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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When a gunman started shooting passengers on a charter bus returning to the University of Virginia from a class field trip on Sunday night, Cavaliers running back Mike Hollins at first thought it was balloons popping.

Then Hollins saw the alleged gunman, former Virginia walk-on football player Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., and screamed at the driver to stop the bus. Hollins and two other students ran off the bus, but he soon realized no one else was following them.

Hollins, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told the two students to keep running, but he went back to the bus to help others, according to his mother, Brenda Hollins.

“His classmates are grateful for him because they said he saved their lives,” Brenda Hollins told ESPN on Thursday. “He was the first off the bus and told two of his classmates to run, and he went back.

“He said, ‘Mom, I went back. I needed to do something. I was going to beat on the windows because no one else was coming off the bus.’ He said, ‘I was going to beat on the windows. I was going to go on the bus and tell them to come on, get off.'”

But when Mike reached the first step of the bus, he encountered Jones, who Mike said was pointing a handgun at him. Mike said he turned to run, and Jones shot him in the back.

“The only thing he remembers is he tried to turn, but he saw him lift the gun,” Brenda said. “He felt his back get hot and he ran.”

According to Brenda, Mike said he started running toward a parking garage and pulled up his shirt. He saw a bullet protruding from his stomach.

“He got afraid that if he ran too far into the parking garage, no one would find him and he would die,” Brenda said.

Mike stopped, and a medical student who was on the bus helped him until emergency personnel arrived.

Virginia football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry were killed in the shooting. Another student, Marlee Morgan, was also shot and is believed to be in good condition.

Hollins might have avoided being shot if he hadn’t gone back toward the bus. His mother isn’t surprised by his actions that night.

“Didn’t surprise me,” Brenda said. “It would surprise me if he didn’t. That’s who Mike is, so it didn’t surprise me.”

Cavaliers coach Tony Elliott also wasn’t surprised to learn of Hollins’ bravery.

“It’s the character that he possesses,” Elliott said. “That act is in you before you ever get to that moment. One of the things we talked about in his program is working towards becoming champion men. We talk about heroes vs. zeroes. And guys who set out to be heroic often fail, but it’s the common guy that does what he’s supposed to do in those adverse moments that becomes a hero. It’s the epitome of who he is.

“He’s the kind of young man that cares about everybody else. He had other teammates on the bus, and he was going back for his teammates. One of the things we talk about in this in this program is love, and what love is and what the highest form of love is. The highest form of love is sacrifice, to lay down your life for somebody else. He reacted exactly how I would anticipate. He thought about his teammates. He didn’t care if he put himself back in harm’s way, but he was going back to check on his teammates.”

Jones, who was a walk-on player on the 2018 Virginia football team, has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Prosecutors have also charged him with two counts of malicious wounding and additional gun-related charges related to shooting Hollins and Morgan. He is being held without bail in a Charlottesville jail.

According to Commonwealth’s Attorney James Hingeley, a passenger on the bus told police that Jones was aiming at people and wasn’t shooting randomly. A witness also told police that Jones shot and killed Chandler while he was sleeping.

Brenda said she has forgiven Jones for what he did.

“I already have,” she said. “I had to in order to heal so I can help my son. I mean, I don’t have a choice. I have to, and then I have to move on to help my baby.”

Mike had emergency surgery Sunday night and another surgery Tuesday to explore damage to his kidneys and abdomen. Brenda said he has been taken out of intensive care, removed from a ventilator and walked for the first time on Wednesday.

“He’s recovering,” Brenda said. “Mentally and physically, he’s having a hard time. He doesn’t know why everything happened, why he was shot one time, why he is here and not his friends.”

Brenda said doctors wanted her to wait until after Mike’s second surgery to tell him that Chandler, Davis and Perry were killed. When Mike was intubated and couldn’t talk, he asked about his teammates by writing their names on a dry-erase board.

“We had to tell him that we had no information,” Brenda said. “We told him that because of the severity of the situation, it was confidential and we couldn’t get any information. I don’t think he believed us. He was throwing his hands up and had this look on his face, and I know he was saying, ‘Why? What do you mean?’

“We couldn’t tell him because we needed his vitals to stay where they were because he had surgery coming up. They didn’t want any complications.”

Immediately after Mike came out of recovery from his second surgery, his family delivered the devastating news that his teammates were gone.

“He was waiting,” Brenda said. “Right after they removed the ventilator, I heard him say, ‘Thanks, doc.’ I hadn’t heard him talk, so it was just a blessing to hear his voice. As soon as we walked in, that was his question: ‘Where is D’Sean?’ He knew. My daughter was standing closest to him, and he looked at her. She shook her head. She said, ‘He’s gone.’

“Mike’s cry was so deep it was like coming from his soul. It was like a cry I’d never heard before in my life. It was so deep. His cry was so deep. There was nothing I could do. I can’t grab him and pull him to me and hug him because he’s hurt. I can’t move him. It was like he was alone in that moment. We were there, but he was alone.”

Mike Hollins and Perry, a junior from Miami, were especially close. Brenda said her son said, “Mom, I don’t know how I’m going to live without him.”

“Mike, you’re going to live for them,” Brenda said she told him. “You’re going to live for him.”

Cavaliers coach Marques Hagans, who coached Chandler and Davis, knows that Hollins’ road back is going to be as much about his mental recovery as physical.

“Mike Hollins, I mean so fortunate to get away, but he’s got to live with not just a scar, but the pain of knowing he was on the bus when three of his teammates died,” Hagans said. “That’s not just something you move on from. He’ll always remember those sounds, that smell, that sight for the rest of his life, and that that’s a heavy burden to carry.”

Brenda had seen her son on the day before the shooting. She attended Virginia’s 37-7 loss to Pittsburgh at Scott Stadium on Nov. 12, in which Mike had eight carries for 23 yards. They had dinner together after the game, and then she flew back to Baton Rouge on Sunday.

During dinner, Mike had talked about how he was excited to go on the field trip to Washington, D.C. He wasn’t a student in the course on African American playwrights; he had been encouraged to go on the field trip by Perry.

Brenda said Mike had talked about how he’d wished they could have driven their own car to watch the play about Emmett Till, but Perry encouraged him to ride the bus. They were excited to meet other students going on the trip.

Brenda said Mike told her that he didn’t know Jones, 22, who was still enrolled in classes at Virginia. Mike said he interacted with Jones once on the trip, with each of them saying to the other, “What’s up?”

When Brenda’s phone rang around 10:40 p.m. Sunday night, she recognized a number from the Charlottesville area code and feared the worst. A doctor told her that Mike had been shot and was going into emergency surgery. His father, Mike Hollins, lives in Fairfax, Virginia, and Brenda’s mother is from Portsmouth, Virginia. They were able to get to UVA Medical Center early Monday morning; Brenda arrived later that day.

“I was devastated,” Brenda said. “Just walking into his room, I saw his feet first and they weren’t moving. And then I hear the machines and I just see him lying there. He was on the ventilator. The worst thing that I could have ever imagined to see in the world.”

Doctors have told Brenda that Mike will need months of rehabilitation during his recovery. He won’t be able to lift anything for three months. She said he is determined to return to the football field. He has at least one season of eligibility remaining; he didn’t play in any games during the COVID-19-interrupted season in 2020.

“We believe God’s report,” Brenda said. “The doctors can tell us anything. But Mike, he is driven. He will be back on the field. He will be carrying someone’s ball. He will be back. … Because he knows God and he knows he’s here for a reason. He was spared for a reason.”

Mike is scheduled to graduate with a bachelor’s degree from Virginia in December. His mother said he has to write four papers to fulfill the degree requirements. He is determined to walk across the graduation stage with his classmates.

“That would be a blessing,” Brenda said. “It’s a blessing because he’s walking with his three brothers on his back, and that’s exactly how he’s going to feel because he’s missing them. And so he’s determined and if he will graduate, he will walk.”

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Nebraska transfer WR Gilmore dismissed from team

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Nebraska transfer WR Gilmore dismissed from team

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska receiver Hardley Gilmore IV, who transferred from Kentucky in January, has been dismissed from the team, coach Matt Rhule announced Saturday.

The second-year player from Belle Glade, Florida, had come to Nebraska along with former Kentucky teammate Dane Key and receivers coach Daikiel Shorts Jr. and had received praise from teammates and coaches for his performance in spring practice.

Rhule did not disclose a reason for removing Gilmore.

“Nothing outside the program, nothing criminal or anything like that,” Rhule said. “Just won’t be with us anymore.”

Gilmore was charged with misdemeanor assault in December for allegedly punching someone in the face at a storage facility in Lexington, Kentucky, the Lexington Herald Leader reported on Jan. 2.

Gilmore played in seven games as a freshman for the Wildcats and caught six passes for 153 yards. He started against Murray State and caught a 52-yard touchdown pass on Kentucky’s opening possession. He was a consensus four-star recruit who originally chose Kentucky over Penn State and UCF.

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB’s hottest trend

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB's hottest trend

The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.

The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.

What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.

Read: An MIT-educated professor, the Yankees and the bat that could be changing baseball


What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?

The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.


How does it help hitters?

The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.

The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.


Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?

Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?


OK. How is this legal?

Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.


Who came up with the idea of using them?

The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.

When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.


When did it first appear in MLB games?

It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.


Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?

In addition to Stanton and Lindor, Yankees hitters Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt have used torpedoes to great success. Others who have used them in games include Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero, Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers and Toronto’s Davis Schneider. And that’s just the beginning. Hundreds more players are expected to test out torpedoes — and perhaps use them in games — in the coming weeks.


How is this different from a corked bat?

Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.


Could a rule be changed to ban them?

Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.


So the torpedo bat is here to stay?

Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.

Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.

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‘It’s taken on a life of its own’: Inside the 48 hours torpedo bats launched into baseball lore

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'It's taken on a life of its own': Inside the 48 hours torpedo bats launched into baseball lore

At 1:54 ET on Saturday afternoon, New York Yankees play-by-play man Michael Kay lit the fuse on what will be remembered as either one of the most metamorphic conversations in baseball history or one of its strangest.

During spring training, someone in the organization had mentioned to Kay that the team’s analytics department had counseled players on where pitches tended to strike their bats, and with subsequent buy-in from some of the players, bats had been designed around that information. In the hours before the Yankees’ home game against the Brewers that day, Kay told the YES Network production staff about this, alerting them so they could look for an opportunity to highlight the equipment.

After the Yankees clubbed four homers in the first inning, a camera zoomed in on Jazz Chisholm Jr.‘s bat in the second inning. “You see the shape of Chisholm’s bat…” Kay said on air. “It’s got a big barrel on it,” Paul O’Neill responded, before Kay went on to describe the analysis behind the bat shaped like a torpedo.

Chisholm singled to left field, and after Anthony Volpe worked the count against former teammate Nestor Cortes to a full count, Volpe belted a home run to right field using the same kind of bat. A reporter watching the game texted Kay: Didn’t he hit the meat part of the bat you were talking about — just inside where the label normally is?

Yep, Kay responded. Within an hour of Kay’s commentary, the video of Chisholm’s bat and Kay’s exchange with O’Neill was posted on multiple platforms of social media, amplified over and over. What happened over the next 48 hours was what you get when you mix the power of social media and the desperation of a generation of beleaguered hitters. Batting averages are at a historic low, strikeout rates at a historic high, and on a sunny spring day in the Bronx, here were the Yankees blasting baseballs into the seats with what seemed to be a strangely shaped magic bat.

An oasis of offense had formed on the horizon, and hitters — from big leaguers to Little Leaguers, including at least one member of Congress — paddled toward it furiously. Acres of trees will be felled and shaped to feed the thirst for this new style of bats. Last weekend, one bat salesman asked his boss, “What the heck have we done?”

Jared Smith, CEO of bat-maker Victus, said, “I’ve been making bats for 15, 16 years. … This is the most talked-about thing in the industry since I started. And I hope we can make better-performing bats that work for players.”

According to Bobby Hillerich, the vice president of production at Hillerich & Bradsby, his company — which is based in Louisville, Kentucky, and makes Louisville Slugger bats — had produced 20 versions of the torpedo bat as of this past Saturday, and in less than a week, that number has tripled as players and teams continually call in their orders.

Even though Saturday marked its launch into the mainstream, this shape of bat has actually been around for a while. Hillerich & Bradsby had its first contact with a team about the style in 2021 and had nondisclosure agreements with four teams as the bat evolved; back then, it was referred to as the “bowling pin” bat. The Cubs’ Nico Hoerner was the first major leaguer to try it — and apparently wasn’t comfortable with it. Cody Bellinger tried it when he was with the Cubs before joining the Yankees during the offseason.

Before Atlanta took the field Sunday night, Braves catcher Drake Baldwin recalled trying one in the Arizona Fall League last year (noting that his first impression was that it “looked weird”). Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor used it in 2024, in a year in which he would finish second in the NL MVP voting; Lindor’s was a little different from Volpe’s version, with a cup hollowed out at the end of the bat. Giancarlo Stanton swung one throughout his playoff surge last fall, but no one in the media noticed, perhaps because of how the pitch-black color of Stanton’s bat camouflaged the shape.

Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli saw one in the Twins’ dugout during spring training and picked it up, his attention drawn to the unusual shape. “What the hell is this thing?” he asked, wondering aloud whether the design was legal. When he was assured it was, he put it back down.

Baldelli’s experience reflected the way hitters have used and assessed bats since the advent of baseball: They’ll pick up bats and see how they feel, their interest fueled by the specter of success. Tony Gwynn won eight batting titles, and many teammates and opposing hitters — Barry Bonds among them — asked whether they could inspect his bats. The torpedo bat’s arrival was simply the latest version of that long-held search for the optimal tool.

On Opening Day, eight teams had some version of the torpedo bat within their stock, according to one major league source. But with video of the Yankees’ home runs being hit off unusual bats saturating social media Saturday afternoon, the phone of Kevin Uhrhan, pro bat sales rep for Louisville Slugger, blew up with requests for torpedo bats. James Rowson, the hitting coach of the Yankees, began to get text inquiries — about 100, he later estimated. Everyone wanted to know about the bat; everyone wanted to get their own.

In San Diego, Braves players asked about the bats, and by Sunday morning, equipment manager Calvin Minasian called in the team’s order. By the middle of the week, all 30 teams had asked for the bats. “Every team started trying to get orders in,” Hillerich said. “We’re trying to scramble to get wood. And then it was: How fast can we get this to retail?”

Victus produces the bats Chisholm and Volpe are using and has made them available for retail. Three senior players, all in their 70s, stopped by the Victus store to ask about the torpedoes. A member of Congress who plays baseball reached out to Louisville Slugger.

The Cincinnati Reds contacted Hillerich & Bradsby, saying, “We need you in Cincinnati on Monday ASAP,” and soon after, Uhrhan and pro bat production manager Brian Hillerich, Bobby’s brother, made the 90-minute drive from the company’s factory in Louisville with test bats.

Reds star Elly De La Cruz tried a few, decided on a favorite and used it for a career performance that night.

“You can think in New York, maybe there was wind,” Bobby Hillerich said. “Elly hits two home runs and gets seven RBIs. That just took it to a whole new level.”

A few days after the Yankees’ explosion, Aaron Leanhardt, who had led New York’s effort to customize its bats as a minor league hitting coordinator before being hired by the Marlins as their field coordinator, was in the middle of a horseshoe of reporters, explaining the background. “There are a lot more cameras here today than I’m used to,” he said, laughing.

Stanton spoke with reporters about the simple concept behind the bat: build a design for where a hitter is most likely to make contact. “You wonder why no one has thought of it before, for sure,” Stanton said. “I didn’t know if it was, like, a rule-based thing of why they were shaped like that.”

Over and over, MLB officials assured those asking: Yes, the bats are legal and meet the sport’s equipment specifications. Trevor Megill, the Brewers’ closer, complained about the bats, calling them like “something used in slow-pitch softball,” but privately, baseball officials were thrilled by the possibility of seeing offense goosed, something they had been attempting through rule change in recent years.

“It’s all the rage right now, given what transpired over the weekend,” said Jeremy Zoll, assistant general manager of the Twins. “I’m sure more and more guys are going to experiment with it as a result, just to see if it’s something they like.”

That personal preference is a factor for which some front office types believe the mass orders of the bats don’t account: The Yankees’ recommendations to each hitter were based on months of past data of how that player tended to strike the ball. This was not about a one-size-fits all bat; it was about precise bat measurements that reflected an individual player’s swing.

“I had never heard of it. I’ve used the same bat for nine years, so I think I’ll stick with that,” White Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi said. “It’s pretty interesting. It makes sense. If it works for a guy, good for him. If it doesn’t, stick with what you got.”

As longtime player Eric Hosmer explained on the “Baseball Tonight” podcast, the process is a lot like what players can do in golf: look for clubs customized for a player’s particular swing. And, he added, hitting coaches might begin to think more about which bat might be most effective against particular pitchers. If a pitcher tends to throw inside, a torpedo bat could be more effective; if a pitcher is more effective outside, maybe a larger barrel would be more appropriate.

That’s the key, according to an agent representing a player who ordered a bat: “You need years of hitting data in the big leagues to dial it in and hopefully get a better result. He’s still tinkering with it; he may not even use it in a game. … I think of it like switching your irons in golf to blades: It will feel a little different and take some adjusting, and it may even change your swing subtly.”

Two days after the home run explosion, Boone said, “You’re just trying to just get what you can on the margins, move the needle a little bit. And that’s really all you’re going to do. I don’t think this is some revelation to where we’re going to be — it’s not related to the weekend that we had, for example. I don’t think it’s that. Maybe in some cases, for some players it may help them incrementally. That’s how I view it.”

“I’m kind of starting to smile at it a little more … a lot of things that aren’t real.”

Said the player agent: “It’s not an aluminum bat with plutonium in it like everyone is making it out to be.”

Reliever Adam Ottavino watched this all play out, with his 15 years of experience. “It’s the Yankees and they scored a million runs in the first few games, and it’s cool to hate the Yankees and it’s cool to look for the bogeyman,” Ottavino said, “and that’s what some people are going to do, and [you] can’t really stop that. But there’s also a lot of misinformation and noneducation on it too.”

Major league baseball mostly evolves at a glacial pace. For example, the sport is well into the second century of complaints about the surface of the ball and the debate over financial disparity among teams. From time to time, however, baseball has its eclipses, moments that command full attention and inspire change. On a “Sunday Night Baseball” game on May 18, 2008, an umpire’s botched home run call at Yankee Stadium compelled MLB to implement the first instant replay. Buster Posey’s ankle was shattered in a home plate collision in May 2011, imperiling the career of the young star, and new rules about that type of play were rewritten.

The torpedo bat eruption could turn out to be transformative, a time when the industry became aware how a core piece of equipment has been taken for granted and aware that bats could be more precisely designed to augment the ability of each hitter. Or this could all turn out to be a wild overreaction to an outlier day of home runs against a pitching staff having a really bad day.

On Thursday, Cortes — who had been hammered for five homers over two innings in Yankee Stadium — shut out the Reds for six innings.

In Baltimore, Bregman, who had tried the torpedo bat earlier this week, reverted to his usual stock and had three hits against the Orioles, including a home run. Afterward, Bregman said, “It’s the hitter. Not the bat.”

This story was also reported by Jeff Passan, Jorge Castillo, Jesse Rogers and Kiley McDaniel.

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