(BASEBALL)—The Kansas City Royals missed getting their first sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals at home in 25 years, but they still won the three-game series. The final game, Sunday, was great for the spectators even though the Royals lost it.
St. Louis 12, Kansas City 10.
Eight home runs. 28 hits. Neither starting pitcher made it to the third inning. A combined dozen relievers followed them to the mound.
Cardinals rookie J. J. Wetherholt had two of the home runs, drove in three runs and scored three times. With one of his two home runs Wetherholt tied an obscure record by a largely forgotten Redbird. His third leadoff home run tied a rookie record set by Bo Hart 24 years ago.
Who?
Bo Hart had a roaring start to his big league career in 2003 when he broke Kirby Puckett’s record by hitting .460 in his first ten games. He finished the season with four homers, to leading off. But a month into the 2004 season he was sent down and never came back to the bigs.
The Cardinals had lost four in a row. The Royals had a three-game winning streak.
(CHIEFS)—Rashee Rice has finished his thirty-jail sentence that started shortly after his knee surgery. His time in jail meant his rehabilitation program could not be fully implemented. He also missed the voluntary offseason workouts and the mandatory minicamp practices.
Rice is in the last year of his four-year, $6.5 million rookie contract. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent next March unless the Chief slap a “franchise” tag on him to keep him through ’27.
(HARDY)—Latest word on Tiger running back Ahmad Hardy is that he’s been hard at work on a Stairmaster in the Tiger Training facility rebuilding the strength in his left thigh after a gunshot wound requiring emergency surgery. Coach Drinkwitz says he’s making good progress but it’s too early to determine if he’ll be in playing condition for the season opener in a little more than a month.
(NFL)—It has been seven years since the NFL has held a supplemental draft. Players have to make themselves available for it—Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsbey has announced he’ll turn pro instead of wrestling opponents about his eligibility after a gambling conviction.
The draft allows teams to submit bids and choose the rounds they want to enter. The first round of bidding is open to non-playoff teams with six or fewer wins. If no team enters from that category, non-playoff teams with more than six wins go next. Playoff teams are last, based on their most recent records. If a team wins a player, the team forfeits the equivalent pick in the next year’s draft.
The supplemental draft is kind of an auction. It’s held only when eligible players have put themselves on the market. This will be the fiftieth year since the draft began and only 46 players have been taken.
Jalen Thompson, chosen by the Cardinals in the 2019 draft, is the last player was taken.
—-On the Road Where Mistakes Make Losers and Surprise Winners—
(INDYCAR)—-IndyCar defending champion Alex Palou started from the pole at Road America and was running second when he was caught speeding on pit road and forced to do a drive-through penalty that set him back far enough to take him out of contention. He was able to salvage fifth.
The bigger story was Christian Lundgaard, who started 12th and whose left front wing was damaged in a first lap tangle with Scott Dixon incident that forced him to the pits for repairs and dropped him to last place, 25th. He made it to the lead on the 43rd of the race’s 55 laps before gibing way to Josef Newgarden for four laps and Marcus Amstrong for 18. But Lundgaard got past Armstrong to lead the last seven laps including a final lap shootout coming out of caution. Davis Malukas finished second for the third time this year.
The last time an IndyCar driver went last-to first was in 2024 when Alexander won the Grand Prix of Monterey.
(NASCAR)—A unique NASCAR Race Sunday produced a special result and seemingly provide a positive answer about whether the series can run a street-course race on a military base.
The cars snaked through the 3.4-mile naval base course in San Diego, California with part-time driver Corey Heim getting his first Cup victory. Bubba Wallace, who lost a wheel early in the race rallied back to second.
Road racing ace Shane Van Gisbergen, who had the fastest qualifying run, was taken out in a multi-car crash about halfway through the race.
Heim, 23, who was running only his sixth Cup race of the year and only the 13th in his young career. He’ll move into a fulltime ride next year as a teammate of Tyler Reddick, the current points leader, and Wallace.
(Picture credits:Heim—Instagram; Hart—Fanatics Collect; Rice—KMBC TV; Lundgaard at Indy—Rick Gevers)