have dropped six of eight games.
The Houston Astros beat the Detroit Tigers 6-4 after Scott Feldman threw six strong innings, and Jose Altuve had three hits and two steals.
Atlanta’s B.J. Upton tripled and drove in two runs to lead the Braves past the Phillies 3-2 for their first four-game sweep in Philadelphia in 50 years, while Nate Freiman hit a three-run homer in his debut this year as the Oakland Athletics completed a three-game series sweep of the Miami Marlins 4-3.
At Kansas City, Omar Infante delivered another big hit against the Angels, singling home the winning run for the Royals’ 5-4 win over the Los Angeles Angels with one out in the ninth inning. Lorenzo Cain hit three doubles for the Royals, finishing with four hits and two RBIs.
In other games, Felix Hernandez allowed one hit over eight innings as the Seattle Mariners blanked the Cleveland Indians 3-0, the San Diego Padres edged the Arizona Diamondbacks 2-1, the Pittsburg Pirates downed the New York Mets 5-2 and the Chicago White Sox shut out the Toronto Blue Jays 4-0.
The Colorado Rockies scored three runs in a wild fifth inning to down the Milwaukee Brewers 10-4, the Minnesota Twins edged the Texas Rangers 3-2 and the Tampa Bay Rays were 12-7 winners over the Baltimore Orioles.
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