Category: Sports News Feed

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Former NHL goaltender Wayne Thomas, who went on to have a lengthy career in hockey as a coach and an executive, has died from cancer. He was 77.

A spokesperson for the San Jose Sharks confirmed the team learned of Thomas’ death Wednesday from his family. The spokesperson said Thomas died at his home in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

An Ottawa native, Thomas tended goal for Montreal, Toronto and the New York Rangers from 1973-80. He immediately went into coaching and spent time as an assistant with New York, Chicago, St. Louis and San Jose, with stints running the bench in the International Hockey League for teams in Salt Lake City and Peoria.

Thomas spent nearly two decades in the Sharks’ front office from the mid-1990s through 2015, a vast majority of the time in which he served as assistant general manager and vice president of hockey operations and oversaw their American Hockey League club.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Royals reacquired veteran utility player Adam Frazier on Wednesday in an All-Star break trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Kansas City sent minor league infielder Cam Devanney to Pittsburgh.

Frazier, 33, has played in 78 games this season split between second base, left field and right field, hitting .255 with 21 RBIs. He spent last season with KC after bouncing around the majors following his start with the Pirates and has played every position except catcher and pitcher during his career since debuting in 2016.

Frazier joins the Royals as they are 4 1/2 games back of the American League’s final wild-card spot. They are 12 games behind Detroit for first in the AL Central.

Devanney, 28, has spent this season at Triple-A Omaha and has not yet made his major league debut.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

MADRID (AP) — Atletico Madrid continues to boost its squad for next season, signing young American midfielder Johnny Cardoso from Real Betis.

The 23-year-old Cardoso arrived on a five-year contract, Atletico said Wednesday.

Cardoso was born in the United States but is of Brazilian descent and has an Italian passport, meaning he doesn’t occupy a non-European Union slot in Diego Simeone’s squad.

The holding midfielder played in Brazil until moving to Betis in the 2023-24 season, where he became an important player for Manuel Pellegrini’s team.

Cardoso made his senior debut for the United States in a match against Wales in 2020. He has 22 caps, winning the CONCACAF Nations League in 2023 and 2024.

Cardoso had to withdraw from Mauricio Pochettino’s CONCACAF Nations League squad in March due to a muscle injury.

Atletico on Tuesday reached an agreement to sign 24-year-old Argentina international Thiago Almada from Brazilian club Botafogo.

It previously had boosted its squad by signing midfielder Álex Baena from Villarreal and 22-year-old Italian left back Matteo Ruggeri from Atalanta.

Simeone’s team finished third in the Spanish league last season, behind Real Madrid and champion Barcelona. It was eliminated in the group stage of the Club World Cup.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

NEW YORK (AP) — The Indiana Fever might be without star guard Caitlin Clark again for a bit after she appeared to injure her groin Tuesday night late in a win over the Connecticut Sun.

It will be a busy week for the league’s young star if she can play. Clark and the Fever visit New York on Wednesday night in the second half of a back-to-back and Indiana hosts the All-Star Game this weekend. Clark is set to compete in a loaded 3-point contest Friday night and is captain of one of the All-Star teams.

“No update. Just felt a little something in her groin,” Fever coach Stephanie White said after an 85-77 victory over the Sun in Boston. “We’ll get it evaluated and see what happens from there.”

Clark was listed as questionable on the afternoon injury report from the team.

She appeared to get hurt with under a minute left when she walked downcourt holding her right groin after assisting on the Fever’s final basket. As teammate Aliyah Boston tried to console her, Clark walked to the basket stanchion and banged her head against it before heading to the bench. During the timeout, she covered her head with a towel and appeared to be holding back tears.

Clark had been durable throughout college and her first season in the WNBA, never missing a game. Now she’s had four different muscle injuries so far this year.

She missed the preseason opener with tightness in her quad but played the next day in an exhibition game at her alma mater, Iowa. She suffered a quad strain against New York on May 24 that kept her out for five games. Clark returned on June 14 and played in five games before suffering another injury to her left groin that kept her out for four contests and the Commissioner’s Cup final.

The Fever canceled shootaround Wednesday morning in New York, a common practice when a team is playing back-to-back games.

“I think we just take it one step at a time. We’ll get some food, get on the plane and start talking about New York,” White said. “She’s being evaluated, we’ll see where we are with that, and certainly we’ll have another evaluation, probably in conversation in the morning, and see where we are. But, you know, this group has played without her, we’ve at least got experience in that. We know that we have a tough opponent in New York, and we know it’s going to be a challenge no matter what.”

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AP Sports Writer Jimmy Golen in Boston contributed to this report.

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AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

USA Bobsled and Skeleton has entered into a multi-year endorsement deal with American Honda, one that will give the sliding sports federation financial and technical support going into both next winter’s Milan-Cortina Olympics and the 2030 Games in the French Alps.

The deal, announced Wednesday, has been in the works for some time. Honda — which becomes the official premier technology partner of the teams — will give USABS, among other things, access to its wind tunnel in Ohio for research and development purposes.

Such access is crucial when determining optimal sled positioning and other aerodynamic factors in sports where one-hundredth of a second can be the difference between winning and losing. Eventually, the partnership will evolve into sled design as well.

“Long term, they’ll be playing a role in helping us design bobsleds,” USABS CEO Aron McGuire told The Associated Press. “We’ll be looking at building four-man sleds initially. They will be providing the aerodynamic expertise and providing us insights, recommendations, into how we can best design a sled as it relates to other factors, like safety of the athletes sitting in the sled and the performance side of the design.”

The teams will also have Acura logos on their sleds for all competitions through the 2030 Games.

“In sports where sleds can reach speeds of over 90 miles per hour and the difference between first and last can be measured in fractions of a second, our Honda engineers are eager to apply their engineering skills and racing background to the USABS programs,” said Larry Geise, the executive vice president of Honda Development & Manufacturing of America.

Financial specifics were not disclosed, but the deal is one of the more significant in USABS history.

“It’s at the top of the cash partners that we’ve had,” McGuire said.

The news comes at a key time for the programs, with the next Olympics just seven months away. The U.S. has legitimate medal hopes in bobsled and skeleton going into Milan-Cortina; Kaysha Love is the reigning women’s monobob champion, women’s pilots Kaillie Humphries Armbruster and Elana Meyers Taylor are the two most decorated female drivers in Olympic history, and the American duo of Austin Florian and Mystique Ro won a gold medal in the new mixed team skeleton discipline at the world championships earlier this year.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports

GENEVA (AP) — Soccer had a fierce reckoning with heat at the recently concluded FIFA Club World Cup in the United States — a sweltering preview of what players and fans may face when the U.S. co-hosts the World Cup with Mexico and Canada next summer.

With temperatures rising worldwide, scientists warn that staging the World Cup and other soccer tournaments in the Northern Hemisphere summer is getting increasingly dangerous for both players and spectators. Some suggest that FIFA may have to consider adjusting the soccer calendar to reduce the risk of heat-related illnesses.

“The deeper we go in the decade, the greater the risk without considering more dramatic measures, such as playing in the winter months and/or cooler latitudes,” said Prof. Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures in Leeds, England. “I’m getting increasingly worried that we are only one heatwave away from a sporting tragedy and I would like to see governing bodies lean into the climate and health science.”

Tournament soccer in June and July is a tradition going back to the first World Cup in 1930.

Since then, the three-month period of June, July and August globally has warmed by 1.05 degrees Celsius (1.89 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Meanwhile, European summer temperatures have increased by 1.81 degrees C. The rate of warming has accelerated since the 1990’s.

Climate scientists say that’s a factor that needs to be considered when playing high-intensity outdoor sports like soccer.

“If you want to play football for 10 hours a day, they’ll have to be the hours of the early morning and late evening,” climatologist Friederike Otto from Imperial College, London, told The Associated Press in an email, “if you don’t want to have players and fans die from heatstroke or get severely ill with heat exhaustion.”

FIFA adapts

Extreme heat and thunderstorms made an impact on FIFA’s newly expanded tournament for club teams. The Club World Cup was held in 11 American cities from June 14 to July 13.

FIFA adapted by tweaking its extreme heat protocol to include extra breaks in play, more field-side water, and cooling the team benches with air fans and more shade.

Still, Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernández said the heat made him dizzy and urged FIFA to avoid afternoon kickoffs at the World Cup next year.

The global soccer players union, FIFPRO, has warned that six of the 16 World Cup cities next year are at “extremely high risk” for heat stress.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino addressed the heat concerns on Saturday, saying the handful of World Cup stadiums that are covered would be used for day-time games next year.

Extreme heat could become an even bigger challenge at the following World Cup in 2030, which will be co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Games are scheduled to be played in afternoons and early evenings from mid-June to mid-July. All three countries have already seen temperatures rise above 40 degrees C (well above 100 Fahrenheit) this summer.

FIFA downplayed the heat risk in its in-house evaluation of the 2030 World Cup bid, saying “weather conditions are difficult to predict with the current development in global and local climate, but are unlikely to affect the health of players or other participants.”

Heat exhaustion

The physical effects of playing 90 minutes of soccer in direct sunshine during the hottest part of the day can be severe and potentially result in hyperthermia – abnormally high body temperatures.

“When players experience hyperthermia, they also experience an increase in cardiovascular strain,” said Julien Périard of the University of Canberra.

“If core temperature increases excessively, exertional heat illness can occur,” leading to muscle cramping, heat exhaustion, and even life-threatening heat stroke, he said.

Many sports events held in the summer adjust their start times to early morning or late night to minimize the risk heat-related illness, including marathons at the Olympics or track world championships. Morning kickoffs, however, are rare in soccer, where World Cup match schedules are often set with European TV audiences in mind.

It would be hard for FIFA to avoid day-time World Cup kickoffs given the packed match schedule as the number of participating teams increases from 32 to 48 in 2026.

Calendar rethink

Heat mainly becomes an issue when the World Cup is held in the Northern Hemisphere, because June and July are winter months in the Southern Hemisphere.

FIFA has stuck to its traditional June-July schedule for the men’s World Cup except in 2022 when it moved the tournament to November-December to avoid the summer heat in Qatar. Something similar is expected when neighboring Saudi Arabia hosts the tournament in 2034.

However, moving the World Cup to another part of the year is complicated because it means Europe’s powerful soccer leagues must interrupt their season, affecting both domestic leagues and the Champions League.

FIFA didn’t respond to questions from AP about whether alternate dates for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups were being considered.

When and where to schedule the World Cup and other outdoor sports events is likely to become more pressing as the world continues to warm.

Athletes and even everyday people doing basic physical activities are now exposed to 28% more of moderate or higher heat risk in 2023 than they were in the 1990s, said Ollie Jay, a professor at the University of Sydney who has helped shape policy for the Australian Open in tennis.

“This is symbolic of something bigger,” said Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist. “Not just the danger and inconvenience to fans and players, but the fundamentally disruptive nature of climate change when it comes to our current way of life.”

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Borenstein contributed from Washington, D.C.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

ATLANTA (AP) — Cal Raleigh was just as successful with the first robot umpire All-Star challenge as he was in the Home Run Derby.

Seattle’s catcher signaled for an appeal to the Automated Ball-Strike System in the first inning of the National League’s win Tuesday night, getting a strikeout for Detroit’s Tarik Subal on San Diego’s Manny Machado.

“You take ‘em any way you can get ’em, boys,” Skubal said on the mound.

Four of five challenges of plate umpire Dan Iassogna’s calls were successful in the first All-Star use of the ABS system, which could make its regular-season debut next year.

Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson won as the first batter to call for a challenge, reversing a 1-0 fastball from Washington’s MacKenzie Gore in the fifth inning that had been called a strike.

Miami’s Kyle Stowers lost when ABS upheld a full-count Andrés Muñoz fastball at the bottom of the zone for an inning-ending strikeout in the eighth.

Mets closer Edwin Díaz earned a three-pitch strikeout against Randy Arozarena to end the top of the ninth on a pitch Iassogna thought was outside.

Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk used ABS to get a first-pitch strike on a 100.1 mph Aroldis Chapman offering to Brendan Donovan with two outs in the bottom half.

“The fans enjoy it. I thought the players had fun with it,” NL manager Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers said. “There’s a strategy to it, if it does get to us during the season. But I like it. I think it’s good for the game.”

Skubal had given up Ketel Marte’s two-run double and retired the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman on a groundout for his first out when he got ahead of Machado 0-2 in the count. Skubal threw a 89.5 mph changeup, and Iassogna yelled” “Ball down!”

Raleigh tapped his helmet just before Skubal tipped his cap, triggering a review by the computer umpire that was tested in spring training this year and could be adopted for regular-season use in 2026.

“Obviously, a strike like that it was, so I called for it and it helped us out,” Raleigh said.

An animation of the computer analysis was shown on the Truist Park scoreboard and the broadcast. Roberts laughed in the dugout after the challenge.

“I knew it was a strike,” Machado said.

Skubal doesn’t intend to use challenges during regular-season games if the ABS is put in place. He says he’ll rely on his catchers.

“I was joking around that I was going to burn two of them on the first balls just so that way we didn’t have them the rest of the game,” he said. “I’m just going to assume that it’s going to happen next year.”

Before the game, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred indicated the sport’s 11-man competition committee will consider the system for next season.

“I think the ability to correct a bad call in a high-leverage situation without interfering with the time of game because it’s so fast is something we ought to continue to pursue,” Manfred said.

ABS decisions may have an error of margin up to a half-inch.

“Our guys do have a concern with that half inch, what that might otherwise lead to particularly as it relates to the number of challenges you may have, whether you keep those challenges during the course of the game,” union head Tony Clark told the Baseball Writers Association of America. “Does there need to be some type of buffer zone consideration? Or do we want to find ourselves in a world where it’s the most egregious misses that we want focus in on?”

Manfred sounded less concerned.

“I don’t believe that technology supports the notion that you need a buffer zone,” he said. “To get into the idea that there’s something that is not a strike that you’re going to call a strike in a review system, I don’t know why I would want to do that.”

MLB sets the top of the automated strike zone at 53.5% of a batter’s height and the bottom at 27%, basing the decision on the midpoint of the plate, 8 1/2 inches from the front and 8 1/2 inches from the back. That contrasts with the rule book zone called by umpires, which says the zone is a cube.

“We haven’t even started talking about the strike zone itself, how that’s going to necessarily be measured, and whether or not there are tweaks that need to be made there, too,” Clark said. “So there’s a lot of discussion that still needs to be had, despite the fact that it seems more inevitable than not.”

Manfred has tested ABS in the minor leagues since 2019, using it for all pitches and then switching to a challenge system. Each team gets two challenges and a successful challenge is retained. Only catchers, batters and pitchers can call for a challenge.

“Where we are on ABS has been fundamentally influenced by player input,” he maintained. “If you had two years ago said to me: What do the owners want to do? I think they would have called every pitch with ABS as soon as possible. That’s because there is a fundamental, very fundamental interest in getting it right, right? We owe it to our fans to try to get it right because the players as I talked to them over a couple of years really, expressed a very strong interest or preference for the challenge system that we decided to test.”

Skubal wondered is all contingencies had been planned for.

“If power goes out and we don’t have ABS — sometimes we don’t have Hawk-Eye data or Trackman data. So what’s going to happen then?” he said. “Are we going to expect umpires to call balls and strikes when it’s an ABS zone?”

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB

ATLANTA (AP) — Kyle Schwarber was nervous.

He had played in Game 7 of the World Series, homered for the United States in the World Baseball Classic.

But he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off.

No one had.

“That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shootout,” he said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after a 6-6 tie Tuesday night in which it wasted a six-run, seventh-inning lead.

Schwarber earned the MVP award, going 0 for 2 with a walk as the NL won for the second time in its last 12 tries. He became the first non-pitcher MVP without a hit.

“It will be interesting to see where that goes,” said AL manager Aaron Boone of the New York Yankees. “There’s probably a world where you could see that in the future, where maybe it’s in some regular-season mix. I wouldn’t be surprised if people start talking about it like that.”

Concerned about running out of pitchers in an era when no All-Star throws more than one inning, Major League Baseball and the players’ association made the change in 2022.

In baseball’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shootout, the game was decided by having three batters from each league take three swings each off coaches.

Boone picked Brent Rooker, Randy Arozarena and Aranda on Monday, and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts picked Eugenio Suárez, Schwarber and Pete Alonso for the NL. Because Suárez was hit on the left hand by a fastball in the eighth inning, the NL turned to its alternate, Kyle Stowers.

Players from both teams stood outside their dugouts, some already in street clothes, jumping and shouting after each long ball from their side. Yankees coach Travis Chapman threw to the AL batters and Dodgers coach Dino Ebel to the NL hitters.

Rooker put the AL ahead by homering on his last two swings, and Stowers hit one. Randy Arozarena boosted the AL lead to 3-1.

Ebel had thrown BP to Schwarber two years ago at the WBC.

“He asked me right before, he was like, where do you want it?” Schwarber recalled “I’m like, just middle. And he’s like, ‘I gotcha.’”

He took two pitches and deposited the third just over the center-field fence. Schwarber took another, then hit a 461-foot drive over the right-center bullpen. After letting two more go by, he dropped to a knee while pulling the third, craned his neck and held his bat in the air as the ball landed in the fourth row of the Chop House seats.

“I didn’t hit it, obviously, my best, but I was thinking I got enough of it,” Schwarber said. “And I was just kind of down there, hoping, saying: go, go, go. And it went. And it was awesome.”

Aranda followed with a fly well short of the center-field warning track, drove a pitch about a foot shy of the top of the right-field wall and hit an opposite-field pop that dropped in medium left.

Alonso, a two-time Home Run Derby champion, didn’t have to bat and patted Schwarber on the head as fireworks went off at Truist Field.

“I felt like a closer going into a game,” Alonso said, “and then it’s like, wait, the guy in the field got a double play to end the inning. You’re not going in.”

What was the score?

MLB, after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau, said in 2022 that All-Star Games ending in a swing-off would be listed as tied, with a notation of the game being decided in a swing-off. MLB’s official postgame notes listed Tuesday’s outcome as a 7-6 NL victory.

In earlier action

Ketel Marte’s two-run double in the first had put the NL ahead, and Alonso’s three-run homer off Kris Bubic and Corbin Carroll’s solo shot against Casey Mize opened a 6-0 lead in the sixth.

The AL comeback began when Rooker hit a three-run pinch homer against Randy Rodríguez in a four-run seventh that included Bobby Witt Jr.’s RBI groundout. Robert Suarez allowed consecutive doubles to Byron Buxton and Witt with one out in ninth, and Steven Kwan’s infield hit on a three-hopper to third off Edwin Díaz drove in the tying run.

Heat on the mound

Paul Skenes, the first pitcher to start the All-Star Game each of his first two seasons, reached 100 mph on four pitches in a perfect first. Jacob Misiorowski, a controversial inclusion after pitching in just five major league games in his rookie season, fired nine pitches of 100 mph or more in a one-hit eighth 34 days after his major league debut. The 23-year-old righty, added to the NL roster by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, reached 102.3 mph. There were 21 pitches of 100 mph or more, down from a record 23 last year.

Robot umpire debuts

Four of five challenges were successful in the first use of the robot umpire in the All-Star Game.

Styling

Teams were back in their regular-season club jerseys — whites for the NL, mostly grays for the AL — after four years of special All-Star uniforms that were much criticized. The AL leads 48-45 with two ties.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb