Boston outfielder Mookie Betts said he won’t accompany the World Series champion Red Sox when they visit the White House on May 9, according to the Boston Globe.
Betts, who was in New York on Saturday night to accept the American League MVP award at an annual dinner hosted by the Baseball Writers Association of America, told the Globe: “I won’t be going (to the White House). I decided not to.”
The Red Sox were scheduled to visit the White House on Feb. 15 but decided last week to postpone the trip because of the partial government shutdown. The Red Sox are now planning to visit a day after a scheduled three-game series at Baltimore on May 6-8.
• Peter Magowan, the lifelong Giants fan who formed the ownership group that kept the team in San Francisco with a sparkling waterfront ballpark, died after a battle with cancer. He was 76.
BIATHLON
WORLD CUP: Clare Egan of Cape Elizabeth earned her fifth top-15 finish of the season, regrouping from a shaky start to wind up 15th in a 12.5-kilometer mass start race in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy.
Egan missed two targets in the first prone shooting stage and dropped to 29th in the 30-woman field, but was perfect in the next three shooting stages to go 18 of 20 overall. She finished 1 minute, 5.8 seconds behind Germany’s Laura Dahlmeier, a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
FIGURE SKATING
U.S. CHAMPIONSHIPS: Nathan Chen lived up to his own impressive standard, wrapping up his third consecutive national title with a sensational free skate at Detroit.
Chen, the world champion, finished with a score of 342.22, defeating the runner-up, Vincent Zhou, by more than 58 points. Jason Brown was third.
SOCCER
U.S. MEN: Gregg Berhalter became only the third U.S. coach in the modern era to start with a win, Djordje Mihailovic and Christian Ramirez scored in their national team debuts and the Americans beat Panama 3-0 at Glendale, Arizona, in an exhibition between two teams that started inexperienced lineups.
Walker Zimmerman also scored for the U.S., which used a roster of players all from Major League Soccer and drew a crowd of just 9,040, its smallest for a home game since October 2016.
SKIING
WORLD CUP: Stephanie Venier of Austria edged the 2018 Olympic champion, Sofia Goggia, to win a crash-interrupted women’s downhill race at Garmisch-Partenkitchen, Germany.
The race was called off with 10 skiers still waiting to compete after Federica Sosio of Italy became the 16th to crash.
• Josef Ferstl became the first German winner of the super-G at the classic Hahnenkamm event at Kitzbuehel, Austria.
• Aksel Lund Svindal, the Olympic men’s downhill champion from Norway, announced his retirement from racing, saying he plans to compete in the super-G on Feb. 6 and the downhill three days later at the championships in Are, Sweden, before calling it a career.
BOBSLEDDING
WORLD CUP: Francesco Friedrich of Germany won his 10th race in 12 tries this season, driving to victory in a four-man event at St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Friedrich has six wins in six two-man races this season, and four wins, a second-place finish and a third-place finish in his six four-man events.
LUGE
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: Felix Loch of Germany won for a record-tying sixth time, edging Reinhard Egger of Austria by one-tenth of a second at Winterberg, Germany.
Loch tied the record held by Armin Zoeggeler of Italy, who won world championships in 1995, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2011. Loch’s previous world titles came in 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013 and 2016.
[“source=pressherald”]
