Marlins starter Ryan Weathers pitches 3 innings after getting hit in the head by catcher’s throw

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Miami Marlins starter Ryan Weathers pitched three innings after he was struck in the head by catcher Nick Fortes’ throw to second base following the final warmup pitch before the bottom of the first inning against the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday.

Fortes’ throw hit Weathers on the top of his head and knocked his cap off. Weathers reached for his head as he fell to the mound. He was face down when athletic trainers rushed to tend to him.

“It’s definitely a first,” said Weathers, who added he felt “good” after the game. “Obviously, it’s just unfortunate, but I’m also fortunate it hit me in the top of the head and not the back of the head.”

Weathers, the son of longtime reliever David Weathers, needed only eight pitches to get out of the first inning. He was taken out after the third for what the Rays called “precautionary reasons.” He threw 57 pitches and gave up four runs, three earned, on three hits and a walk. The team said he would undergo further evaluation.

“I just felt very disconnected out there a little bit just with like, just all that adrenaline left me,” Weathers said. ”It’s kind of like that episode of ‘SpongeBob’ where everything’s on fire inside of his brain. I just felt like I was in pure chaos after that happened. So it was just kind of the right time to come out of the game there.”

Fortes was visibly shaken after the incident, but Weathers assured him he was OK.

“Yeah, I just told him, ‘I’m fine. I’m still going to go to battle with you,’” Weathers said. “Like, it’s not going to change that fact. … It was just one of those weird days. I’m just happy we came out with a win.”

The Marlins won 11-10 in 10 innings.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — National Guard troops began arriving in Los Angeles early Sunday on orders from President Donald Trump in response to clashes in recent days between federal immigration authorities and protesters seeking to block them from carrying out deportations.

Members of California’s National Guard were seen staging at the federal complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Metropolitan Detention Center, one of several sites that have seen confrontations involving hundreds of people in the last two days.

Trump has said he is deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests, which he called “a form of rebellion.”

The move came over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsome, marking the first time in decades that a state’s national guard was activated without a request from its governor, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Early Sunday, the deployment was limited to a small area in downtown Los Angeles, with the rest of the city of 4 million people largely unaffected.

Their arrival follows two days of relatively small protests that began Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city, and neighboring Compton.

As federal agents staged near a Home Depot in Paramount, demonstrators sought to block Border Patrol vehicles, with some hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, federal agents in riot gear unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.

Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement.

On Sunday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the National Guard would “keep peace and allow people to be able to protest but also to keep law and order.”

The troops included members of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, according to a social media post from the Department of Defense that showed dozens of National Guard members with long guns and an armored vehicle.

In a signal of the administration’s aggressive approach, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened to deploy active-duty Marines “if violence continues” in the region.

Newsom, a Democrat, described Trump’s decision to call in the National Guard as a “provocative show of force” that would only escalate tensions, adding that Hegseth’s threat to deploy Marines on American soil was “deranged behavior.”

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said the order by Trump reflected “a president moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism” and “usurping the powers of the United States Congress.”

Several Republicans, meanwhile, have voiced support for the involvement of the National Guard. Among them was Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who stopped short of backing Hegseth’s threat to send in active-duty military personnel.

“My guess is the National Guard ought to take care of the situation,” Johnson said.

Offenhartz reported from New York.