From Jack Harris: The Dodgers finally landed a lot of little jabs as an offense Sunday against the San Diego Padres.
And in a pivotal, sweep-evading 8-2 win at Petco Park — which once again tied the two teams for first place in the National League West standings — it allowed their slumping lineup to deliver some badly needed knockout blows.
For the first time this weekend, the Dodgers looked like themselves at the plate.
They bashed four home runs, none bigger than a tie-breaking three-run shot from backup catcher Dalton Rushing in the seventh that ultimately decided the game.
They strung together nine hits and four walks, cracking a Padres pitching staff that had smothered them over the first two games in this rivalry’s final renewal of the season.
“For us to come out here and execute as an offense, way better than we did the last couple days, that’s a big boost for us,” said first baseman Freddie Freeman, who had two home runs to help the Dodgers salvage the series finale.
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ANGELS
Nico Hoerner had an RBI double against former teammate Kyle Hendricks and the Chicago Cubs beat the Angels 4-3 Sunday to complete a three-game series sweep.
Hoerner and Matt Shaw each had two hits in backing right-hander Jameson Taillon (9-6), who allowed one run in five innings as the Cubs improved to 8-2 in winning their third straight series. Right-hander Daniel Palencia worked out of a ninth-inning jam for his 20th save.
Taylor Ward hit his 30th homer for the Angels, who fell to 2-7 since a three-game sweep of the Dodgers.
From Ben Bolch: That thick, wavy black hair once had no place atop Tino Sunseri’s head.
Long before he arrived in Westwood as UCLA’s offensive coordinator and a GQ cover candidate, his father made him shave that glorious mane, the better to protect his head so that it would fit snugly inside his helmet as a young quarterback.
“I always had an emphasis of, ‘Hey, I don’t care how your frickin’ hair looks or what women think,’” Sal Sunseri said. “The bottom line is, I wanted him to be secure.”
This is how the Sunseris operate. Success means sacrifice. It’s why Anthony Sunseri, Tino’s grandfather and the family patriarch, would rise at 5 each morning to prepare for another day of running the family’s Italian deli and grocery store in Pittsburgh. The man who called himself Tony Macaroni wouldn’t come home until after 5 in the evening, only to tackle a stack of bills and other obligations just so that he could get to bed and rise to do it all over again.
TODD MARINOVICH
From Ryan Kartje: Todd Marinovich has heard the story of his life told so many times over the years. The quarterback prodigy. The overbearing father. The sudden rise to stardom. The drug-induced downfall. Each retelling framed in the fashion of a Greek tragedy.
His story has been chronicled in painful detail over decades, by everyone it seems but Marinovich. But writing it, reconciling with his past, would prove pretty agonizing in its own right. It wasn’t always easy to hear back old stories, filtered through his co-writer, Lizzy Wright.
“It was cathartic,” Marinovich, 56, told The Times. “But I had to really try not to be defiant. To just kind of let go. That was not easy for me.”
The result was a memoir — “Marinovich: Outside the Lines in Football, Art and Addiction” — that’s packed with details of the quarterback’s wild rise and harrowing fall. Marinovich, who now lives in Hawaii, talked with The Times about his experience writing the book.
REBUILDING AFTER THE FIRES
From Sam Farmer: The tennis ball, an undisturbed artifact of a horrific wildfire, sat just off the Pacific Palisades court and was so covered in gray ash that its Penn logo was only faintly visible.
Pam Shriver studied it the way she might a precious archaeological discovery.
“I find that so moving,” the Hall of Fame tennis player said. “The ball survived.”
All of this is intensely personal to Shriver, as it is to millions of Southern Californians. She lives in Brentwood and though she was evacuated in the January fires, her home was spared. Still, more friends and families than she can count were not so fortunate.
That has been the driving force for her the past eight months, how she can use tennis and her influence to help rebuild the communities most severely affected by the catastrophic flames.
LITTLE LEAGUE WORLD SERIES
Lin Chin-Tse retired the first 13 batters he faced and gave up just one hit in five innings as Taiwan beat Nevada 7-0 in the Little League World Series championship Sunday, ending a 29-year title drought for the Taiwanese.
Taiwan won its first LLWS since 1996, although its 18 titles are the most of any country beside the United States, including five straight from 1977 to 1981.
Lin, a 5-foot-8 right hander, also smashed a three-run triple in Taiwan’s five-run fifth. The 12-year-old from Taipei hit more than 80 mph with his fastball multiple times during the tournament, which to batters looks much faster because the plate in this level of baseball is only 46 feet away. His velocity looked much the same Sunday.
THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY
1804 — Alice Meynell becomes the first woman jockey as she rides in a four-mile race in York, England.
1888 — Henry Slocum becomes the first man to win the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association singles title besides Richard Sears.
1904 — Jim Jeffries knocks out Jack Munroe in the second round in San Francisco to retain the world heavyweight title.
1908 — The first $50,000 trotting race in the United States, the American Trotting Derby, is won by Allen Winter with Lon McDonald driving.
1946 — Ben Hogan wins the PGA championship with a 6 and 4 win over Ed Oliver.
1950 — Sugar Ray Robinson knocks out Jose Basora at 52 seconds of the first round to retain world middleweight boxing title.
1968 — Arthur Ashe becomes 1st Black man to win the U.S. singles championship.
1973 — The NASL championship is won by the Philadelphia Atoms with a 2-0 victory over the Dallas Tornadoes.
1974 — The Los Angeles Aztecs edge the Miami Toros 4-3 to win the NASL Championship.
1984 — France’s Lutin D’Isigny wins the $250,000 International Trot by seven lengths, the largest margin of victory in this race. Jean-Paul Andre drives Lutin D’Isigny to a world record trot for the 1¼-mile in 2:30, smashing the record of 2:31.2 shared by Speedy Scot and Noble Victory.
1991 — Carl Lewis reclaims his title of world’s fastest human by setting a world record of 9.86 seconds in the 100-meter final in the world championships in Tokyo. Lewis clips four-hundredths of a second off the previous mark of 9.90 set by Leroy Burrell in the U.S. Championships two months earlier.
1996 — Tiger Woods wins an unprecedented third U.S. Amateur Championship, beating Steve Scott on the 38th hole after coming back from 5-down with 16 to play and 2-down with three to go.
2006 — Japan’s Yusaku Miyazato becomes the first golfer to make two holes-in-one in the same round of a PGA Tour tournament when he aces a pair of par 3s at the Reno-Tahoe Open.
2012 — Alpha and longshot Golden Ticket finish in a historic dead heat in the $1 million Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. Golden Ticket leads the field of 11 3-year-olds in the stretch, but 2-1 favorite Alpha closes strongly and the two hit the finish line in tandem. It’s the first dead heat in the 143 runnings of the Travers, and a rare finish for any Grade 1 race. Alpha pays $4.10 and 33-1 shot Golden Ticket returns $26.80 to win.
2013 — Teen star Lydia Ko runs away with the Canadian Women’s Open with a five-stroke victory over Karine Icher. The 16-year-old New Zealand amateur successfully defends her title, closing with a 6-under 64 for her fourth win in 14 professional events.
THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY
1922 — In one of the wildest games ever played, the Cubs beat the Phillies 26-23. The Cubs led 25-6 in the fourth inning, but held on as the game ended with the Phillies leaving the bases loaded.
1934 — Detroit’s Schoolboy Rowe won his 16th consecutive game with a 4-2 triumph over the Washington Senators. Rowe singled in the winning run in the ninth inning.
1952 — Detroit’s Virgil Trucks pitched his second no-hitter of the season, a 1-0 gem over New York at Yankee Stadium. The Tigers committed two errors and Trucks walked one batter and struck out eight. It was the last victory of the season for Trucks, who finished with a 5-19 record.
1967 — Dean Chance of Minnesota pitched his second no-hitter of the month, defeating the Indians 2-1. Chance pitched an abbreviated five perfect innings against Boston on Aug. 6 for a 2-0 victory.
1972 — Philadelphia Ken Reynolds tied a National League record with his 12th consecutive loss, 6-1 to Cincinnati, from the beginning of the season.
1979 — Don Baylor of the Angels tied a club record by driving in eight runs during a 24-2 rout of the Toronto Blue Jays. The 24 runs and 26 hits set Angel records.
1985 — Dwight Gooden of the Mets became the youngest pitcher ever to win 20 games with a 9-3 triumph over the San Diego Padres. Gooden at age 20 years, nine months, and nine days was one month younger that Bob Feller who won 20 games in 1939.
1998 — Toronto’s Roger Clemens struck out 18 and won his 11th straight decision as he pitched a 3-0 three-hit victory over the Kansas City Royals.
2004 — Jeff DaVanon became the first Angels player in 13 years to hit for the cycle in Anaheim’s 21-6 rout of Kansas City.
2008 — Brett Myers, J.C. Romero and Clay Condrey combined on a 13-hit shutout in Philadelphia’s 5-0 victory over the Dodgers.
2010 — The Colorado Rockies overcame a nine-run deficit, matching the biggest rally in team history and stunning the Atlanta Braves 12-10 on Troy Tulowitzki’s go-ahead single in the eighth inning. Down 10-1 in the third inning, the Rockies chipped away against the NL East leader before taking the lead with four runs in the eighth.
2010 — The Reds blew a nine-run lead, then regrouped and rallied past the Giants, 12-11, on Joey Votto’s tiebreaking single in the 12th inning. The NL Central-leading Reds took a 10-1 lead into the bottom of the fifth before San Francisco came back with a six-run burst in the eighth to take an 11-10 lead.
2011 — The New York Yankees became the first team in major league history to hit three grand slams in a game, with Robinson Cano, Russell Martin and Curtis Granderson connecting in a 22-9 romp over the Oakland Athletics.
2017 — Rhys Hoskins hit another homer and Cesar Hernandez ripped a three-run triple to help Philadelphia to a 7-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Hoskins has put on a tremendous power display. He has nine homers and 21 RBIs in 16 games. No player in major league history had reached nine homers that quickly.
2020 — Chicago White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito no-hits the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-0.
2021 — In the longest major league game since the introduction of the extra-innings rule before the 2020 season, the Dodgers need 16 innings to defeat the Padres, 5-3, after almost six hours of playing time. After five scoreless extra frames in spite of the presence of a designated runner on second base every time, the Dodgers finally take a 3-1 lead in the top of the 15th, only to see Fernando Tatis Jr. tie it with his 35th homer of the year off Corey Knebel in the bottom of the inning, necessitating yet another inning. A.J. Pollock finally provides the margin of victory with a two-run homer off Daniel Camarena and the Padres fail to score against Shane Greene.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
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