Boston, MA
Jarren Duran delivers walk-off as Red Sox rally late past Blue Jays 7-6
There’s something different about these Red Sox.
Over the past few years games like Monday night rarely had a happy ending, and when the Red Sox blew a late lead and allowed five runs with two outs in the top of the seventh, a disappointing loss felt inevitable. But rather than roll over, the Red Sox fought back, and with the NBA champions looking on the young ballclub pulled out arguably its signature win of the season.
Trailing by four runs entering the bottom of the eighth, the Red Sox rallied late to beat the Toronto Blue Jays 7-6 on a walk-off single by Jarren Duran. Along the way David Hamilton hit a two-run home run and Romy Gonzalez hit a game-tying two-run single in the eighth, and in the bottom of the ninth Ceddanne Rafaela drew an error and advanced into scoring position on a balk, setting the stage for Duran’s heroics.
“That was my first walk-off so I’d have to put it at the top,” said Duran when asked where the win ranked this season. “I think that was a really good team win. We went down and we fought back, we never gave up and I’m so proud of this team, we did everything right today and we just kept it really simple and kept it rolling.”
Coming into the day the Red Sox already had plenty of momentum with nine wins in their last 11 games, and Monday got off to a special start when the Boston Celtics visited the clubhouse shortly before first pitch, showing off the Larry O’Brien Trophy and talking up their crosstown counterparts.
The Celtics threw out the ceremonial first pitch and appeared several times on the jumbotron in the late innings to help rally the crowd, and following the game several Red Sox players said the Celtics’ involvement was awesome and inspiring.
“It’s crazy to see like, you get lost in the fact that we cheer for the Celtics but you don’t see them cheering for you because they’re doing their job and we’re doing our job,” Duran said. “To see them come over here and say hi, know your name, ‘oh we’re big fans,’ guys were like ‘woah you guys watch us?’”
“It was incredible, just with the Celtics being here and celebrating their finals win, it was amazing,” Gonzalez said. “I’ve never really been a part of something like this so hopefully we can keep this thing rolling.”
Yet between meeting the Celtics and the thrilling finale, the game started off as a straightforward pitchers duel.
Tanner Houck, who at this point is looking like an All-Star lock, was outstanding. The right-hander retired the first nine men he faced and sent the Blue Jays down 1-2-3 in four separate innings. He allowed an RBI single to Justin Turner in the fourth but escaped without further incident after drawing an inning-ending double play, and in the sixth he picked up two quick outs before escaping another jam. The Blue Jays loaded the bases with a hit by pitch, a Guerrero double and a Turner walk, but Houck forced George Springer to fly out to end the threat.
At that point the Red Sox led 2-1 thanks to mammoth two-run home run by Rafael Devers in the fourth, who smashed a slow Chris Bassitt curveball 443 feet into the right field bleachers. But in the top of the seventh Toronto got the leadoff man on after catcher Reese McGuire was called for catcher’s interference, and that soon proved costly.
Houck got a strikeout and drew a groundout to bring up two outs again, but the groundout also moved Addison Barger into scoring position, and Kevin Kiermaier capitalized by delivering a game-tying RBI single. That forced Houck from the game, and in his place manager Alex Cora summoned Isaiah Campbell, who had been called up from Triple-A hours earlier.
Campbell’s return to the majors did not go as planned.
The right-hander quickly allowed the go-ahead RBI single to Spencer Horwitz, and then Guerrero crushed the first pitch he saw clear over the Green Monster, a 471-foot rocket that according to Statcast was the fourth longest home run hit in the majors this season.
That was a three-run shot, and in the blink of an eye Toronto led 6-2. Houck was now on the hook for the loss despite having allowed three runs over 6.2 strong innings.
Not helping matters was Boston’s punchless offensive performance against Toronto starter Chris Bassitt. The veteran righty allowed two runs over seven innings, giving up five hits and one walk while striking out two, and outside of Devers’ home run Boston only managed four singles.
Fortunately Toronto’s bullpen has been among the worst in baseball this season, and once Bassitt was gone the Red Sox made their push.
Trailing by four in the eighth, Duran skied an infield popup that the Blue Jays infield lost and allowed to fall in for what was ruled a double. Then Hamilton ripped a two-run home run to right-field, cutting the deficit in half and making it 6-4 Blue Jays. Then Devers singled and Tyler O’Neill doubled to put the tying run in scoring position, and the Blue Jays intentionally walked Rob Refsnyder to load the bases.
Following a raucous pitching change that featured a lengthy appearance by the Celtics on the big board, pinch hitter Romy Gonzalez stepped to the plate and hit the first pitch he saw from Blue Jays reliever Zach Pop for a two-run single, tying the game at 6-6.
Kenley Jansen came on and shut the Blue Jays down in the top of the ninth, getting a hand from catcher Tyler Heineman after the recent Triple-A call-up caught pinch runner Steward Berroa stealing, and from there Rafaela and Duran took care of the rest to send the fans home happy.
Following the game Cora said the win was the team’s biggest of the season, and that the crowd atmosphere was probably the best he’s seen at Fenway Park since 2021.
“Today was loud, they were locked in, they stayed all the way to the end and I think it was a great night at Fenway,” Cora said. “I know the boys had fun today.”
The Red Sox (43-36) now have a chance to clinch their fifth straight series victory, while Toronto (35-42) has now lost seven straight and is sinking deeper into the AL East abyss. Brayan Bello (7-4, 4.83) is slated to take the mound against Toronto’s Kevin Gausman (5-6, 4.24).
Boston, MA
Between Providence And Boston Is A Vibrant Massachusetts Town Bursting With Diverse Entertainment – Islands
For some, New England might conjure images of skating rinks, Colonial architecture, and quaint villages. Others might picture waterfront cities like Boston or Providence, rich in history and — in the case of Boston, especially — towering skyscrapers. As you drive between these two capitals along Interstate 95 — a trip that should take about an hour — you’ll pass by towns like Foxborough. For the last few decades, this little community has developed a reputation as a hub of diverse entertainment, making it a worthwhile pit-stop as you journey along the East Coast.
If you’ve ever watched the Patriots kick off from Gillette Stadium on TV, then you’re already familiar with this Massachusetts town. The stadium, considered one of the 10 best in the U.S. for fun activities and events, was completed in 2002, but Foxborough itself has served as the home base for the Patriots since the 1970s. In the decades since, the team has attracted millions of visitors.
Foxborough — also spelled “Foxboro” — is normally home to about 6,500 year-rounders, but it floods with thousands more people on game or concert days. In total, the stadium can accommodate over 65,000 fans. When you’re not at Gillette Stadium, which is less than 4 miles from the heart of downtown, you’ll find plenty of other things to do. There’s live theater, outdoor recreational opportunities, and an eclectic mix of dining options, each deserving some exploration.
NFL games and Cranberry Bogs in Foxborough
Foxborough is located roughly 30 miles from Boston and just over 20 miles from Providence. In the area, you’ll find plenty of suburbs with historic downtowns and lush trails, like Hopedale, but Foxborough, nicknamed the “Gem of Norfolk County,” has one of the most diverse mixes of entertainment options. Marilyn Rodman Performing Arts Center, for instance, housed in a 1920s-era silent movie theater, offers a busy calendar of comedy and musical performances year-round.
Football fans will also enjoy visiting the Patriots Hall in Patriot Place Mall, which is open daily for $10 per standard ticket. Here, you’ll be able to watch interviews with former players and stroll through a range of exhibits. “I liked all the different memorabilia from all different players all labeled with who and what milestone they came from,” reads one review on Tripadvisor. Afterward, check out the dozens of shopping and dining options in the surrounding mall, which also has its own commuter rail station and connected hotels. Gillette Stadium is next door; along with the Patriots, the venue has hosted performers like Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and The Rolling Stones.
The Ocean Spray Cranberry Bogs and surrounding nature trails are also part of Patriot Place. Planted back in the 1920s, these bogs continue to thrive. They’re typically harvested in October, when visitors can attend the annual Harvest Festival. At this fun and family-friendly local event, you’ll be able to enjoy an inflatable corn maze, a beer garden, live music, and more.
Where to eat and sleep in Foxborough
As you explore Foxborough, you’ll find a range of dining options, from classic breakfast plates at The Commons, to artisanal burgers at Union Straw. As one reviewer writes about the latter on Google, “[This is a] Gorgeous venue, one of our favorite daytime lunch or date places. All food options are 10/10, truffle burger, gnocchi bolognese, and the flatbread pizzas are delicious and the fries are perfect.”
If you’re planning to spend the night rather than hit the road after a burger at Union Straw or a long football game, you’ll have a range of vacation rentals, local inns, and chain hotels to choose from. The Rally Point Inn & Pub, for instance, is within walking distance of local restaurants and shops. It also has its own sport-themed bar, weekly trivia nights, and karaoke. Just make sure to book your stay well in advance, as places tend to fill up before popular events.
The nearest airport is also in Providence, but you’ll find more flight options at Boston Logan International. Travelers can also opt for the “Event Train,” which runs between Patriot Place and Boston’s South Station on game days, providing a convenient way to avoid the notorious traffic. Besides the I-95 drive from Providence to Boston, there are plenty of other New England road trip tours you can take through gorgeous small towns. That being said, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a destination that attracts as many annual visitors as Foxborough.
SALT LAKE CITY — Up until the past month or so, Clayton Young wasn’t sure if he’d make it to the starting line of the 130th Boston Marathon.
By Monday afternoon, he was walking away from the course with a stunning new personal best.
Young finished the 26.2-mile point-to-point course in a personal-record time of 2 hours, 5 minutes and 41 seconds Monday, good for 11th place in an all-time year. Zouhair Talbi ran the fastest time ever by an American, finishing fifth overall in 2:03:45 and Jess McClain broken the American women’s record in 2:20:49.
In all, seven American men and 12 American women finished in the top 20 of the prestigious marathon — including Young, whose streak of six consecutive top-10 finishes dating back to 2023 (including the Paris Olympics) ended, albeit barely.
But donning the No. 24 bib and a brand-new kit for new sponsor Brooks, the former BYU national champion who prepped at American Fork High jumped into the lead pack from the start and never looked back as he broke his previous lifetime best set from the 2023 Chicago marathon and the Olympic trials nearly a year later by close to 3 seconds.
“With only nine weeks of training. … I was really happy to be a 2:05 guy,” Young told FloTrack after the race. “Obviously, falling outside the top 10 is a little disappointing, but I’m really happy with the time.”
The final finish was only the faintest disappointment in the incredibly fast field.
Young’s finish as the third fastest American on Monday marks the fifth-fastest time by an American man all-time in Boston. Charles Hicks finished 50 seconds behind Talbi in 2:04:35, with Young coming in just over a minute later to cheers of friends and family.
His former BYU teammate, Canadian international Rory Linkletter, finished 14th with a personal-best time of 2:06:04. Former BYU runner Michael Ottesen finished 52nd in 2:16:06, and Utah resident Todd Garner finished his 11th running of the Boston Marathon all-time in 3:14:35.
“I think we’re in an era in distance running, on the men and women’s sides, but especially the women’s side, where we’re all making each other so much better every time we line up with one another,” McClain told the Associated Press. “And I think it’s just going to get stronger and stronger.”
Former Utah Valley and BYU runner Kodi Kleven finished 14th in the women’s race with a personal-best time of 2:24:48. The three-time St. George marathon course record holder from Mount Pleasant led for large portions of the race en route to her qualifying time for the 2026 U.S. Olympic marathon trials.
Former BYU standout and Utah State coach Madey Dickson, who also runs trains locally with Run Elite Program, beat her previous personal record in 2:28:12 — good for 18th in the women’s race.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
For an industrial robot built for the rigors of factories and power plants, tidying up a living room may seem like a light day at the office for Spot. Yet, a recent video of the robot picking up shoes and soda cans in a residential home represents the promise of AI models in robotics. In this case, Google’s visual-language model (VLM) Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 was empowering Spot with embodied reasoning.
This particular demo grew out of a 2025 hackathon at Boston Dynamics that built on prior projects using Large Language Models (LLMs) and Visual Foundation Models (VFMs) to enable Spot to contextualize its environment and engage in more complex autonomous actions than a typical Autowalk mission. Rather than write formal software logic or a “state machine” program that defines each step of a given task, we interacted with Gemini Robotics using conversational language. In turn, it communicated with Spot on our behalf.
A Robust SDK and Natural Language Prompts Save Time
Using Spot’s SDK, we developed a layer that facilitated interaction between Gemini Robotics and Spot’s application programming interface (API). The API normally gives developers access to the robot’s capabilities to create custom applications or behaviors. For example, researchers at Meta have used Spot to test how an AI system could locate and retrieve objects it had never seen before.
Our ability to engage Gemini Robotics using natural language prompts was a huge timesaver, compared to traditional programming. We told Gemini Robotics it had access to a mobile robot equipped with cameras and a robotic arm. It also had a finite set of tools it could use to control the robot. A tool is a lightweight script that performs some internal logic and translates inputs from Gemini Robotics to actual API calls. We limited the actions to navigating between locations, capturing images, identifying objects, grasping them, and placing them somewhere else.
The extent of our SDK means there are great examples one could leverage to add more access to the API with minimal development.
Giving Gemini Robotics a Baseline
To start we needed to explain to Gemini Robotics what we wanted it to do. We did experience a learning curve when writing these baseline prompts. Simple instructions like “put down an object” or “take a picture” weren’t detailed enough to produce expected behavior. We had to add context in our descriptions as we refined each tool.
A good example is the detailed prompt for the “TakePicture” tool:
This command will cause the robot to take a picture with the specified camera. There is some nuance to choosing the correct camera. Once arriving at a location using GoTo, you should always start by taking a picture with the gripper camera, because it's the most informative.
If the robot has arrived at location and is already holding an object, you can do one of two things:
1. Immediately call PutDown
2. Search the area with either of the front cameras. The front cameras are low to the ground, so if you're trying to put things on an elevated surface, they won't give you useful information.In this example, we gave Gemini Robotics no detailed description of the robot’s chassis or arm. Instead, we simply explained that Spot’s front cameras would be too low to photograph objects on elevated surfaces. We were able to iterate rapidly, as small changes in wording produced noticeably better results. Once it had this set of basic tools through the API, Gemini Robotics could sequence Spot’s actions and follow the handwritten instructions on a whiteboard on the day of the demonstration.
How Gemini Robotics and Spot Collaborate
Until the robot powers on, Gemini Robotics has no context for what specific tasks we might ask it to perform in a given demo. We only provided simple written instructions, such as, “Make sure all of the shoes at the front door are on the shoe rack.” Gemini Robotics evaluated images from Spot’s cameras and identified objects in the scene that matched the instructions. These objects became the reference points for Spot’s navigational and manipulation systems.
In many respects, Gemini Robotics was identical to an operator manually driving Spot using its tablet controller. For example, to pick up an object with Spot, an operator positions the robot near the object and then uses a grasp wizard to identify the target object. The operator provides high-level direction and Spot figures out the exact details. In this demonstration, Gemini Robotics functioned as both the operator and the tablet sending commands to the robot. This freed us up to act more like a team lead, providing a high-level to-do list and trusting Spot and Gemini Robotics do the rest.
Call and Response
When Gemini Robotics engages a given tool, the tool responds with results and context, such as, “I picked up the object,” or “I can’t pick up something while my hand is full.” Gemini Robotics then makes adjustments on the fly based on this feedback from Spot. For example, to pick up shoes, Gemini Robotics requests an image, identifies the shoes in that image, and calls the “pickup” command. By creating fundamental tools that semantically flow in conversation, Gemini Robotics can manage the sequence of tasks required to clean up the room. Spot’s existing software stack manages the locomotion, navigation, and manipulation of the robot itself.
It’s important to note Gemini Robotics has strict boundaries in this scenario. It can’t invent new capabilities or control Spot beyond what is available through the API. This keeps Spot’s behavior predictable, while still allowing Gemini Robotics to adapt to different situations.
A Force Multiplier for Developers
For developers already working with Spot, this research has tremendous potential. Through Spot’s SDK, they have access to a robust toolkit of capabilities. Companies use these tools today to build applications for inspection, research, and industrial data analysis, among others.
An AI model like Gemini Robotics offers a way to expand those applications more rapidly. Rather than write extensive task logic on top of Spot’s APIs, developers can experiment with having AI systems interpret natural language instructions and dynamically choose to engage the robot. As a result, models like Gemini Robotics can act as force multipliers, amplifying the reliable toolkit and robust performance that is already delivering value for Boston Dynamics customers.
Our Next-Token Prediction for Spot and Gemini Robotics
Although this is still an experimental step and not a hardened application, it illustrates a compelling direction for robotics and physical AI. Robots like Spot are already extremely capable of navigating complex and changeable environments, collecting data and sensor readings, and manipulating objects. Rather than reinventing the wheel, AI foundation models offer a new way to expand these capabilities in new settings and to new applications.
Physical AI is a rapidly evolving field and our team is leading the way in the lab and in real applications of AI empowered robots. While we are early in our formal partnership with Google Deepmind, we’re excited for what the future holds with Atlas and we’ve already rolled out practical enhancements for Spot and Orbit, with AIVI-Learning powered by Google Gemini Robotics ER 1.6. This next evolution of our AI Visual Inspection tool unlocks a new level of visual intelligence, as users benefit from shared expertise bringing a deeper level of contextual intelligence to Spot and Orbit. Model improvements automatically happen behind the scenes, adding more capabilities to the same software and hardware.
Today, this demo points to a future where users can rely more on natural language to guide Spot’s actions, rather than complex code. The engineer’s role shifts toward setting goals and objectives. The multi-modal robot foundation model interprets the instructions to form complex and adaptive plans and Spot executes the action.
This article was contributed by Issac Ross and Nikhil Devraj, engineers on the Spot team.
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