From Kevin Baxter: When the Dodgers arrived in Colorado on Sunday night they had a golden opportunity to pad their narrow division lead against with the worst team in the majors. Unfortunately, even with Thursday’s 9-5 win over the Rockies, the Dodgers only managed a split of the four-game series.
They now head to San Diego for a crucial three-game-series against the Padres with the division lead once again up for grabs.
“I wish we had won all four, but it just didn’t happen,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “That’s just the way baseball is. So we’ve got to go out there and regardless of the standings, we’ve got to beat those guys.”
The standings, however, loom large. The margin over the Padres is just a game.
The Dodgers will have a bit of momentum on their side after scoring 20 runs on 30 hits in the two wins at Coors Field. Thursday’s matinee saw four players finish with multiple hits, including third baseman Alex Freeland, who was a career-best three for five with a run scored and another driven in. Freeland had six hits in the final three games in Denver.
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From Ben Bolch: Demetrice Martin built an early, practically insurmountable lead.
Landing six defensive backs by Christmas, the UCLA secondary coach added two more before the spring transfer portal window closed, making this race appear to be a runaway.
Before long, a formidable challenger emerged. Closing fast in the battle to become the Bruins’ top recruiter on an almost entirely new coaching staff was Andy Kwon.
Having helped snag four transfers — a few of whom committed before his hiring — the offensive line coach went on to secure verbal commitments from two four-star high school prospects from Florida, the kind of highly coveted out-of-region talent that UCLA had seen go elsewhere in recent years.
The heated duel to see who could secure the best players, which included every new assistant and holdovers Ikaika Malloe and Jerry Neuheisel, was a welcome surprise to coach DeShaun Foster.
From Ryan Kartje: Rising star USC wideout Ja’Kobi Lane suffered a broken foot in May, but was fully cleared this week and will be ready for the Trojans’ season opener against Missouri State, coach Lincoln Riley said Thursday.
The foot injury kept Lane limited through most of the summer. By the start of preseason camp, he was still being brought along slowly. During the portion of USC’s practices open to reporters, Lane wasn’t even running routes on air.
Lane wasn’t deemed fully healthy until the final week of USC’s preseason camp. Riley said that the junior wideout had actually “progressed a little bit ahead of schedule.”
RAMS
From Gary Klein: As Matthew Stafford got to the podium on Thursday, he joked that he was sure reporters wanted to ask him questions about the paper cut he suffered.
The Rams star quarterback then fielded inquiries about the subject that clouds all conversation about the Rams: The back injury that sidelined Stafford until this week.
Stafford practiced for the fourth day in a row, another small milestone for the 17th-year pro and a team aiming to make a Super Bowl run.
“The good thing is I feel pretty good,” said Stafford, who practiced for the fourth day in a row. “The last couple days out there practicing, I was able to do even more than I thought I was going to be able to do the first day, and then I’ve just been trying to stack days.
THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY
1851 — The United States wins the first international yacht race. The schooner named “America” beats 14 British yachts.
1885 — Richard Sears beats Godfrey M. Brinley, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0, 6-3 to win the U.S. men’s national tennis championship held at the Newport (R.I.) Casino.
1898 — Malcolm Whitman beats Dwight F. Davis, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1 to win the U.S. men’s national tennis championship held at the Newport (R.I.) Casino.
1948 — The Chicago Cardinals beat the College All-Stars 28-0 in front 101,220 fans at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
1949 — The Philadelphia Eagles beat the College All-Stars 38-0 at Chicago’s Soldier Field. It’s the largest shutout in the series, later matched by Green Bay in 1966.
1950 — Althea Gibson becomes the first Black tennis player to be accepted in competition for the national championship.
1957 — Floyd Patterson knocks out Pete Rademacher in the sixth round to retain his world heavyweight title at Sicks Stadium in Seattle.
1984 — Evelyn Ashford sets the world record in the 100-meter dash with a clocking of 10.76 seconds in a meet at Zurich, Switzerland.
1987 — Brazil snaps the 34-game winning streak of the U.S. men’s basketball team with a 120-115 victory in the Pan Am Games. Oscar Schmidt scores 46 points to lead Brazil. Cuba wins a record 10 of 12 gold medals in boxing and beats the U.S. 13-9 in the baseball final.
1999 — Jenny Thompson breaks Mary T. Meagher’s 18-year-old 100-meter butterfly record at the Pan Pacific swim championships. Thompson with a time of 57.88 seconds lowers the mark of 57.93 set by Meagher.
2004 — American sprinter Justin Gatlin wins the coveted Olympic 100m gold medal in Athens in 9.85 ahead of Francis Obikwelu of Portugal & American Maurice Greene.
2008 — Usain Bolt helps Jamaica win the 400-meter relay final in 37.10 seconds for his third gold medal and third world record of the Beijing Games. Bolt becomes only the fourth man, and the first since Carl Lewis in 1984, to win all three Olympic sprint events. Bryan Clay wins the decathlon, the first American to win the 10-discipline event at the Olympics since Dan O’Brien at Atlanta in 1996.
2018 — Ohio State suspends football coach Urban Meyer three games for mishandling repeated professional and behavioral problems of an assistant coach, with investigators finding Meyer protected his protege for years through domestic violence allegations, a drug problem and poor job performance.
2018 — The NCAA ditches the RPI for its own evaluation tool to select teams for the NCAA Tournament. The NCAA Evaluation Tool will rely on game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency and quality of wins and losses. NET will be used for the 2018-19 season by the committee that selects schools and seeds the tournament.
THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY
1917 — Pittsburgh’s Carson Bigbee set a major league record — since tied — with 11 at-bats in a 22-inning game against Brooklyn. Pirate Elmer Jacobs pitched 16 2-3 innings in relief. The game was also the fourth consecutive extra-inning game by the Pirates for a total of 59 innings, a National League record.
1934 — Pitcher Wes Ferrell hit two home runs to give the Boston Red Sox a 3-2 triumph over the Chicago White Sox in 12 innings. Trailing 2-1, Ferrell hit a home run in the eighth inning to tie the score and with two out in the 12th, Ferrell connected again for the game-winner.
1961 — Roger Maris, en route to his 61-home run season, became the first player to hit his 50th homer in August. He connected off California pitcher Ken McBride in a 4-3 loss to the Angels.
1965 — In the third inning of a game against the Dodgers, pitcher Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants hit catcher John Roseboro of the Dodgers in the head with his bat. A 14-minute brawl ensued and Roseboro suffered cuts on the head. Marichal thought Roseboro threw too close to his head when returning the ball to Sandy Koufax.
1971 — The Oakland Athletics opened and closed the game with solo homers to beat the Boston Red Sox 2-1. Boston pitcher Sonny Siebert gave up both, Bert Campaneris lead off the game and Reggie Jackson ended it with two out in the ninth inning.
1984 — New York Mets right-hander Dwight Gooden, at 19, fanned nine San Diego Padres to become the 11th rookie to strike out 200 batters in one season.
1989 — Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers became the first pitcher to strike out 5,000 batters. Ryan struck out 13, walked two and allowed only five hits in a 2-0 loss to Oakland. Ryan began the night needing six strikeouts and fanned Rickey Henderson swinging, leading off the fifth inning, for the record.
1999 — Mark McGwire became the first player to hit 50 homers in four consecutive seasons, hitting Nos. 49 and 50 in the first game of a doubleheader against the New York Mets.
2007 — The Texas Rangers became the first team in 110 years to score 30 runs in a game, setting an American League record in a 30-3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles in the first game of a doubleheader. It was the ninth time a major league team scored 30 runs, the first since the Chicago Colts set the major league mark in a 36-7 rout of Louisville in a National League game on June 28, 1897.
2012 — Oakland A’s P Bartolo Colon is suspended for 50 games for testing positive for testosterone, eight days after Giants OF Melky Cabrera was also suspended for using the same performance-enhancing substance.
2016 — Adrian Gonzalez hit three of the Dodgers’ seven homers — driving in a career-high eight runs — to lead Los Angeles to an 18-9 win over the Cincinnati Reds.
2021 — Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers becomes the 28th player to hit 500 home runs with a solo home run off of Steven Matz of the Blue Jays.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
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