report

Dodgers clinch postseason spot

From Maddie Lee: The Dodgers celebrated clinching a postseason berth with a champagne toast. Simple. Restrained. Leaving room for larger celebrations to come.

“The message was, ‘We haven’t come close to playing our best baseball yet,’” manager Dave Roberts said after the Dodgers’ 4-1 win over the Reds on Monday. “And here we are with 12 games left, getting a ticket to the postseason. And that says a lot about this entire organization. And just to finish strong.”

It marked the Dodgers’ 14th straight playoff berth, tying a record set by the Atlanta Braves from 1991 to 2005.

“It’s different than anything I’ve experienced, for sure,” Tarik Skubal said of the understated celebration. “But I think it just speaks to the people in this room and what they expect out of this team. That was cool. A little toast and move on. Forget it happened. We’ve got more to accomplish.”

Most teams don ski goggles to celebrate with champagne and beer showers. The Dodgers will save the messier celebration for clinching the division. Their win over the Reds (70-80) trimmed that magic number to three.

It was fitting that Skubal, the Dodgers’ big trade-deadline acquisition, was on the mound for the clincher. He’s progressively improved in his eight starts with the Dodgers. And on Monday, he breezed through seven shutout innings, allowing just four baserunners (three singles and a walk).

“I think a lot of the struggles have been me versus me,” Skubal said. “Thinking too much out there, not competing the way I know how to compete. Just thinking too much about pitch selection at times and trying to be too fine and not challenging guys.”

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Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Will Edwin Díaz be on postseason roster?

From Maddie Lee: Even as the Dodgers clinched a postseason berth with their 4-1 win over the Reds on Monday, bullpen uncertainty loomed.

When they get to the playoffs, who’s going to take the ball in high-leverage situations?

Their options are dwindling. Edgardo Henriquez landed on the 15-day injured list Monday with low back discomfort, ruling him out for the rest of the regular season. Edwin Díaz was so shaky in his rehab assignment Sunday that a spot on the postseason roster isn’t guaranteed.

“We have to go with our best pitchers, as far as performance, talent, all that stuff,” manager Dave Roberts said before the Dodgers opened a four-game series against the Reds. “So my bet is that he will be [on the roster]. But there’s got to be some kind of evidence or something for us to sort of bet on. And so my bet is, yes, but we’ve still got to see something.”

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Angels defeat the Mariners

Reid Detmers struck out eight over six innings, and Jose Siri and Denzer Guzman each drove in two runs to help the Angels beat the fading Seattle Mariners 6-4 on Monday night.

Detmers (6-8) gave up three runs and seven hits and a walk as third-place Seattle (70-81) dropped 5½ games behind AL West-leading Houston with 11 to play.

Ryan Watson pitched 1⅓ scoreless innings and Ben Joyce walked two in the ninth before retiring J.P. Crawford on a lineout to first base for his fifth save.

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Angels box score

MLB standings

Steve Ballmer did the right thing for his team

From Kevin Baxter: Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and his staff had spent the last 12 months loudly insisting they’d done nothing wrong.

The podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” first raised questions about payments star forward Kawhi Leonard received from Aspiration Partners without doing any endorsement work to benefit the company on Sept. 3, 2025. The NBA responded by starting an investigation.

In its findings — released Sept. 2 — an independent law firm reported “a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations” that benefited Leonard, who received $66 million in cash and equity from four companies through agreements facilitated by Ballmer and team executives at the request of Leonard’s uncle and then-agent. Those deals violated the league salary cap, which limits how much teams can pay players. The cap is $164.961 million for the coming season.

The Clippers released two statements that same day, protesting the finding and the stiffest sanctions in NBA history, including a $30-million fine and the loss of five future first-round draft picks. In addition, Ballmer, 69, was banned from all league activities for the next year.

After immediately calling the NBA’s investigation “biased” and vowing to “vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us,” the Clippers were silent for 11 days.

On Sunday night, they surrendered.

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Swanson: Clippers avoid a death penalty with Kawhi Leonard trade, but only if they clean house

Chargers miss chance to seize spotlight in L.A.

From Mirjam Swanson: It’s just one game. And it’s a long season.

Maybe a loooong season, if you’re a Chargers fan.

Sunday’s season-opening debacle — a sloppy, uninspired and uninspiring 26-14 loss to the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium — was a first, giant step back for these Chargers.

You can’t call Game 1 of any season a must-win. But you can pan back and recognize that sometimes Game 1 is a really, really should-win affair.

Not only because the Cardinals represented as close to a gimme as the Chargers are going to get on their precarious schedule.

But the Chargers also missed a prime opportunity to fill a hole in the L.A. football plot, rare as those are.

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Rams give updates on Garrett, Donald

From Gary Klein: Sean McVay and the Rams thought the situation was under control, or at least manageable.

Star edge rusher Myles Garrett first experienced knee discomfort and swelling during training camp, a condition that caused him to sit out the majority of team workouts throughout the weeks leading up to the season opener.

But Garrett failed to record a tackle, and was clearly not himself, in an embarrassing defeat by the San Francisco 49ers on Friday in Australia.

On Monday, Garrett was scheduled to have surgery, and he will sit out at least the next four games on injured reserve.

Will lineman Aaron Donald, who has returned from a two-year retirement, make his season debut against the Giants?

“We haven’t decided that yet,” McVay said. “He’s going to continue to work his process and we’ll see what that looks like.”

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This day in sports history

1899 — Willie Smith wins the U.S. Open golf title, beating George low, Val Fitzjohn and W.H. Way.

1923 — Bill Tilden wins the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn. championship, beating William Johnston in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1, 6-4.

1962 — Frank Tripucka of the Denver Broncos passes for 447 yards and two touchdowns in a 23-20 win over the Buffalo Bills.

1971 — Stan Smith wins the U.S. Open title over Jan Khodes and Billie Jean King beats Rosie Casals for the women’s title. It’s the first time in 16 years both titles were won by U.S. players.

1973 — Three-year-old Secretariat wins the Marlboro Cup Invitational Handicap in the then-world record time of 1:45 2-5 for 11/8 miles.

1973 — Archie Griffin of Ohio State starts his NCAA record string of 31 games of rushing for at least 100 yards, leading the Buckeyes to a 56-7 rout of Minnesota in Columbus.

1978 — Muhammad Ali becomes the first three-time heavyweight champion with a unanimous 15-round decision over Leon Spinks at the Superdome in New Orleans.

1991 — The United States women’s gymnastics team makes history with its first team medal — a silver — at the World Championships in Indianapolis.

2002 — Sam Hornish Jr. wins another incredible race at Texas Motor Speedway, and his second straight IRL title. Hornish side-by-side with Helio Castroneves for many of the last 25 laps in the season-ending Chevy 500, crosses the finish line 0.0096 seconds — only a few inches — ahead of the other driver in contention for the season championship. Hornish wins his IRL-record fifth race of the season and becomes the first driver to win two IRL championships.

2002 — Oakland quarterback Rich Gannon begins NFL record-tying (Kurt Warner, Steve Young) streak of six consecutive 300-yard passing games, throwing for 403 yards in Raiders’ 30-17 victory at Pittsburgh.

2004 — NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announces a lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.

2012 — LSU beats Idaho 63-14 to give the Tigers an NCAA FBS record 40th-straight non-conference regular season victory. LSU also set a Tiger Stadium mark with 20 straight home wins. Kansas State had 39 straight non-conference regular-season wins from 1993-2003.

2013 — Philip Rivers is 36 of 47 for 419 yards and three touchdown passes to Eddie Royal to lead San Diego to a 33-30 victory at Philadelphia. Michael Vick of the Eagles passes for a career-best 428 yards and two touchdowns and runs for a score.

2018 — Zlatan Ibrahimovic scores his 500th worldwide goal in the Galaxy’s 5-3 loss to Toronto FC. The 36-year-old Swede joins Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as the only active players with 500 goals for in club and international play.

2021 — U.S. gymnasts, including Simone Biles, testify against former team doctor Larry Nassar at a Senate Committee hearing, criticizing a system that allowed it to happen.

2022 — Tennis great Roger Federer announces his retirement from pro tennis at 41 with 20 grand slam wins and 103 ATP titles.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1902 — Chicago Cubs infielders Tinker, Evers and Chance turn their first double play together.

1912 — Joe Wood of the Boston Red Sox pitched his 16th consecutive victory to tie Walter Johnson’s record as he beat the St. Louis Browns 2-1.

1938 — Brothers Lloyd and Paul Waner hit back-to-back homers for the Pittsburgh Pirates off Cliff Melton of the New York Giants. This was the only time brothers hit successive home runs in a major league game. It was Lloyd’s last homer.

1946 — The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs 2-0 in five innings when the game was called because of gnats. The insects became such a problem for the players, umpires and fans that the game had to be stopped.

1963 — All three Alou brothers — Felipe, Matty and Jesus — played in the outfield at the same time for the San Francisco Giants in a 13-5 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

1969 — St. Louis left-hander Steve Carlton struck out 19 Mets for a nine-inning game record. New York won the game 4-3 on a pair of two-run homers by Ron Swoboda.

1979 — Bob Watson of the Red Sox became the first player to hit for the cycle in both leagues as he led Boston to a 10-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles. He hit for the cycle with the Houston Astros against San Francisco on June 24, 1977.

1990 — Bobby Thigpen pitched one inning and became the first relief pitcher with 50 saves in a season as the Chicago White Sox beat the Red Sox 7-4.

1996 — The Baltimore Orioles set baseball’s season home run record with five against Detroit, including Mark Parent’s record breaking shot in the third inning and Brady Anderson’s 10th leadoff homer of the year. The homers gave the Orioles 243, three more than the 1961 New York Yankees.

1997 — Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 51st and 52nd homers in Seattle’s win over Toronto to become the sixth major league player to hit 100 or more home runs over two consecutive seasons. Griffey hit 49 homers last season.

1998 — Ken Griffey Jr. hit his AL-leading 52nd homer and drove in five runs to become the fourth-youngest player to reach 1,000 RBIs, leading the Seattle Mariners over the Minnesota Twins 12-7.

2002 — Arizona’s Curt Schilling struck out eight to reach 300 for the season, joining Randy Johnson as the first teammates in baseball history to each strike out 300 in the same season. The Diamondbacks beat Milwaukee 6-5 in 13 innings.

2008 — In an unprecedented move, the Milwaukee Brewers fired manager Ned Yost. It marked the first time in major league history — except the strike-split 1981 season — that a manager was fired in August or later with his team in playoff position. The Brewers, 83-67, lost seven of eight and fallen into a tie with Philadelphia for the NL wild-card lead.

2009 — David Ortiz hit his record-breaking 270th homer as a designated hitter and had an RBI single in Boston’s 4-1 victory over the Angels. Frank Thomas had held the mark with 269.

2011 — Pablo Sandoval tripled in the sixth inning to complete the first cycle of his career and San Francisco beat Colorado 8-5.

2017 — The Cleveland had its AL record winning streak stopped at 22 as the Indians were beaten 4-3 by the Kansas City Royals, who became the first team to conquer the defending league champions since Aug. 23. The Indians came within four of matching the overall record held by the 1916 New York Giants.

2014 — The Mets’ Jacob deGrom ties a major league record when he strikes out the first eight batters he faces before his opponent on the mound for the Marlins, Jarred Cosart, singles to right. DeGrom ties the record set by Jim Deshaies in 1986. He strikes out 13 in seven innings but ends up with a no-decision as the Marlins win, 6-5.

2022 — On Roberto Clemente Day, the Rays make history by fielding an all-Latino line-up (excluding starting pitcher Shane McClanahan). It consists of C René Pinto, 1B Harold Ramirez, 2B Isaac Paredes, SS Wander Franco, 3B Yandy Díaz, LF David Peralta, CF José Siri, RF Randy Arozarena and DH Manuel Margot, with five countries being represented. All wear Roberto Clemente’s iconic uniform number, 21, as they go on to defeat the Blue Jays, 11-0.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Federal authorities probing the death of actor Hayden Panettiere are focusing on where the drugs and medications that played a role in her death came from, echoing similar probes that resulted in charges for suppliers in the deaths of Matthew Perry and Mac Miller.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local investigators have questioned several people about the circumstances of her Aug. 16 death, focusing on potential controlled substances and medications tied to her demise inside a Greenville, S.C., apartment, according to sources familiar with the probe.

Paramedics and police found Panettiere in cardiac arrest, according to the Greenville County Coroner’s Office. Dispatch audio recordings from Broadcastify.com reference a possible overdose and CPR in progress. Narcan was reportedly administered by paramedics who arrived, and after efforts to resuscitate her, she was declared dead at 2:31 p.m.

Her death echoes that of actor Matthew Perry and rapper Mac Miller, both of whom succumbed to overdoses. In their respective cases, prosecutors secured convictions for the people who supplied Perry with ketamine and Miller with cocaine and oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl. Perry’s demise in his hot tub led to his assistant, two doctors, a producer and a woman dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” pleading guilty.

The Greenville County coroner, in the wake of Panettiere’s death, conducted an autopsy but has not made a formal finding on the cause of death and toxicology results are pending.

Panettiere lived in Los Angeles, but her boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, is a Greenville native, according to authorities. A police report outlined the initial response from police who arrived at the scene. The report states that Hickerson and his brother Zach Hickerson were with Panettiere inside an apartment when the 36-year-old actor died.

According to the police report, Brian Hickerson showed an officer “a bag of medications HAYDEN is currently on.”

Several areas of the report were redacted, including statements from the brothers about what transpired as they called 911.

The officer who authored the report, Matthew Bryan, wrote that he recorded an interview with Brian Hickerson on his body-worn camera, and observed Zach Hickerson being “very emotional” while first responders tried to revive the actor. Brian Hickerson became emotional after she was declared dead, Officer Matthew Bryan wrote.

Later, he said that authorities obtained video of three individuals coming and going from the apartment from the complex’s security, which helped detectives with a search warrant.

Sloan Ellis, a South Carolina attorney for Hickerson hired in the wake of Panettiere’s death, said in a statement, “Hayden’s death remains under investigation, and it is important to allow that investigation to proceed. As has been publicly reported, police confirmed there were no signs of foul play. Out of respect for Hayden’s loved ones and the ongoing investigation, there will be no further comment at this time.”

Sources familiar with the probe have met with DEA agents about the actor‘s death, according to People magazine and TMZ.

Hickerson was arrested multiple times on suspicion of domestic violence against Panettiere, beginning in May 2019 in Los Angeles, though the charges were later dismissed when prosecutors couldn’t secure a material witness.

Following an eight-count criminal indictment in 2020 that covered multiple violent incidents over the previous year, Hickerson pleaded no contest in April 2021 to two felony counts of injuring a spouse or girlfriend.

He was sentenced to 45 days in county jail along with four years of formal probation, ordered to attend mandatory domestic violence classes, and received a five-year protective order.

Boxer Fernando Vargas Jr. was arrested on suspicion of DUI following a multi-vehicle collision at a Universal Studios Hollywood parking lot, according to law enforcement and multiple media outlets.

California Highway Patrol responded to the incident on Thursday after receiving a call at 7:51 p.m.

CHP confirmed to The Times that one arrest was made at the scene for “suspicion of DUI.” No other injuries were reported at the scene.

Reports by KTLA confirmed that the 29-year-old was the individual arrested after officers observed “signs of alcohol impairment from Vargas” and conducted a DUI investigation.

Officers took him to the CHP Central Los Angeles Area office. The case will be submitted to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office for possible charges.

Hours before the arrest, Vargas posted a video to Instagram of himself and a woman inside a vehicle, who appeared to be in the passenger seat, TMZ reported.

The super welterweight boxer is the oldest son of two-time middleweight world champion Fernando Vargas. The famed Mexican American fighter from Oxnard — who at one point was the youngest U.S. national amateur champion — also faced legal troubles of his own for his role in a 1999 assault case.

Since fighting his first professional match in 2020, Vargas Jr. himself has built a steady record in the ring with 15 knockouts in 17 wins. His last bout was during the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford card in September 2025, where he lost to Irish boxer Callum Walsh.

Mother Monster has reportedly welcomed her first baby.

Pop singer Lady Gaga and her fiancé, tech investor Michael Polansky, were recently photographed with a newborn child during an outing in Northern California, according to Page Six.

The “Bad Romance” singer and 16-time Grammy winner was seen wearing a large ring and holding the child, supported by a baby wrap, tightly to her chest, according to photos published by the outlet.

A representative for the singer, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

She confirmed her engagement to Polansky at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where she was said to have introduced him to then-French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

The pair was first spotted together kissing at a Las Vegas party in 2019.

In October, Lady Gaga revealed on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” that she was ready to become a mom.

“That’s my next starring role, I hope,” she said.

Rams lose to 49ers

From Gary Klein: Maybe, if the Rams still reach their intended destination at season’s end, they’ll look back at their very long trip to Australia — and purposely short stay — and be grateful.

A humbling punch in the face. A wake-up call. A rallying point that spurs them to even greater heights.

Until then, there is only one way to look at it:

The Rams embarrassed themselves, for a new part of the NFL world to see, in a humiliating 27-7 defeat by the San Francisco 49ers.

The Rams arrived here as the star-studded favorite to win Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium. They left star-crossed, stunned and searching for answers on their long flight back to Los Angeles.

The Rams sleep-walked through nearly all of the opener before a sold-out crowd of 100,021 at Melbourne Cricket Ground, in the first NFL game in Australia.

Coach Sean McVay’s strategy of arriving the day before the game backfired and resulted in a dull performance by a team featuring some of the NFL’s biggest stars.

“I don’t believe that’s why we didn’t play well enough, I really don’t,” McVay said. “It’s easy in hindsight to be able to say that was a miss.”

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Rams summary

Rams poll

We asked, “Will the Rams win the Super Bowl and how many games will they win, counting the playoffs?”

After 1,172 responses:

Will the Rams win the Super Bowl?

Yes, 62.8%
No, 37.2%

How many games will the Rams win this season, including the playoffs?

18, 25%
17, 22.2%
16, 14.2%
15, 11.9%
14, 7.4%
20, 5.1%
9, 4.9%
19, 4%
12, 2.8%
Fewer than 10, 1.2%
10, 0.7%
11, 0.6%

Ohtani on IL raises questions

From Maddie Lee: When it comes to Shohei Ohtani‘s injury management, it’s tempting to dwell on the what-ifs.

What if the Dodgers forced him to give up pitching in July, when he needed a lubricant injection to alleviate irritation in his left knee?

It was clear by then that Ohtani was playing through multiple injuries. A right biceps problem popped up for the second time on July 3 — the last time he pitched in a game. The Dodgers said his knee inflammation was only aggravated by pitching and the biceps tightness was tied to hitting. And yet, they were confident that the MLB All-Star break would give Ohtani enough time to bounce back.

If the Dodgers had been more proactive, instead of starting and stopping Ohtani’s throwing program until his injuries forced a shutdown, would he be in the lineup Friday against the Miami Marlins instead of on the 15-day injured list?

Maybe.

Or maybe the injuries were significant enough that they would have affected him down the stretch regardless. Maybe seeing if he could return to the mound was worth the risk.

Maybe not.

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Shaikin: Why it’s past time for MLB players, owners to get a 2028 Olympics deal done

UCLA confident a big Iamaleava game is coming

From Connor Dullinger: UCLA senior wide receiver Mikey Matthews expects the Bruins’ aerial attack to be as electrifying and dominant as their ground game was in a season-opening win over California.

The passing offense lived up to Matthews’ expectations against Cal — but only for a half.

After quarterback Nico Iamaleava completed 12 of 18 passes for 179 yards in the first half, he completed just two more passes for five yards — the Bruins’ only yardage in the third quarter.

The rushing attack carried the Bruins to victory, breaking open a tied game with three fourth-quarter touchdown runs.

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Family values are key to Trent Mosley’s USC success

From Ryan Kartje: Since he was a boy, Trent Mosley was taught to live by the Five Ps: Proper preparation prevents poor performance.

The Five Ps weren’t so much a lesson in the Mosley household as “a lifestyle,” father Emmett Mosley explains. He can’t recall when or from whom he first heard the phrase, but ever since, the Five Ps have stuck with him. To the point that he and his wife, Cindy, made it a core tenet of their family. All four Mosley kids — their daughter, Jalyn, and three boys, Emmett Jr., Trent and Grant — were brought up on the principle that preparation was paramount.

So then, no one in the Mosley family was surprised to see Trent sprinting wide open in the second quarter last Friday night at the Coliseum, well on his way to another impressive performance in his second college game. Just like no one at USC is batting an eye at the freshman’s staggering start, which has him leading the nation with three touchdown catches and the Big Ten with 222 receiving yards.

To those who know Trent best, it’s like this sudden ascent to stardom simply was … inevitable. That’s the Five Ps at work, his father explains.

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This day in sports history

1886 — The Mayflower defends the America’s Cup by beating Britain’s Galatea in two straight heats.

1937 — Don Budge beats Gottfried von Cramm in five sets to win his first U.S. Open men’s singles title. Budge wins 6-1, 7-9, 6-1, 3-6, 6-1.

1964 — ABC television cancels Fight of the Week, ending 18 years of regularly scheduled prime-time boxing on U.S. broadcast network television.

1976 — In the third race at Latonia, jockey John Oldham and his wife, Suzanne Picou, become the first husband and wife riding team to compete in a parimutuel race. Oldham finishes second aboard Harvey’s Hope and Picou rides My Girl Carla to an 11th-place finish.

1977 — In the last U.S. Open match played at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York, Guillermo Vilas beats Jimmy Connors, 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-0, for the men’s singles title

1982 — Chris Evert wins her sixth U.S. Open singles title, defeating Hana Mandlikova, 6-3, 6-1.

1982 — In a 23-16 loss to Illinois, Ralf Mojsiejunko of Michigan State kicks a 61-yard field goal in his first collegiate attempt.

1983 — Pittsburgh running back Franco Harris runs for 118 yards in Steelers 25-21 win at Green Bay to become only the third player in NFL history to rush for 11,000 yards.

1988 — Mats Wilander wins the longest men’s final in U.S. Open history, edging Ivan Lendl, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4.

1994 — Andre Agassi wins the U.S. Open with a three-set victory over Michael Stich and becomes the first unseeded player to beat five seeded players in a Grand Slam and the first unseeded champion since Fred Stolle in 1966. Andre wins 6-1, 7-6, 7-5.

1999 — U.S. Open Women’s Tennis: Serena Williams wins her first Grand Slam title; beats world No. 1 Martina Hingis 6-3, 7-6.

2001 — Sports comes to a standstill after terrorism in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, with major league baseball postponing a full schedule of regular-season games for the first time since D-Day in 1944.

2010 — James Madison, a top team in the Football Championship Subdivision, beats No. 13 Virginia Tech 21-16. The last time Virginia Tech lost to a I-AA team was 1985, when Richmond beat the Hokies 24-14 at Lane Stadium.

2010 — The Penn State women’s volleyball team has its record winning streak ends at 109 matches with a 28-26, 25-12, 25-18 loss to Stanford in a tournament at Florida. Penn State’s streak is the second-longest in Division I team sports, behind the 137 straight wins by the Miami men’s tennis program from 1957-1964.

2011 — Carolina’s Cam Newton becomes the first rookie to throw for more than 400 yards in his NFL opener in a 28-21 loss to Arizona. Newton, the No. 1 draft pick playing on the same field where he led Auburn to the BCS championship in January, completes 24 of 37 passes for 422 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.

2015 — Roberta Vinci stuns Serena Williams to end her Grand Slam bid in one of the greatest upsets in tennis history. The 43rd-ranked Italian wins 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the U.S. Open semifinals.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1912 — Eddie Collins set a major league record with six stolen bases for the Philadelphia Athletics in a 9-7 win over the Detroit Tigers. Collins stole six more in a game on Sept. 22.

1918 — The Boston Red Sox beat the Chicago Cubs 2-1 behind the three-hit pitching of Carl Mays to win the World Series in six games. This was Boston’s third championship in a four-year stretch — 1915, 1916 and this season.

1936 — Hod Lisenbee of the Philadelphia A’s tied a major league record for hits allowed, giving up 26 in a 17-2 rout by the Chicago White Sox.

1949 — The New York Yankees sent 18 men to the plate in the third inning of the first game of a doubleheader against Washington. In the 50-minute half-inning the Senators walked a major-league record 11 batters as the Yankees went on to a 20-5 win. New York won the second game 2-1 in one hour and 22 minutes.

1959 — The Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-4, putting an end to reliever Roy Face’s 22-game winning streak. It was his only loss of the season as he finished with an 18-1 record.

1974 — It took the St. Louis Cardinals 25 innings — seven hours, four minutes — to beat the New York Mets. There were a record 202 plate appearances. Felix Millan and John Milner had 12 appearances apiece.

1985 — Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds became the all-time hit leader with his 4,192nd hit to break Ty Cobb’s record. Rose lined a 2-1 pitch off San Diego pitcher Eric Show to left-center field for a single in the first inning. It was the 57th anniversary of Ty Cobb’s last game in the majors.

1987 — New York Mets third baseman Howard Johnson, with 34 homers, became the first National League infielder to reach 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in the same season. His 30th stolen base came in the fourth inning of a 6-4, 10-inning loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.

1996 — San Diego’s Ken Caminiti broke his own major league record by homering from both sides of the plate in a game for the fourth time this season. In a 6-5 win over Pittsburgh, Caminiti homered left-handed in the fifth inning, hitting a two-run shot. Batting right-handed in the seventh, he hit a solo shot to break his record set last year.

2008 — Albert Pujols drove in his 100th run with a sixth-inning double in the Cardinals’ 3-2 loss to the Cubs, becoming only the third player in major league history to reach the milestone in his first eight seasons. Pujols also extended his major league-record streak of reaching 30 homers and 100 RBIs in his first eight seasons, two more than any player in history.

2014 — Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton sustained multiple facial fractures, dental damage and cuts that needed stitches after being hit in the face by a pitch. Stanton was hit under the left eye by a fastball from Milwaukee’s Mike Fiers in the fifth inning of a 4-2 loss.

2021 — Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader of the Milwaukee Brewers throw a combined no-hitter to beat the Cleveland Indians 3-0. It was the record ninth no-hitter of the season.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Experts say there is a major shift in travel trends in 2026

Flight chaos and cost driving people to trains and cruises, report says Holiday experts say the rising cost and uncertainity of air travel is sparking a rising interest in rail and cruise breaks in the UK. Bookings for rail and cruise itineraries have jumped 31% year-on-year, according to a report from The Luxury Holiday Company – with 87% saying they are interested in a rail or cruise holiday in 2026.

Nearly half say these types of holidays now offer better value for money and 27% say they want to avoid ‘airport hassle’

The report also found a growing shift towards multi-generational holidays whike people want to prioritise ease, comfort and ‘together time’. The data shows that European-specific rail holidays are alsogetting longer, with average stays increasing by 14%, while European and Scandinavian cruises have surged by 433% year-on-year.

Scenic journeys also play a major role, with more than a third saying scenery and views are a core part of the holiday experience.

Alison Nicolle, rail and cruise travel specialist at The Luxury Holiday Company, said: “Our research shows Brits’ travel priorities this year include a strong desire for experience-driven or bucket-list-style holidays. We’re seeing a rise in rail and cruise holidays year on year, and there’s no sign of this slowing down.

“In 2026 travellers want to see more, and enjoy the journey itself, all while reducing the stress of constant planning. We’ve seen demand rise for groups booking a cruise or rail holiday, as group bookings have skyrocketed 55% in the past year.

“This isn’t just a niche trend. Groups want holidays where everyone, from grandparents to grandchildren, can experience beautiful destinations, relax and enjoy the journey itself. Slowing down, seeing nature and prioritising relaxation over adventure are the most important factor to more than a third of travellers this year.

“Clients are booking longer rail journeys as well as choosing itineraries that combine scenery, culture and indulgence. It’s no longer about getting there quickly, it’s about travelling well.”

Dodgers edge the Reds

From Maddie Lee: Even Dodgers catcher Will Smith, who’d never be accused of wearing his emotions on his sleeve, was a little worried during his monthslong absence because of a persistent neck injury that he might not be healthy by the end of the season.

“‘It was kind of the ‘who knows how long it’s going to take,’” Smith said when the Dodgers activated him at the beginning of the month. “But at some point I was going to be fed up and just kind of deal with it.”

It apparently didn’t come to that. And in the Dodgers’ 3-2 win against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday, Smith’s fifth time in the lineup since returning from the injured list, he put the Dodgers ahead with a first-inning home run and guided Dodgers left-handed starter Tarik Skubal through 7 ⅓ innings of two-run ball.

“He called a great game,” Skubal said of his Team USA teammate. “And the targets that he sets up, and the way that he goes about it, he gives me a ton of confidence back there.”

A neck problem that was initially expected to resolve on its own in a few days turned into a nearly three-month IL stint. With the revolving door behind the plate in Smith’s absence, getting him back down the stretch and into the postseason was going to be key.

While Smith was on the IL, backup catcher Dalton Rushing was thrown into the starting role, learning how to balance the defensive responsibility of serving as the main backstop at the major-league level with a desire to also contribute offensively.

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Shohei Ohtani out of the Dodgers lineup, available to pinch-hit

Shaikin: An October bye-bye? Dodgers need bye to save Shohei Ohtani

Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Aaron Donald won’t play in Rams’ season opener

From Austin Knoblauch: Defensive lineman Aaron Donald will not travel with the Rams to Melbourne to play in their season opener against the San Francisco 49ers, coach Sean McVay said Tuesday.

Donald, who rejoined the Rams last month after a two-year retirement, wouldn’t confirm if he was planning to play in the season opener when asked multiple times by reporters on Monday, only saying he was “feeling really good. Feeling great.”

The development isn’t surprising considering McVay and his assistants weren’t pushing Donald to play. Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula said Monday that the team was taking a “day-to-day” approach regarding Donald’s status.

“I think he’ll be ready to go sooner rather than later, but we’re making a decision that we think is best for him and for our team,” McVay said. “He’s attacked this the right way, but it would have been a really quick turnaround.”

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Rams used player ‘guinea pigs’ to help craft their Australia travel plan

How the Rams turned their weakest link into a strength with secondary makeover

Rams vs. 49ers will be a mini Super Bowl for Melbourne’s iconic cricket ground

More than just a coaching tree: Why Sean McVay is so good at forging NFL coaches

Rams poll

Two questions for you: Will the Rams win the Super Bowl and how many games will they win, counting the playoffs? Click here to vote in our survey. Results announced on Friday.

Phil Jackson to get statue

From Chuck Schilken: Phil Jackson will be the next member of the Lakers to receive a statue outside Crypto.com Arena.

The Lakers announced on Tuesday that they have commissioned a statue of the coach who led them to five NBA championships — with help from Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Pau Gasol and others — that will be unveiled April 9 when the Minnesota Timberwolves are in Los Angeles for the next-to-last game of the 2026-27 season.

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Angels defeat the Red Sox

Reid Detmers struck out nine and gave up one hit over six shutout innings, Zach Neto was four for five with a two-run homer, and the Angels beat the Red Sox 6-1 on Tuesday night to end Boston’s five-game winning streak.

Vaughn Grissom and Jose Siri hit RBI singles and the Angels scored twice on double-play grounders, providing ample offense for Detmers (5-8), who got his first win since a 1-0 decision over Kansas City on Aug. 15.

Detmers struck out at least one in all six innings he pitched and allowed only three runners. He retired the last 10 batters he faced after hitting Jahmai Jones with a pitch in the third, then was pulled before the seventh after throwing a career-high 112 pitches.

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Angels box score

MLB standings

This day in sports history

1909 — Jack Johnson retains his heavyweight boxing title when he fights Al Kaufman to a no decision in 10 rounds at Coffroth’s Arena in San Francisco.

1940 — Donald McNeil beats Bobby Riggs after losing the first two sets to capture the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn. title. Alice Marble wins her third straight title with a two-set triumph over Helen Jacobs.

1956 — Australia’s Ken Rosewall wins the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn. title with a four-set victory over Lewis Hoad. Shirley Fry beats Althea Gibson 6-3, 6-4 for the women’s title.

1960 — The Denver Broncos beat the Boston Patriots 13-10 in the American Football League’s first regular-season game. The game is played on a Friday night at Boston University’s Nickerson Field.

1968 — Arthur Ashe wins the U.S. Open by beating Tom Okker 14-12, 5-7, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3. Ashe is the first Black male to win a Grand Slam tournament. As an amateur, Ashe is ineligible to receive the $14,000 winner’s prize, but collects $280 in expenses for the two-week tournament.

1972 — UCLA’s Efren Herrera kicks a 20-yard field goal with 22 seconds remaining to beat preseason No. 1 Nebraska 20-17 at the Coliseum.

1974 — Jimmy Connors romps to a 6-1, 6-0, 6-1 victory over Ken Rosewall to win the U.S. Open.

1978 — Chris Evert beats 16-year-old Pam Shriver 7-5, 6-4 to win her fourth straight U.S. Open.

1979 — In an all-New Yorker U.S. Open men’s final, John McEnroe beats Vitas Gerulaitis, 7-5, 6-3, 6-3. Tracy Austin, at 16 years, 8 months and 28 days, becomes the youngest U.S. Open women’s singles champion, ending Chris Evert’s 31-match win streak at the Open with a 6-4, 6-3 win.

1984 — John McEnroe beats Ivan Lendl 6-3, 6-4, 6-1 to win his fourth U.S. Open.

1990 — Pete Sampras, at the age of 19 years and 28 days, becomes the youngest U.S. Open men’s singles champion, defeating Andre Agassi, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2.

2000 — Venus Williams wins her first U.S. Open singles title, defeating Lindsay Davenport, 6-4, 7-5.

2006 — Top-ranked Ohio State tightens its hold on the No. 1 spot after beating the No. 2 ranked and defending champion Texas Longhorns 24-7 in Austin, Texas.

2007 — Asafa Powell sets another world record in the 100 meters, winning a heat at the Rieti Grand Prix in 9.74 seconds. The world’s fastest man improves his record by 0.03 seconds, having run 9.77 three times.

2012 — Serena Williams, two points from defeat, suddenly regains her composure and her game, coming back to win the last four games and beat No. 1-ranked Victoria Azarenka 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 for her fourth U.S. Open championship and 15th Grand Slam title overall.

2015 — Japan’s Saori Yoshida wins her 16th world or Olympic freestyle title at the world wrestling championships. The most decorated athlete in wrestling history, the 32-year-old Yoshida wins her 13th title at worlds — to go with three Olympic golds in as many tries.

2017 — Sloane Stephens dominates Madison Keys in the U.S. Open final and wins 6-3, 6-0 for her first Grand Slam title. The 83rd-ranked Stephens is the second unseeded woman to win the tournament in the Open era, which began in 1968.

2018 — Alabama strengthens its hold on No. 1 over No. 2 Clemson. The Crimson Tide made its 106th overall appearance at the top of the AP football rankings, which started in 1936, passing Ohio State for the most by any school.

2018 — Green Bay Packers start 100th season with historic 24-23 comeback win over Chicago Bears at Lambeau Field; first ever Packer recovery from 17+ points deficit after three quarters (20-3).

2018 — Cleveland ends its 17-game losing streak with a 21-21 tie against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

2021 — Tom Brady becomes the first player in NFL history to start 300 regular season games. Brady and the Buccaneers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 31-29 on opening day of the 2021 season.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1914 — George Davis of the Boston Braves pitched a 7-0 no-hitter against the Philadelphia Phillies in the second game of a doubleheader. Davis’ no-hitter was the first thrown at Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox.

1922 — Baby Doll Jacobson hit three triples to lead the St. Louis Browns to a 16-0 victory over the Detroit Tigers.

1936 — The New York Yankees clinched their eighth American League pennant with a doubleheader sweep of the Cleveland Indians, 11-3 and 12-9. The Yankees finished 19½ games ahead of the Detroit Tigers for the largest margin in team history.

1945 — Dick Fowler of the Philadelphia Athletics pitched a 1-0 no-hitter against the St. Louis Browns in the second game of a doubleheader.

1948 — Rex Barney of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitched a 2-0 no-hit victory against the New York Giants on a rainy day at the Polo Grounds. He walked two and struck out four.

1965 — Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers tossed his fourth no-hitter, a perfect game, against the Chicago Cubs. Koufax fanned 14 in the 1-0 victory while Cubs pitcher Bob Hendley gave up one hit — a double by Lou Johnson.

1987 — Nolan Ryan strikes out his 4,500th batter.

1988 — Atlanta’s Bruce Sutter joined Rollie Fingers and Rich Gossage as the only pitchers to save 300 games as the Braves beat the San Diego Padres, 5-4 in 11 innings.

1992 — Robin Yount became the 17th player to reach 3,000 hits in the Milwaukee Brewers’ 5-4 loss to the Cleveland Indians. Yount singled to right center off Cleveland’s Jose Mesa in the seventh inning.

1998 — The New York Yankees officially clinched the AL East title, the earliest in AL history, beating the Boston Red Sox 7-5. The Yankees improved to 102-41 — 20½ games ahead of second-place Boston.

2001 — Barry Bonds hit three home runs to give him 63 for the season. The third homer was a three-run shot in the 11th inning lifting San Francisco over the Colorado Rockies 9-4. Bonds broke Roger Maris’ record of 61 for most homers in a season by a left-handed hitter.

2004 — Joe Randa had six hits and tied a major league record with six runs, and Alex Berroa hit a three-run homer and drove in a career-high five runs in Kansas City’s 26-5 victory over Detroit in the first game of a doubleheader. Randa became the first AL player to have six hits and six runs in the same nine-inning game.

2007 — Milwaukee became the third team in major league history to open a game with three straight home runs when Rickie Weeks, J.J. Hardy and Ryan Braun connected off Cincinnati’s Phil Dumatrait in a 10-5 victory. Weeks and Braun each hit two home runs and J.J. Hardy homered and hit two doubles — all in the first four innings.

2017 — Jose Abreu became the first White Sox player to hit for the cycle in 17 years in Chicago’s 13-1 rout of the San Francisco Giants.

2020 — At the urging of Roberto Clemente’s family, Major League Baseball pays tribute to its first Latin American superstar by allowing Puerto Rican players and others to wear his uniform number, 21, in his honor, on this day. This is akin to the wearing of No. 42 on Jackie Robinson Day. In addition, all members of the Pirates, Clemente’s former team, wear the number, the first time it has been worn by a team member since Clemente’s passing 48 years earlier.

2022 — Major League Baseball announces the adoption of a number of changes to the rules to be introduced at the start of the 2023 season. They include a pitch clock, limits on defensive shifts, and larger bases. All of these changes have already been successfully tested in minor league games and aim to improve pace of play, reduce injuries and create more in-game action.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Published on 08/09/2026 – 14:29 GMT+2•Updated
15:54

Three MEPs have agreed in a report to be published Wednesday to tighten the requirements for foreign direct investment in the EU, restricting access to the European market for Chinese investors, Euronews has learned.

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The report comes from the European Parliament’s rapporteurs on the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, MEPs Christophe Grudler (Renew), Pierre Jouvet (S&D) and MEP Anna Cavazzini (The Greens). The act was presented by the European Commission last March and creates a European preference on the EU market to favour products made in Europe, in a move to protect strategic sectors of EU industry from foreign competition.

However, China has threatened several times to retaliate against the legislation, which is still under discussion, putting access to the EU market at the top of the agenda in some ongoing trade negotiations with Brussels.

The exclusive details of the report obtained by Euronews show that in sectors where China is dominant, among them electric vehicles, solar panels, critical raw materials and batteries, the three rapporteurs want to impose strict requirements on investments exceeding €50 million, a threshold lower than the €100 million initially proposed by the Commission.

For such investments, any investor from a country holding 40% of the sector’s global market share will have to meet six conditions: own no more than 49% of the share capital of the EU target; make the investment through a joint venture with an EU entity; transfer technologies to Europeans; ensure that at least 60% of the workforce consists of EU workers; reinvest at least 1% of annual revenue into research and development within the EU; and source at least 30% of manufacturing inputs from within the bloc.

A signal to Beijing

The rapporteurs have added to the Commission’s proposal investments in other sectors such as wind power, electrolysers and heat pumps, making it necessary for the investor to meet at least three of the conditions above.

The report also restricts access to public procurement and public support schemes to products made in the 27 EU member states across areas such as clean technologies, cars and energy-intensive industries.

The Commission will only be allowed to extend the scope to products coming from non-EU countries under strict conditions, such as the application of reciprocal access for Europeans to foreign countries’ public procurement.

This follows intense lobbying from EU foreign partners, which want their products to be recognised as “made in Europe” to access the EU market. Many, such as the United Kingdom, argued that EU value chains were too intertwined with their own market to exclude them.

The report by the three MEPs will now have to be adopted by EU lawmakers before discussions start with EU member states on this future legislation.

However, it sends a signal to China that Europeans will not give up in their attempt to protect the EU market from China’s aggressive industrial policy.

RABAT: Moroccan media have criticized a Spanish police report that accused Morocco’s security forces of failures as tens of thousands of migrants crossed into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

More than 70,000 migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco on July 30 and 31 in an unprecedented, chaotic surge that left scores dead and sparked European Union infighting over the touchy issue of migration.

The Spanish police report seen by AFP flagged a Moroccan police response of “total permissiveness” that it said facilitated the rush, with some officers directing migrants toward the water.

Moroccan police numbers around the border post were “clearly smaller than usual” and officers “made no serious attempt” to stem the surge, said the report.

But Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has consistently avoided blaming Morocco, noting that there was no “solid proof” that the North African country orchestrated the migrant rush.

Sanchez’s leftist government has tried for years to improve the countries’ historically delicate relations — notably over the status of Ceuta and Spain’s other north African territory, Melilla.

Moroccan authorities have yet to comment on the leaked police report, but several Moroccan media outlets have weighed in on its allegations.

Moroccan news site Hespress on Friday called it “particularly weak,” saying it lacked material evidence and contained “glaring contradictions.”

Hespress said the police report sought to make Morocco “the scapegoat” in Spanish political and judicial disputes.

Moroccan news site Le Desk on Thursday described the report as “botched,” pointing to factual errors including a reference to June 30 instead of July 30.

And TelQuel said that claims by some media that the report directly accused Morocco of “planning and executing” the influx were false, adding that the allegations did not name any Moroccan official as responsible.

News site Medias24 challenged the “permissiveness” claim by arguing that it was based solely on one satellite image that was “obviously just a snapshot.”

Last month, a senior Moroccan official told AFP on condition of anonymity there had been no Moroccan security failures during the influx.

After LAPD recruitment officers were accused of making racist, sexist and homophobic comments — some of which were caught on tape — department leaders promised to look into whether they improperly disqualified any police applicants.

More than a year and a half later, the city is still waiting on the report.

But the contents of a separate LAPD internal affairs file reviewed by The Times has shed new light on the unit at the center of the scandal and how its officers responded to investigators who were looking into the matter.

No clear explanation has been given for the delay in publicly addressing the scandal’s effect on recruitment efforts.

In response to a records request from The Times, the city’s personnel department, which is conducting the inquiry, said it had not yet finished its review and had no timeline for doing so.

Last month, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman charged Daniel Flores, the LAPD whistleblower who secretly recorded his colleagues, with 16 felonies, alleging he violated a state eavesdropping law. But, after criticism from Mayor Karen Bass and others, the district attorney downgraded the counts to misdemeanors with a diversion agreement that will probably allow Flores to avoid any time behind bars.

Flores’ recordings captured Los Angeles Police Department recruitment officers referring to Black people as “monkeys,” describing a female job applicant as “rapeable,” and saying “F—ing deport them, call ICE” during a conversation about Latinos, among a long list of other offensive remarks.

Asked about the pending LAPD report into the fallout from the tapes, Bass said in a statement that the review “has gone on too long.” The mayor said she had directed the personnel department to “complete the report and release it without further delay.”

Flores alleged in a complaint he filed with the LAPD in January 2025 that some recruits had been improperly rejected, adding to ongoing concerns about the department’s struggle to replenish its ranks.

As of last week, the LAPD had 8,507 sworn personnel — its lowest total since October 1995.

Even after efforts under Bass to streamline hiring and boost recruitment, Chief Jim McDonnell has warned that the department may not be adequately staffed in time for the 2028 Olympics.

McDonnell said after Flores’ allegations were made public in early 2025 that the personnel department would conduct a “biopsy” to examine “any adverse impacts” of the scandal on recruitment.

In a brief statement, the department said that it wouldn’t comment on what discipline, if any, had been meted out to the officers involved, citing state privacy law.

“The Department takes allegations of discriminatory or biased conduct seriously,” the statement read. “We are committed to ensuring the workplace is professional, respectful and free from misconduct.”

The Police Commission said in a statement that it is still waiting on the report, adding that “fair and equitable hiring of sworn and civilian employees remains a priority.”

The LAPD internal affairs investigative file reviewed by The Times described a frat-like office atmosphere in the Hiring and Evaluation Section in which Flores worked.

According to the internal affairs report, Flores claimed that at least one colleague, Shirley Burgos, had inappropriately disqualified candidates based on their appearance.

The report said that Burgos was captured in several recordings making fun of overweight candidates who were “ugly, creepy” people.

Another officer, Ayron McKay, told internal affairs investigators about an instance in which the unit’s officers were discussing a candidate who they believed was overweight.

Burgos then looked up the woman’s driver’s license picture on the DMV database, which several officers told internal affairs probably violated department policy, according to the report.

Burgos and McKay did not respond to inquiries to their work email accounts.

The internal affairs file said Flores recorded another officer saying he wanted to go to Big Bear, a popular winter sports destination in the San Bernardino National Forest, and roll the candidate down the ski slope. Meanwhile, according to the report, McKay asked the others how much they would pay to sleep with the woman, and referred to her as “Jabba the Hut.”

When asked about the conversation by internal affairs, the report said, McKay told investigators that the conversation started with Burgos venting about an applicant, but acknowledged that it should not have been allowed to continue.

In one recording made on Nov. 13, 2024, the report said, Burgos told her colleagues that she had released information about disqualified candidates to a friend of hers at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which is against LAPD policy.

The officers were all required to sign a confidentiality agreement that barred them from discussing candidates’ personal information with anyone outside the office.

During her internal affairs interviews, Burgos denied providing information to other agencies, saying it was clear from her laughter on the recording that she was joking.

Burgos told investigators that the only time she’d ever discussed a candidate with someone outside the department was during a conversation with an unnamed background investigator with the Sheriff’s Department or Santa Monica police — and said that was only to confirm that the candidate had in fact applied to the LAPD, according to the report.

The LAPD investigation noted that she and the other involved officers all denied that their office conversations had ever caused them to inappropriately disqualify a candidate.

The internal affairs report quoted the unit’s supervisor, Sgt. Denny Jong, a 20-year-department veteran, as describing his relationship with the officers under his command as friendly and professional; none of them had ever expressed discomfort about their work environment, he reportedly said.

Jong did not respond to emailed questions from The Times.

Several officers told investigators that they used gallows humor as a way to deal with the stress of working long hours in a small, windowless basement office.

According to the report, some officers, including Jong and McKay, acknowledged that the office banter sometimes crossed the line, but they denied that there was anything malicious about their comments. They also contended that the unit had little authority about which applicants advanced in the recruitment process — decisions, they said, that had to go through several layers of review.

During his internal affairs interviews, Jong often told investigators that he didn’t recall making certain inappropriate comments. The report said he also denied ever making any of the inappropriate comments that were contained in Flores’ complaint.

When he was confronted with audio of comments in which he referred to a candidate of Chinese descent as a terrorist, Jong said he was joking.

“He explained that this was based on current news stories at the time, which involved concerns over Chinese nationals attempting to infiltrate the country,” the internal affairs report said. “Jong was not serious and did not believe the candidate was a terrorist, but admitted the remark was an off-color joke and inappropriate for the workplace.”

The U.S. Secret Service dealt with several drone-related incidents without adjusting its protection policies or documenting why it didn’t, according to a government report released Thursday. That information may have helped illustrate the emerging threat of civilian drone use before one was used in the 2024 assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pa.

The report from the Government Accountability Office found delays and holes in how the Secret Service updates its policies regarding threats, and arrives after a few turbulent years for the agency charged with the president’s protection.

The would-be assassin in Butler positioned himself on a roof left unsecured, nicking the president’s ear with a bullet. Months later, a man with a rifle got surprisingly close to Trump at his West Palm Beach, Fla., golf course. And in April, an armed man got beyond security barriers at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner, where the president sat.

The report found that between 2015 and 2025 the Secret Service dealt with 83 security incidents and that it updated its protection policies in response to 25 of them. Among the incidents was a drone that made contact with President Obama’s motorcade in 2015 and another flown about 200 feet over a rally for then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Failing to document why the Secret Service decided not to change its policy is the concern, said Nathan Tranquilli, acting director of the Government Accountability Office, adding that the drone incidents were a “compelling example” of that.

“Some of the missing information has been relevant to subsequent attacks,” the report read. It cited the Butler incident, where the culprit flew a drone for 11 minutes over the crowd, which helped him position himself to get a clear shot at Trump.

The Secret Service also failed to update eight of 22 protection policies within a required time frame of four years. A memorandum of understanding between the Secret Service and the Diplomatic Security Service, which designates each agency’s responsibilities for the president’s overseas security, hasn’t been updated since 1991, even though an annual review and update are required. As a consequence, the memorandum doesn’t address newer threats, such as drones.

“When you look at the Secret Service and you look at their mission, really it’s a zero-fail mission, and they’ve got a ton of challenges,” Tranquilli said. “When decisions were being made about where to put time and energy, some of these things fell to the side, and, as a result, there were some delays.”

The report recommended three fixes, including that the Secret Service revise its policy to require that, when a security incident doesn’t warrant a policy update, that the rationale is documented.

A spokesperson for the Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the report stated that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, agreed with all recommendations and plans to implement changes.

Bedayn writes for the Associated Press.

L.A. Clippers are the L.A. Cheaters

From Bill Plaschke: Boom, goes the Clippers.

Steve Ballmer has been tattered. Lawrence Frank has been shredded. Their team future has been flattened.

Boom, goes those damn Clippers.

They had transformed themselves from the ridiculed Clip Joint to a top-shelf NBA organization, with the billionaire owner, the beautiful arena, the best coach and the most devoted fans … but they apparently got greedy, seemingly played dirty, and now have been affixed with a scarlet eight letters that will follow them forever.

Cheaters.

The NBA has ruled that the Clippers are cheaters.

Ballmer, cheater. Frank, cheater. Even president of business operations Gillian Zucker, cheater.

The NBA suspended Ballmer and Zucker for one year and Frank for six months Wednesday for violating salary cap rules when they signed Kawhi Leonard in 2019.

In arguably the harshest punishment in sports since SMU was given college football’s death penalty in 1987 — this is even worse than the USC sucker punch of 2010 — the league added injury to insult by stripping the team of five consecutive draft picks from 2029 to 2033.

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NBA hammers Clippers, Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard following investigation

Read the NBA’s investigation of the Clippers, Steve Ballmer, Kawhi Leonard

Shohei Ohtani seems off as Dodgers lose to Cardinals

From Joaquin Ruiz: Shohei Ohtani didn’t look right when striking out in the 10th inning of the Dodgers’ 8-6 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday.

Ohtani, who hasn’t pitched since July 3 due to lingering knee and biceps issues, winced in pain throughout his eight-pitch at-bat against reliever Riley O’Brien, seeming to strain himself with every muscle flex, let alone big-league hacks.

“I saw the same thing that everyone saw,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I’m going to talk to [Ohtani] tomorrow and really try to figure out … where he’s at physically. Because, yeah, I saw the shaking of the arm, I saw the wincing, and clearly, the swings aren’t who he is.

“Obviously, there’s some compensation. So, I’m going to talk to him, and then I’ll make a decision tomorrow about his availability.”

Roberts isn’t sure if Ohtani, who went 0-for-4 on Wednesday with four strikeouts and a walk, will need to go on the injured list.

“It won’t be an IL, unless it is,” Roberts said. “But it’s very unlikely.”

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Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Angels lose to Yankees

Cam Schlitter gave up one run and two hits in eight superb innings, and the New York Yankees scored five two-out runs in the 10th in a series-clinching, 6-3 victory over the Angels on Wednesday night at Angel Stadium.

New York loaded the bases with one out in the 10th when Jose Caballero singled, the automatic runner holding at third, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. walked against reliever Luke Murphy (0-2).

Murphy got Luis Garcia Jr. to pop out, but Austin Wells stroked a two-run single to right, Cody Bellinger hit an RBI single to center, Trent Grisham hit an RBI single to left, and Ben Rice had an RBI single to right for a 6-1 lead.

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Angels box score

MLB standings

Jordan Chiles returns to gymnastics

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: That Girl is back.

Olympic gold medalist Jordan Chiles announced her intention to train for the L.A. Olympics on Wednesday, publicly beginning her attempt for a third Olympic Games in a video narrated by NBA legend Michael Jordan.

“Why again?” says Jordan, whom Chiles is named after. “Because the dream is still there.”

Chiles helped the United States to a team gold medal in 2024, competing in all four events in the final. She won her first individual Olympic medal, a bronze on floor with her energetic Beyoncé-inspired routine, but that result still is being considered by the Court of Arbitration for Sport after controversy involving the inquiry process that led to Chiles’ score being upgraded to overtake Romania’s Ana Barbosu.

Chiles is the fourth member of that gold medal-winning team to announce a comeback for the 2028 Olympics, joining Suni Lee, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera. Simone Biles, the 29-year-old, 11-time Olympic medalist, has not officially come out of retirement.

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This day in sports history

1908 — Canadian world heavyweight boxing champion Tommy Burns KOs Australian Bill Lang in six rounds in Melbourne in a warmup fight for his famous title bout with Jack Johnson.

1921 — The U.S. defeats Japan in five straight matches to win the Davis Cup.

1932 — Ellsworth Vines wins the men’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn. championships with a three-set victory over France’s Henri Cochet.

1944 — Frank Parker wins the men’s singles title with a four-set victory over Bill Talbert in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn. championships. Pauline Betz captures her third straight women’s title with 6-3, 8-6 victory over Margaret Osborne.

1945 — Frank Parker defends his U.S. Open title, defeating Bill Talbert 14-12, 6-1, 6-2 in the final of the first postwar U.S. Open.

1956 — Jockey John Longden surpasses Sir Gordon Richards’ then-record number of wins by riding Arrogate to victory in the Del Mar Handicap at Del Mar Racetrack to attain his 4,871st victory.

1974 — Future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame guard Oscar Robertson retires; leaves NBA with 26,710 points, 9,887 assists and 7,804 rebounds in 1,040 games.

1975 — Martina Navratilova, 18, defeats Margaret Court, who is 33 and competing in her 11th and final U.S. Open, 6-2, 6-4 in the quarterfinals.

1977 — Ken Rosewall, two months shy of his 43rd birthday, is beaten by 24-year-old Jose Higueras, 6-4, 6-4. The best-of-three-set third-round match marks Rosewall’s final U.S. Open singles match.

1989 — Chris Evert defeats 15-year-old Monica Seles, 6-0, 6-2, for her 101st and final U.S. Open singles win.

1994 — Miami beats Georgia Southern 56-0, breaking an NCAA record with its 58th consecutive home victory. The Hurricanes surpass Alabama’s record of 57 wins in a row at home set from 1962-82.

2001 — Jockey John Velazquez becomes the first jockey to ride six winners on a single card at Saratoga Racecourse. Velazquez guides Starine to a 5¼-length victory in the Diana Handicap, a 1 1-8 mile turf race, for his sixth win.

2006 — Sparks center Lisa Leslie wins the WNBA’s Most Valuable Player award, joining Sheryl Swoopes as the league’s only three-time winners.

2016 — Serena Williams’ dominating third-round victory at the U.S. Open is notable for a milestone: 307 Grand Slam wins. Williams’ 6-2, 6-1 win over 47th-ranked Johanna Larsson of Sweden improves her major-tournament mark to 307-42, putting her one win up on Martina Navratilova among women and tying Roger Federer among all players in the Open era.

2017 — UCLA’s Josh Rosen fakes the spike and throws a 10-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Lasley with 43 seconds remaining and UCLA overcomes a 34-point deficit to stun Texas A&M 45-44. Rosen is 35 of 59 for 491 yards and throws four fourth-quarter touchdowns. UCLA scores on five straight possessions after trailing 44-10 with 4:08 to play in the third quarter.

2022 — 23-time Grand Slam tennis champion Serena Williams plays her final singles match at the US Open, losing 7-5, 6-7, 6-1 to Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia in a third round match in New York.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1917 — Philadelphia’s Grover Cleveland Alexander went the distance in both games of the Phillies’ 5-0 and 9-3 sweep of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1947 — Bill McCahan pitched a no-hitter to give the Philadelphia Athletics a 3-0 win over the Washington Senators. One batter reached base for Washington, a two-base throwing error by first baseman Ferris Fain in the second inning.

1947 — The New York Yankees had 18 hits, all singles, in an 11-2 victory over Boston at Fenway Park. Tommy Henrich and Joe DiMaggio each had four hits.

1957 — Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves pitched his 41st career shutout with an 8-0 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Spahn’s shutout set a major league record for left-handers.

1970 — Billy Williams of the Chicago Cubs asked to be kept out of the lineup, ending his National League record of 1,117 consecutive games played. His record was broken in 1983 by Steve Garvey.

1976 — Milwaukee’s Mike Hegan hit for the cycle and drove in six runs to lead the Brewers to an 11-2 rout of Mark Fidrych and the Detroit Tigers.

1986 — Billy Hatcher’s homer in the top of the 18th inning gave the Houston Astros an 8-7 victory over the Chicago Cubs. The teams played 14 innings the day before and used a major league record 53 players in the game.

1990 — Bobby Thigpen set a major league record with his 47th save in a 4-2 Chicago White Sox victory over Kansas City. Thigpen broke the record set by Dave Righetti of the New York Yankees in 1986.

2000 — Kenny Lofton’s 1st-inning run ties a 1939 major league record set by the Yankees ’Red Rolfe for scoring in 18 consecutive games. The speedy Indians outfielder, besides hitting the game-winning homer in the 13th, also steals five bases tying Cleveland’s single-game record set by Alex Cole.

2001 — Bud Smith became the 16th rookie in modern history to throw a no-hitter and the second to do it to San Diego this season in St. Louis’ 4-0 win. Smith was making his 11th start.

2007 — Pedro Martinez completed his comeback from major shoulder surgery and quickly went into the record books, becoming the 15th pitcher to strike out 3,000 batters in his career. The New York Mets right-hander needed only two strikeouts to reach the mark in a 10-4 win over Cincinnati.

2011 — Milwaukee’s George Kottaras hit for the cycle to lead the Brewers to an 8-2 win over the Houston Astros.

2013 — Pinch-hitter Travis Snider homered in the ninth inning to lift Pittsburgh to a 4-3 win over the Milwaukee Brewers that clinched the Pirates’ first non-losing record in 21 seasons.

2017 — Jose Ramirez tied a major league record with five extra-base hits, including a pair of home runs that deflected off Detroit outfielders, and the Cleveland Indians routed the Tigers 11-1 for their 11th straight victory. Ramirez had three doubles in becoming the 13th player with five extra-base hits in a game.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Chinese state-run shipping company COSCO has been using concealed systems on its vessels to gather signals intelligence around North American, European, and Asian coastlines for decades, it has been alleged. Similar claims have been made in the past, and overlap between nominally civilian enterprises in China and the country’s military and intelligence services is well established at this point.

Reuters first reported on the use of COSCO ships as discrete signals intelligence platforms earlier today, citing two unnamed officials within President Donald Trump’s administration.

“The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. assessment of the Chinese program, said COSCO has a decades-long intelligence-collection partnership with Beijing,” according to the report. “The arrangement allows China to collect communication signals from vessels ​and aircraft operating across Europe, North America and Asia, they said.”

It is worth noting here that China’s National Intelligence Law, enacted in 2017, includes a specific provision that requires all organizations and citizens within the country to support state intelligence work as required. It also obligates the state to protect entities that do so.

“The advanced equipment aboard the ships is intended to enable China ​to gather information about ‘military communications technologies and encryption developments,’ one of the officials said,” Reuters‘ story today added. “The officials did not detail the type of equipment COSCO ships were allegedly using, but said they were ‘sophisticated signals intelligence collection’ platforms, not routine communications hardware.”

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., unsurprisingly denied these assertions, according to that outlet.

Purpose-built signals intelligence suites can range widely in size and shape, as can their capabilities. They can be very small and basic or far more elaborate systems. Even the latter could be concealed as modern commercial ships, which already feature lots of antennas.

What might happen to intelligence collected by the ships is unknown. At the very least, systems onboard could record the data, which could then be batched out when safe to do so, either physically or via transmission. Basic passive signals suites can also run autonomously, or even be controlled from anywhere in the world if the ship is connected via satellite communications (SATCOM). High-bandwidth SATCOM is very common now on ships around the globe.

Personnel on the ship could also operate the systems, and even process receptions of interest. It might be possible to fit the ships with suitable datalinks to then transmit the collected data in near-real-time to other nodes, including ones back in China, for further analysis and exploitation.

Reuters‘ sources said scooping up data on “military communications technologies and encryption developments” was a priority for the commercial vessels turned spy ships. Signals intelligence can take many other forms, from emissions from radars to communications chatter. Depending on what is collected and how, specialists can use that information to glean details about how systems function, as well as insights into standard operating procedures and other details. This is especially true when multiple forms of intelligence are fused together. Generally speaking, signals intelligence is routinely used to help build out so-called ‘electronic orders of battle’ detailing the disposition and capabilities of an opponent’s forces, especially air defense and command and control networks. Fusing multiple forms

As mentioned, this is not the first time claims in this general vein have emerged, either. At least some evidence has been presented in the past, through open-source analysis. Reuters‘ sources directed that outlet to a report published last year by the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College exploring exactly this topic in relation to China’s quasi-military maritime militia. The maritime militia is made up of ostensibly civilian fishing fleets, but has direct ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese Coast Guard. It is routinely used to harass and intimidate foreign vessels in disputed waters, especially in the South China Sea.

“Undergirding these operations is a cadre of maritime militia intelligence specialists called ‘information personnel.’ Information personnel are organized into force contingents that support operational militia forces,” according to that report. “Most have day jobs in the fishing industry, but many hale [sic; hail] from other sectors, including marine shipping and even maritime law enforcement units.”

“It is more likely than not that PRC [People’s Republic of China] vessels operating overseas have already begun embarking information personnel to serve intelligence collection and reporting functions. In the case of China’s fishing fleet, serving this foreign intelligence collection function could be as simple as adding a new duty to the ‘information personnel’ that already embark aboard some distant-water fishing vessels,” that report added. “Aside from their primary responsibilities of tallying and reporting production numbers, serving as experts on international and national fisheries regulations that affect their work, and handling interactions with foreign officials while at sea and in port, they might also be tasked with collecting and reporting military and political intelligence while operating overseas.”

“Similar processes may already be in place in the commercial shipping industry,” it continued. “For instance, Guangxi province’s Beihai city has built up its ranks of maritime intelligence specialists by recruiting from among marine shipping personnel.”

No explicit mention is made in the report about signals intelligence gathering.

In the past year or so, there have been multiple reports that Russia is also using its so-called ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tanker ships in a secondary role as intelligence-gathering platforms. The primary job of those vessels is to help the Kremlin evade sanctions.

There is other tangential evidence that also lends credence to today’s report from Reuters. As mentioned, in the midst of still mysterious drone swarms that harassed U.S. Navy ships off the coast of southern California back in 2019, U.S. authorities at least explored the possibility that a Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier, the M/V Bass Strait, might have been a launch point. It remains unknown, at least publicly, whether the Bass Strait or another nearby ship might have been the source of the harassment, or if it came from somewhere else, potentially further away. TWZ was the first to report on this detail as part of a deeper investigation into these incidents, which came amid a spike in news about claimed sightings of what are now commonly referred to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). We have been saying for years now that, while some UAP sightings do remain unexplained, many more are likely to have been drones (as well as balloons), which foreign governments could be using for intelligence gathering and other malign purposes.

It’s also worth noting here that intelligence collection from international waters and airspace is a practice that nation state armed forces and intelligence agencies globally, including those in the United States, engage in regularly with varying degrees of openness. Leveraging nominally civilian ships, as well as aircraft, for these purposes is hardly new.

Despite the official denials to the Reuters piece today, it would be hard to imagine Chinese authorities not making use of commercial ships for this purpose, if possible, given that major deepwater ports worldwide are often dual-purpose civilian/military facilities. Radar sites and other critical facilities are often positioned along or near coastlines. Cargo ships and tankers often pass by major exercises and under major military operating airspace, where they could scoop up critical data.

With commercial ships already plying their routes, this would also just offer the Chinese government ways to readily bolster maritime intelligence-gathering capacity at low cost and low risk. China’s commercial fleets dwarf any other on Earth, making their presence commonplace and providing many opportunities to hide these operations.

Shipyard in Snow

A 2021 report published through the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) Tearline Project also highlighted the possibility of Chinese-owned facilities at ports around the world being used for intelligence gathering or even for launching non-kinetic attacks, including electronic warfare jamming. It specifically noted how COSCO’s facility in Belgium’s Port of Zeebrugge is “in close proximity to a Belgian Naval Base and thus could fulfill additional militarized requirements.”

Concerns about land owned by Chinese companies and nationals being used to collect intelligence or for other purposes have become an increasingly hot topic of discussion in the United States in recent years.

Reuters‘ piece does not say what, if any, steps U.S. authorities have taken or may be planning to take now to monitor for or take more active countermeasures against Chinese-flagged ships being used for intelligence gathering, despite this being said to be a decades-old practice. The report does note that “the Pentagon put COSCO on its list of companies linked to China’s military in January 2025, a designation that carries serious reputational costs for companies ​as well as U.S. government procurement ​bans, but does not entail ⁠formal sanctions.”

Though no hard evidence has yet been provided, Chinese authorities using cargo ships as additional discreet signals intelligence-gathering assets is very plausible, and would certainly seem to be an issue that should be taken seriously, if it is not already being addressed.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

UCLA fires Martin Jarmond

UCLA has fired athletic director Martin Jarmond and appointed longtime Lakers executive Tim Harris to replace him as chief executive and director of athletics.

UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk announced the change on Monday, ending Jarmond’s run of more than six years that included a stunning move to the Big Ten Conference, a string of conference championships outside of football and a significant financial deficit.

“UCLA Athletics currently carries a significant financial deficit, and its current path is not sustainable,” Frenk wrote. “Now is the moment to build a model for Athletics that protects the breadth of our program, creates new opportunities for student-athletes and coaches, and supports itself through the revenue it generates. I believe UCLA should help lead the transformation of intercollegiate athletics: our future must be shaped by purpose — not by pressure.”

Frenk cited the rapidly evolving college landscape, including the soaring costs associated with the name, image and likeness athlete compensation era, while announcing the need to shift to Harris’ leadership. Harris is a UCLA alum who spent more than 35 years helping run the Lakers’ business operations. Frenk announced Harris is accepting the job on “pro bono basis.”

“Tim will develop a new strategy to grow revenue through partnerships, licensing and other ventures, while ensuring that our student-athletes and coaches have the required support to compete at the highest level,” Frenk wrote in a letter to UCLA fans while outlining a new direction for the athletics program.

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Angels interim GM discusses his plan

From Bill Shaikin: In two months as the Angels’ interim general manager, John Mozeliak has reoriented the team’s draft selection priority from “closest to the majors” to “best available,” traded one-third of the major league roster to seed a barren minor league system, fired three coaches and completed a restructuring of the front office.

On Monday, he has scheduled the first meeting of the new leadership group in baseball operations.

We’ll get to that restructuring, but none of the decisions so far resolve two of the most compelling questions in Anaheim: Who is going to be running the Angels next year? And, with this year’s Angels flirting with the first 100-loss season in franchise history, are the Angels going to be much better next year?

To the latter question: Probably not.

“With the starting pitching we have, if we have the ability to be more consistent with our offense, you can definitely squint and see a better club out there,” Mozeliak told me. “But it’s going to take a few pieces to do that.”

Uh oh. That sounds discouragingly like the Angels of the last decade: We’re undermanned, but we want to be competitive, so we’ll sign a few lower-tier free agents and hope we can sneak into the playoffs with an 83-win season. In the real world, the Angels clinched their 11th consecutive losing season before the calendar turned to September.

Mozeliak has said he did not believe that the Angels need to rebuild, that the resources available to a team in the second-largest market in the majors should preclude outright tanking. In theory, that should mean that Mozeliak could trade José Soriano for shortstop Arjun Nimmala, 20, now the Angels’ top prospect, comfortable that owner Arte Moreno could buy a quality free agent to replace Soriano in the starting rotation.

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Angels end losing streak

Vaughn Grissom drove in four runs, rookie Walbert Ureña pitched seven strong innings and the Angels ended a seven-game losing streak with a 10-1 victory over the sloppy New York Yankees on Monday night.

Mike Trout had a two-run single and Christian Moore drove in a pair of runs as the Angels won at home for the first time since Aug. 15. Ureña (9-9) gave up five hits with no walks and eight strikeouts.

Elmer Rodríguez (0-3) failed to make it out of the fourth for the Yankees (78-60), giving up four runs and four hits with three walks over 3⅔ innings. It was the shortest of his six career starts since making his major league debut in April.

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Angels box score

MLB standings

Angel City defeats Boston

Prisca Chilufya scored a pair of goals as Angel City snapped a six-game winless streak with a 5-2 win over the Boston Legacy at Gillette Stadium on Monday night.

The match featured four goals in the first 18 minutes. Ally Sentnor scored for Angel City (8-8-5) in the fifth minute with a hard strike from just outside the box.

Some three minutes later, Sammy Smith added her own long strike for the Legacy that bounced to the far post out of reach of goalkeeper Angelina Anderson.

Angel City regained the lead with Chilufya’s first goal that got a slight deflection before getting past goalkeeper Laurel Ivory in the 14th minute.

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Angel City summary

NWSL standings

This day in sports history

1923 — The United States wins its fourth consecutive Davis Cup by beating Australia four matches to one.

1946 — Patty Berg wins the U.S. Women’s Open golf title by beating Betty Jameson in the final round.

1971 — John Newcombe becomes the first top-seeded man to lose in the first round of the U.S. Open when he loses to Jan Kodes, 2-6, 7-6, 7-6, 6-3.

1972 — American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer beats Russian champion Boris Spassky 12.5-8.5 in Reykjavik, Iceland; most publicized world title match ever played; Fischer 1st American to win title.

1973 — George Foreman knocks out Jose Roman at 2:00 of the first round in Tokyo to retain the heavyweight title.

1977 — Renee Richards, the 43-year-old transsexual who fought for more than a year for the right to play in the women’s singles of a major tennis championship, is beaten in the first round by Virginia Wade, 6-1, 6-4. Tracy Austin, at the age of 14 years, eight months, 20 days, becomes the youngest player to play in the U.S. Open, defeating Heidi Eisterlehner, 3-6, 6-3, 6-1, in the first round. Austin’s mark is broken in 1979 by 14-year-old Kathy Horvath.

1984 — Willie Totten of Mississippi Valley State passes for a Division I-AA record 536 yards and nine touchdowns in a 86-0 rout of Kentucky State. Jerry Rice catches 17 passes for 294 yards and five touchdowns and breaks his own Division I-AA record for receiving yards.

1987 — Fifteen-year-old Michael Chang beats Paul McNamee, 6-3, 6-7, 6-4, 6-4, to become the youngest man to win a match at the U.S. Open.

1989 — Chris Evert becomes the first 100-match winner in 108 years of U.S. tennis championships. Evert, playing her final U.S. Open, beat Patricia Tarabini 6-2, 6-4.

1993 — Goran Ivanisevic and Daniel Nestor play the longest tie-break in the history of the U.S. Open (38 points). Ivanisevic wins the first-round match 6-4, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (18).

2007 — Appalachian State 34, No. 5 Michigan 32. Julian Rauch’s 24-yard field goal with 26 seconds left puts the Mountaineers ahead of the Wolverines and Corey Lynch blocks a field goal in the final seconds to seal one of college football’s biggest upsets.

2012 — Eureka (Ill.) College quarterback Sam Durley passes for 736 yards in a 62-55 victory over Knox to break the NCAA single-game passing record. Durley completes 34 of 52 passes and throws for five touchdowns, including two in the final two minutes as the Red Devils close the Division III game with 17 unanswered points.

2014 — Kei Nishikori outlasts Milos Raonic in a five-set marathon that ends at 2:26 a.m., tying the latest finish in U.S. Open history.

2015 — Indiana’s Tamika Catchings scores 13 points, and the Fever beat the Connecticut Sun 81-51 to reach the playoffs for a WNBA-record 11th straight season.

2021 — Cristiano Ronaldo breaks the world record for goals scores in men’s international football with his 110th and 111th goals for Portugal in a 2-1 World Cup qualifying win over the Republic of Ireland.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1906 — The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1 in 24 innings. Jack Coombs of the Athletics and Joe Harris of the Red Sox pitched all 24 innings. Coombs fanned 18.

1930 — Wes Ferrell of Cleveland beat the St. Louis Browns 9-5 for his 13th straight victory.

1931 — Lou Gehrig hit his third grand slam in four days as the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 5-1.

1945 — The Philadelphia Phillies, behind Vince DiMaggio’s grand slam, beat the Braves 8-3 in Boston. It was the fourth grand slam of the year for DiMaggio to tie a major league mark.

1958 — Vinegar Bend Mizell of the St. Louis Cardinals set a National League record by walking nine batters and tossing a shutout. Mizell beat Cincinnati 1-0 in the first game of a doubleheader.

1963 — Curt Simmons of the St. Louis Cardinals allowed six hits, drove in two runs with a triple and stole home plate in a 7-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. Simmons’ steal of home is the last by a pitcher.

1967 — Cincinnati’s Bob Lee walked Dick Groat with the bases loaded in the 21st inning to give the San Francisco Giants a 1-0 victory at Crosley Field.

1975 — Tom Seaver struck out Manny Sanguillen in the seventh inning to become the first pitcher to strike out at least 200 batters in eight consecutive seasons. Seaver recorded 10 strikeouts in the Mets’ 3-0 triumph over Pittsburgh.

1986 — Oddibe McDowell and Darrell Porter of Texas hit back-to-back pinch hit homers in the ninth inning off Boston reliever Steve Crawford, but the Rangers fall to the Red Sox 6-4.

1998 — Mark McGwire broke Hack Wilson’s 68-year-old National League record for home runs in a season, hitting his 56th and 57th in the St. Louis Cardinals’ victory over the Florida Marlins.

1999 — Twenty-two of baseball 68 permanent umpires found themselves jobless, the fallout from their union’s failed attempt to force an early start to negotiations for a new labor contract. Under the deal mediated by U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner, the union agreed the 22 “will provide no further services.”

2002 — Miguel Tejada hit a game-ending three-run homer to power Oakland to a 7-5 win, Oakland’s 18th straight victory, over Minnesota.

2007 — Clay Buchholz threw a no-hitter in his second major league start, just hours after being called up by the Boston Red Sox. Buchholz struck out nine, walked three and hit one batter to give the Red Sox a 10-0 victory over Baltimore.

2008 — Arizona’s Stephen Drew and Seattle’s Adrian Beltre became the first players to hit for the cycle on the same day since Bobby Veach of the Detroit Tigers and George Burns of the New York Giants did it on Sept. 17, 1920.

2014 — Cole Hamels and three Philadelphia Phillies relievers combined to pitch a no-hitter, beating the Atlanta Braves 7-0. Hamels pulled after six innings. Relievers Jake Diekman, Ken Giles and closer Jonathan Papelbon each pitched a hitless inning to finish off the fourth no-hitter in the majors this season.

2018 — South Korea wins its third straight baseball Gold in the Asian games as they beat Japan 3-0.

2019 — Justin Verlander of the Houston Astros strikes out 14 batters as he throws his third career no-hitter in a 2-0 win over the Toronto Blue Jays.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Coral reefs make up just 1 percent of ocean coverage, but host a quarter of all life in the sea.

Coral reefs are experiencing bleaching events so frequently that they no longer have time to recover before the next one strikes, scientists have warned.

Global coral cover is now well below ⁠normal levels and at risk of irreversible decline, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) said in a report released on Monday.

“If we give them enough time, they ‌have the capacity to recover,” lead author Manuel Gonzalez Rivero said. “But we haven’t seen that amount of time being allowed. In fact, the frequency of those bleaching events has pretty much doubled.”

Bleaching occurs when corals expel the colourful algae living in their tissues. Without this algae, they become vulnerable to starvation and disease. Bleached coral are not dead, but they need time in cooler water to recover.

“We had 40 years of coral cover around the world that had remained relatively unchanged until 2010,” said Gonzalez Rivero, a scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. “Since 2010, there has ⁠been a very steep change.”

The latest bleaching in 2023 was the most extensive on record, impacting 77 percent of the world’s coral reef areas.

Rivero warned that another such event is “very likely” this year given elevated temperatures globally.

Coral reefs are critical barometers for global ocean health, supporting more than 25 percent of all marine life despite covering less than 1 percent of the ocean floor.

The GCRMN’s warning came as organisers of the annual Pacific Islands Forum announced that at least five leaders of the 18-nation group will skip the group’s summit.

The forum has been touted for decades as a symbol of regional unity, and is used to discuss pressing matters facing Pacific states, including climate change and ocean health.

The Federal Communications Commission under Trump has tried to target news outlets for spreading ‘fake’ news.

United States President Donald Trump says he will report a prominent NBC television journalist to the federal agency in charge of regulating broadcast news outlets for “rebuke or punishment”.

In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump took issue with Kristen Welker’s characterisation of his endorsements of electoral candidates as having “mixed results” in the primaries leading up to November’s elections.

“How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given public airwaves?” Trump wrote. He also posted, without any attribution of where he got the data, a chart showing 98 percent of the candidates he endorsed had won their elections.

“Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC,” the Federal Communications Commission, he said.

Welker hosted the 2020 presidential election debate between Trump and former President Joe Biden and currently hosts NBC’s weekly news programme Meet the Press.

‘Crooked networks’

In June, Welker had a one-on-one interview with Trump that ended in a heated exchange as she pressed the Republican president on continuing to claim the Democratic Party had cheated in the 2020 presidential election, in which Biden defeated Trump.

“Your elections are crooked, and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked and so is ABC and CBS and CNN. You’re one-sided crooked networks,” Trump said shortly before pulling off his microphone and leaving the interview.

Trump, who has long had a tumultuous relationship with those US television news networks, has increasingly threatened to use the FCC to target what he says is false news.

This month, ABC News’s owner, Disney, sued the FCC, saying the agency was conducting an early licence review of eight of the network’s stations, a move that it said was “retaliation” against it. ABC said the FCC was seeking “a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely”.

The review followed a row between the network and the FCC after Trump and his wife Melania called on it to fire late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he had made about her.

President Trump has also filed several multibillion-dollar civil lawsuits against news outlets alleging defamation. Last year, he filed a $10bn lawsuit against the BBC, which he said unfairly edited a clip of him speaking just before his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to make it seem like he had called for violence.

Trump sued The New York Times for $15bn and The Wall Street Journal for $10bn, alleging defamation over reporting on issues such as how he amassed his wealth and his relationship to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A judge threw out the case against The Wall Street Journal. Trump refiled the case against The New York Times after a judge dismissed the first complaint against the newspaper last year.

Attempts to compel reporters to reveal sources

The warning from Trump also comes as his administration has taken the rare step of using the courts to try to pressure journalists into giving up confidential sources for stories that have pointed out wrongdoing.

This month, The New York Times said agents from the FBI showed up at the home of one of its reporters in February to deliver a subpoena seeking cooperation for an investigation into a story that revealed how a secret US Navy SEALs mission in North Korea had ended up with them opening fire on a North Korean boat.

In July, the US Department of Justice also tried to subpoena three other journalists from the newspaper after they reported on security concerns with the president’s new Air Force One jet. Investigators were seeking phone records of the journalists but withdrew the requests after a federal judge upbraided the tactic in court, saying they were violating the First Amendment, a provision in the US Constitution that protects freedom of the press.

Reporters at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have also been subpoenaed in recent months for national security coverage, including for reporting on internal Pentagon warnings about the US-Israel war on Iran.

News media freedom groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists have criticised the Trump administration for targeting critical media. In April, the group Reporters Sans Frontieres, or Reporters Without Borders, said the US has fallen to a “historic low” in its annual global press freedom rankings, dropping from 57th in the world to 64th.

WASHINGTON — A new National Park Service report backs President Trump’s proposed arch, despite what it says are adverse effects to the sightline between a host of landmarks in Washington, including the Washington Monument and Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

The report released Friday says the 250-foot-tall arch is likely to disrupt the historically significant layout of dozens of sites near its planned location adjacent to Memorial Bridge.

Many of Washington’s monuments, buildings and sites have been carefully planned over decades to reflect significant moments in the nation’s history and to evoke symbolism through sightlines that connect them to other sites. The arch will disturb the sightline between more landmarks than anticipated, the report said.

But the Park Service report says “the same characteristics that make Memorial Circle sensitive from a preservation perspective are also the characteristics that make it the historically appropriate location for the undertaking.”

The project’s effects cannot be “fully avoided without either relocating the Arch away from the historically identified site or eliminating the principal commemorative feature, both of which would fail to meet the undertaking’s purpose and need,” the report said.

“For this reason, alternative locations outside Memorial Circle are not reasonable avoidance alternatives,” the report said.

The 133-page report by the Park Service supports Trump’s plans for the controversial arch and could play an important role in bolstering the administration’s case in its fight against a legal challenge filed by three veterans and a group of historians.

The proposed towering arch, which last month received initial approval from a key federal commission, would impact the “integrity” of dozens of historic properties because it would change “character-defining visual and spatial relationships” between them.

One of the most obvious elements the report cited is that the arch would break alignment between the Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge and Arlington House that was formerly Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s home. That alignment was “intended to physically and symbolically unite North and South through a coordinated monumental composition extending across the Potomac River,” the report said.

The Lincoln Memorial Arlington House connection was one of dozens of historic sites and structures listed as being impacted directly by the proposed structure. It added that the National Mall, the U.S. Capitol, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, Georgetown Historic District, Old Naval Observatory, Key Bridge, National Cathedral and other sites also would be affected.

Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group representing the plaintiffs, said the report again “confirms what we’ve been saying all along: the project will have an enormous impact and transform that National Mall.”

The report underscores the legal challengers’ claim that a project of this size and importance “is a decision for Congress to make” and should not be rushed through by executive decree, Sansone said.

Daly writes for the Associated Press.

Three months after Josh Jacobs was arrested on five charges relating to domestic abuse, the Green Bay Packers star running back on Thursday was formally charged with misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor criminal damage to property.

The Brown County (Wis.) District Attorney’s Office released an incident report that asserts that video footage taken inside Jacobs’ garage corroborates the altercation the alleged victim described. However, a felony and four misdemeanor charges pertaining to domestic violence were dropped.

Jacobs’ legal team led by David Z. Chesnoff issued a statement: “The Brown County District Attorney has reviewed evidence and elected to file misdemeanor charges against Josh that do not include domestic violence. The allegations will be addressed in court, and not in the media. Mr. Jacobs respects the District Attorney’s office and the process it followed.”

The report states that on the morning of May 23, police were dispatched to Jacobs’ home near Green Bay because of a disturbance between Jacobs and a woman described as his girlfriend.

The woman told officers she had a lump on her head as a result of a physical struggle with Jacobs. She said she became upset after looking through Jacobs’ phone and seeing he had been talking to other women. Jacobs had her phone, and she told Jacobs he could look through it, but when she tried to take back her phone, he grabbed her arm and she ended up on the floor.

According to the report, the video shows that Jacobs followed her to the garage. When she attempted to exit, Jacobs grabbed her, threw her to the ground and she struck her head. The woman lay on the ground before standing and walking into the house.

The report stated that a responding officer observed redness on the woman’s face and neck and felt the bump on the back of her head.

Retrieving relevant video from the surveillance system in the garage “was complex and took several weeks,” according to the report. Surveillance footage “corroborates the relevant portions of [the alleged victim’s] statements” that occurred in the garage but “does not depict any portion of the incident that is alleged to have occurred inside the residence.”

The day of the incident, Jacobs was charged with felony strangulation and suffocation, and four misdemeanors pertaining to domestic abuse. However, he was released from jail the next day because the District Attorney’s office said it found insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges.

Three months later, that changed, although neither of the Class A misdemeanors filed Thursday mentioned domestic abuse. Jacobs would be subject to a fine of not more than $10,000 and not more than nine months in jail if he is convicted.

“Our office sought to ensure a fair and complete review of available evidence, some of which only recently became available to our office due to significant, ongoing forensic efforts by law enforcement,” Brown County District Attorney David L. Lasee said in a statement. “A criminal complaint is nothing more than a written, formal accusation against a defendant alleging the commission of criminal offenses and does not raise any inference of guilt. Mr. Jacobs is presumed innocent of these charges.”

The Packers and the NFL both issued statements saying only that they are monitoring the developments and will cooperate with law enforcement.

Jacobs has been one of the top running backs in the NFL since he was drafted out of Alabama in the first round by the Raiders in 2019. He signed a four-year, $48 million contract with the Packers as a free agent after the 2023 season.

Jacobs, 28, has rushed for more than 1,000 yards in four of his seven NFL seasons and last year rushed for 929 yards despite missing two games with a knee injury.

Dodgers swept by Braves

From Maddie Lee: The Dodgers’ recent offensive woes were punctuated Thursday by a complete-game shutout by Braves left-hander Chris Sale.

“We ran into a buzz saw,” manager Dave Roberts said after the 1-0 loss.

The Dodgers (80-54), who’ve been swept three times this month, are clinging to a one-game lead over the Braves (79-55) for the second-best record in the National League. They are three games behind the Brewers (83-51) for the best record in baseball.

“I wish we’d played better,” Roberts said. “I wish we’d have won the game. I wish we’d won the series. It didn’t happen. But right now, there’s nothing we can do but just go out there and keep trying to get better and win a baseball game [Friday].”

What was expected to be a pitchers’ duel between Dodgers rotation leader Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Sale lived up to the hype.

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Tarik Skubal returns to Detroit to face the Tigers. His focus is on the task at hand

Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Mark Walter should sell the Sparks

From Mirjam Swanson: Mark Walter doesn’t need to sell the Sparks. It said so in a release from his company Wednesday: “TWG is not looking to sell its sports assets at ‘fire sale’ prices to raise capital for its insurance operations.”

He should sell the Sparks anyway.

Not because of the investigations into allegations that insurance companies under Walter’s umbrella failed to properly disclose and conduct transactions between other companies he controls.

But for the sake of the storied WNBA franchise, which hasn’t won a championship in a decade and is about to miss the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season — something that would have been unthinkable six seasons ago.

Sell for the sake of the Sparks, who have long deserved an owner who wants seriously to run the team like Walter’s group runs, well, the Dodgers.

With passion and pride, foresight and smarts.

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Sparks’ Cameron Brink blasts Enes Kanter Freedom, offers support to transgender community

Rams defeat Chargers in preseason game

From Gary Klein: Rams coach Sean McVay does not play starters or players expected to be significant backups or contributors during the preseason, especially in the final game.

Quarterback Stetson Bennett did not play on Thursday night against the Chargers.

That would seem to indicate that Bennett, not rookie Ty Simpson, will open the season as Matthew Stafford’s backup.

Simpson led three first-half scoring drives in a 20-18 victory at SoFi Stadium.

Simpson, the 13th pick in the draft, completed 18 of 23 passes for 119 yards, including a second-quarter touchdown.

It was Simpson’s second no-turnover performance. In the preseason opener against the Kansas City Chiefs, Simpson played all but the first two series and completed 21 of 25 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns.

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Rams-Chargers summary

Chargers preseason takeaways: DJ Uiagalelei makes case to be Justin Herbert’s backup

Rams reacquire Tutu Atwell

From Gary Klein: The Rams never found a way to consistently deploy speedy receiver Tutu Atwell. But they apparently can’t quit him.

On Thursday, the Rams traded second-year running back Jarquez Hunter to the Miami Dolphins in exchange for Atwell, the team announced.

Atwell, who will turn 27 in October, was selected by the Rams in the second round of the 2021 NFL draft out of Louisville. He was sidelined much of his rookie season because of a shoulder injury, and was subsequently used sparingly the next three seasons. In 2024, he caught a career-best 42 passes for 562 yards.

Before the 2025 season, the Rams signed Atwell to a one-year, $10-million contract. But with Puka Nacua and Davante Adams getting the majority of targets, Atwell caught only six passes for 192 yards, 88 coming on a winning touchdown pass play against the Indianapolis Colts.

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This day in sports history

1886 — Richard Sears beats R. Livingston Beeckman 4-6, 6-1, 6-3, 6-4 to win his sixth straight U.S. national tennis championship.

1888 — Henry Slocum defeats Howard Taylor 6-4, 6-1, 6-0 to win the eighth U.S. men’s national tennis championship. Slocum, last year’s runner-up, is the first men’s champion other than Richard Sears. Sears, the U.S. champion from 1881-1887, retired last year.

1908 — Fred McLeod wins the U.S. Open golf title with a one-stroke victory over Willie Smith in a playoff.

1922 — The oldest American international team golf match, the Walker Cup, is established with the U.S. beating Britain 8-4.

1949 — The U.S. takes the Davis Cup, topping Australia 4-1.

1950 — Althea Gibson becomes the first Black player to compete in the U.S. Open. Gibson wins her first round match, defeating Barbara Knapp of Britain 6-2, 6-2 at Forest Hills in New York.

1977 — The Cosmos beat the Seattle Sounders 2-1 at Portland, Ore., to win their second NASL title. Giorgio Chinaglia’s header in the 77th minute is the winning goal.

1989 — Pete Sampras, 18, wins his first U.S. Open singles match in four sets over Agustin Moreno of Mexico.

1990 — Stefan Edberg becomes the first top-seeded player since John Newcombe in 1971 to lose in the first round of the U.S. Open. Edberg loses to Alexander Volkov of the Soviet Union, 6-3, 7-6, 6-2.

1994 — Tiger Woods, 18, becomes the youngest winner in the history of the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship, capturing the last three holes of his 36-hole title match against Trip Kuehne.

1995 — Monica Seles, plays in her first Grand Slam tournament in more than 2 1-2 years and beats Ruxandra Dragomir 6-3, 6-1 in first round of the U.S. Open.

2004 — The U.S. women’s basketball team goes through the Athens Olympics undefeated to win its fifth Olympic gold medal, beating Australia 74-63 in the final.

2004 — Led by San Antonio Spurs shooting guard Manu Ginóbili, Argentina beats Italy 84-69 for the Olympic basketball gold medal in Athens; star-studded U.S. team takes bronze.

2008 — Top-seeded Ana Ivanovic is ousted from the U.S. Open, beaten by 188th-ranked Julie Coin 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 in the second round. Never before in the Open era that began in 1968 had the No. 1 woman lost this early in the tournament.

2014 — Acknowledging he “didn’t get it right” with a two-game suspension for Ravens running back Ray Rice, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announces tougher penalties for players accused of domestic violence, including six weeks for a first offense and at least a year for a second.

2022 — Tour Championship, Men’s Golf, East Lake GC: Irishman Rory McIlroy wins $18 million with one stroke win over Scottie Scheffler and Im Sung-jae; becomes first 3-time winner of the FedEx Cup.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1918 — Tris Speaker was suspended for the rest of the season because of his assault on umpire Tom Connolly after a dispute at home plate in Philadelphia.

1926 — Emil Levsen of the Cleveland Indians pitched two complete-game victories over the Boston Red Sox, 6-1 and 5-1. He did not strike out a batter in either game. The Indians used the identical lineup in both games.

1951 — The Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Giants 2-0, ending the Giants’ 16-game winning streak. The streak enabled the Giants to cut the Dodgers 13½-game lead to six.

1971 — In the nightcap of a doubleheader, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Rick Wise hit two home runs to help himself to a 7-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants.

1977 — Steve Garvey of the Dodgers hit three doubles and two home runs in five at-bats, leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to an 11-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. One of Garvey’s homers was a grand slam.

1977 — In a 6-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, Nolan Ryan of the Angels struck out 11 batters to pass the 300-strikeout plateau for the fifth time in his career.

1987 — Mike Schmidt passes Ted Williams and Willie McCovey with 522 home runs

1990 — Ryne Sandberg became the first second baseman in history to have consecutive 30-homer seasons, leading the Cubs to a 5-2 victory over the Houston Astros.

1992 — The Milwaukee Brewers set an American League record with 31 hits and 26 singles in a 22-2 rout of the Toronto Blue Jays.

1993 — Pinch-hitter Jeremy Hess’ bases-loaded single with two out in the sixth inning gives Long Beach a 3-2 victory over Panama in the championship game of the Little League World Series.

2003 — Eric Gagne set a major league record with his 44th straight save this season as the Dodgers beat Houston 6-3. Gagne eclipsed Tom Gordon’s 1998 record of 43 in a row to begin a season.

2005 — Michael Memea’s home run in the bottom of the seventh gives West Oahu of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, the Little League World Series title.

2008 — Cristian Guzman of the Nationals became the second player to hit for the cycle since the franchise moved to Washington, driving in three in an 11-2 rout of the Dodgers.

2014 — San Francisco’s Yusmeiro Petit set a major league record when he retired his 46th batter in a row, and the Giants beat Colorado 3-1. Petit got the first eight Colorado hitters, establishing the mark by striking out Charlie Culberson. That broke Mark Buehrle’s record of 45 straight with the Chicago White Sox in 2009. Petit’s streak covered eight games, six of them in relief.

2016 — Ryan Harlost led Endwell, N.Y., to the Little League World Series title, striking out eight and limiting South Korea to five hits in six innings in a 2-1 victory. Endwell gave New York its first championship since 1964.

2021 — Angels pitcher/DH Shohei Otani becomes the first player in team history to reach 20 stolen bases and hit 40 home runs in a season.

2025 — For the third time this season, a player has a four-homer game, with Kyle Schwarber performing the feat and driving in nine runs in a 19-4 Phillies win over Atlanta. Three such games in one season breaks the previous record of two, set in 2002 and tied in 2017. In spite of its frequency this season, the feat has only been performed 21 times in major league history, and the last Phillies player to accomplish it had been Mike Schmidt in 1976.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.