Sports
Freddie Freeman has hairline fracture, but he won't miss games for Dodgers
For much of the summer, putting together a daily lineup was a tiresome exercise for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, toiling to piece together a patchwork roster plagued by injuries.
On Monday afternoon, however, the Dodgers skipper almost smiled when asked about that night’s batting order.
“On the position player side,” he said, “this, since opening day, is as healthy as we’ve been.”
Indeed, in a visual reminder of the Dodgers’ offensive potential when at full strength, the team fielded its best lineup in weeks — maybe months — for its series opener against the Seattle Mariners at Dodger Stadium.
Freddie Freeman followed leadoff hitters Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts in the third spot, having avoided the injured list despite being diagnosed with a hairline fracture in his right middle finger earlier Monday.
Max Muncy and Tommy Edman were activated from the injured list, resupplying the Dodgers with their opening-day third baseman (Muncy had been out since May 15 because of an oblique strain and rib injury) and marquee trade deadline acquisition (Edman had yet to play this season, for the Dodgers or St. Louis Cardinals, because of offseason wrist surgery and a sprained ankle).
Even the one player who went on the IL — backup catcher Austin Barnes, who suffered a toe fracture after fouling a ball off his foot Sunday — is expected to miss the minimum 10 days, Roberts said.
“It seemed like everyone was pretty excited today, getting a couple pieces back,” Muncy said. “Definitely a little pep in the step for everybody, so hopefully we can just carry that onto the field and we can get everyone going at the right time right now.”
Freeman’s presence in the lineup was the biggest sigh of relief.
After exiting Saturday’s game in the eighth inning with a jammed right middle finger, then missing Sunday’s game because of continued swelling, the veteran first baseman got a CT scan on Monday that showed a hairline fracture.
However, an injured list stint was never much of a consideration, Roberts said, not after Freeman tested his still-bandaged finger in pregame drills and told the team he could tolerate the lingering pain.
“We talked about it briefly, but he was adamant that he was gonna be fine,” Roberts said of Freeman. “He’s a guy that you certainly trust.”
Muncy’s availability also marked a long-awaited return.
For the last three months, the veteran third baseman had endured a series of stops and starts in his recovery from an oblique injury, with continued discomfort derailing a recovery that was initially expected to take only a matter of days.
The problem, Muncy explained Monday, was that in addition to his oblique strain, doctors discovered that he had “a bottom rib that was out of place that was causing a lot of damage.”
Austin Barnes puts down a bunt during a game against the Miami Marlins on Aug. 19, 2023.
(Ryan Sun / Associated Press)
“We don’t know,” Muncy said when asked how the rib initially got hurt. “My best guess is maybe the week leading up to when I got hurt, I dove for a ball or something and landed on it wrong, and we just didn’t know it at the time. The day that I got hurt, I already had some bruising down there.”
The issue was finally fixed when Muncy got a “chiropractic adjustment” last month, as Roberts put it then, that repositioned his rib and soon relieved all pain.
What exactly did doctors do?
“I’d re-show you, but I can’t actually physically get my body in that position,” Muncy joked. “It kind of felt like they almost broke my rib. They didn’t, but it almost felt like that’s what happened. It’s one of those things where it hurt in the moment but there was a ton of relief almost immediately. The next day I got an injection and that helped a ton. A day or two after that, it felt like I was never even hurt.”
Edman’s recovery from offseason wrist surgery went even slower, getting pushed back earlier this summer by a sprained ankle he suffered while still with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Yet after completing a minor-league rehab assignment alongside Muncy last week, the utilityman is finally ready for both his season and Dodgers debut.
“When you have Tommy Edman hitting ninth, Miguel Rojas and what he’s done for us hitting eighth, Max Muncy at seventh, you’ve got some length in your lineup,” Roberts said.
To make all the pieces fit, the Dodgers designated shortstop Nick Ahmed for assignment and optioned slumping rookie center fielder Andy Pages back to the minors. They also recalled Hunter Feduccia to be a short-term replacement for Barnes.
More help could be on the way soon, with Chris Taylor likely to be activated “within the week,” Roberts said. Taylor will play a couple rehab games with single-A Rancho Cucamonga first.
On the pitching side, reliever Blake Treinen (hip) is expected to be activated on Tuesday. Starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto (shoulder) and reliever Brusdar Graterol (hamstring) continue to throw bullpen sessions. Roberts also reiterated his belief that staff ace Tyler Glasnow (elbow tendinitis) is looking at a “short stint” on the injured list.
To be competitive long term this season, the Dodgers will likely need most, if not all, of those pitchers back before the end of the season.
For Monday night, though, a mostly full-strength lineup was enough for Roberts to crack a grin.
“We’re still trying to get some pitchers to health,” Roberts said. “But as far as offensively, I like the guys we have.”
Sports
Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna reveals that he’s changing his jersey number
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Toronto Maple Leafs No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna has already been on the ice with the team as it held its development camp this week, but the highly-touted rookie is going to have to make a big change for this fall.
His number.
When he was playing for the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers and then again at Penn State this past season, McKenna wore the No. 72.
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Toronto Maple Leafs top pick Gavin McKenna has revealed that he’ll be opting for a new number for his rookie campaign. (Photo by Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images)
The expectation was that McKenna would wear No. 72 with the Maple Leafs, and he did so this week at development camp. Plenty of fans have also already ordered No. 72 jerseys with his name on the back.
On most rosters, No. 72 is unique enough that he wouldn’t run into any issues wearing it. However, on July 1, the Leafs signed two-time Stanley Cup champion goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who has worn No. 72 for most of his career, except during his first two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, when he wore No. 35.
So, some were wondering how this would work out. Would the Leafs want their new franchise player to get his pick of the number litter, or would they defer to a two-time Vezina winner?
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Gavin McKenna wore No. 72 in juniors, as well as last season at Penn State. (Photo by Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)
Well, it turns out that McKenna will be the one swapping numbers, and he’ll be switching to No. 92 this season.
McKenna had to get creative here because the obvious number changes were a no-go in Toronto. Adding 7 and 2 would be 9, but that was retired in honor of Charlie Conacher and Ted Kennedy.
Another option would’ve been to flip the digits and go with No. 27, but that was retired in honor of Frank Mahovlich and Darryl Sittler.
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So, 92 it is.
However, McKenna reached out to one of the three previous players to wear the number, Jeff O’Neill, to ask whether he was comfortable with him using it.
It’s fair to say he was down with the idea.
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McKenna will be a key piece of a Maple Leafs team that is looking to bounce back after a nightmare 2025-26 campaign that saw them finish last in the Atlantic Division.
Sports
Dodgers’ Eliezer Alfonzo praying his sister and stepmother will be found in Venezuela
It’ll be the culmination of nine minor-league seasons. But Eliezer Alfonzo‘s major-league debut on Sunday won’t include his family watching from Dodger Stadium.
Alfonzo’s younger sister, Eliana, and stepmother, Patricia, have been missing since last month when earthquakes caused widespread devastation in his home country of Venezuela.
“I’ve been trying to support my dad a lot, every day talking to him, trying to be with him,” Alfonzo said of the elder Eliezer Alfonzo, a retired major-league catcher. “It’s a little tough from here because I would like to be there with him, supporting him every day.”
His father, of course, would love to be in attendance for his son’s debut. He told him as much when he heard the Dodgers were calling him up.
The Dodgers switched their backup catchers Saturday, optioning Chuckie Robinson. They saw an opportunity to give Alfonzo some runway behind Dalton Rushing, with starting catcher Will Smith’s stay on the injured list expected to extend through the All-Star break.
The elder Eliezer Alfonzo, however, is doing whatever he can to locate his wife and daughter. Their dog was found alive, which gave the younger Eliezer Alfonzo hope.
“We’ve just gotta stay together as a family, as a country,” Alfonzo said. “Because I feel like we’re a beautiful country, we’re a really beautiful people over there. It’s not just about my family, it’s all families that have lost people already. But we’ve got hope. We just pray, we ask God to give them back to us alive.”
Alfonzo’s locker in the clubhouse is next to countryman Miguel Rojas’ stall. Rojas’ wife, Mariana, and their two children were in Venezuela, planning to renew Mariana’s passport and seek Venezuelan citizenship for their children, when the earthquakes hit. They managed to stay safe and have returned to the U.S.
“I just want to be here for him,” Rojas said. “At the end of the day, that’s the best thing I can do for him, is being a good teammate and being a friend for him. Because I know there’s going to be ups and downs. He’s going to have a lot of time to be caught [up] in baseball, and that’s going to probably take his mind away from stuff. But sometimes he’s probably going to feel weak, and he’s going to start thinking about his family. So I’m going to be here, I’m right next to him. And that’s what I told him.”
Rojas, who played against the elder Eliezer Alfonzo for years in Venezuela, reached out Saturday morning and promised him he’d save the ball from his son’s first major-league hit.
Sports
Kylian Mbappé’s seventh goal of the World Cup lifts France past Paraguay in physical Round of 16 match
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The United States may not have been in action on Independence Day, but France — who fittingly played an important role in the Revolutionary War — was on the pitch in Philadelphia against Paraguay in a massive Round of 16 clash for a trip to the quarterfinals.
It was a hot day in the birthplace of our nation, and that made things difficult for both teams in more ways than one.
While Paraguay is a great squad, they were significant underdogs against a heavily favored French team led by superstar Kylian Mbappé, who has been lighting it up this tournament.
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French and Paraguayan players get into a shoving match during their Round of 16 match on Saturday in Philadelphia. (Kyle Ross-Imagn Images)
Obviously, the heat itself is a factor, but it also made for a slower pitch, something that was believed to play into the hands of Paraguay.
However, most of the action in the first half was played on their end as France put the pressure on through the first half hour of the match.
It was intense, and that intensity boiled over in the 35th minute with some pushing and shoving after Mbappé and Paraguay’s Andrés Cubas started a wild shoving match.
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But while the intensity ramped up — and stayed high for pretty much the entire game — Paraguay weathered the storm and had every reason to feel good about reaching halftime with the game scoreless.
France got some more scoring opportunities in the early part of the second half, including a near-breakaway for Mbappé.
France’s Kylian Mbappe scored the go-ahead and ultimately game-winning goal against Paraguay on a penalty kick. (James Lang-Imagn Images)
In the 67th minute, France was awarded a penalty kick for a foul against Desire Doue that had to go to VAR for review, and it was Mbappé who took it.
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Mbappé has tended to do most of his damage in the second half, and that trend continued here with him drilling the penalty past Paraguay goaltender Orlando Gill.
That was his 19th career World Cup goal, and his seventh of this tournament alone, tying him with Argentina’s Lionel Messi for the tournament lead.
Paraguay seemed to fade after the Mbappé goal, but turned it on again late, forcing Mike Maignan to make his first save of the day about 89 and a half minutes into the match.
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It seemed like Paraguay’s plan was to try and get a rise out of the French, and they succeeded in drawing three yellow cards. In fact, they even tried to keep that going after the match with players meeting near midfield for some more pushing and shoving.
But France is moving on, and they will take on Morocco in a quarterfinal match on Thursday in Boston.
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