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🚨Heads
⛳️ Charges withdrawn: Louisville officials have dropped all charges against Scottie Scheffler following a traffic incident outside Valhalla Golf Club on May 17.
🎾 Thriller in Paris: Iga Świątek fought back from match point to beat four-time major winner Naomi Osaka 7-6, 1-6, 7-5 in the second round of the French Open.
⚾️ Mets goes Mets: The Mets DFA’d reliever Jorge López after he threw his glove into the stands and called them the “worst team in probably the whole damn MLB.” Things are going well in Queens.
🏈 Animal cruelty charges: Chiefs DT Isaiah Buggs has been charged with animal cruelty, the latest bad headline in an animal cruelty-filled offseason for the reigning Super Bowl champions.
🏀 NBA coaching moves: The Clippers gave Tyronn Lue a five-year, $70 million extension; the Wizards promoted interim head coach Brian Keefe to the permanent job.
⚾️ “You’re out!” Goodbye, Ángel Hernández
Angel Hernández, perhaps the most maligned umpire in MLB history retired this week after more than three decades in the major leagues. Breathe a collective sigh of relief from fans and players alike.
Details: The 62-year-old Cuban-American, a full-time Major League umpire since 1993, has reportedly reached a financial settlement with MLB to call it a career. And while “he was NOT forced to leave,” his lawyer told The Athletic ($), there is a long line of people who would have happily shown him the door.
What they say: “I don’t understand why he’s doing these games,” Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia said after Hernández infamously overturned three calls at first base on replay in a 2018 ALDS game. “He’s always bad.”
How bad was he really? Last season he missed 161 calls in just 10 games. This season he ranked 66th out of 85 referees in ball-striking accuracy (93.2%). So not great! Add to that his penchant for turning games into “ump shows,” and it became a recipe for disaster, writes Jake Mintz of Yahoo Sports.
Being an MLB umpire is a thankless job. Summer evenings are spent sweating under layers of protective gear as fans hurl obscenities and empty feedback. But Hernández’s outwardly aloof attitude and penchant for comically bad decisions did him no favors.
That his name kept popping up in controversy after controversy felt like more than a random coincidence. The mistakes and behavior made him a household name, the perfect type of punching bag in the age of social media.
Why wasn’t he fired? To begin with, the referees’ association would never let that happen without a fight. But Hernández’s performance was also better than outside evaluators made it seem, as detailed in an ESPN report on MLB’s official evaluation system ($).
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Instead, MLB kept him out of the spotlight: He hasn’t played in a World Series since 2005, nor a League Championship Series since 2016, only becoming an interim crew chief.
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That lack of assignments prompted Hernández to sue MLB for racial discrimination in 2017, but MLB said it was actually poor performance that prevented him from getting those assignments, and the lawsuit was dismissed in 2021.
The last word: ‘I don’t think much [players] hated him as a person,” one player told Yahoo Sports. “He was just so bad at his job.”
Watch: Hernández highlight role
📸 Photo gallery
Lowell, MA — Minnesota defeated Boston 3-0, won the first PWHL championship and won the Walter Cup, capping a successful first season for the startup league.
Edmonton The Oilers came back from a 2-0 deficit to beat the Stars 5-2 and even the West Finals at two games apiece.
Lancaster, PA — The 79th US Women’s Open gets underway today at Lancaster Country Club, with red-hot Nelly Korda aiming for her seventh victory in eight starts.
Baltimore— Gunnar Henderson’s grand slam lifted the Orioles past the Red Sox, tied him for the MLB lead with 18 home runs and put the 22-year-old on pace to hit 54 bombs this season.
🏈 Sources: NCAA ponders corporate logos on the court
NCAA officials are brooding changes in the law to allow schools to place corporate logos on their football fields – and perhaps eventually corporate logos on players’ jerseys.
From Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports:
Starting in the fall of 2025, power conference schools will be allowed to share millions with their athletes, possibly as much as $22 million, in a limited revenue-sharing model that is part of the consolidation of three antitrust cases.
The concept – paying players directly – has schools more willing than ever to dive into commercialization as they try to increase revenue to offset the additional compensation costs for athletes.
While the exact policy change is not clear, it is expected that schools will be allowed to display company names and logos in three ways: at midfield; on a line of 25 meters; and on the other 25-yard line. The group that oversees the rules of the game also monitors potential changes to jerseys, such as schools adding patches to a player’s jersey.
Read the full story.
📆 May 30, 1911: The first Indy 500
113 years ago today, Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 and came out of retirement before the race before retreating back to the winner’s circle.
An innovative design: Harroun piloted his self-designed single-seat Marmon Wasp and was the only racer not accompanied by a driving mechanic. Without the mechanic, he needed a way to see behind him during the race, so he installed what is believed to be the first-ever rearview mirror.
More about this day:
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⚾️ 1927: Walter Johnson pitched his MLB-record 110th and final shutout, 20 more than anyone else. Clayton Kershaw is the active leader, with 15.
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⚾️ 1986: Barry Bonds made his MLB debut with the Pirates, although you could say he actually debuted more than a month earlier*.
*Time warp: Later that season, Bonds appeared in a game that was suspended on April 20, making him one of at least six MLB players debut before they debuted.
📺 Watchlist: A few Game Fives
Prepare your dual-screen experience for an exciting evening, with simultaneous Game 5s in the NHL and NBA.
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🏒 New York City: Panthers (2-2) at Rangers (8 p.m. ET, ESPN)
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🏀 Minneapolis: Mavericks (up 3-1) at Timberwolves (8:30 p.m., TNT)
More to watch:
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⛳️ LPGA: US Women’s Open* (8:00 AM, US/Peacock)
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⛳️ PGA: Canadian Open* (6:45 a.m., ESPN+; 3 p.m., golf)
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🥎 NCAA softball: Women’s College World Series (ESPN/ESPN2) … Four games in Oklahoma City.
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🎾 Tennis: French Open (5 hours, tennis)
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🏀 WNBA: Storm with fever (7 p.m., Prime Minister)
*Prize money: The US Women’s Open has a purse of $12 million (women’s golf record), while the Canadian Open purse is $9.4 million.
⚾️ MLB Trivia
Ask: Without looking at the MLB standings, can you name the six current division leaders?
Answer below.
🥇 Lahinda gets her gold
From Jeff Eisenberg of Yahoo Sports:
Lashinda Demus needed just 52.77 seconds to complete the 400 meters hurdles at the 2012 London Olympics. The American’s wait for the gold medal she rightly deserves has lasted more than 4,300 days.
It took more than a decade for Russian hurdler Natalya Antyukh’s Olympic victory to be disqualified due to evidence of doping. It took another four months before Demus was formally upgraded from second to first place. And it took a year for Demus to secure the right to have her gold medal around her neck on the Olympic podium.
Demus announced Wednesday that the International Olympic Committee plans to award medals to her and the rightful silver and bronze medalists at a ceremony on August 9 in Paris’ Champions Park, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. It will be the first medal redistribution ceremony ever held at a Summer Olympics.
Read the full story.
Trivia answer: Yankees (38-19), Guardians (37-19), Mariners (31-26), Phillies (39-18), Brewers (32-23), Dodgers (36-22)
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