Sports
Jack Dreyer is Dodgers' Rubik's Cube master, and potential big league option in bullpen
PHOENIX — It took some four hours of work, roughly 1,200 Rubik’s Cubes, and years’ worth of knowledge with the six-side, 54-panel puzzle.
Ever since high school, minor-league Dodgers reliever Jack Dreyer has been able to master the Rubik’s cube; getting so good he not only solves them in as little as 20 seconds, but has learned to arrange them on canvasses by the hundreds to create multi-colored murals.
So, when the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani to his record-breaking $700 million contract in late 2023, Dreyer decided to commemorate the moment with a unique piece of art, creating a Rubik’s Cube portrait of the two-way star that was displayed at the team’s Camelback Ranch facility last spring.
“I was like, ‘Hey, he’s the face of baseball right now,’” Dreyer recalled Wednesday. “I think it would be kind of cool to have the fans get to see something like that.”
Dreyer is unsure if Ohtani ever saw the piece. And now, he said with a laugh (and hint of sorrow), it no longer exists, having been knocked over and shattered last year.
Will the 26-year-old left-hander build Ohtani a new one?
“I definitely could,” he said, “if that’s something that he would want to see.”
The good news for Dreyer: He wouldn’t have to walk far to find Ohtani and ask.
Unlike last year, when the undrafted University of Iowa product started the season as just another talented but raw prospect in the organization, Dreyer is in big-league camp this spring, sitting just 14 stalls away from Ohtani in the Dodgers’ spring clubhouse.
Dreyer hasn’t discussed his hobby with Ohtani yet, but it has become one of the spring’s more light-hearted subplots, with everyone from Tony Gonsolin to Jackson Ferris to Yoshinobu Yamamoto toying around with the cubes Dreyer has brought into the room.
“He carries a Rubik’s Cube everywhere he goes,” manager Dave Roberts joked. “Some guys carry a golf club. He carries a Rubik’s Cube.”
According to Roberts, Dreyer (and his Rubik’s Cube) almost reached the majors last year, with the Dodgers coming close on several occasions to calling him up for his MLB debut.
“There were a couple times where Jack was going to be the guy,” Roberts said. “It’s a very slow brain, as far as managing situations. A good heartbeat. The fastball really plays. And the slider has really come on.”
Prior to last year, the big leagues were more of a distant dream for Dreyer — whose father, Steve, spent two years pitching for the Texas Rangers in the early ‘90s.
During his first two minor-league seasons in the Dodgers organization, Dreyer flashed his potential by striking out 92 batters in 66 ⅔ innings between rookie ball and high-A, posting a 2.16 ERA along the way. But he also issued 41 walks, struggling to keep his fastball/slider mix in the zone.
Dodgers relief pitcher Jack Dreyer has given up only one run in four appearances this spring, striking out seven and walking one.
(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)
“The Dodgers are super transparent in terms of what they would like to see out of you, and what areas they want you to improve on each offseason,” Dreyer said. “So I had some really good conversations with the front office and the coaching staff, just saying like, ‘Hey, your stuff is good. But if you want to move to the next level, you need to reduce the walks.”
Reduce the walks, Dreyer did.
Entering last season, Dreyer said he focused on making a full “mentality shift.” His delivery didn’t change. He didn’t tweak his arsenal. But he did begin throwing “with conviction on every pitch,” he said, learning to have “the belief in yourself” to more consistently pound the strike zone and attack opposing hitters.
The results were sterling.
In 46 outings between double-A and triple-A, Dreyer again posted a 2.20 ERA, but this time while issuing just 12 walks on the entire season.
“I didn’t make any mechanical changes or anything like that,” he said. “It was purely just a mentality shift.”
While it didn’t yield a big-league call-up, Dreyer’s improvements were enough for the Dodgers to put him on the 40-man roster last November to protect him from going into the Rule 5 draft.
Dreyer said he got the news while playing catch at Camelback Ranch, when Dodgers director of player development Matt McGrath came out to the field to inform him of the decision.
“I tried my best to keep it out of my mind,” Dreyer said. “But it was cool to be able to be here in person and get congratulated by him and some teammates that were here.”
Dreyer has parlayed the opportunity — which also meant a first spring training spent in big-league camp this year — into a strong performance thus far in the Cactus League. In four appearances, he has given up just one run, struck out seven batters and walked only one.
“The biggest thing for me is just to try to be a sponge every day,” Dreyer said. “Obviously, surrounded by All-Stars and future Hall of Famers, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to learn everything I can and ask questions whenever I can. I’m just learning more about the process and pitch selection and all kinds of things. It’s been very useful.”
Dreyer has been giving lessons of his own with the Rubik’s Cube, too.
He said Gonsolin already knew how to solve the three-dimensional puzzle, but has sought new methods to complete it more quickly. Roberts noted that Dreyer also outdueled Tommy Edman in a challenge earlier this spring.
Has Roberts taken a shot at making every side the same color?
“No,” the manager laughed. “Part of my strength is I know my weaknesses … I don’t have the bandwidth to approach that yet.”
Given Dreyer’s current trajectory, Roberts might get future opportunities. After coming close to the majors last year, the pitcher appears to be near the top of the organization’s relief pitching depth chart, primed to reach the majors with his improved command and renewed mental approach.
“The organization has raved about his make-up, his talent, for a while,” Roberts said. “And now for me to get to know him a little bit more, see him against major league hitters, he’s really impressive.”
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Sports
Commentary: ‘I don’t want any handouts.’ Amid the Angels’ drought, a starry homecoming for Mike Trout
Mike Trout last played in an All-Star Game seven years ago. It’s crazy, really. The best player of the previous decade, the link that ties Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, has not taken an All-Star at-bat this decade.
Injuries, mostly. And he turns 35 next month.
Next week’s All-Star Game takes place in Philadelphia, about 40 miles north of Trout’s hometown of Millville, N.J. Major League Baseball reserves a potential All-Star roster spot or two each summer for distinguished players: Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander this year, Clayton Kershaw last year, Pujols and Miguel Cabrera in past years.
That could have been Trout’s spot this summer: a worthy honor for a three-time most valuable player, a local hero feted on the national stage the Angels have failed to provide him.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Trout said.
Not even at home?
“It’s an honor to get voted in and represent the American League,” he said. “For me, I don’t want any handouts.”
Trout is an All-Star for the 12th time, the old-fashioned way: He earned it.
Fans voted him into the starting lineup, with the most final-round votes of any AL outfielder. His peers voted him as one of the top three outfielders in the AL.
“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of hurdles, a lot of adversity. I put some hard work in, and I did not let up. I could have easily got down on myself and not pushed through it and not come back.
“I know what I am capable of. I know I have the confidence to get back to the player I used to be.”
His .874 OPS entering play Thursday ranks second among AL outfielders, a career season for many players. In 11 of his 14 full seasons — all but the previous three — he has posted a higher OPS.
In April, in a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Trout hit five home runs and drove in nine runs.
“Everything was clicking,” he said. “When I first came up, that’s how I felt the whole season.
“Just to be able to get that feeling back, that little spark, to know it’s still in there, it makes you feel pretty good.”
For him, so does playing in Philadelphia. The first time he played there with the Angels, Millville basically closed down for the night, and just about everyone in town boarded a bus to the game. Then Trout had an exceptionally rare experience, a visiting player cheered at the home of the boo.
Mark Gubicza can testify to that. Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher and now the Angels’ television analyst, grew up in Philadelphia.
“I don’t care if you were God himself, if you were wearing a different color uniform, I was still booing you,” Gubicza said. “But he was cheered.”
Still is. Trout is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, with his season tickets not in some climate-controlled luxury suite but along the sideline.
“The players all walk by him and say ‘Trouty!’ ” Gubicza said. “Before they all go out to get their heads beat in, they’re all saying hi.
“He’s not one of those guys that comes there to be seen. He’s going there to root. That’s why they love him: He’s one of us.”
Said Trout: “I know how passionate I am about the Eagles. From my experience as an Eagles fan, it’s just different.
“It’s like win or die.”
It’s not like that in Southern California, where almost no one listens to sports-talk radio, and where a nice day is always a day away.
No one would begrudge Trout for living year-round along the Orange County coast. (OK, maybe Philadelphia fans would.)
Roy Hallenbeck, Trout’s high school coach, remembered visiting years ago on what he called “a perfect day” and asking Trout how he could ever get tired of all that sunshine.
“Yeah, coach, I couldn’t live here,” Trout told him. “‘I need my seasons.”
Trout built a family home near his boyhood home. He built his Trout National golf resort, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, in Millville.
He is as loyal to the Angels as he is to Millville. He appreciates the team that “took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey” and signed him to two nine-figure contract extensions.
Trout was the last Angels player to take a postseason at-bat, in 2014. Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.
“It’s where it all began,” Trout said. “I think the fuel of people doubting us kind of makes it more of a fire for me to try to get back to the playoffs. I think that’s the biggest key for me.
“Could I take the easy way out and just leave? Yeah. But I think — I said this last year around this time, but it’s the same feeling I’ve been having — I really haven’t sat down and talked to anybody about it specifically, but I know there’s a time where, if things change, who knows? I don’t know. But, for me, right now, my focus is on trying to get this club back in the playoffs.”
At the All-Star Game, Trout might well hear Phillies fans beseech him to come play for the home team. However, Hallenbeck said, the hometown folks no longer are as strident in that long-held wish.
“I think the overriding sentiment of most people I talk with, even Phillies fans, is we would all — as people that know him, love him and care for him — love to watch him play relevant baseball in August and September,” Hallenbeck said. “It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter who. Just being relevant late in the season would be something we would all love to see.
“Hopefully, it’s with the Angels. They’ve been so good to him. We’d love to see it there.”
So would we. In the meantime, in the absence of a World Series, Trout deserves to enjoy his homecoming game.
Sports
London descends into disorder as Morocco fans flood streets after World Cup elimination by France
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Public unrest began in parts of London late Thursday night, and it appears Morocco’s exit from the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the hands of France is the reason.
France took down Morocco 2-0, eliminating the African country for the second consecutive tournament, this time in a quarterfinal match.
As a result, many feared Paris would erupt into riots, especially after the chaos that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory over Arsenal in May.
Instead, images and videos from Edgware Road in northwest London showed police clashing with large crowds as smoke billowed through the streets and debris littered the roadway.
A police vehicle is parked in a road as people from pro-Palestinian activist groups gather near the Edgware United Synagogue during a demonstration against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” organized by real-estate agency My Home in Israel, which markets property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in London, Britain, June 14, 2026. (Toby Shepheard)
Riot police, equipped with shields and body armor, tried to contain the crowds as they clashed with people launching fireworks and throwing debris. One video also appeared to show an officer down.
KYLIAN MBAPPÉ, OUSMANE DEMBÉLÉ FIRE FRANCE INTO WORLD CUP SEMIFINALS WITH WIN OVER MOROCCO
It’s unknown what happened to the officer who was down on the asphalt or how he was injured.
Fans waved Moroccan flags in the middle of the streets, which held up traffic. Some even jumped on top of vehicles trying to get through the area.
Moroccan fans in the stands before a FIFA World Cup 2026 quarterfinal match between France and Morocco at Boston Stadium July 9, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (Richard Sellers/SportsphotoAllstar)
Similar scenes unfolded after Egypt’s World Cup exit, when Argentina rallied for a controversial 3-2 victory that featured several disputed officiating decisions.
Paris, on the other hand, looked more like a city celebrating than one on the brink of a riot. Supporters of both France and Morocco flooded the streets, slowing traffic in several parts of the city.
One video showed horns blasting from cars with French and Moroccan flags out the windows on the L’avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Supporters on the side of the road, waving their own flags, joined in on the celebration.
France’s Kylian Mbappé scored his eighth goal of this World Cup, which ties him for the most with Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Ousmane Dembélé also scored in the second half for France in the 2-0 win over Morocco.
It’s the third straight semifinal appearance for France, while Morocco still made World Cup history despite the loss. After becoming the first African country to reach the quarterfinals and semifinals in World Cup history in 2022, Morocco added to that by becoming the first-ever African nation to reach more than one quarterfinal.
Moroccan fans react while attending a watch party for the World Cup round of 8 match between France and Morocco in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2026. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)
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Morocco’s exit means there are no more African nations alive in the World Cup. France will be taking on the winner of Spain and Belgium, while England and Norway and Argentina and Switzerland face off in the quarterfinals.
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