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SONOMA, Calif. — Kyle Larson celebrated NASCAR approving his participation in the playoffs with his third Cup victory of the season — a Sunday win at his home track.

The victory for Larson, who grew up 80 miles away from Sonoma Raceway in Elk Grove, was his second on the rolling road course in picturesque wine country. It is the fifth win on a road course for NASCAR’s 2021 Cup champion and moved him to the top of the current series standings.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he got to victory lane after coming out of the pits in eighth after his final service stop of the race with less than 30 laps remaining. He had to drive his way to the front and didn’t regain the lead until eight laps remaining.

“I didn’t know what we were doing as far as strategy. I was just out there banging laps away,” Larson said. “I don’t know, we study all the strategy, but it’s like doing homework: I don’t really know what I’m looking at.

“So I was like, ‘Well, man, these guys are going to have to pit another time, maybe?’ Then we said we had to go race and pass these guys, I got a bit nervous.”

Despite his early season dominance, it took until Tuesday of this week for NASCAR to grant Larson the waiver he needed to compete in this year’s playoffs because he missed the Coca-Cola 600 last month. Larson became the fifth driver to attempt to run the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s longest race of the season on the same day, but rain in both Indiana and North Carolina ruined the attempt.

The Indy 500 was delayed four hours by rain, which forced Larson to miss the start of the Coca-Cola 600. By the time he arrived in North Carolina, the race had been stopped for rain there, never resumed and Larson never turned a lap. Because of that, it took NASCAR a week of internal debate to decide if one of its biggest stars would be given the pass required to remain eligible for playoff participation.

His win at Sonoma only showed how foolish NASCAR would have looked had it ruled against the Hendrick Motorsports driver.

Larson led 19 of the 110 laps and passed defending race winner Martin Truex Jr. with eight laps remaining to uphold the win in his No. 5 Chevrolet. It is his 20th win since joining Hendrick in 2021 which ranks third in the organization behind Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson.

Truex was going to finish second in a Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing but ran out of gas before he reached the finish line. He was scored 27th as a pair of tow trucks followed him to the finish.

That gave second to Michael McDowell in a Ford for Front Row Motorsports. Chris Buescher was third in a Ford for RFK Racing and Chase Elliott of Hendrick was fourth. He was followed by Ross Chastain of Trackhouse, who had last-lap contact with Kyle Busch that dropped Busch from fifth to 17th.

Hamlin out early

Denny Hamlin, the Cup Series points leader at the start of the race, had his day come to an abrupt end just two laps into the event when his Toyota engine failed, sending him to a last-place finish at Sonoma for the second consecutive year.

Hamlin said he had zero warning the engine was about to blow. He started 25th and was 29th when his engine failed.

“No. Nothing. It’s just the gearing is a little weird for the track,” Hamlin said. “It’s a lot of high-end RPM stuff, but the same as everyone else and I’m just not really sure. They’ll look at it and figure it out, but certainly not ideal.”

Hamlin, who was scored with a 38th-place finish, has finished outside the top 30 at Sonoma for three consecutive years.

It wasn’t much better for Ty Gibbs, his teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, who hit the wall 16 laps into the race and finished just one spot better than Hamlin in 37th.

“I just made a mistake and took us out of this day,” Gibbs said.

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NASCAR takes the Cup Series to Iowa Speedway for the first time in track history.

NASCAR began using the track in 2006 for lower level series and then some national series events in 2009, but never the Cup. NASCAR stopped using the track after the 2019 season.

IndyCar made the track an annual stop in 2007 and has been there every year since except 2021.

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M’s Naylor exits with sore shoulder after swing

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M's Naylor exits with sore shoulder after swing

SEATTLE — Mariners first baseman Josh Naylor left Thursday’s 4-3 victory against the Chicago White Sox in the third inning because of shoulder soreness, manager Dan Wilson said.

In his first at-bat against White Sox starter Shane Smith, Naylor grimaced after swinging at a high, inside fastball. He walked down the first base line and back before finishing his at-bat, which ended with a strikeout.

Naylor stayed in the game, but later exited after grounding out to second base to end the third inning.

Wilson told reporters after the game that Naylor is day-to-day.

Naylor, one of Seattle’s notable trade deadline acquisitions from the Arizona Diamondbacks, is hitting .289, with 14 home runs, 65 RBI and 21 stolen bases this season. Since joining the Mariners, the left-hander is batting .261 with three home runs and 10 stolen bases.

While with the Diamondbacks, the left-handed hitter was pulled from a June 23 game — also against the White Sox — in the fourth inning due to right shoulder discomfort. Naylor avoided a stint on the injured list and returned to the lineup two days later.

Donovan Solano, who hadn’t played in two weeks, took over at first base for Seattle when Naylor exited.

The Mariners, who swept a series for the first time since July 11-13, moved within 1 1/2 games of first-place Houston in the American League West.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Barrier-breaking MLB umpire Pawol ‘ready to go’

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Barrier-breaking MLB umpire Pawol 'ready to go'

NEW YORK — Jen Pawol was in her hotel room in Nashville, Tennessee, when she got the call she had awaited for a decade.

She was going to make her major league debut this weekend, becoming the first woman umpire in a century and a half of big league baseball.

“I was overcome with emotion,” Pawol recalled Thursday, two days before she will break a gender barrier when she works the bases during Miami’s doubleheader at Atlanta. “It was super emotional to finally be living that phone call that I’d been hoping for and working towards for quite a while, and I just felt super full. I feel like a fully charged battery ready to go.”

Her voice quavering with emotion, Pawol talked about getting the news during a Wednesday conference call with director of umpire development Rich Rieker and vice president of umpire operations Matt McKendry.

Pawol thought back to her long road. In the early 1990s at West Milford High School in New Jersey, she had a summer conversation with Lauren Rissmeyer, the third baseman on the school’s softball team.

“‘Do you want to come umpire with me?'” Pawol remembered being asked. “I didn’t think twice about it. Lauren’s doing it, so I’m going to do it.”

Pawol’s pay was $15 per game.

“She took a field and I took a field,” Pawol said. “It was a one-umpire system. I had no idea what I was doing, but I got to put gear on and call balls and strikes, so I was in.”

A 1995 graduate at West Milford, which inducted her into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022, Pawol became a three-time all-conference softball selection pick at Hofstra.

After umpiring NCAA softball from 2010 to 2016, she was approached by then-big league ump Ted Barrett at an umpire camp in Binghamton, New York, in early 2015.

“Moreso than any female that I’d seen, she looked like she could handle the rigors of the job physically,” Barrett said Thursday. “But what impressed me was her willingness to learn. She seemed like a sponge, everything that we were teaching her. I’m proud that I made her aware of the opportunity.”

Barrett invited Pawol to attend a clinic in Atlanta and then a MLB tryout camp at Cincinnati that Aug. 15. He invited her to dinner in Atlanta with fellow big league umps Paul Nauert and Marvin Hudson and their wives.

“I warned her: ‘Look, this is what you’re up against. It’s going to be 10 years in the minor leagues before you sniff a big league field,'” Barrett said.

Pawol was among 38 hopefuls invited to the Umpire Training Academy in Vero Beach, Florida, and started her pro umpiring career in the Gulf Coast League on June 24, 2016, working the plate when the GCL Tigers West played at the GCL Blue Jays.

She moved up to the New York/Penn League in 2017, the Midwest League after the first two weeks of the 2018 season, then worked the South Atlantic League in 2019, the High-A Midwest League in 2021, the Double-A Eastern League and the Triple-A International and Pacific Coast Leagues in 2023. She was called in for big league spring training in 2024 and ’25.

“This has been over 1,200 minor league games, countless hours of video review trying to get better, and underneath it all has just been this passion and this love for the game of baseball,” she said. “This started in my playing days as a catcher and transformed over into an umpire, and I think it’s gotten even stronger as an umpire. Umpiring is for me, it’s in my DNA. It’s been a long, hard journey.”

Pawol is among eight women umpires currently in the minors. For her big league debut, she will join Chris Guccione’s crew in Atlanta, where she expects about 30 family and friends. She is to work the bases during Saturday’s doubleheader and call balls and strikes on Sunday.

Pawol was at third base Wednesday night as Jacksonville beat Nashville in the International League when Sounds third baseman Oliver Dunn congratulated her.

“If I make it to the big leagues,” he told her, “we will have both worked all the levels together.”

Pawol repeatedly thanked her minor league umpiring predecessors, mentioning several who exchanged calls or texts, including Christine Wren, Pam Postema and Ria Cortesio. Just after her promotion to Triple-A, Pawol met with Postema in Las Vegas.

“The last thing she said to me when I saw her was ‘Get it done!'” Powal explained. “So I texted her yesterday and said, ‘I’m getting it done!'”

Barrett will be watching from Oregon, where he is attending Northwest League games this weekend.

“The hopes of this are that it inspires,” he said. “Who knows, there’ll be a young lady watching the game on TV and says, ‘Hey, I’d like to try that.'”

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Skenes allows career-worst 7 hits, still blanks Reds

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Skenes allows career-worst 7 hits, still blanks Reds

PITTSBURGH — It took 47 major league games before Pirates ace Paul Skenes gave up seven hits to an opposing lineup.

Skenes’ record streak of allowing six or fewer hits ended at 46 starts Thursday night in a 7-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.

According to OptaStats, the longest such streak to begin a career (excluding openers) previously belonged to Shohei Ohtani, who went 31 starts from 2018 to 2021 for the Los Angeles Angels.

Skenes (7-8) yielded seven hits over six innings Thursday night. He struck out eight and lowered his ERA to 1.94, lowest among qualified pitchers. He extended his scoreless streak at home to 27⅔ innings; he hasn’t allowed a run at PNC Park since June 8 against the Philadelphia Phillies — and that one was unearned.

“His stuff was elite,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said.

Skenes hasn’t permitted an earned run over his past five starts at PNC Park, the longest such stretch for a Pirates pitcher at home since earned runs became an official National League statistic in 1912. Skenes had shared the team record with Bob Harmon (1915) and Zane Smith (1990).

The 23-year-old right-hander is the youngest major league pitcher since 1920 with such a streak.

“Every time he goes out, he’s unbelievable, the way he’s able to attack hitters,” Kelly said.

Skenes has been especially effective against the Reds, with a 4-0 career record and 0.39 ERA to go with 33 strikeouts.

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