Kansas City starter Edinson Volquez on Tuesday pitched six innings of Game 1 of the World Series only hours after the death of his father.
However, it was unclear whether Volquez found out the news before taking the mound against the New York Mets.
Volquez left the stadium after being taken out of the game and did not speak to reporters.
Media reports surfaced just before the game that Daniel Volquez, 63, had died of heart complications back home in the Dominican Republic.
Kansas City manager Ned Yost said the information had been kept from Volquez, at the request of his family, until after he had finished pitching.
However, teammate Chris Young said he had been told that Volquez had found out before the game.
Young, who is slated to start Game 4, was told by Yost that he would have been the starting pitcher had Volquez been unable to play.
“We found out about it before the game and the wishes of the family was ‘let Eddie pitch,’ so I ... didn’t want him to hear about it,” Yost told reporters after the game. “I was keeping my eye on him and he was fine. He didn’t know, and I guess after the game was when he found out.”
However, Young, speaking later on the MLB Network after pitching the final three innings to register the Game 1 win, had a different story.
“I heard originally he [Volquez] did not know, and then I’ve heard in the clubhouse post game he did know and still took the ball and went out there,” Young said.
“Ned gave me a little warning before the game that they might need me to start if Edinson felt like he couldn’t go tonight. He came out, and was just tremendous, and gave us a chance to win,” Young said. “All of us were inspired by that. Talk about the courage and the guts to go out and do that, and the focus, it’s just tremendous.”
Young can empathize with Edinson after losing his own father recently.
“Words can’t describe my pain for Edinson tonight,” he added.
“I went through something similar about a month ago when my dad passed away. I felt like I needed to take the ball, felt like it was what my dad wanted me to do, go out and pitch and also I felt an obligation to my teammates to not let them down. I think Eddie [also felt that way] tonight,” Young said.
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