Pirates chop Wood and Giants; A's winning streak ends at two
Bryan Reynolds drove in three runs and made a leaping catch against the wall, helping the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the San Francisco Giants 9-4 on Wednesday to climb back above .500.
Former Giants Andrew McCutchen and Connor Joe each went 3 for 4 with an RBI as the Pirates (28-27) won consecutive games after dropping below .500 for the first time since they were 1-2. Pittsburgh is 8-19 following a 20-8 start.
Mitch Keller (7-1) improved to 4-0 in his last five starts, allowing four runs and 10 hits in six innings with eight strikeouts. It was his seventh consecutive outing with at least eight strikeouts.
Alex Wood (1-1) allowed a season-high six runs, eight hits and three walks in 4 1/3 innings as the Giants fell back to .500 at 28-28.
Pittsburgh outhit San Francisco 14-12.
BRAVES 4, A'S 2 >> Ozzie Albies hit a go-ahead, tworun homer in a three-run fifth inning, and Atlanta beat Oakland to deny the Athletics' bid for their first three-game winning streak this season.
Coming off their second pair of consecutive wins, the A's lost for the 20th time in 24 games and fell to 12-46. They are 24 1/2 games behind AL West-leading Texas.
Oakland drew just 6,429 to the Coliseum, the 22nd time in 31 home games attendance has been under 10,000.
Tennis STEARNS BEATS FORMER CHAMP OSTAPENKO >>
French Open debutant Peyton Stearns produced the biggest win of her career by defeating former champion Jelena Ostapenko to reach the third round at Roland Garros on Wednesday.
Stearns, a former player
at the University of Texas, only turned professional in June last year.
Ostapenko won the 2017 French Open but has since failed to advance past the 3rd round. The 17th-seeded Latvian dropped her serve five times against Stearns and hit 28 unforced errors in her 6-3, 1-6, 6-2 loss.
The 21-year-old Stearns has been climbing the WTA rankings and entered the French Open at No. 69 on the back of an encouraging clay-court campaign.
Motor sports NASCAR SLAMS STEWARTHAAS RACING FOR CHEATING >>
NASCAR issued its second massive penalty in as many days by levying huge fines against Stewart-Haas Racing for an alleged “counterfeit part” found on Chase Briscoe's car in a secondary inspection after the CocaCola 600.
SHR's No. 14 team was docked 120 points in both the owner standings and Briscoe's driver standings, and he also was stripped of 25 playoff points. John Klausmeier, the crew chief, is suspended six races and was fined $250,000.
The penalties are the harshest NASCAR can impose under its written deterrence
system. It comes a day after superstar Chase Elliott was suspended one race for deliberately wrecking Denny Hamlin on Monday at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
College football HOLIDAY BOWL SUES PAC-12, UC REGENTS >>
The organization that runs the Holiday Bowl is suing the Pac-12 Conference and the University of California Regents because UCLA backed out of the 2021 game citing COVID-19 concerns.
The San Diego Bowl Game Association is seeking a minimum of $3 million in compensatory damages in a lawsuit filed in California Superior Court in San Diego County.
UCLA announced less than five hours before it was supposed to kick off against North Carolina State on Dec. 28, 2021, that it was pulling out of the game after three defensive linemen tested positive for COVID-19.
NHL KRAKEN SIGN GM RON FRANCIS TO 3-YEAR EXTENSION >>
The Seattle Kraken signed general manager Ron Francis to a three-year contract extension through the 202627 season after the franchise reached the second round of the NHL playoffs in its second year of existence.
Hired to be the first GM in franchise history, Francis navigated through a difficult first season and helped land the pieces that turned Seattle into a playoff team in the second year without mortgaging future opportunities or putting the Kraken into challenging salary cap situations.
Seattle is the second stop for Francis as an executive after spending seven seasons in the front office of the Carolina Hurricanes. Francis started as director of hockey operations before becoming the general manager in 2014. Francis was let go by the Hurricanes after the 2018 season.
Olympics SPORTS LEADERS MEET AMID UNCERTAINTY OVER RUSSIANS COMPETING AT 2024 PARIS GAMES >>
Complex questions about if — and how — Russian athletes could return to their competitions ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics looked far from being resolved when sports governing bodies met Wednesday.
Different sports have varying sporting, political and logistical pressures, and there's a lack of clarity about how to define neutral status for Russian and Belarusian athletes that is mandatory for their return on the field of play.
The ASOIF annual meeting came two months after the International Olympic Committee gave detailed advice on how individual athletes from Russia and its military ally Belarus could be reintegrated as neutral athletes, despite those countries' ongoing war on Ukraine.
Exactly how that neutrality is being defined is not very much clearer now as key qualification events start for the Olympics that open in July next year.*