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The pickleball craze that swept the United States in recent years finally reached Mookie Betts some time around January. It became his go-to extracurricular activity in spring training, during which he arranged for a custom court to be built on the lawn of his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino. The project was finished by late June, about a week after he fractured his left hand on a hit by pitch. It was perfect timing. Betts was quickly able to replace one obsession — learning shortstop, arguably his sport’s most difficult position, on the fly — with another: pelting plastic balls with 16-inch paddles.

“I’m the type of person who can’t just sit down,” Betts said. “I don’t operate that way.”

Betts’ season has been about as dynamic as his disposition. It began with him preparing to become a full-time second baseman, after eight seasons and six Gold Gloves in right field, only to switch to shortstop less than a week before he and the rest of the Los Angeles Dodgers flew to South Korea to open their season. Betts spent the next three months painstakingly trying to pull off the type of midcareer position change no player of his stature had ever attempted, then spent the next eight weeks rehabilitating an ill-fated injury — only to return to right field and settle into the No. 2 spot of the lineup.

When Betts went down June 16, he led the National League in FanGraphs wins above replacement. Since coming back Aug. 12, he ranks fourth in win probability added. He’s producing at his customary level, with a .293/.377/.500 slash line, 19 home runs and 16 stolen bases in 111 games. But his value to this year’s Dodgers has been marked by acquiescence and proficiency. He moved out of leadoff, a spot where he’d made 80% of his career starts, and helped pave the way for Shohei Ohtani‘s unprecedented 50/50 season. And he moved all over the field to accommodate the Dodgers’ roster construction.

“I don’t think you can quantify the value of his willingness to move around the diamond,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “You just don’t see superstars willing to put themselves out there to potentially fail. And there’s no place on the diamond that you probably can get exposed more than at shortstop.”

There’s a part of Betts that misses shortstop. Misses sweating through those early afternoon hours while repeatedly taking ground balls from every conceivable angle. Misses sitting on the grass with coaches and analyzing his footwork on a tablet that recorded his every move. Misses peppering veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas with questions about how to handle the multitude of situations that come up in a game. Misses immersing himself in something new and exciting and difficult.

“I had the time of my life,” Betts, 31, said.

He also learned something about himself.

“I’m a lot stronger than I thought. I can do more things than I thought.”

Betts had spent much of his time in L.A. longing to return to second base, where he spent most of his time in the minor leagues. He finally got his wish heading into the 2024 season, with Jason Heyward looking like a sensible option for semi-regular playing time in right field. But then Gavin Lux‘s throwing issues re-emerged in the wake of knee surgery, and suddenly, a handful of days into March, the Dodgers were left scrambling.

The only way they could preserve their most talented lineup was for Betts to somehow learn shortstop — for a future Hall of Famer to open himself up to criticism and make himself vulnerable at the height of his powers.

Betts saw it as an opportunity to face a fear.

“On the other side of that fear and all the criticism is bliss, beautifulness,” Betts said. “That’s where my brain was — ‘Get through all this. Once you get through it, it’s going to be great.'”

Betts is often self-deprecating and at times even self-loathing, a trait that has helped him unlock athletic greatness at 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds. His foray into shortstop, a task that satiated his constant need for challenges, brought out the most extreme versions of his meticulousness. But the difficulty of it, and the scrutiny that surrounded it, helped him find balance.

“I wasn’t going to be self-critical while everybody else was, too,” Betts said. “It wasn’t going to be me and everybody else against me, that’s for damn sure. It was going to be me against the world at that point. That’s the thing I really learned — how to be my own cheerleader. How to be my own best friend.”

Betts committed nine errors in 61 starts at shortstop, all but one of which were the result of throws. Some of the advanced metrics did not grade him out favorably. But he was adequate. And he was steadily improving. And if he continued to hone in on the footwork required to make throws from certain angles, Dodgers infield coach Dino Ebel believes, he could have vied for a Gold Glove there eventually.

“Unfortunately we didn’t get to that part, but I think we were on our way, man,” Betts said. “I’m just proud of myself for accepting the challenge that comes with it.”

If not for the 98-mph fastball that ran in on his hands in the middle of June, Betts could have remained at shortstop and perhaps even given Ohtani a run for the MVP. But Betts didn’t spend much time lamenting the injury. He appreciated the rare time it provided with his family; how it helped him get closer to his 17-month-old son, Kaj. And he cherished all the pickleball he got to play with his wife, Brianna, a quasi-tradition they’ve maintained after home games throughout the season.

By the time Betts was healthy enough to return, Ohtani was thriving in the leadoff spot and Roberts began to see the benefit of using the right-handed-hitting Betts to split up the lefty-hitting Ohtani and Freddie Freeman at the top of his lineup. At that point, Rojas, the best defensive shortstop on the team, was in the midst of a career year offensively, Lux had completely turned his season around while solidifying himself at second base and Heyward’s bat had slowed.

“The thing that keeps Mookie going are certain challenges,” Roberts said, “but I do think he is smart enough to understand the roster, the landscape of our ballclub and what makes sense for our ballclub. And at that point in time, it was clear that he needed to go to right field.”

Given the uncertainty of their starting rotation — Tyler Glasnow and Gavin Stone are out; Clayton Kershaw is still on the mend; Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler have each had their struggles — the Dodgers will probably have to win with offense in October. And Betts will have to be a catalyst. Encouraging signs have emerged lately.

Twice, an opponent has chosen to intentionally walk Ohtani to instead pitch to Betts. Twice, Betts has made them pay — with a three-run homer in the 10th inning from Angel Stadium on Sept. 3 and a ninth-inning, go-ahead single from Atlanta on Sept. 15. Seven days later, in a come-from-behind win against the Colorado Rockies, Betts hit his first walk-off home run as a Dodger immediately after Ohtani tied the score in the ninth.

Betts has thrived in high-leverage moments throughout his career, though he has accumulated just two hits in 25 at-bats over the past two division series — both of which ended in stunning elimination. This year, he believes, there’s a certain ease with which he navigates stressful situations. He trusts his preparation and lives with the results of it, sparing himself the second-guessing. It’s a shift.

“This is all definitely learned,” Betts said. “I used to be way more hard on myself. ‘I got to get ready for hitting second.’ ‘I got to get ready to play shortstop.’ ‘I got to do this.’ ‘I got to do that.'”

Perhaps it was a fear of failure. Perhaps, as Betts said, “It was not looking far enough through that fear to get to the other side.

“Now I’m a little older. Now I understand that whatever fears there are, man, I’m facing them dead-on.”

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Remembering Ruffian 50 years after her breakdown at Belmont

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Remembering Ruffian 50 years after her breakdown at Belmont

Thoroughbred racing suffered its most ignominious, industry-deflating moment 50 years ago today with the breakdown of Ruffian, an undefeated filly running against Foolish Pleasure in a highly promoted match race at Belmont Park. Her tragic end on July 6, 1975, was a catastrophe for the sport, and observers say racing has never truly recovered.

Two years earlier, during the rise of second-wave feminism, the nation had been mesmerized by a “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. King’s win became a rallying cry for women everywhere. The New York Racing Association, eager to boost daily racing crowds in the mid-1970s, proposed a competition similar to that of King and Riggs. They created a match race between Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian, the undefeated filly who had dominated all 10 of her starts, leading gate to wire.

“In any sport, human or equine, it’s really impossible to say who was the greatest,” said outgoing Jockey Club chairman Stuart Janney III, whose parents, Stuart and Barbara, owned Ruffian. “But I’m always comfortable thinking of Ruffian as being among the four to five greatest horses of all time.”

Ruffian, nearly jet black in color and massive, was the equine version of a Greek goddess. At the age of 2, her girth — the measurement of the strap that secures the saddle — was just over 75 inches. Comparatively, racing legend Secretariat, a male, had a 76-inch girth when he was fully developed at the age of 4.

Her name also added to the aura. “‘Ruffian’ was a little bit of a stretch because it tended to be what you’d name a colt, but it turned out to be an appropriate name,” Janney said.

On May 22, 1974, Ruffian equaled a Belmont Park track record, set by a male, in her debut at age 2, winning by 15 lengths. She set a stakes record later that summer at Saratoga in the Spinaway, the most prestigious race of the year for 2-year-old fillies. The next spring, she blew through races at longer distances, including the three races that made up the so-called Filly Triple Crown.

Some in the media speculated that she had run out of female competition.

Foolish Pleasure had meanwhile ripped through an undefeated 2-year-old season with championship year-end honors. However, after starting his sophomore campaign with a win, he finished third in the Florida Derby. He also had recovered from injuries to his front feet to win the Wood Memorial and then the Kentucky Derby.

Second-place finishes in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes left most observers with the idea that Foolish Pleasure was the best 3-year-old male in the business.

Following the Belmont Stakes, New York officials wanted to test the best filly against the best colt.

The original thought was to include the Preakness winner, Master Derby, in the Great Match Race, but the team of Foolish Pleasure’s owner, trainer and rider didn’t want a three-horse race. Since New York racing had guaranteed $50,000 to the last-place horse, they paid Master Derby’s connections $50,000 not to race. Thus, the stage was set for an equine morality play.

“[Ruffian’s] abilities gave her the advantage in the match race,” Janney said. “If she could do what she did in full fields [by getting the early lead], then it was probably going to be even more effective in a match.”

Several ballyhooed match races in sports history had captured the world’s attention without incident — Seabiscuit vs. Triple Crown winner War Admiral in 1938, Alsab vs. Triple Crown winner Whirlaway in 1942, and Nashua vs. Swaps in 1955. None of those races, though, had the gender divide “it” factor.

The Great Match Race attracted 50,000 live attendees and more than 18 million TV viewers on CBS, comparable to the Grammy Awards and a pair of NFL “Sunday Night Football” games in 2024.

Prominent New York sportswriter Dick Young wrote at the time that, for women, “Ruffian was a way of getting even.”

“I can remember driving up the New Jersey Turnpike, and the lady that took the toll in one of those booths was wearing a button that said, ‘I’m for her,’ meaning Ruffian,” Janney said.

As the day approached, Ruffian’s rider, Jacinto Vasquez, who also was the regular rider of Foolish Pleasure including at the Kentucky Derby, had to choose whom to ride for the match race.

“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure, and I knew what he could do,” Vasquez told ESPN. “But I didn’t think he could beat the filly. He didn’t have the speed or stamina.”

Braulio Baeza, who had ridden Foolish Pleasure to victory in the previous year’s premier 2-year-old race, Hopeful Stakes, was chosen to ride Foolish Pleasure.

“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure and ridden against Ruffian,” Baeza said, with language assistance from his wife, Janice Blake. “I thought Foolish Pleasure was better than Ruffian. She just needed [early race] pressure because no one had ever pressured her.”

The 1⅛ mile race began at the start of the Belmont Park backstretch in the chute. In an ESPN documentary from 2000, Jack Whitaker, who hosted the race telecast for CBS, noted that the atmosphere turned eerie with dark thunderclouds approaching before the race.

Ruffian hit the side of the gate when the doors opened but straightened herself out quickly and assumed the lead. “The whole world, including me, thought that Ruffian was going to run off the screen and add to her legacy,” said longtime New York trainer Gary Contessa, who was a teenager when Ruffian ruled the racing world.

However, about ⅛ of a mile into the race, the force of Ruffian’s mighty strides snapped two bones in her front right leg.

“When she broke her leg, it sounded like a broken stick,” Vasquez said. “She broke her leg between her foot and her ankle. When I pulled up, the bone was shattered above the ankle. She couldn’t use that leg at all.”

It took Ruffian a few moments to realize what had happened to her, so she continued to run. Vasquez eventually hopped off and kept his shoulder leaning against her for support.

“You see it, but you don’t want to believe it,” Janney said.

Baeza had no choice but to have Foolish Pleasure finish the race in what became a macabre paid workout. The TV cameras followed him, but the eyes of everyone at the track were on the filly, who looked frightened as she was taken back to the barn area.

“When Ruffian broke down, time stood still that day,” Contessa said. Yet time was of the essence in an attempt to save her life.

Janney said that Dr. Frank Stinchfield — who was the doctor for the New York Yankees then and was “ahead of his time in fixing people’s bones” — called racing officials to see whether there was anything he could do to help with Ruffian.

New York veterinarian Dr. Manny Gilman managed to sedate Ruffian, performed surgery on her leg and, with Stinchfield’s help, secured her leg in an inflatable cast. When Ruffian woke up in the middle of the night, though, she started fighting and shattered her bones irreparably. Her team had no choice but to euthanize her at approximately 2:20 a.m. on July 7.

“She was going full bore trying to get in front of [Foolish Pleasure] out of the gate,” Baeza said. “She gave everything there. She gave her life.”

Contessa described the time after as a “stilled hush over the world.”

“When we got the word that she had rebroken her leg, the whole world was crying,” Contessa said. “I can’t reproduce the feeling that I had the day after.”

The Janneys soon flew to Maine for the summer, and they received a round of applause when the pilot announced their presence. At the cottage, they were met by thousands of well-wishing letters.

“We all sat there, after dinner every night, and we wrote every one of them back,” Janney said. “It was pretty overwhelming, and that didn’t stop for a long time. I still get letters.”

Equine fatalities have been part of the business since its inception, like the Triple Crown races and Breeders’ Cup. Some have generated headlines by coming in clusters, such as Santa Anita in 2019 and Churchill Downs in 2023. However, breakdowns are not the only factor, and likely not the most influential one, in the gradual decline of horse racing’s popularity in this country.

But the impact from the day of Ruffian’s death, and that moment, has been ongoing for horse racing.

“There are people who witnessed the breakdown and never came back,” Contessa said.

Said Janney: “At about that time, racing started to disappear from the national consciousness. The average person knows about the Kentucky Derby, and that’s about it.”

Equine racing today is a safer sport now than it was 50 years ago. The Equine Injury Database, launched by the Jockey Club in 2008, says the fatality rate nationally in 2024 was just over half of what it was at its launch.

“We finally have protocols that probably should have been in effect far sooner than this,” Contessa said. “But the protocols have made this a safer game.”

Said Vasquez: “There are a lot of nice horses today, but to have a horse like Ruffian, it’s unbelievable. Nobody could compare to Ruffian.”

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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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