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ATLANTA — GEORGIA TECH football coach Brent Key’s office looks out onto Bobby Dodd Stadium, with part of the Atlanta skyline in view as well. One of the buildings visible is the old Equitable building, now owned and operated by Georgia’s Own Credit Union, which has a 174-foot long digital sign around the top.

With that as the backdrop, Key was asked recently if the success of two-time defending national champion Georgia gives him extra motivation to right the ship for the Yellow Jackets.

“Kirby [Smart has] done an unbelievable job,” Key said of Georgia’s head coach. “He’s done a great job. I give him all the credit in the world. But we’ve known each other since college. And I respect him as a coach, I respect him as a man, and I respect the job he’s done. For me to worry about what goes on down there, I got way too much to do here to worry about that.”

He continued, “Now, when I walked in this office building [in January] of last year, and it was dark out, Georgia’s Own building right there said, ‘Congrats, Go Dawgs!’ Did that piss me off? Damn right it did.

“Did I call [strength coach] A.J. Artis up on the phone and tell him I want every single kid on our football team, when they’re done with workouts to come outside and do stadiums to the very top of the stadium and stare at it? You damn right I did.

“But to worry about what’s going on over there? I don’t have time to do that.”


THIS IS THE job Key has always wanted. When he was bumped up from offensive line coach to interim head coach after Geoff Collins’ firing four games into last season, Key told ESPN he wasn’t acting like it was a temporary seat at the table. His instincts were correct, and the interim tag was removed after the Yellow Jackets went 4-4 to close the campaign.

While Key, who played at Georgia Tech from 1997 to 2000, might have wanted the job, it clearly has its challenges. Tech hasn’t made a bowl game since 2018, its longest drought since 1992-1996. Collins, who was hired to replace Paul Johnson, never won more than three games during his three-plus-year tenure. In trying to attract talent, the school contends with some potential roadblocks, including higher academic standards than many big-time programs and an urban campus.

Meanwhile, the Yellow Jackets’ in-state rival roughly 80 miles to the east is aiming to become the first team to pull off a national title three-peat in almost 90 years and has won 18 of the past 21 meetings between the teams, including the last three by a combined score of 134-21.

After his playing days, Key was a graduate assistant at Tech for two years before a stop at Western Carolina, then a decade at UCF with his old head coach, George O’Leary. He spent 2016 through 2018 at Alabama before he returned to Atlanta as an assistant in 2019. He’s fully aware of the perceived complications of the job, and said he doesn’t buy into them.

“People say, ‘[The] school is hard, you have to take calculus.’ Look, I graduated but I never took one calc class in my life. So I’m like, what are you talking about? I didn’t take calculus.

“Now, I failed the hell out of chemistry.

“Other people talk about being in Atlanta — look, Atlanta made me who I am. Atlanta is an unbelievable city, the culture, the diversity, the things you learn, it creates a little bit of an edge to you.”

One of Key’s biggest priorities in trying to turn things around is to make sure his team has an identity. He has a spreadsheet mapping out every hour of every day from the start of camp to the Georgia game on Nov. 25 in Atlanta.

For every day through camp, the top of every sheet had a goal of establishing the identity of the team.

“That’s what this camp has been about,” he said. “And people talk about playing to a standard and our standard. We have no standard. There’s none. We have to create it. Nick Saban didn’t have a standard in 2006 at Alabama, he had his personal standard. You have to create those things.

“So what is our identity? We will be disciplined, we’re going to be tough as hell. This team is committed to themselves, number one, and they’re committed to this football team. And then when the number is called, we’ve got to execute.

“You got to expect good things to happen as opposed to bad things. It’s one thing to say, ‘Well, if you believe it, you say it, we’re gonna talk it into reality.’ Yeah, you got to believe, but you got to work your ass off in between. … That’s what I want our team to be. They say that there’s no greater compliment than a football team to take on the identity of the head football coach. That’s what I want.”


KEY ISN’T THE only new coach trying to restore old glory at Georgia Tech. Damon Stoudamire was hired in March to shape the men’s basketball program, and his mission — and approach — is similar to his football counterpart’s.

Stoudamire played at Arizona under the legendary Lute Olson and went on to play 13 seasons in the NBA, most notably with the Portland Trail Blazers. He came to Atlanta after being an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics. This is his second gig as a college head coach, having been at Pacific from 2016 until 2021.

Georgia Tech had a basketball team for many years, but Bobby Cremins turned it into a program in the 1980s and accumulated 354 wins over 19 seasons in Atlanta. The success continued to some degree under Paul Hewitt, who took the Yellow Jackets to a Final Four in 2004.

But since Hewitt’s departure, Tech has made just one NCAA tournament appearance after a surprising ACC tournament championship in 2021.

Like Key, Stoudamire talked about wanting to build a standard, which he said begins with toughness.

“I want to be the physically and mentally tougher team,” Stoudamire said. “I just think that wins games. We could talk about X’s and O’s and all those different things. But those two things there, and then the relationship part of it. I’m big on customer service, that’s what I like to call it. I just think that if you don’t have relationships with your players, you don’t have relationships in the workspace and different things, you can’t win.

“I’ve never really wanted to look at coaching from a coaching standpoint because I’m big on the relationship part of it, and I think if a player feels good, he plays good.

“So what does that mean? If a guy misses three in a row and he looks over, and the bench is like, ‘Keep shooting, keep shooting.’ I don’t react, I try not to at least, because I don’t want anybody to play on how they see me react. I want them to understand that Coach is calm, poised and staying in the moment.”

As far as reenergizing the fan base, Stoudamire believes in the only solution known to work anywhere and everywhere.

“I just think you got to win,” Stoudamire said. “We can get gimmicky, we can do different things, but I think you got to win. And I think people buy in. I just think it’s pretty simple.”


THE CHANGES AT Georgia Tech aren’t limited to the football and men’s basketball coaches. On the south end of Bobby Dodd Stadium is the Wardlaw Center, which itself is representative of the athletic department’s fresh start.

Georgia Tech’s athletic staff is moving into the building, which despite being part of the stadium for decades was occupied by the Institute Development and Institute Communications departments.

Settling into a new office is athletic director J. Batt, himself only about 10 months into the job. He replaced Todd Stansbury, who was AD from 2016 until his firing in 2022.

There are still some frames that need to go up on the walls in Batt’s office, which overlooks the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium. His most prized one, given to him by Homer Rice, lists the original qualifications of the award named for Rice, given annually to an athletic director who has made a significant impact on their profession and intercollegiate athletics.

Batt came to Atlanta from Alabama, where he had been since 2017, establishing himself as one of the country’s top fundraisers as executive deputy director of athletics, chief operating officer and chief revenue officer. But he’s familiar with ACC athletics. He grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was a goalie for the North Carolina soccer team, helping win a national title in 2001. He also worked at Maryland as the school transitioned from the ACC to the Big Ten.

Georgia Tech is Batt’s first swing as an AD, and returning to the ACC was an immediate draw for him. But Batt saw the potential for success because of institutional alignment, the history of Georgia Tech, “and then a group of alums and fans that care.”

“[President Angel Cabrera] stepped forward and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to make athletics as good as the academics of this institution.’ And that was truly a huge part of it for me,” Batt said. “This brand, this program — four national championships, I mean, who else has Coach of the Year Bobby Dodd, Assistant of the Year [Frank] Broyles, AD of the Year [Homer] Rice, Player of the Year [John] Heisman,” referencing the namesakes of national awards who have Georgia Tech ties. “There’s no other program with that incredible tradition.”

But the opportunity boils down to a top-down commitment to athletics, which appears to give Batt — who has seen college programs run at the highest level in Tuscaloosa — a sense that he can be the one to fix Georgia Tech.

“This guy’s walking the walk,” Batt said of Cabrera. “He is literally providing resources, he’s providing access. I mean, look at this building. This is a building that’s been in the football stadium for 30 years, athletics has never occupied it. Truly taking a step forward, and prioritizing athletics. Moving us forward with our $85 million Student-Athlete Performance Center. That project is on a fast track to get done as soon as we possibly can.”

The need for a fresh start, both on his team and in the athletic department as a whole, and the importance of the financial commitment was echoed by Key.

“That’s no different than the offensive line room needing an O-line coach that was completely different than I was,” he said. “So that the line walked in every day and it was new, it was different.

“Because when the interim has become the head coach, I’m sure there’s that fear of, ‘Well, what if some of it is the same? What is going to be different?’ … Thankfully, the alignment with J and Dr. Cabrera has allowed a lot of these things to take place, knowing that those things matter.”

One of those things is the revamped football facility.

“People have a vision of what Georgia Tech is,” Key said. “They think engineers and architects and numbers and all this nerdy stuff, and old, and the industrial age of all those things. I said, ‘Well, guess what?’

“Imagine the old locomotive going through the tunnel and it busts out the other side, and it’s one of those bullet trains coming out going the speed of sound. That’s my vision of what Georgia Tech was and is. People walk in here, I don’t want to think the old things. I want it to look like an Apple store.”

Along with the new performance center and increased revenue through business partnerships, Batt had two critical hires to make in his first six months on the job.

“We’re looking for partners,” he said. “You know, stepping in as the new AD to Georgia Tech, the president stepped forward and linked arms with me and said, ‘Hey, we’re building this back.’ I think it had us looking for people that were going to build it with us.

“Brent and Damon, no strangers to hard work, right? These guys are tremendous competitors with tremendous passion to build it back. And so I was looking for a partner and both of those coaching hires, and certainly found it in both.”

With the new beginnings, there’s a sense around Atlanta that better days are ahead. Rather than worry about what has gone wrong, the focus is on what can be done right given everything Batt, Key and Stoudamire believe Georgia Tech has to offer.

“Since I’ve been here, we talked about alignment,” Stoudamire said. “I’ve always preached that. I think football, basketball, with the president and AD, I think all that aligns. I’ve always had a saying when one thing wins, everybody wins. And I think with football and basketball, what a tremendous opportunity that we all have here.”

Key has a notebook that he started back in 2009 in which he wrote down everything he wanted as a head coach. “One thing I never would have planned on was having a boss like J. Batt,” Key said. “He’s amazing.”

“To have a guy that’s just as driven, to have a guy that does his job like football coaches do their job. It could be 9 or 9:30 at night, and you’re here doing work, and to have an administrator just pop in and say, ‘Hey,’ because they’re working, too.

“To know what that position looks like at the most successful program in the history of college football, and they know what the most successful coach looks like, and how he goes about his business, but also to be able to allow those things to occur, and then give the resources and to help those things. And if the resources aren’t there, he gets out on the street and gets things done.

“A lot of people come up with a lot of ideas and sayings and all this kind of crap. He gets things done. He works. And when your boss is working that hard, it keeps you rolling now.

“You know everyone’s on the same page.”

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Schwarber reaches 1,000-hit milestone with HR

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Schwarber reaches 1,000-hit milestone with HR

NEW YORK — Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber topped Mark McGwire for most home runs among a player’s first 1,000 hits, hitting long ball No. 319 during Friday night’s 12-5 victory over the New York Yankees.

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not,” Schwarber said.

Ten days after lifting the National League to victory in the first All-Star Game swing-off, Schwarber keeps going deep. He hit a pair of two-run homers Friday night, with the first drive, his milestone hit, starting the comeback from a 2-0 deficit. He got the ball back after it was grabbed by a Phillies fan attending with his friends in Yankee Stadium’s right-center-field seats.

“I saw it on the video and then I see the dude tugging,” Schwarber said. “I’m like: ‘Oh, they all got Philly stuff on.’ That was cool.”

He met the trio after the game, gave an autographed ball to each and exchanged hugs. When he went to get a third ball to autograph, one of the three said he just wanted the potential free agent to re-sign with the Phillies.

“You show up to the field every single day trying to get a win at the end of the day, and I think our fans kind of latch on to that, right?” Schwarber said. “It’s been fantastic these last 3½ years, four years now. The support that we get from our fans and it means a lot to me that, you know, that they attach themselves to our team.”

Schwarber tied it at 2-2 in the fifth against Will Warren when he hit a 413-foot drive on a first-pitch fastball.

After J.T. Realmuto‘s three-run homer off Luke Weaver built a 6-3 lead in a four-run seventh and the Yankees closed within a run in the bottom half, Schwarber sent an Ian Hamilton fastball 380 feet into the right-field seats.

Schwarber reached 1,000 hits with eight more homers than McGwire. Schwarber has 36 homers this year, three shy of major league leader Cal Raleigh, and six homers in seven games since he was voted All-Star MVP. He has 33 multihomer games.

“I don’t know where we’d be without him,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “Comes up with big hit after big hit after big hit. It’s just — it’s amazing.”

Schwarber, 32, is eligible for free agency this fall after completing a four-year, $79 million contract. He homered on all three of his swings in the All-Star Game tiebreaker, and when the second half began, Phillies managing partner John Middleton proclaimed: “We love him. We want to keep him.”

“He’s been an incredible force all season long,” Realmuto said. “What he’s meant to his team, his offense, it’s hard to put in words.”

A World Series champion for the 2016 Chicago Cubs, Schwarber has reached 35 homers in all four seasons with the Phillies. He’s batting .255 with 82 RBIs and a .960 OPS.

He also has almost as many home runs as singles (46).

Schwarber had not been aware he topped McGwire for most homers among 1,000 hits.

“I had no clue. I didn’t even know it was my 1,000th, to be honest with you,” he said.

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A’s Kurtz becomes first rookie with 4-HR game

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A's Kurtz becomes first rookie with 4-HR game

Nick Kurtz of the Athletics became the first rookie in Major League Baseball history to hit four home runs in a game, part of a spectacular Friday night for the 22-year-old that will go down as one of the greatest offensive displays the sport has seen.

Kurtz also matched the MLB record with 19 total bases in the 15-3 triumph against the Astros in Houston.

“It’s arguably the best game I’ve ever watched from a single player,” Athletics manager Mark Kotsay said. “This kid continues to have jaw-dropping moments.”

Kurtz didn’t make an out all night, going deep in the second, sixth, eighth and ninth innings. He also doubled — a 381-foot drive that would have been out in six major league ballparks — and singled on his 6-for-6 night to equal Shawn Green, who had four homers, six hits and 19 total bases for the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 23, 2002 at Milwaukee.

Kurtz and Green are the only players with six hits in a four-homer game.

“It’s hard to think about this day being kind of real, it still feels like a dream,” Kurtz said in a postgame television interview. “So it’s pretty remarkable. I’m kind of speechless. Don’t really know what to say.”

It was the 20th four-homer game in major league history and second this season. Arizona’s Eugenio Suárez did it on April 26 against Atlanta. No player has ever hit five home runs in a game.

Kurtz finished with eight RBIs and six runs scored.

The 6-foot-5, 22-year-old slugger has 23 homers in 66 games this season. The fourth pick in last year’s amateur draft out of Wake Forest, he made his major league debut April 23 and hit his first homer May 13.

He is the youngest player with a four-homer game. Pat Seerey of the Chicago White Sox was 25 when he homered four times on July 18, 1948.

“This is the first time my godparents have been here, so they probably have to come in the rest of the year,” Kurtz said. “My parents flew in today. They’ve been here a bunch, but it was cool to have some family here for that.”

On Friday, Kurtz homered off each of the Astros’ four pitchers: Ryan Gusto, Nick Hernandez, Kaleb Ort and outfielder Cooper Hummel, who worked the ninth with the game out of hand. His longest drive was his third, a 414-foot solo shot off Ort in the eighth.

For his fourth homer, Kurtz hit an opposite-field line drive to the Crawford Boxes in left field on a 77 mph, 2-0 pitch from Hummel. The three-run shot made it 15-2.

“With a positional player on the mound, I’m just trying to move the ball forward,” Kurtz said. “You don’t want to be the guy that strikes out. That’s only my second at bat ever off a positional player, so I don’t know. Just trying to move the ball forward and get something that I can touch, and I hit another one.”

Kurtz’s double in the fourth inning hit just below the yellow line over the visitor’s bullpen, narrowly missing what would have been a fifth homer.

“Everybody was just like, laughing,” A’s shortstop Jacob Wilson said. “How is he doing it? This is not normal. He’s playing a different sport than us right now. It’s not baseball, it’s just T-ball what he’s doing right now.”

With the baseballs from his last two homers inside a plastic bag at his locker, Kurtz signed scorecards from all four A’s broadcasters and a lineup card. One of the scorecards and a bat were bound for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Kurtz has been the best hitter in the majors in July, ranking first in batting average (.425), on-base percentage (.494), slugging percentage (1.082), runs (22), doubles (13), homers (11) and RBIs (27).

He extended his hitting streak to 12 games, and his 23 home runs are the most for an A’s rookie since Yoenis Céspedes in 2012 and fourth most in franchise history.

Kurtz entered Friday as a -325 favorite at ESPN BET to win American League Rookie of the Year. His odds moved to -2500 after Friday night.

Information from ESPN Research and The Associated Press was used in this report.

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Yankees land 3B, acquire McMahon from Rockies

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Yankees land 3B, acquire McMahon from Rockies

NEW YORK — The Yankees on Friday acquired third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for minor league pitchers Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz, the teams announced.

The Yankees assumed the remainder of McMahon’s contract, which includes approximately $4.5 million for the rest of 2025 and $32 million over the next two seasons, a source told ESPN.

An All-Star last season, McMahon, 30, was batting .217 with 16 home runs, a .717 OPS and a National League-leading 127 strikeouts in 100 games for Colorado in 2025. After a dreadful start to the season through April, he has been significantly better, with a .246 batting average, 14 home runs and an .804 OPS. He hit home runs in the first two games after the All-Star break and another Tuesday. He is on pace to keep his four-year 20-homer streak alive.

Defensively, McMahon is a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman whose four Outs Above Average is third in the majors this season. He joins a Yankees club that has been marred by sloppy defense. On Wednesday, the Yankees committed four errors against the American East-leading Toronto Blue Jays.

“He has had some ups and downs offensively this year,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of McMahon. “I know, over the last month, he’s really swinging the bat well, but he’s a presence, and he can really defend over there at third and has for a number of years. So, we’re excited to get him.”

Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez, who began Friday with 36 home runs and an MLB-leading 86 RBIs, could be the best hitter moved before the July 31 trade deadline, but the Yankees were not particularly aggressive in pursuing him, a source told ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Though McMahon’s offensive production resulted in a 92 OPS+, which suggests he has been 8% worse than the average major league hitter this season, he’s still a significant offensive upgrade at third base for New York. The Yankees have had Oswald Peraza, one of the worst hitters in the majors, playing third base nearly every day since the club released DJ LeMahieu, another former Rockies player, earlier this month and moved Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base.

Peraza, though a strong defender, is slashing .147/.208/.237 in 69 games this season. His 24 wRC+ ranks last among the 310 hitters with at least 160 plate appearances this season.

McMahon has played his first eight-plus seasons with the Rockies. They selected him in the second round of the 2013 draft. He debuted four years later and became a regular in 2019. By then, the Rockies were descending to the bottom of the NL West. This year, they’re 26-76 and could finish with the most losses in major league history.

He leaves that environment for New York’s pressure cooker and a club with World Series aspirations, a change the Yankees hope can help McMahon.

“Hopefully, the environment is a great thing for him, that he falls into that and doesn’t have to be the guy,” Boone said. “Go do your thing. Go find the role. But it’s our job — my job, staff, coaches, players — to make sure they’re welcomed and get them as comfortable as possible.”

The price for McMahon — and his team control over the next two seasons — was a pair of pitchers who have not reached Double-A.

Herring, 22, has a 1.71 ERA in 89⅓ innings across 16 starts between Low- and High-A this season. He was a sixth-round pick out of LSU in the 2024 draft.

Grosz, an 11th-round pick in 2023, had a 4.14 ERA in 87 innings over 16 games (15 starts) for High-A Hudson Valley this season.

With third base addressed, the Yankees will seek to acquire pitchers to bolster their rotation and bullpen. Luis Gil‘s return should help. The right-hander, who has been out all season because of a lat injury, made his third rehab start Wednesday. Boone said there’s “a good chance” Gil gets another start in the minors before making his season debut.

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