LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Larry Demeritte, a trainer who realized his dream of running a horse in the Kentucky Derby last year, has died. He was 75.

His wife, Inga, said her husband died Monday night of cardiac arrest after a long battle with cancer, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Tuesday.

A Bahamas native, Demeritte moved to the United States in 1976 and attended his first Derby the following year, when Seattle Slew won on his way to a Triple Crown sweep.

Demeritte became the second Black trainer since 1951 in the 150th Derby last year. The other, Hank Allen, finished sixth with Northern Wolf in 1989.

“This is truly amazing how we got to this position with this horse,” Demeritte said. “I’m hopeful people will see our story and become interested in this sport because this horse is proving anyone with a dream can make it to the Derby stage.”

His horse, West Saratoga, finished 12th. The colt was an $11,000 purchase and the pride of Demeritte’s 11-horse stable at The Thoroughbred Center in Lexington. West Saratoga went on to earn $473,418 in his 13-race career.

“My motto is, ‘I don’t buy cheap horses. I buy good horses cheap,'” he said last year.

Demeritte was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 and underwent chemotherapy. His father was a trainer in the Bahamas and Demeritte still carried the accent of his home country, where he was leading trainer for two years.

Demeritte had run horses on the Derby undercard in past years.

“I’ve been practicing,” he said in 2024. “I used to pray to get to the Derby. I feel like I am blessed with this horse.”

Demeritte went out on his own as a trainer in 1981 and won 184 races in 2,138 career starts with purse earnings of more than $5.3 million. His last race was May 13, when Mendello finished fourth at Horseshoe Indianapolis.

“We’re all so glad and proud that Larry achieved his dream of being in the Kentucky Derby with West Saratoga,” the Kentucky Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association said in a statement.

“It showed yet again that the little guy, with some luck and a lot of skill, can compete with stables with far greater numbers and bankroll. Larry, with his backstory, engaging personality and wide smile, was a terrific ambassador for horse racing, and the industry lost one of its bright lights with his passing.”

BOSTON — New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said he’ll talk to Juan Soto about hustling out of the batter’s box after the slugger watched his would-be home run bounce off the Green Monster for a single Monday night against the Boston Red Sox.

Leading off the sixth inning on a chilly night at Fenway Park with a 15 mph wind blowing in from left field, Soto hit a 102 mph line drive to left and stood watching as it sailed toward the 37-foot-high wall. The ball hit about two-thirds of the way up, and Soto was able to manage only a single.

“He thought he had it,” Mendoza told reporters after his team’s 3-1 loss. “But with the wind and all that, and in this ballpark — anywhere, but in particular in this one, with that wall right there — you’ve got to get out of the box. So, yeah, we’ll discuss that.”

Soto stole second on the first pitch to the next batter, but the $765 million star ended up stranded on third. He denied lollygagging on the basepaths.

“I think I’ve been hustling pretty hard,” he said. “If you see it today, you can tell.”

It’s not uncommon for balls that hit off the Green Monster to result in singles. In the first inning, Pete Alonso was thrown out trying for second base on a ball off the left-field wall. But Soto had also failed to run hard out of the box on a groundout Sunday night at Yankee Stadium.

“We’ll talk to him about it,” Mendoza said.

LOS ANGELES — Hyeseong Kim started in center field to take some of the burden off Tommy Edman‘s tender ankle and wound up losing a baseball in the twilight. Jack Dreyer opened for Landon Knack in hopes of maximizing matchups against the opposing Arizona Diamondbacks, and yet the two surrendered seven runs within the first three innings.

Nothing, it seems, goes right for the Los Angeles Dodgers these days.

On Monday night, they were bad enough on defense and ineffective enough on the mound that their mighty offense could not make up the difference. They lost 9-5 at Dodger Stadium, suffering their first four-game home losing streak since May 2018.

“We haven’t given up, but you’re going to go through certain situations like this,” Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts said. “It’s just tough. We got to find a way to get back healthy, get our guys back out there. But we’re battling with what we’ve got.”

Three critical members of the Dodgers’ rotation are currently on the injured list; Blake Snell, Tony Gonsolin and Roki Sasaki are all nursing shoulder injuries with uncertain timelines. Four high-leverage relievers — Kirby Yates, Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Michael Kopech — have hit the shelf since the start of spring training. And in the wake of that, a Dodgers organization that has been lauded for its ability to absorb injuries, most recently by riding bullpen games to a championship, has been unable to overcome.

Forty-eight games in, the Dodgers (29-19) possess a 4.28 ERA, which ranks 22nd in the major leagues. Their rotation, hailed as one of the sport’s deepest collections of arms when the season began, holds baseball’s sixth-highest ERA at 4.51.

“It’s not the staff we thought we’d have this season,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But I feel that what we still do and have done in the past with injuries, we’re not doing. And I say that in the sense of getting ahead of hitters and keeping the ball in the ballpark.”

Dodgers pitchers rank sixth in home run rate and have started behind in the count on 117 batters this season, tied for ninth most in the majors.

Dodgers coaches have spent the past few days preaching the importance of getting ahead and thus commanding counts in hopes of fostering a more aggressive approach from their staff. Dreyer seemed to carry that mindset with him early, getting ahead on three of his first four hitters. But the fourth sent a fly ball to straightaway center field that Kim, a rookie second baseman making his first career Dodger Stadium start at the position, never saw. It landed for an RBI double, igniting a two-run first inning.

The D-backs added another run in the second, on an errant throw from third baseman Max Muncy, a wild pitch from Dreyer and a sacrifice fly from Geraldo Perdomo. Four more came in the third, when Knack, vying for a long-term spot in the rotation, surrendered two-run homers to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno.

By that point, the Dodgers, coming off getting swept by the crosstown-rival Los Angeles Angels, faced a 7-0 deficit they could not overcome. Shohei Ohtani belted his major-league-leading 17th home run, Betts added two of his own, and the rest of the lineup rallied to make things interesting in the bottom of the ninth. But it wasn’t enough.

The Dodgers’ offense, which got Edman and Teoscar Hernandez back from injury in the past two days, is whole at this point. L.A.’s pitching staff is far from it.

The effects of that are being felt.