Video footage from the April 30 game shows Markwood falling headfirst over the railing above the Clemente Wall in right field. He appears to flip head over heals multiple times before landing on the warning track.
Play was stopped for several minutes as the training staffs for both teams tended to Markwood. He eventually was carted off and taken to Allegheny General Hospital in critical condition. According to “Inside Edition,” Markwood broke his back, neck, every rib and punctured a lung.
“I’m doing better than what I was, that’s for sure,” said Markwood, who was shown during the interview walking around outside PNC Park wearing a cast on his left forearm.
Markwood told “Inside Edition” that he had jumped out of his seat to cheer and came down awkwardly on the railing and careened off of it. Although Pittsburgh Public Safety has labeled the incident an accident, 21-year-old McKeesport resident Ethan Kirkwood has been arrested for allegedly providing alcohol to Markwood at the game.
Kirkwood faces two misdemeanor counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Sept. 29. A police report viewed by WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh indicates that Markwood’s girlfriend told police that he hadn’t had anything to drink before arriving to the stadium and had two beers while there.
“I feel terrible because it wasn’t his fault,” Markwood said of Kirkwood, who can be seen on the footage from the accident climbing over the railing from a section closer to field level and jumping onto the ground to help his friend.
Markwood added that alcohol had nothing to do with what happened. It was, he said, “a tragic accident.”
From Jack Harris: Over three nights in Pittsburgh this week, the Dodgers didn’t win a game, despite playing a last-place Pirates club.
They didn’t grow their division lead, despite the second-place San Diego Padres suffering their own three-game sweep.
And, as veteran infielder Miguel Rojas stressed Thursday night, they simply didn’t look like a team capable of sharing in any joy, despite their constant insistence that better play will materialize.
“I feel like ever since we started playing poorly a couple months ago, the pressure and frustration has been building up on the team,” Rojas said.
“We know what we’re capable of. We’re playing under the threshold, the goal that we have. But at the end of the day, we gotta put all that aside … and we have to find some joy and some motivation to come to the ballpark. Not just, ‘I gotta do my job.’ We have to come here and enjoy ourselves around the clubhouse, regardless of the situation.”
The situation, of course, looks bleak, with Thursday’s 5-3 loss to the Pirates sealing a confounding three-game sweep.
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ANGELS
Bobby Witt Jr. hit a two-out solo home run in the eighth inning and the Kansas City Royals beat the Angels 4-3 on Thursday night to avoid a sweep in a three-game series.
The Royals hit four solo homers in a game where all seven runs came on home runs.
Lucas Erceg (7-4) struck out two in one inning and Carlos Estévez picked up his major league-best 37th save.
From Steve Henson and Salvador Hernandez: At the heart of the uproar over allegations that Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers received millions in undisclosed payments from a tree-planting startup is a National Basketball Association rule that caps the total annual payroll for teams.
According to a report by Pablo Torre of the Athletic, bankruptcy documents show that the tree-planting startup Aspiration Partners paid Leonard $21 million — and still owes him another $7 million — after agreeing to a $28-million contract for endorsement and marketing work at the company.
The report claims there is no evidence to show that Leonard did anything for Aspiration Partners, whose initial funding came in large part from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Torre alleges that the payment to Leonard was a way to skirt the NBA salary cap and pad his contract.
The Clippers have forcefully denied that they or Ballmer “circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration.”
From Sam Farmer: Turns out, the marquee matchup Friday night between the Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs isn’t just a season-opening showdown between two premier quarterbacks and legitimate Super Bowl hopefuls.
It’s also a family feud — minus the bad blood.
Devin Woodhouse, head strength and conditioning coach for the Chargers, is the son-in-law of Chiefs coach Andy Reid, an under-the-radar connection that further hems these AFC West rivals.
“In our first game last year, I was a little anxious playing them,” Woodhouse told The Times. “It felt weird rooting against him at times.”
Reid understands, and he loves the fact that before bringing Woodhouse with him from the University of Michigan, Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh called his Kansas City counterpart and asked him if that would be OK.
Thompson’s transfer fee is a record $1.65 million, a person with knowledge of the agreement not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times. That amount surpasses the $1.3 million Arsenal paid Liverpool for Canadian Olivia Smith in July. That also tops the $1.5 million that Mexico’s Tigres received from the Orlando Pride for Lizbeth Ovalle last month.
Angel City declined to comment on Thompson’s status, with coach Alexander Straus refusing to even say her name, referring to Thompson as “a certain player” and “a certain transfer” in a conference call with reporters Thursday.
Caitlin Clark will miss the rest of the Indiana Fever’s season because of a right groin injury.
“I had hoped to share a better update, but I will not be returning to play this season,” Clark said in a statement. “I spent hours in the gym every day with the singular goal of getting back out there, disappointed isn’t a big enough word to describe how I am feeling. I want to thank everyone who had my back through all the uncertainty.
“This has been incredibly frustrating, but even in the bad, there is good. The way the fans continued to show up for me, and for the Fever, brought me so much joy and important perspective. I am so proud of how this team has only gotten stronger through adversity this year. Now it’s time to close out the season and claim our spot in the playoffs.”
1922 — The U.S. beats Australia 4-1 to capture the Davis Cup for the third straight year.
1938 — Don Budge leads the U.S. to a 3-2 victory over Australia in the Davis Cup final at Philadelphia. Budge beats Adrian Quist of Australia 8-6, 6-1, 6-2 to wrap up the title.
1949 — Pancho Gonzalez captures his second consecutive men’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships. Gonzalez needs 67 games — the most ever in a final — to defeat Ted Schroeder, 16-18, 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4. Mary Osborne du Pont defeats Doris Hart 6-4, 6-1 for the women’s title.
1951 — Maureen Connolly, 16, wins the U.S. women’s singles title with a 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 victory over Shirley Fry.
1960 — Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) beats 3-time European champion Zbigniew Pietrzykowski of Poland by unanimous points decision to win Olympic light heavyweight boxing gold medal at the Rome Games.
1975 — Martina Navratilova of Czechoslovakia loses to Chris Evert in the U.S. Open semifinals, then appears at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service office in New York and asks for political asylum.
1987 — John McEnroe is fined $17,500 for tirades at US Tennis Open.
1989 — Chris Evert’s illustrious career ends in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open when she blows a 5-2 first-set lead and is beaten 7-6, 6-2 by Zina Garrison. Evert’s record at the U.S. Open is 101-12 and she finishes her career with a match record of 1,304-145 and 18 Grand Slam titles.
1990 — Ivan Lendl’s bid for a record nine straight U.S. Open men’s finals ends in the quarterfinals. Pete Sampras wins in five sets, 6-4, 7-6, 3-6, 4-6, 6-2.
1994 — SF wide receiver Jerry Rice catches 2 touchdown passes and runs for another score in 49ers’ 44-14 rout of the Raiders; surpasses Jim Brown as NFL’s career TD leader with 127.
2001 — Old rivals Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras battle in a classic match. Sampras wins in four sets, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (5), with neither player losing serve.
2002 — The U.S. men finish without a medal at the basketball world championships. Yugoslavia comes back from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter and defeats the U.S. 81-78. After going 58-0 using NBA players in international competitions, the Americans lose two straight.
2007 — Alicia Sacramone’s floor routine rallies the U.S. to the world women’s gymnastics title in Stuttgart, Germany. The Americans finishes with 184.4 points, beating defending champion China by .95 for their second world title, and the first won on foreign soil.
2009 — Three-year-old filly Rachel Alexandra becomes the first female to win the Grade I Woodward Stakes when she holds off Macho Again by a head at Saratoga.
2011 — Antron Brown becomes the first NHRA racer to win the U.S. Nationals in both Top Fuel and Pro Stock Motorcycle, beating Del Worsham in the Top Fuel final. Brown, five-time winner this season, completes a successful transition to Top Fuel from Pro Stock Motorcycle in 2008.
2013 — Denver’s Peyton Manning ties an NFL record with seven touchdown passes against the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens to lead the Broncos to a 49-27 win in the season opener. Manning becomes the sixth player to throw for that many, and the first since Joe Kapp on Sept. 28, 1969.
2020 — 8-1 Underdog Authentic holds off heavy favorite Tiz the Law to win the 146th Kentucky Derby.
THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY
1908 — Brooklyn’s Nap Rucker pitched a 6-0 no-hitter against Boston. Rucker struck out 14 and walked none.
1918 — Babe Ruth pitched a six-hitter for the Boston Red Sox, who beat the Chicago Cubs 1-0 in the opening game of the World Series. The Series was started early because of World War I.
1954 — Roswell’s Joe Bauman of the Longhorn League hit three home runs to give him 72 for the season. Bauman never made it to the majors.
1955 — Brooklyn pitcher Don Newcombe connected for his seventh homer of the season for a National League record for home runs by a pitcher. The Dodgers, behind Newcombe’s power and 20th win, defeated the Phillies 11-4.
1971 — J.R. Richard tied Karl Spooner’s major league record by striking out 15 San Francisco Giants in his first major league game as the Houston Astros beat the Giants.
1982 — Roy Smalley hit a pair of three-run homers, one from each side of the plate, as the Yankees beat the Kansas City Royals 18-7.
1998 — Mark McGwire became the third player in baseball history to reach 60 home runs, as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-0. He joined Babe Ruth and Roger Maris with 60 homers in a season.
2002 — Alex Rodriguez became the fifth player in major league history to record successive 50-homer seasons, hitting two in Texas’ 11-2 rout of Baltimore. Rodriguez, who hit 52 homers last season, joined Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr.
2003 — Mike Maroth became the first major league pitcher in 23 years to lose 20 games in a season when Detroit lost to Toronto 8-6. Maroth (6-20) gave up eight runs and nine hits in three-plus innings. Oakland’s Brian Kingman went 8-20 in 1980.
2009 — Pittsburgh’s Ross Ohlendorf became the 40th major league pitcher to strike out the side on nine pitches in an inning, but didn’t figure in the decision as the Pirates lost 2-1 to St. Louis in 10 innings.
2018 — Shohei Ohtani homered twice during a huge night at the plate after getting bad news about his pitching arm, and the Angels beat the Texas Rangers 9-3. Perhaps headed for Tommy John surgery, the two-way rookie sensation went 4 for 4 with three RBIs, four runs and a stolen base to power the Angels. Ohtani’s homers were towering drives into the right-field seats. With his second two-homer game, the designated hitter tied Kenji Johjima’s 2006 major league record of 18 homers by a Japanese rookie.
2018 — Brandon Phillips hit a two-out, two-run homer in the ninth inning, highlighting his long-awaited season debut and capping the biggest comeback by the Boston Red Sox this year for a 9-8 win over the Atlanta Braves. The Red Sox overcame a late six-run deficit to sweep the three-game series between division leaders.
2023 — Giancarlo Stanton hits the 400th home run of his career off José Cisnero in the 6th inning to break a 1-1 tie and lead the Yankees to a 5 – 1 win over the Tigers. Having needed 1,520 games to reach the mark makes him the fourth fastest in history following Mark McGwire, Babe Ruth and Alex Rodriguez.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
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PITTSBURGH — Over three nights in Pittsburgh this week, the Dodgers didn’t win a game, despite playing a last-place Pirates club.
They didn’t grow their division lead, despite the second-place San Diego Padres suffering their own three-game sweep.
And, as veteran infielder Miguel Rojas stressed Thursday night, they simply didn’t look like a team capable of sharing in any joy, despite their constant insistence that better play will materialize.
“I feel like ever since we started playing poorly a couple months ago, the pressure and frustration has been building up on the team,” Rojas said.
“We know what we’re capable of. We’re playing under the threshold, the goal that we have. But at the end of the day, we gotta put all that aside … and we have to find some joy and some motivation to come to the ballpark. Not just, ‘I gotta do my job.’ We have to come here and enjoy ourselves around the clubhouse, regardless of the situation.”
The situation, of course, looks bleak, with Thursday’s 5-3 loss to the Pirates sealing a confounding three-game sweep.
“It’s frustrating. It’s embarrassing,” Rojas said. “But we have to be able to turn the page and come tomorrow with a better attitude. … We have to find a way to enjoy the game a little bit more.”
This loss, granted, was the easiest to explain.
In six scoreless innings, Cy Young frontrunner Paul Skenes was his typically dominant self. Already the major-league ERA leader, the second-year right-hander stuck out eight batters, gave up just two hits, escaped his only real threat by stranding a pair of two-out baserunners in the third inning, and otherwise overpowered the Dodgers with a seven-pitch repertoire headlined by his upper-90s mph sidearm fastball.
His counterpart, two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, was nowhere near top form, giving up five runs in five innings despite largely limiting much hard contact.
The Dodgers (78-62) did finally show some life offensively in the top of the ninth, scoring three times (their first runs since the eighth inning of Tuesday’s game) and putting the tying run on base. But by then, it was too little, too late — with the game ending on a three-pitch strikeout by newly called-up catcher Ben Rortvedt, the latest hair-pulling moment in a season of deflation.
“We’re just not playing good baseball, that’s really it,” Snell said. “We’ve got to figure that out. That’s on us to do that. We’ve got to get it going. It’s crunch time right now. Can’t really have excuses.”
Pirates starting pitcher Paul Skenes delivers against the Dodgers on Thursday.
(Justin Berl / Getty Images)
Indeed, the Dodgers lead the NL West by only two games — having missed a chance to create distance in the standings after the Padres unexpectedly dropped three straight against the Baltimore Orioles earlier in the week.
They also trail the Philadelphia Phillies by three games for a top-two seed in the NL playoff picture, placing themselves in danger of facing a three-game wild-card series rather than a first-round bye.
With 22 games remaining, the Dodgers would have to be perfect the rest of the way to reach the 100-win mark. At this point, even 90 victories feels far from a certainty, given the team’s 4-12 record in their last 16 against teams with losing records.
“I want to say it’s uncharacteristic, but I think we’ve done that a lot,” manager Dave Roberts acknowledged afterward.
And when facing the current best pitcher in the sport, they certainly never seemed poised to change that trend.
Skenes set the tone immediately on what had been a rainy evening in Pittsburgh. Shohei Ohtani struck out on a 99-mph heater in the game’s first at-bat. The next seven Dodgers who came to the plate all recorded outs, flailing at Skenes’ mix of four-seamers, sweepers, curveballs and changeups to allow him to quickly find a comfortable rhythm.
It wasn’t until Dalton Rushing — who started in place of an injured Will Smith, as the team’s starting catcher awaited results on a CT scan for a bruised hand he suffered the night before — hit a third-inning fastball high off the center-field wall for a double that gave the Dodgers their first baserunner. But, after an Ohtani walk, Mookie Betts grounded out to retire that threat.
From there, the only other damage Skenes allowed was a fifth-inning single from Rojas. And though the Dodgers’ ability to at least foul off two-strike pitches — they fought off 15 in all — at least got him out of the game after six innings, it was already too late to mount a comeback.
That’s because, unlike the Dodgers, the last-place Pirates (64-77) actually managed to build rallies against another of the game’s other top pitchers.
Snell’s outing was a grind from the start, with Rushing misfiring to first base for an error in the first inning and Betts reacting slowly to a ground ball at shortstop to extend the second.
Snell worked around those jams. In the third, however, he followed a leadoff single by Bryan Reynolds with a pair of wild pitches that got by Rushing. With Reynolds suddenly on third, and the Dodgers’ infield forced to play in, Tommy Pham slapped a single through the dirt for the night’s opening run.
Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell delivers in the second inning Thursday against the Pirates.
(Justin Berl / Getty Images)
Two innings later, the Pirates broke it open.
In the fifth, Snell gave up three consecutive singles that doubled Pittsburgh’s lead. Then, after an intentional one-out walk to Andrew McCutchen, Nick Yorke went after a first-pitch curveball for a two-run double down the line. McCutchen later scored from third on a grounder.
“It just seemed like today there was some seeing-eye single, balls finding the outfield grass,” Roberts said. “I thought he was good, not great. But again, a little bit unlucky. When you’re facing Paul Skenes, you just can’t afford to give up runs.”
If all that wasn’t enough, the game ended with another regrettable sequence in the ninth. Betts broke up the shutout with a leadoff home run. Singles from Teoscar Hernández, Michael Conforto, Andy Pages and Rojas brought around two more runs with the Dodgers down to their last out.
Then, however, Rortvedt came up as their ill-fated final hope.
A career minor-leaguer whom the Dodgers acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays at the trade deadline, then called up Thursday after Smith took a foul ball off his hand the night before, Rortvedt struck out after having replaced Rushing an inning earlier.
As Roberts explained postgame, he was trying to get Rushing (a rookie who has been a backup this season, but will likely start the next three games as Smith recovers from his bruised hand) off his feet. Given the way the game had gone, he wasn’t expecting Rushing’s spot in the order (which was due up eighth in the ninth inning) to come back up again.
“Obviously, in a separate world, I would’ve loved to have had Dalton up there,” Roberts said. “But when you have three hits through eight [innings] and you’re down 5-0, just kind of trying to figure out how to preserve him for the next few days, too.”
So it goes for the Dodgers right now. Their inconsistent lineup continues to scuffle. Their supposed strength of a rotation hasn’t been able to dominate. And, with their record an incomprehensible 22-30 since July 4, there remains no end in sight to their second-half slide — nor visible signs of anything other than frustration.
“I feel like, as an offense, we’re putting a little bit too much pressure on ourselves, because we feel the necessity of winning. And we’re really forgetting about the most important part, which is playing for each other and having some joy when we play this game,” Rojas said.
“We all know, when you’re losing baseball games it’s not that fun. But I feel like we have to find a way to put everything in perspective. We’re still in first place. We’re still two games ahead of the Padres. We should be able to have some fun while we’re playing the game, and kind of relax a little bit more. Because I think when this team is together like that, we’re really hard to beat.”
PITTSBURGH — It was a pivotal moment, in a pivotal game, in what’s become a pivotal week for the Dodgers in the National League West standings.
Which, rather predictably given their recently floundering form, meant they found a new way to mess it all up.
In the top of the second inning on Wednesday night at PNC Park, the Dodgers appeared to be in optimal position.
Earlier in the day, the second-place San Diego Padres had been swept by the woebegone Baltimore Orioles, opening the door for the Dodgers to extend their 2½-game lead in the division. And despite trailing by a run in their own showdown against a last-place team, the Dodgers had the Pittsburgh Pirates on the ropes, loading the bases with no outs for a chance to take the lead.
The task, at that point, was simple.
Get the ball in play. Manufacture some early scoring. And, at the very least, set a positive tone for a night in which the NL West lead could grow.
“That’s a situation where you get shorter with your swing, use the big part of the field and you’ve got to drive in a run,” manager Dave Roberts said.
That approach, however, never materialized.
Over the rest of an inexplicable 3-0 loss to the Pirates, what happened next would instead loom large.
First, second-year outfielder Andy Pages came up, worked another full count against Pittsburgh starter Braxton Ashcraft … then went down swinging chasing a slider that would’ve been ball four.
Next, rookie infielder Alex Freeland again ran the count full, got an elevated slider up in the zone to hit … but kept the bat on his shoulder as the umpire rung him up for a called third strike.
A Kiké Hernández flyout would ultimately end the inning. But it was the first two at-bats that had Roberts fuming afterward.
“You never want to say that one inning kind of win or loses a game,” Roberts said. “But the second inning, bases loaded, nobody out — I just felt that we had two bad at-bats and didn’t come away with anything.”
“That flipped the game,” Roberts later added. “It flipped the momentum.”
Indeed, on a night the Dodgers (78-61) failed to score any of their 11 baserunners or record a hit in seven at-bats with men in scoring position, no sequence was more frustrating than their second-inning fizzle.
It was the latest epitome of the team failing to produce in a clutch situation. Another example of their roster flunking some basic fundamentals.
“We’ve got to collectively get all of us on board understanding the magnitude of each at-bat, each situation,” Roberts bemoaned from his office postgame. “I sound repetitive [about how] it’s got to get better. But I do believe that having the right approach, the right mindset, the right urgency in a particular at-bat lends itself to better results.”
This has been a recurring theme for the Dodgers during the second half of the season; the kind of fine-margin miscues that have haunted them during a perplexing 22-29 stretch since July 4.
Sometimes, it’s their big-name superstars that falter. In other cases, it’s younger contributors like Pages and Freeland who fail to execute when required.
The only constant: Every time the Dodgers seem to be turning a corner, they find another way to trip themselves up.
“I do believe that the guys that we have in the room are capable of putting together consistent team at-bats of urgency from the first pitch on,” Roberts said. “But at the end of the day — and I’m sure our players are echoing the same message — we just got to get it done.”
This week’s series at PNC Park (the fourth straight the Dodgers have dropped here over the last four years) has exemplified the club’s maddening current rut in other ways.
One night, they explode at the plate for seven runs … only for their pitching staff to give up nine as it did in Tuesday’s loss.
The next, they piece together a decent pitching effort (even after Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his scheduled start because of an illness) … only for the offense to squander every single opportunity they had to take control of the contest (and lose catcher Will Smith along the way to a bruised hand he suffered on an errant foul ball, though postgame X-rays came back negative).
“We haven’t really put it together at all for a while now,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We need to start playing better.”
On Wednesday, the Pirates jumped in front in the first inning, when Bryan Reynolds homered in the 12th pitch of his at-bat off spot starter Emmet Sheehan. Andrew McCutchen doubled the lead in the second, adding to the sting of the Dodgers’ squandered bases-loaded opportunity with a line-drive home run in the game’s very next at-bat.
After that, “we just really couldn’t put anything else together,” Roberts said.
Or, more precisely, they failed to finish any other chances off.
The Dodgers loaded the bases again with two out in the third, before Alex Call hit a dribbler up the first-base line to retire the side.
The team had two runners aboard again in the fifth and seventh, but continued to come up empty each and every time.
“We had guys on, we just didn’t get the hit,” said Freeman, who rolled into a fifth-inning double-play to extinguish that threat. “Frustrating night.”
The only saving grace right now is that the Padres (who have lost four in a row while dealing with a string of deflating injuries) haven’t made up ground against them.
“I’m very much aware of that,” Roberts said. “But they’re feeling the same thing we are. We’ve got to control what we can control. And we’re certainly not.”
A different approach in Wednesday’s second inning might have changed all that. Instead, it served as another regrettable failure, turning a potentially pivotal chance to stretch the division lead into one of the season’s most dispiriting losses.
Smith update
Smith exited Wednesday’s game after the second inning, when a foul tip bounced off the dirt and hit his right throwing hand as it was hanging behind his right thigh.
Because Smith’s X-rays came back negative, Roberts said the club was hopeful he could avoid the injured list. However, given the swelling and soreness he was feeling postgame, the team was still planning to call up a third catcher on Thursday for more roster insurance.
PITTSBURGH — Now is the time, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts believes, for his team’s intensity to rise.
And if the external pressures of a tight National League West race, postseason seeding implications and a looming World Series title defense in October don’t do it, then maybe, he hopes, increased internal battles for playing time will.
For a while on Tuesday night, in a series opener against the perpetually rebuilding Pittsburgh Pirates, the Dodgers showed fight. Clayton Kershaw gave up four runs in an ugly first inning, but the lineup clawed its way back to even the score — thanks, in part, to a 120-mph rocket of a home run from Shohei Ohtani in the third, his 46th of the season and 100th as a Dodger and a tying solo blast from Andy Pages in the fourth.
Kershaw, meanwhile, settled down to get through five innings without any more damage, retiring 13 of his final 15 batters to put the Dodgers in position for a come-from-behind win.
Instead…
The bullpen faltered, with Edgardo Henriquez (who hadn’t given up a run in his first 12 outings this year) and Blake Treinen (who had finally started looking like himself again after an early-season elbow injury) combining for three runs conceded to break the tie in the sixth.
The lineup couldn’t overcome another big deficit, scoring twice in the seventh only for the Pirates to get the runs back in the next two innings.
And once more, the Dodgers fell to a team miles behind them in the standings, losing 9-7 at PNC Park to drop their 10th game out of the last 14 against opponents with losing records this season.
“There were different points in the game that we showed some life,” Roberts said. “And then, unfortunately, we just couldn’t kind of put up that zero to build off of it.”
Still, the Dodgers’ inability to beat bad teams has underscored a persistent issue with the club.
They’ve been inconsistent, struggling to stack clean performances or any semblance of an extended winning streak. They’ve at times lacked urgency, failing to pull away from the slumping Padres in the division or get back in position for a top-two NL playoff seed (which would give them an all-important first-round bye in the postseason).
For all their efforts to rally on Tuesday, they also saw each of their three outfielders fail to snag tough but catchable balls, an eighth-inning wild pitch by Anthony Banda led to one key insurance run and a general lack of execution cost them in other key spots (like when they managed only one run from a bases-loaded, no-out situation in the second).
“Obviously we didn’t play well. We all know that,” shortstop Mookie Betts said. “Don’t have to necessarily have a team come-to-Jesus [moment] about it. We’ve just got to find ways to win games. There’s no secret formula about it. It doesn’t matter if a team’s below .500 or above .500. Especially right now, we’ve got to find ways to win games. We’re not doing it.”
Still, neither a soft spot in the schedule nor the realities of the calendar has remedied that issue.
Thus, Roberts highlighted another potential solution in his pregame address — acknowledging that players who don’t step up their performance soon could see their playing time get cut as the roster returns to full health.
“We got some guys coming back, and guys are gonna get opportunities,” Roberts said. “As we get into September, where all these games certainly matter, you got to have guys that you trust.”
On Monday, when MLB rosters expanded to 28 players at the start of September, the Dodgers (78-60) activated two key pieces from the injured list: Infielder Hyeseong Kim, who had been out since late July with a shoulder injury; and reliever Michael Kopech, who had been limited to eight appearances this year because of arm troubles and a meniscus surgery in his knee.
Next homestand, more reinforcements could be on the way, with Max Muncy and Tommy Edman beginning rehab assignments with triple-A Oklahoma City this week.
Before long, the Dodgers’ long-shorthanded depth chart could suddenly be crowded. And as a result, tough decisions could loom in left field, at second base and in the bullpen — forcing the issues for a number of players at various spots on the roster.
“I do think just kind of naturally it raises the level of performance and intensity,” Roberts said, pointing to veteran infielder Miguel Rojas as one example of someone who is “fighting for playing time” with recently improved play.
“I tip my cap to him,” Roberts said. “I’m expecting that from a lot of other guys as well.”
Roberts said Edman will play mostly center fielder during his rehab stint, something he had been unable to do earlier this season while battling an ankle injury. Once he’s back, that means someone such as Michael Conforto (who went 0-for-three with a walk Tuesday to dip to .189 on the season in batting average) could drop to the bench, leaving the corner outfield spots for Pages and Teoscar Hernández.
In the infield, Kim will likely figure in at second base (though could also kick out to left field, where he saw time during his own recent rehab assignment). That will create one more slice in an infield pie that is already being divvied between Rojas, Kiké Hernandez and Alex Freeland. Once Muncy is back at third, at-bats will be at even more of a premium.
The same situation could unfold in the bullpen, which will also get Alex Vesia and Brock Stewart back this month from their own injuries. That will raise the pressure on struggling offseason signings Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates to continue earning leverage opportunities.
How it all shakes out remains unclear.
But where there are more options, the Dodgers believe, better production — and intensity — will follow. To this point, nothing else seems to be consistently raising the team’s level of play.
Pirating, as evidenced by centuries of stories and one of the greatest theme park rides, has long fascinated. Seafaring and sword fighting imply adventure. Dice games? Bluffing and strategy. And if you’re really lucky, maybe you’ll find a mermaid.
Audience members seen during a production of “Pirates Wanted,” an interactive production from Last Call Theatre.
(Gabriella Angotti-Jones/The Los Angeles Times)
Last Call Theatre, a local interactive-focused performance group, has found a way to give us a taste of buccaneering — without the pesky consequences of being captured by the Royal Navy or succumbing to a rum-induced liver disease.
For one more weekend in Long Beach, theatergoers can live out a mini marauding fantasy on an actual ship at “Pirates Wanted,” a limited-run revival of the troupe’s 2024 show. It’s theater, but it’s also a choose-your-own-adventure-style game, one with branching narratives, multiple endings and even life lessons.
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The show is set on board the American Pride tall ship docked at Long Beach’s Pine Avenue Pier, a 130-foot schooner that today is primarily used as an education-focused vessel. Stand still and feel the lean and long boat gently rock on the waves. But you’ll rarely be stationary on the wood-heavy craft. With a cast of 14 and an audience capacity of 55, “Pirates Wanted” explores the full top deck of the ship, which is accessible via a small portable stairway.
The setup: As audience members, we are to be trained as pirates in 17th century England, with much of the cast performing in exaggerated accents. The drama: Our captain’s previous ship was marooned under suspicious circumstances. To complicate matters, a long-lost sibling, also a pirate with his own troubling history, is here to judge the crew’s seaworthiness. The show begins with a speech from Capt. Souvanna (Bonnie-Lynn Montaño), who sternly demands a vocal “aye” from the audience as the ground rules are laid out. Follow them, Souvanna warns, or risk being thrown into the harbor.
Captain Souvanna (Bonnie-Lynn Montaño) and Captain Draken (Shelby Ryan Lee) share a moment during immersive theater production “Pirates Wanted.”
In moments, we are free to wander and link up with various crew members for our pirating lessons. The so-called “treasures of the seas” aren’t going to be pillaged without our help, and I soon find myself improvising sea shanties and engaging in a game of liar’s dice. I stumble over relearning how to construct a knot — important, I am told, in case I’m tossed overboard and need to quickly lasso myself to a raft — but have better luck mimicking a figure 8 with my sword. We have tasks to complete — or games to play, rather — which are ultimately an excuse for conversation.
Ask a roaming bard about the previous ship’s fate and a host of stories start to unravel and reveal themselves — love affairs, hidden secrets, lost maps and the requisite discontentment among the ship’s keep. What would a pirate narrative be without talk, for instance, of mutiny?
Oats Weetle (Mads Durbin) climbs a mast during a dramatic scene in “Pirates Wanted.”
“Pirates Wanted” is heavily active, and one won’t discover all of the show’s narrative paths. Wander, for instance, to a compartment at the ship’s bow, and you may hear conspiratorial whispers. Hang in the aft, and there might be talk of a siren on board. I saw others with treasure maps, and only caught murmurs of the romantic soap operas unfolding among the crew. Love letters were lost and recovered, and at one point I was pulled aside, a pirate whispering to me to ask if there was an illicit affair on board between a member of the crew and the British Navy.
Audience members take in “Pirates Wanted.”
Like all of Last Call’s shows, there are multiple ways to watch — or play. One can opt to be a relatively passive observer trying to overhear conversations and uncover the various storylines. But it’s advised to lean in, to hop from character to character armed with questions and the willingness to go on assigned quests. Here, the latter rely heavily on gossip. Early on I was tasked, for instance, with asking the various pirates about their feelings over losing their last ship, only I was told not to use the word “feel” in my line of questioning (after all, one must trick a pirate into vulnerability).
Throughout, “Pirates Wanted” explores how to navigate complicated family drama and romantic relationships when value systems — you know, looting and pillaging versus not — don’t align. There are metaphors if you go looking for them, specifically on having to live much of one’s life in the closet, but “Pirates Wanted” places a heavy emphasis on silliness too.
Last Call over the last three years has established itself as one of the more prolific companies on the city’s immersive theater scene, regularly hosting two or three shows per year. The troupe has already announced a winter time traveling production, “The Butterfly Effect,” set to debut Nov. 8 at Stella Coffee near Beverly Hills. “Pirates Wanted” last year became one of Last Call’s best reviewed productions.
Throughout “Pirates Wanted” audience members will be tasked with quests, sometimes seeking hidden items.
“It definitely was our most critically and financially successful show we put on,” says Ashley Busenlener, Last Call’s executive director. “Who doesn’t like pirates on an actual ship?”
“Pirates Wanted” leans campy, a vision of the lifestyle more informed by Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean than any historical fiction. It also tackles subject matter not often seen in pirate tales, such as feelings of being misunderstood and the struggle to be one’s true self.
“One of the things that I often notice about pirate media is a lot of the time you see pirates and the majority of time they are white men,” Busenlener says. “That’s not who I think I pirates are. We were very intentional … in creating a cast that we felt represented what piracy should be.”
In turn, many of the actors are female, queer and hail from diverse backgrounds. The goal, says Busenlener, was to show that anyone can be a pirate.
“Pirates are the people who were outside of society,” Busenlener says. “They were breaking rules and laws and taking power into their own hands. That’s something we wanted to reflect.”
There are multiple story tracks in one “Pirates Wanted.” In one, captain Souvanna (Bonnie-Lynn Montaño) may face a mutiny.
And it’s represented in one of the show’s most affecting narrative branches, one in which a half-mermaid spent their life presenting only as human out of fear. It’s intimate drama laced with mysticism, an adult theme ultimately handled with a hint of levity for this family-friendly show.
It also gets to the heart of Last Call’s ambitious with “Pirates Wanted.” Come for the swashbuckling — and the chance to learn some sword-fighting moves — but stay for the emotional adventure. Just don’t be surprised if you leave the pier suddenly talking in a fake British accent.
Tall ship the American Pride in Long Beach, home for one more weekend to immersive theater show “Pirates Wanted.”
Seth Hernandez has imagined his name being announced for years at the MLB amateur draft. It finally happened Sunday. The Gatorade national player of the year and two-time L.A. Times player of the year from Corona High School was chosen No. 6 overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Pirates have been successful with Southern California pitchers, having drafted Gerrit Cole (Orange Lutheran), Paul Skenes (El Toro) and Jared Jones (La Mirada) in the past. And they took Warren pitcher Angel Cervantes in the second round on Sunday.
It was an historic opening draft for Corona High, because for the first time, a single high school produced three first-round draft picks. Shortstop Billy Carlson went No. 10 to the Chicago White Sox and third baseman Brady Ebel went No. 32 to the Milwaukee Brewers in joining Hernandez.
“It’s nuts,” said Corona coach Andy Wise, who went to gatherings at the Hernandez and Carlson houses. “It’s an absolute honor to have those kids in our program, and I couldn’t be happier for their families.”
Hernandez was considered the best right-handed high school pitcher in the draft after a sensational senior season in which he struck out 105 batters in 53 1/3 innings while walking only seven using a 99-mph fastball. His ERA was 0.39.
Wise said he has coached no one better. Hernandez missed his first two years of high school being home schooled. The last two seasons his pitching record was 18-1. He has a very good slider and changeup. He’s uniquely ready for the pressure and exposure ahead, having been watched closely for years by scouts and interviewed over and over.
Shortstop Gavin Fien from Great Oak was taken No. 12 by the Chicago White Sox.
In the second round, shortstop Cooper Flemming from Aliso Niguel went to Tampa Bay and shortstop Quentin Young from Oaks Christian was selected by the Minnesota Twins. Tennessee shortstop Dean Curley, a Northview grad, was chosen by the Cleveland Guardians.
The Colorado Rockies made USC third baseman Ethan Hedges the second pick of the third round. He’s a former Mater Dei standout. Former Lakewood pitcher Anthony Eyanson from LSU was selected by the Boston Red Sox at No. 87. Former Sherman Oaks Notre Dame first baseman Jack Gurevitch of San Diego went to the St. Louis Cardinals at No. 89. Former Huntington Beach pitcher Ben Jacobs of Arizona State went No. 98 to the Detroit Tigers.
High school shortstop Eli Willits from Oklahoma was taken No. 1 by the Washington Nationals.
Orlando Bloom has teased a return to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, saying he would love to ‘get the band back together’ on ITV’s This Morning
12:32, 05 Jun 2025Updated 12:45, 05 Jun 2025
TM: Orlando Bloom teases return of Pirates of the Caribbean
Orlando Bloom dropped a major hint at a possible comeback of the swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean series.
The actor famed for his role as Will Turner spilled all during an interview on This Morning, sparking speculation of a sixth instalment of the iconic film franchise that first set sail in 2003 with The Curse of the Black Pearl.
With Dead Men Tell No Tales having made its voyage in 2017, chatter about a new chapter has been rife, and Orlando stoked the gossip with a coy: “Who knows?”
He teased further: “I can’t say anything at the moment because I really don’t know. They’re trying to work out what it would all look like.
“I personally think it would be great to get the band back together. But there are always different ideas, so we’ll see where it lands.”
Could another Pirates of the Caribbean film be on its way?(Image: Peter Mountain/Disney via AP)
The Lord of the Rings actor’s comments come after producer Jerry Bruckheimer addressed a return of Pirates of the Caribbean.
When asked by ComicBook.com about the future of the franchise and that of Top Gun, he replied: “It’s hard to tell. You don’t know, you really don’t know.”
Elaborating, he noted the uncertainty surrounding movie projects, but assured that rebooting Pirates is less complex since it doesn’t hinge on particular stars’ schedules.
He said: “But we’re gonna reboot Pirates, so that is easier to put together because you don’t have to wait for certain actors.”
Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom were absent from the fourth film
Despite Orlando’s eagerness to “get the band back together,” he was notably absent from the fourth instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean.
In a 2010 interview about his potential involvement in the fourth film, he stated: “No, definitely not… I think Will is sort of swimming around with the fish at the bottom of the ocean. “”.
“I had a great time making those movies,” he added. “I just really wanted to do different things, but I think it’s going to be great.”
