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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Rick Hendrick gave Kyle Larson a second chance in NASCAR because Hendrick Motorsports had wanted him in its lineup for years. Now that Hendrick has his man, he has locked Larson down for two more seasons with full sponsorship.

Hendrick on Wednesday told his 93 dealerships that the hottest driver in motorsports has signed a contract extension through 2023 and Larson will be fully sponsored by HendrickCars.com.

It may seem like the sponsorship is all Rick Hendrick’s money anyway, but the sponsorship for 35 races the next two years is paid for from the marketing budget of Hendrick Automotive. The deal is somewhat unprecedented because the website will also sponsor Larson in all his non-NASCAR events with branding on the nose of his dirt cars, helmets, gloves and firesuits.

“My dealerships, the general managers and the employees, they didn’t want anyone else on the car,” Hendrick told The Associated Press.

Larson joined HMS this season on the cheap after a nearly yearlong NASCAR suspension for using a racial slur. Sponsors were initially skittish so the Hendrick website for new and used cars bought some of the ad space on the No. 5 Chevrolet.

The site has been on Larson’s car in 14 races so far this season but only three of his five NASCAR victories. A different sponsor was on the car when Larson won at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May to make Hendrick the winningest team in NASCAR history and the automotive group was not pleased.

Hendrick told AP his marketing team at Hendrick Motorsports was actively selling Larson sponsorship and had offers, but the team owner halted all conversations when his automotive group said it wanted the ad space.

“I bumped it up about 20% once automotive committed,” Hendrick said. “We had one deal for the whole thing, so I made them step up and at least match the offer. And they did, they want as much as they can get.”

The top stars in NASCAR for years were identified by their sponsors but the branding faded in an unsustainable economic model and teams have been forced to sell ad space on their cars in chunks to multiple companies.

Ally, the sponsor for Hendrick driver Alex Bowman, is the only current company in the Cup Series with a full season of sponsorship and HendrickCars.com would have matched that commitment if Valvoline had not already bought three races for next year on Larson’s car; that deal is expected to continue in 2023.

“When we race on Sunday our people are excited when they get to work on Monday,” Darryl Jackson, vice president of financial services for Hendrick Automotive Group, told AP. “By the water cooler, on the showroom floor, in the service center, they are talking about their car. It is ‘My driver. My team.’

“When you put that together with the business, it just makes sense. More leads sell more cars, right? We’ve got to advertise somewhere, so why not advertise on one of our assets?”

Larson has won a Cup Series-high four points races this season, as well as the $1 million All-Star race. He is second in the championship standings and has won 10 times so far this year in non-NASCAR events.

He races at dirt tracks all over the country and has 56 wins since the start of 2020 – most of those coming outside of NASCAR during his 32-race suspension for using the slur while participating in an online race at the start of the pandemic.

Hendrick hinted at his automotive arm keeping the sponsorship following Larson’s win at Nashville last month and said he wouldn’t sell the No. 5 car in a “piecemeal deal because I think it’s worth more to me than to do that.”

The data proved Hendrick right.

Jackson said since the paint scheme was revealed in February, traffic to the HendrickCars.com website has exploded. Five of the six highest-trafficked days this year followed races in which Larson contended with the website as his sponsor.

“He’s created total lead generation value of $1.8 million and over $5 million in television exposure,” Jackson said. “And we haven’t even gotten to the (playoffs) yet.”

Seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson retired from NASCAR at the end of last season and inked a sponsorship deal with Carvana for his transition from Hendrick Motorsports to IndyCar. Carvana has made significant ad buys during NASCAR races, but the Hendrick group insisted it felt no competitive pressure to increase its presence.

“Look, Kyle’s on-track performance and what we saw on the business side is what drove us to make this decision,” Brian Johnson, vice president of marketing at Hendrick Automotive Group, told AP. “Kyle has elevated our business platform in such a tremendous way that this makes sense. As someone who is responsible for our advertising spend, and all things have remained equal except for the addition of Kyle, I don’t know how else you correlate what he’s doing for the company.”

Exiled from NASCAR this time last year, the 28-year-old Larson would not have dreamed of such a fortunate turn in his career. He grew up a Jeff Gordon fan and to this day links the Hall of Famer with sponsor Dupont and its rainbow and flames paint schemes.

Larson was backed heavily by Target at the start of his NASCAR career but in eight seasons has never had one company fully committed to him.

“I want to be at Hendrick for the rest of my career and if I can have this sponsorship attached to me, I think that goes a long way for my brand and my fanbase,” Larson told AP. “Someday when I’m retired from Cup and only racing dirt cars, maybe they can back me there, too. … I feel like we’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible.”

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Volpe toss hits Judge as sloppy Yanks fall again

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Volpe toss hits Judge as sloppy Yanks fall again

NEW YORK — A blunder that typifies the current state of the New York Yankees, who find themselves in the midst of their second six-game losing streak in three weeks, happened in front of 41,401 fans at Citi Field on Saturday, and almost nobody noticed.

The Yankees were jogging off the field after securing the third out of the fourth inning of their 12-6 loss to the Mets when shortstop Anthony Volpe, as is standard for teams across baseball at the end of innings, threw the ball to right fielder Aaron Judge as he crossed into the infield from right field.

Only Judge wasn’t looking, and the ball nailed him in the head, knocking his sunglasses off and leaving a small cut near his right eye. The wound required a bandage to stop the bleeding, but Judge stayed in the game.

“Confusion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I didn’t know what happened initially. [It just] felt like something happened. Of course I was a little concerned.”

Avoiding an injury to the best player in baseball was on the Yankees’ very short list of positives in another sloppy, draining defeat to their crosstown rivals. With the loss, the Yankees, who held a three-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East standings entering June 30, find themselves tied with the Tampa Bay Rays for second place three games behind the Blue Jays heading into Sunday’s Subway Series finale.

The nosedive has been fueled by messy defense and a depleted pitching staff that has encountered a wall.

“It’s been a terrible week,” said Boone, who before the game announced starter Clarke Schmidt will likely undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.

For the second straight day, the Mets capitalized on mistakes and cracked timely home runs. After slugging three homers in Friday’s series opener, the Mets hit three more Saturday — a grand slam in the first inning from Brandon Nimmo to take a 4-0 lead and two home runs from Pete Alonso to widen the gap.

Nimmo’s blast — his second grand slam in four days — came after Yankees left fielder Jasson Dominguez misplayed a ball hit by the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the first inning. On Friday, he misread Nimmo’s line drive and watched it sail over his head for a double. On Saturday, he was slow to react to Starling Marte’s flyball in the left-center field gap and braked without catching or stopping it, allowing Marte to advance to second for a double. Yankees starter Carlos Rodon then walked two batters to load the bases for Nimmo, who yanked a mistake, a 1-2 slider over the wall.

“That slider probably needs to be down,” said Rodon, who allowed seven runs (six earned) over five innings. “A lot of misses today and they punished them.”

Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s throwing woes at third base — a position the Yankees have asked him to play to accommodate DJ LeMahieu at second base — continued in the second inning when he fielded Tyrone Taylor’s groundball and sailed a toss over first baseman Cody Bellinger’s head. Taylor was given second base and scored moments later on Marte’s RBI single.

The Yankees were charged with their second error in the Mets’ four-run seventh inning when center fielder Trent Grisham charged Francisco Lindor’s single up the middle and had it bounce off the heel of his glove.

The mistake allowed a run to score from second base without a throw, extending the Mets lead back to three runs after the Yankees had chipped their deficit, and allowed a heads-up Lindor to advance to second base. Lindor later scored on Alonso’s second home run, a three-run blast off left-hander Jayvien Sandridge in the pitcher’s major league debut.

“Just got to play better,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s fundamentals. Making a routine play, routine. It’s just the little things. That’s what it kind of comes down to. But every good team goes through a couple bumps in the road.”

This six-game losing skid has looked very different from the Yankees’ first. That rough patch, consisting of losses to the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, was propelled by offensive troubles. The Yankees scored six runs in the six games and gave up just 16. This time, run prevention is the issue; the Yankees have scored 34 runs and surrendered 54 in four games against the Blue Jays in Toronto and two in Queens.

“The offense is starting to swing the bat, put some runs on the board,” Boone said. “The pitching, which has kind of carried us a lot this season, has really, really struggled this week. We haven’t caught the ball as well as I think we should.

“So, look, when you live it and you’re going through it, it sucks, it hurts. But you got to be able to handle it. You got to be able to deal with it. You got to be able to weather it and come out of this and grow.”

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Former White Sox pitcher, world champ Jenks dies

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Former White Sox pitcher, world champ Jenks dies

Bobby Jenks, a two-time All-Star pitcher for the Chicago White Sox who was on the roster when the franchise won the 2005 World Series, died Friday in Sintra, Portugal, the team announced.

Jenks, 44, who had been diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a form of stomach cancer, this year, spent six seasons with the White Sox from 2005 to 2010 and also played for the Boston Red Sox in 2011. The reliever finished his major league career with a 16-20 record, 3.53 ERA and 173 saves.

“We have lost an iconic member of the White Sox family today,” White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. “None of us will ever forget that ninth inning of Game 4 in Houston, all that Bobby did for the 2005 World Series champions and for the entire Sox organization during his time in Chicago. He and his family knew cancer would be his toughest battle, and he will be missed as a husband, father, friend and teammate. He will forever hold a special place in all our hearts.”

After Jenks moved to Portugal last year, he was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in his right calf. That eventually spread into blood clots in his lungs, prompting further testing. He was later diagnosed with adenocarcinoma and began undergoing radiation.

In February, as Jenks was being treated for the illness, the White Sox posted “We stand with you, Bobby” on Instagram, adding in the post that the club was “thinking of Bobby as he is being treated.”

In 2005, as the White Sox ended an 88-year drought en route to the World Series title, Jenks appeared in six postseason games. Chicago went 11-1 in the playoffs, and he earned saves in series-clinching wins in Game 3 of the ALDS at Boston, and Game 4 of the World Series against the Houston Astros.

In 2006, Jenks saved 41 games, and the following year, he posted 40 saves. He also retired 41 consecutive batters in 2007, matching a record for a reliever.

“You play for the love of the game, the joy of it,” Jenks said in his last interview with SoxTV last year. “It’s what I love to do. I [was] playing to be a world champion, and that’s what I wanted to do from the time I picked up a baseball.”

A native of Mission Hills, California, Jenks appeared in 19 games for the Red Sox and was originally drafted by the then-Anaheim Angels in the fifth round of the 2000 draft.

Jenks is survived by his wife, Eleni Tzitzivacos, their two children, Zeno and Kate, and his four children from a prior marriage, Cuma, Nolan, Rylan and Jackson.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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In search of infield options, Yanks add Candelario

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In search of infield options, Yanks add Candelario

NEW YORK — The New York Yankees, digging for options to bolster their infield, have signed third baseman Jeimer Candelario to a minor league contract and assigned him to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, the affiliate announced Saturday.

Candelario, 31, was released by the Cincinnati Reds on June 23, halfway through a three-year, $45 million contract he signed before the start of last season. The decision was made after Candelario posted a .707 OPS in 2024 and batted .113 with a .410 OPS in 22 games for the Reds before going on the injured list in April with a back injury.

The performance was poor enough for Cincinnati to cut him in a move that Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall described as a sunk cost.

For the Yankees, signing Candelario is a low-cost flier on a player who recorded an .807 OPS just two seasons ago as they seek to find a third baseman to move Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base, his natural position.

Candelario is the second veteran infielder the Yankees have signed to a minor league contract in the past three days; they agreed to terms with Nicky Lopez on Thursday.

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