Sports briefs
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Astros pitcher Ronel Blanco suspended ten games
HOUSTON | Astros pitcher Ronel Blanco received a 10-game suspension Wednesday for violating Major League Baseball rules prohibiting foreign substances.
Blanco was ejected from Tuesday night’s start against the Oakland Athletics. His penalty, which also included an undisclosed fine, was announced by MLB senior vice president of on-field operations Michael Hill.
Houston general manager Dana Brown said Blanco will not appeal the suspension, which was set to begin Wednesday night against Oakland.
“Initially, he was thinking about appealing, and then him and his agent said, ‘Look, I want to get back out there. I’m not going to appeal this.’ And he’s going to move forward,” Brown said.
Blanco threw a no-hitter in his season debut and is 4-0 with a 2.09 ERA this season. With the Astros using a six-man rotation, Brown said the right-hander will probably only miss one turn.
“Ronel Blanco is a good human being,” Brown said. “He’s a good dude. He’s worked his butt off to get into the starting rotation. I think he sees it as, look, I don’t want to be out. I don’t want to extend this any longer. I want to get back to the business of pitching.”
Blanco was ejected at the start of the fourth inning during a 2-1 win over Oakland after umpires found a foreign substance that first base umpire Erich Bacchus said was “the stickiest stuff” he’s felt on a glove.
Third base umpire and crew chief Laz Diaz ejected Blanco after a check of his glove before he threw a pitch in the fourth. The umpires, Blanco and Houston manager Joe Espada stood at the mound for a couple of minutes discussing the issue before the pitcher was tossed.
Bacchus said there was nothing on Blanco’s glove when he checked it in the middle of the first, but he discovered the substance when he did his second check before the fourth.
“I felt something inside the glove,” Bacchus said. “It was the stickiest stuff I’ve felt on a glove since we’ve been doing this for a few years now.”
After Bacchus discovered the substance, he called in the rest of the crew to confer.
“Everybody checked the glove to make sure we all had the same thing and he had to get ejected because he had a foreign substance on his glove,” Diaz said.
Brown said the ejection is “an umpire’s judgement where he felt like he felt some sticky stuff, so they don’t get into what it actually was. They said he was suspended because of that.”
However, Brown did point out that Blanco has “massive sweat.”
“I would think that they thought it was more than rosin, but from our perspective, I know if you guys notice that Ronel sweats profusely,” Brown said. “And I think it was a combination of the rosin and the sweat, and it’s an umpire’s call. He made the judgement that he thought it was sticky substance, so we are at the mercy of what his judgement is. From our perspective, this is a guy who sweats a ton, and when you combine the sweat and the rosin, we felt like maybe that’s what they felt is sticky.”
After the game Tuesday, Blanco denied using an illegal substance.
“Just probably rosin I put on my left arm,” he said in Spanish through a translator. “Maybe because of the sweat it got into the glove and that’s maybe what they found.”
Espada added that when he went to the mound he saw “white powder” inside Blanco’s glove.
“It looked to me when I grabbed the glove (that) there was some rosin,” Espada said. “You’re not allowed to use rosin on your non-pitching hand and that’s what it looked like to me. It was a little bit sticky with the moisture and the sweat but that’s what it looked like to me.”
Blanco allowed four hits and struck out one in three scoreless innings Tuesday.
Indigenous consultant accuses Blackhawks of fraud
CHICAGO | A consultant the Chicago Blackhawks hired to improve relationships with American Indian tribes has filed a lawsuit accusing the team, its charity foundation and its CEO of fraud, breach of contract and sexual harassment.
Nina Sanders filed the civil action late Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court. She alleges in the lawsuit that the Blackhawks were facing intense public pressure to change their name and logo in 2020. The team’s CEO, Dan Wirtz, hired her that year to serve as a tribal liaison.
Wirtz promised that he would create positions for American Indians, buy land to give to the Sac and Fox Nation and change the team’s logo if she decided to accept the job, according to the lawsuit. She took the job based on those promises, but Wirtz never followed through on any of it, the lawsuit alleges.
Sanders goes on to allege that she told her immediate boss that an employee had been sexually harassing her and tried to force her into his hotel room in 2021. The harassment continued into 2022, but nothing was ever done about it, according to the lawsuit. Sanders also maintains that she reported two other incidents of male employees groping women, but nothing was done.
Wirtz ended Sanders’ contract last summer, according to the lawsuit.
A Blackhawks spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press on Wednesday afternoon seeking comment.
The team said in a statement to WBBM-TV that the organization noted “operational issues” in Sanders’ work, and external partners told the team that they didn’t want to work with her. The team still extended her a new contract in 2023, but Sanders chose not to renew it. The team said it investigated Sanders’ sexual harassment allegations and couldn’t find enough evidence to substantiate them.
LeBron James shows up to watch son Bronny play
CHICAGO | Bronny James’ famous father was on hand Wednesday to watch him play at the NBA draft combine.
LeBron James showed up wearing a black hoodie and sat in the second row for Bronny’s second and final scrimmage of the combine.
The NBA’s career scoring leader, his wife and daughter were frequent spectators for Bronny’s games at Southern California last season. LeBron James has said repeatedly he would like to team with his son. The four-time MVP and four-time NBA champion just completed his 21st season and could become a free agent if he opts out of his contract with the Los Angeles Lakers. But he also said following a season-ending loss to Denver that he hasn’t “given much thought lately” to playing alongside his son.
Bronny James is deciding whether to turn pro after one college season. He declared for the draft and entered the transfer portal on April 5.
Bronny James was one of the nation’s top prospects when he decided to stay near home and committed to USC last May out of Sierra Canyon School in nearby Chatsworth. But things took an unexpected turn last summer.
James went into cardiac arrestbecause of a congenital heart defect during a basketball workout at USC in late July and needed surgery. He missed the first month of the season. He averaged 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 25 games for the Trojans.
FIFA members to vote on the host of the 2027 Women’s World Cup
The FIFA Congress will pick from a winnowed field of two candidates to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup at its meeting in Bangkok this week.
A joint bid by the United States and Mexico was pulled late last month, and South Africa withdrew its candidacy in November. That left only two bids standing for Friday’s vote: A joint proposal from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and another from Brazil.
It’s the first time that all 211 of FIFA’s members associations will have the opportunity weigh in on the host of the women’s tournament. Previously, it was decided by the FIFA Council, the governing body’s decision-making committee.
Brazil is favored to win the contest, particularly after ranking higher in a FIFA evaluation report last week.
“The document shows Brazil has fulfilled with excellency all the rigid demands of the bidding process,” Brazilian soccer confederation president Ednaldo Rodrigues said.
Brazil’s bid, titled “As Natural as Football,” emphasizes an event that will inspire women and girls, as well raise awareness of such issues as sustainability, social responsibility and inclusion.
Brazil was also in the running for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, but dropped out citing lingering hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan also withdrew late in that process. When the bids were ultimately considered, there were only two, Colombia and the joint submission from Australia and New Zealand, which ultimately won with 63% of the council’s vote.
Brazil has hosted two men’s World Cups, in 1950 and 2014, and the 2016 Olympics. A South American country has never hosted a Women’s World Cup and fellow CONMEBOL nations are likely to support the effort.
“The results published by FIFA add to our strength so we can work harder in this final sprint,” Rodrigues said. “We will work more so we can get the biggest number of votes possible. We want everyone’s support.”
Germany hosted the Women’s World Cup in 2011 and the Netherlands hosted the 2017 Women’s European Championship. Among the advantages of the “BNG” proposal: There are 13 possible host cities that are accessible by train.
Their bid — titled “Breaking New Ground,” using the countries’ initials — marks the first time the three traditional rivals have collaborated as prospective hosts. Belgium and the Netherlands co-hosted the men’s European Championship in 2000.
“There’s a fantastic combination of knowledge from organizing those big tournaments together, with some new ideas,” German soccer federation secretary general Heike Ullrich told The Associated Press. “One very important thing for us was when it comes to organizing a tournament is that it’s compact … so ‘local but global’ is one slogan. The longest distance between two venues is 300 kilometers (185 miles), which means for teams and fans, they can just find their base camp and from there they can go from A to B.”
The evaluation report flagged risks within the legal “contractual framework” that FIFA requires to host the event in the BNG proposal. Ullrich countered that any complications from working with three different governments would be ironed out, and that something like transport, for example, is only arranged after a successful bid. Germany will host the men’s European Championship this year, when ticket holders will have free local transport to games and discounted long-distance services.
“It’s just a question of timing, and when we take these steps,” Ullrich said. “Of course we will match everything FIFA needs to have a FIFA Women’s World Cup.”
Hosting the event has a growing economic benefit, too. The Women’s World Cup in Canada in 2015 drew 1.35 million spectators. There was $493.6 million in economic activity generated by the tournament and the under-20 Women’s World Cup the year before.
At last year’s World Cup it almost doubled, generating $865.7 million for Australia and $67.87 million for co-host New Zealand.
The United States and Mexico withdrew at the end of April after touting $3 billion in economic impact. But the sports calendar was already crowded with the United States, Mexico and Canada set to host the men’s World Cup in 2026, and Los Angeles hosting the 2028 Olympics.
Nets will retire Vince Carter’s No. 15 jersey
NEW YORK | The Brooklyn Nets are retiring the No. 15 jersey of Vince Carter, the high-flying guard who will be enshrined this year in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Nets made the video announcement Wednesday that included former backcourt mate Jason Kidd, whose No. 5 jersey is retired by the franchise.
Carter played 4 1/2 seasons with the Nets while they were in New Jersey, averaging 23.6 points. He owns their single-season record with 2,070 points in the 2006-07 season.
Carter is third in franchise history in points and is in the Nets’ top 10 in numerous other categories.
He is the only player in NBA history to play in four decades. The NBA Rookie of the Year in 1999 with the Toronto Raptors, he was dealt by the Raptors to New Jersey on Dec. 17, 2004, and played with the Nets through the 2008-09 season. His last season, 2019-2020, was with the Atlanta Hawks.
Carter will become the seventh Nets player with a retired jersey. Along with Kidd, the others are Julius Erving, Buck Williams, Drazen Petrovic, “Super” John Williamson and Bill Melchionni.
—From AP reports
