Sports
Phillies, Giants' benches clear after sequence of close pitches nearly hit Phillies' Bryce Harper
Tempers reached a boiling point during a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants Wednesday.
During one plate appearance, Bryce Harper became visibly upset after he was buzzed by a pair of fastballs.
Players emerged from their respective dugouts after Giants pitcher Kyle Harrison threw back-to-back fastballs high and inside.
Harper’s bat made contact with the second pitch, and the ball ended up landing in foul territory, but the seven-time All-Star voiced his displeasure about Harrison’s pitch selection.
METS PITCHER LAUNCHES GLOVE INTO STANDS AFTER GETTING EJECTED
No punches were thrown, and no players were ejected from the game after the benches cleared.
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“He didn’t mean it,” Harper said after the game. “I didn’t want to get hit in the face again. That’s about it. … You get hit in the face, man, it’s not fun. That’s about it.”
Harrison said he did not intend to hit Harper.
“I would’ve gone in again. Why not, you know?” Harrison said, via NBC Sports. “We’re trying to get guys out, and it’s a spot where I thought I could get him. It might have leaked a little too [far] in, but really just focusing on the baseball side and just trying to execute, and that’s it.”
The Phillies cruised to a 6-1 victory to secure their league-best 39th win of the season.
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Sports
Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz rips trans participation in women's sports
Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz made his stance on transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports very clear on Sunday.
Holtz fired off a post on X on the anniversary of Title IX.
“I was happy when Title IX came out,” the former Notre Dame coach wrote. “But here we are, many years later, and now we can’t even ensure women competing against women.
“It’s crazy!”
Title IX was originally published on June 23, 1972. The law prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools and other education programs that receive funding from the federal government.
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” Title IX stated.
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Recently, the Biden administration unveiled new Title IX rules zeroing in on safeguarding LGBTQ+ students and changing the ways in which sexual harassment and assault claims are adjudicated on campus.
The new rules stopped short on barring transgender athletes from competing against females in women’s sports.
Last week, a U.S. district court in Kentucky ordered the implementation of the Biden administration’s new Title IX protections halted after a West Virginia girl and a Christian Educators Association International sued over a transgender teen competing on a middle school team. The new injunction applies to Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia.
A federal judge blocked Biden’s Title IX rule in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho a week prior.
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Sports
Plaschke: With the help of Dodgers history, team historian Mark Langill battles brain cancer
He was struggling to walk, battling to talk, fighting to think.
But he never forgot the Dodgers. He couldn’t forget the Dodgers.
In the first days following surgery to remove two brain tumors, Dodgers team historian Mark Langill was having trouble recalling everything but the legacy that lives permanently in the deepest blue part of his soul.
“The strangest thing,” Langill said. “Ninety percent of my brain was temporarily affected, but the Dodger part never went away.”
During a walk around the Huntington Hospital hallway, an orderly asked him his room number and, thanks to the Dodgers, he remembered.
It was Ted Sizemore’s Dodger rookie number, combined with Sizemore’s number when he returned to the Dodgers seven seasons later.
4105
As he continued his recovery, every day melting into the next, nurses would try to keep him alert by writing each new date on a grease board.
Thanks to the Dodgers, he never lost track.
Somebody wrote, May 1, and Langill immediately said, “Brooklyn Robins against the Boston Braves, 26 innings in 1920, longest game in major league history.”
On May 5 he said, “Russell Martin’s debut in 2006.”
On May 7 he said, “Russell Martin’s first home run against the Milwaukee Brewers in 2006.”
Nearly two months later, Langill is out of the hospital and fighting to beat brain cancer with the staunchest of allies.
His sword is Dodger memories. His shield is Dodger highlights. He knows more about Dodger history than any living human, and that history is carrying him through the rocky ground where everything else is uncertain.
“All this obscure Dodger stuff stayed in my head,” said Langill, 59. “Whatever they cut out, they didn’t cut that.”
This reliance on Dodger landmarks actually began on April 25, the day he was rushed to the hospital after behaving unsteadily at Dodger Stadium.
As he lay in the speeding ambulance, all he could think about was, it was flag day!
“Who can forget that?” he said. “April 25, 1976, the most famous play in the history of Dodger Stadium was made by an opposing player, Rick Monday saving the American flag.”
Later that day, while being inserted into the MRI machine, he assured the technicians that he was being calmed by the memory of … Andy Etchebarren?
“The 1966 World Series, he played for the Baltimore Orioles, he was the last man to bat against Sandy Koufax, and…he won the starting job in the spring because Dick Brown had a brain tumor,” Langill explained. “I survived the MRI by playing baseball brain tumor trivia.”
And when he learned that his surgeon would be Dr. Celene Mulholland? He never again forgot that name because, of course, Terry Mulholland pitched for the Dodgers in 2001 and 2002.
Only Langill, it seems, would remember a celebrated neurosurgeon because of a pitcher who graced the Dodgers with a 1-1 record and 6.60 ERA.
“I can’t help it,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s who I am.”
It’s what he’s been for the last 30 years, a delightful human trove of information that constantly shares with players and fans alike. A former sports writer, Langill began working in the team’s publications department before spending the last 22 years as baseball’s first official team historian, a role which puts him at the forefront of the team’s powerful connection between its present and past.
“Mark can talk about something that happened in 1965 as easily as something that happened yesterday,” said Lon Rosen, Dodgers executive vice president and chief operating officer. “He brings great comfort to everyone because you can ask him anything and he always has the right answer.”
If a former player wants to relive glory days, he calls Langill, who derives joy from assisting Dodgers both famous and anonymous, from the day of their retirement until their death. He has provided memories and memorabilia for many memorial services and even served as an impromptu eulogizer at Willie Davis’ funeral.
“Mark has always been my number-one asset to continue to understand the greatness of the Dodgers,” said Orel Hershiser, former pitcher and current broadcaster. “He brings another level of expertise and passion with the details he remembers at a moment’s notice.”
If a fan wants to embrace a special memory, they are also directed to Langill, who loves to print out ancient remnants to remind folks of their happiest Dodger moments.
“He is everybody’s brother, father, cousin, a trusted family member who remembers everything and is happy to share this knowledge with everyone,” said Rosen.
In fact, in his last game at Dodger Stadium before falling ill, Langill hosted an 80-year-old woman whose first game was at Ebbets Field in 1954 when Don Newcombe was pitching.
Langill surprised her by printing out the box score from that actual game, handing it to her, then they both basked in her wonder at reliving her childhood.
“Suddenly she’s 10 years old again and sitting with her grandfather,” Langill recalled. “She said it was raining that day, and she talked about what it was like to be a 10-year-old at her first game and … to actually see her relive all that was priceless.”
A few days later Langill was spinning more great tales for new Dodger employees during a stadium tour when he became unsteady. He ended up at Huntington Hospital, where several days later Mulholland pitched a perfect game in removing two tumors the combined size of a lemon.
Before the surgery, Langill prepared himself by watching a laptop video of Game 2 of the 1974 World Series between the Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics.
“That’s the one game in that series that the Dodgers won, and it was won by my first favorite Dodgers team with my all-time favorite Dodger Jimmy Wynn,” Langill said. “I figured, if I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out my way.”
He also remembered that it was the World Series where manager Tom Lasorda wore two different cleats because he had two different shoe contracts.
“Those are the little stories that make Dodger history so special,” Langill said.
As the surgery approached and it came time to seek peace, Langill kept thinking about Gary Cooper’s quote while portraying Lou Gehrig, “All the arguing in the world can’t change the decision of the umpire.”
He explained, “Some people in that situation rely on Scripture. I also rely on ‘Pride of the Yankees’.”
Throughout the ordeal, his recovery buoyed by his longtime partner, Patty Hirata, and registered nurse nephew Michael Rayala, Langill quickly bonded with various hospital workers through the Dodgers. He doesn’t remember much about the physical details of his stay, but he remembers discussing Shohei Ohtani with one orderly and then traveling back down memory lane with his first physical therapist.
“Mark has always been my No. 1 asset to continue to understand the greatness of the Dodgers.”
— Orel Hershiser
“He said his earliest Dodger memory was when he was 4 years old and his mom took him to LAX and I knew exactly what he was talking about,” Langill said. “Oct. 23, 1957, Red Patterson arranged for a pep rally to welcome the team to Los Angeles.”
During his rehabilitation, while initially struggling with everything but his Dodger knowledge, Langill was strengthened by the way it connected him with his uncomfortable surroundings.
“It’s like knowing 100 languages,” he said. “You can talk to anybody at any age if it involves the Dodgers.”
During his many years with the Dodgers, he had made many of those unique connections, his constant outreach making him arguably the franchise’s most important public representative.
There was the longtime Brooklyn Dodgers fan who was on his deathbed and wanted to hear one more Dodger story before he passed. His daughter handed the phone to Langill, who proceeded to take the man on an audio tour of all the Brooklyn Dodger memorabilia spread around the stadium.
“I told him, ‘We’re here for you,’” Langill recalled.
Then there is his annual reminder to Eric Karros every May 23.
“Happy Stan Belinda Day,” he will tell him because, on that day in 1992, Karros established himself as a future star by hitting a three-run walk-off homer against the Pirates’ Stan Belinda.
You can look it up. Langill’s memory of Dodger history is bulletproof.
“With him, we never need a fact checker,” said Rosen. “He’s right every time.”
“He’s basically become the caretaker of Dodger history,” said Karros of Langill. “Anything you want to know, he’s your guy.”
Then there was the story of Roy Gleason, a former outfielder who doubled in his only major-league plate appearance for the Dodgers in 1963. After that season Gleason was sent to Vietnam and never played major league baseball again, ending his career with that one at-bat, always wondering if anybody on the Dodgers remembered.
Langill remembered. Langill always remembers. And when he heard that Gleason was feeling disconnected from an organization that indeed had seemingly forgotten him, Langill invited Gleason to Dodger Stadium in the summer of 2003.
Once there, Langill accompanied Gleason to a wall that contains most of the names on the Dodgers’ all-time roster. In a scene that brought both men to the verge of tears, Gleason’s name was there.
“I was surprised that anyone in the organization even remembered my name,” said Gleason recently. “But Mark took the time to go into the Dodger archives and research my history.”
Later that season, Gleason threw out the first pitch and was surprised with a 1963 World Series ring.
“The best night of my life…a night I will never forget,” said Gleason. ‘And it all happened because of Mark Langill.”
This season Dodger history will have a new entry, a new landmark, a new hero, the date of June 17.
“That’s the anniversary of the first regular season ‘Freeway Series’ game between Dodgers and Angels,” Langill recalled. “Dodgers won on Todd Zeile’s walk-off home run against Troy Percival.”
Well, yes, but this is about something bigger.
June 17 should be forever known as the day Mark Langill not only recorded Dodger history, but made it.
It is the day he returned to work.
Sports
Bill Belichick's reported girlfriend's 64-year-old ex blasts critics: 'Let them live their lives'
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have competition – but it hasn’t come without criticism.
Last week, it was reported that former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, 72, is dating Jordon Hudson, a 24-year-old cheerleader.
The two have been spotted together since the reports swirled, all but confirming their relationship (as did Rob Gronkowski at the roast of Tom Brady).
But with the age gap has come lots of questions – many of which are unnecessary, says none other than Hudson’s ex-boyfriend, 64-year-old Joshua Zuckerman.
Zuckerman squashed any speculation that Hudson is dating Belichick simply for money and fame.
“She is wise beyond her years, much more than any 20-something I’ve ever met in my life,” Zuckerman told TMZ. “The narrative about her character is not fair to her.”
MATTHEW STAFFORD’S WIFE SAYS SHE ‘DATED’ HIS ‘BACKUP’ AT GEORGIA TO MAKE HIM JEALOUS
“I’ve been getting calls left and right from news stations about my relationship with Jordon Hudson. I have been involved with Jordon platonically and romantically and I consider her a good friend. I feel bad that she’s caught up in this whirlwind,” Zuckerman added.
Zuckerman said he and Hudson “regularly discuss business and shared interest in psychology, philosophy and most important, our love of nature.” It’s rumored that Belichick signed Hudson’s college textbook when they first met, and they initially bonded over similar topics.
But at the end of the day, Zuckerman wants what’s best for Hudson, and that’s for her to live her best life with Belichick.
“To be honest, I wish these internet trolls and paparazzi would leave her alone – and everyone else alone – and let them live their lives.”
Belichick will be off an NFL sideline for the first time since 1974 after he and the Pats, with whom he won six Super Bowls, parted ways after 24 seasons.
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