St. John’s legend Kaiser dies at 95

Jack Kaiser, a former St. John’s baseball player and coach who later guided the university through a changing landscape in 22 years as athletic director, has died. He was 95.

St. John’s said Kaiser died Wednesday. The school didn’t provide a cause of death.

Considered the patriarch of the Red Storm athletic department, Kaiser dedicated parts of nine decades to his alma mater, serving as the department’s athletic director emeritus from 1995 until his death.

“We live in thankfulness for everything that Jack was and his enduring impact on St. John’s and the Big East Conference,” said university president, the Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P. “As a player, a coach, an athletic director, and especially as a supporter of St. John’s, Jack was a difference-maker. We celebrate his life well-lived.”

Kaiser was one of the seven athletic directors who banded together to create the Big East Conference in 1979, forever changing the history of college basketball.

During his time as athletic director, Kaiser also instituted women’s varsity athletics at St. John’s beginning in 1974. There are currently 10 Red Storm women’s teams.

Born in Brooklyn on Oct. 6, 1926, John Warren Kaiser attended St. John’s Prep and served in the Army in World War II. He enrolled at St. John’s after returning home in 1946 and became a three-sport star, particulary in baseball, leading St. John’s to its first College World Series appearance in 1949.

REDS EXPLODE FOR 20 RUNS

Kyle Farmer homered and knocked in five runs on the day to power the Reds to their highest-scoring game in 23 years, a 20-5 rout of the visiting Cubs.

Farmer and Nick Senzel notched four hits each, and Brandon Drury, Tommy Pham and Albert Almora Jr. collected three apiece. The Reds entered with a .217 batting average, 28th among the 30 teams, and finished with 20 hits in all as they gained a four-game split.

HALEP OUT AFTER PANIC ATTACK

Two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep said she had a panic attack while leading her second-round match that she eventually lost at the French Open on Thursday.

The 2018 Roland Garros winner said she “lost it” and couldn’t regain focus while playing 19-year-old Qinwen Zheng, who won, 2-6, 6-2, 6-1, at Court Simonne-Mathieu.

“I had a break in the second set, but then something happened. I just lost it,” the 30-year-old Romanian said in her post-match press conference. “It was just a panic attack. It happened. I didn’t know how to handle it because I don’t have it often.”

Halep, the 2019 Wimbledon champion, had already amassed 20 wins this season and had beaten 74thranked Zheng in January.

Halep said she likely put too much pressure on herself.

“It’s something normal that everybody has. I will be better next time, for sure. I don’t have these things, so it was new for me,” she said.

KENTUCKY TRAILBLAZER WARFORD DIES

Reggie Warford, who was Kentucky’s second Black men’s basketball player and first Black basketball player to graduate, has died. He was 67.

Kentucky basketball spokeswoman Deb Moore said Warford’s wife, Marisa, notified coach John Calipari that Warford had died Thursday in Pittsburgh. Warford had dealt with numerous health issues the past decade and underwent a series of transplants.