team employee

HOUSTON — José Soriano and two relievers combined for a two-hitter and Oswald Peraza hit his first home run since a trade from the Yankees to lead the Angels to a 3-0 win over the Houston Astros on Sunday.

Angels outfielder Taylor Ward was injured trying to make a catch on that hit when he crashed face-first into the metal scoreboard in left field.

He was bleeding and appeared to have a cut above his right eye. He held a smaller cloth to his head as he was slowly carted off the field while resting his head on the shoulder of a team employee who rode the cart with him. There was no immediate update on his injury.

Soriano (10-9) allowed one hit and struck out eight in seven innings. Luis García allowed one hit in a scoreless eighth and Kenley Jansen threw a perfect ninth for his 25th save.

There were two outs in the fifth when Peraza connected off Hunter Brown (10-7) into the bullpen in right-center field to put the Angels up 1-0. His homer comes after his two-run single in the ninth inning Saturday helped Los Angeles to a 4-1 victory that snapped a three-game skid.

Yoán Moncada walked to start the eighth and scored on Mike Trout’s double that bounced off the wall in center field to make it 2-0. Ward walked before Luis Rengifo reached and Trout scored on an error by Lance McCullers Jr. when the pitcher overthrew first base.

Yordan Alvarez singled with no outs in the first and Soriano walked a batter in the second and sixth innings. The Astros didn’t get another hit until Ramón Urías doubled with one out in the eighth inning.

Brown allowed three hits and a run with five strikeouts in six innings. McCullers Jr. allowed three hits and two runs in his first relief appearance since 2018.

Up next: LHP Yusei Kikuchi (6-9, 3.68 ERA) will start for the Angels in the series finale Monday. Houston hasn’t announced its starter.

What started as a subtle act of protest has become national news.

Three days after singer and social media personality Nezza performed a Spanish version of the national anthem at Dodger Stadium — despite being asked by a team employee to sing it in English — the performer further addressed the situation Tuesday in an interview with CNN.

“With everything that’s been happening, I just felt like I needed to stand with my people and show them that I’m with them,” Nezza (whose full name is Vanessa Hernández) said on CNN’s “The Lead.” “I wanted to represent them that day.”

Nezza’s performance of the Spanish anthem — a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” commissioned by the U.S. State Department in 1945 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt — became a viral story after she posted a video on TikTok of an unidentified Dodgers employee telling her beforehand that “we are going to do the song in English today, so I’m not sure if that wasn’t relayed.”

Nezza proceeded to sing the Spanish version anyway; doing so on the same day thousands gathered downtown to protest President Trump and recent ICE raids around Los Angeles in the last two weeks.

In email communications with the team leading up to her performance, Nezza said she asked if she could sing the anthem in both English and Spanish, but was told no because she would have only a 90-second window for her performance.

Still, she said she arrived at the stadium “fully thinking that I was welcome [to sing in Spanish], because nobody told me in that email thread, ‘No, you can’t.’”

“Had they told me you can’t have any Spanish in there,” she added, “I would have respectfully declined and not shown up on Saturday.”

Instead, Nezza performed the anthem in Spanish prior to the Dodgers-Giants game, before posting two videos on TikTok explaining the situation that quickly went viral.

On Sunday, a Dodgers official told The Times in a statement that she would be welcome back at the stadium.

In Tuesday’s CNN interview, Nezza said she was “very shocked” to learn she was welcome back at the ballpark, noting that “30 seconds after my performance, we actually received a call that said, ‘Don’t ever call us again. Don’t ever email us again. The rest of your clients are never welcome here again.’ So for me, that kind of feels like a ban.”

The Dodgers, however, reaffirmed to CNN that there were “no hard feelings” resulting from the situation. And a team spokesperson confirmed to The Times this week that, “She is certainly welcome back at the stadium. She is not banned from the stadium.”