NEW YORK -- It certainly appears that trip to Las Vegas turned Travis dArnaud into a much more confident hitter.
Authentic Taj Gibson Bulls Jersey . The rookie catcher snapped an eighth-inning tie with a two-run double, and the New York Mets overcame an early injury to starter Jonathon Niese, beating the skidding Texas Rangers 6-5 Friday night to stop a four-game slide. "Felt really good," dArnaud said. "Its a big win for us to start the homestand." Lucas Duda hit a two-run homer off Yu Darvish, and the Mets opened a 10-game homestand with their second victory in nine games. An angry Niese left in the first with a bruised lower back after he was hit by Alex Rios line drive. X-rays were negative, the team said. Star third baseman David Wright missed his seventh straight game with a sore left shoulder, but fill-in Eric Campbell had three hits and an RBI for New York. Carlos Torres, pressed into long relief when Niese was injured, gave up two runs in 4 2-3 valuable innings. "Nobody expects stuff like that to happen. It does. This is baseball," Torres said. "Whoever they call down for, they step up and go out there and go do their job." Shin-Soo Choo hit a leadoff homer, and Adrian Beltre also went deep for the Rangers, who have dropped six in a row and 14 of 16. Their 10-game losing streak on the road is the clubs longest since a 12-game skid in 2003. "One day the pitching is really good, and one day the offence isnt helping," Choo said. "Right now, everything bad is coming together at the same time." Bobby Abreu drew a leadoff walk from Aaron Poreda (2-1) in the eighth and Campbell singled off Jason Frasor with one out before dArnaud sent a drive up the alley in right-centre. Batting .180 when he was sent to Triple-A Las Vegas in early June, dArnaud quickly went on a power-hitting tear in the Pacific Coast League. Brought back to the big leagues, he is hitting .303 with six RBIs in nine games since he was recalled. "I just try to keep my mind at ease and keep everything simple and not overstress myself, and thats been paying off," dArnaud said. Jenrry Mejia (5-3) retired Rios with two runners in scoring position to end the eighth. Mejia allowed an RBI single by Adam Rosales in the ninth before retiring pinch-hitter Robinson Chirinos on a tricky popup to finish a plodding game on Fireworks Night that took 4 hours, 8 minutes. Darvish, pushed back a day because of rain Thursday in Baltimore, entered with dominant stats against NL teams. But he was off in this one, allowing four runs and five hits in five innings. "He was a little erratic with his command, but I thought he did a good job of righting the ship there in the last three innings," Rangers manager Ron Washington said. Choo hit his 13th career leadoff homer, second this season, on Nieses third pitch. Moments later, Rios drive nailed Niese on the left side of his lower back. He recovered in time to get Rios at first base -- the only out he got -- before manager Terry Collins, pitching coach Dan Warthen and trainer Ray Ramirez came out to check on the left-hander. Niese repeatedly told Collins he was fine, but was removed without trying a warmup pitch. Torres was given all the time he needed to get loose. "It was precaution more than anything," Collins said. Niese fired his glove against the dugout wall and knocked over a bucket of bubble gum before disappearing down the tunnel. The teams most reliable starter this season, Niese was done after 12 pitches. He has gone 21 straight starts without allowing more than three earned runs -- the longest active streak in the majors. "Theres not much to say other than Im fine. I didnt want to be taken out. I just felt like I was cheated there a little bit," Niese said. Elvis Andrus had his second consecutive three-hit game for the Rangers. Darvish doubled to the left-centre fence for his second hit in 11 major league at-bats -- the first for extra bases. NOTES: Rather than risk a weather-related flight delay, the Rangers bused from Baltimore to New York after Thursday nights loss. Washington said it took about 3 hours, 15 minutes, and the team arrived around 3:30 a.m. ... Mets RHP Dillon Gee (strained right lat) went six innings in a rehab start for Class-A Brooklyn, striking out 10. He threw 75 pitches and gave up one run and three hits. ... Before the game, there was a video tribute and a moment of silence for former Mets GM Frank Cashen, the architect of their 1986 championship team. Cashen died Monday, and the Mets are honouring him by wearing a memorial patch with his initials on their sleeves. ... Wright hopes to play Saturday.
Authentic Isaiah Thomas Celtics Jersey . Or at least on everyone elses expectations. Costa Rica followed up its surprise win over Uruguay with another World Cup stunner on Friday, beating four-time champion Italy 1-0 to secure a spot in the next round and eliminate England in the process.
Kobe Bryant USA Jersey. -- Conner Bleackley got it done in regulation time and in the shootout.The challenges of playing hockey in a Canadian market are well documented: higher taxes, over abundant media coverage, lack of anonymity, an unrelenting and vicious winter, way too much Rush in rotation on FM radio. What makes Canada such a great place to be a hockey fan makes it a difficult environment to play in. Canada is indisputably the centre of the hockey universe, and at that universes core is Toronto. The Greater Toronto Hockey League is over a hundred years old and the largest minor hockey league in the world. Despite their futility, the Leafs could sell out Rogers Centre for home games charging $1000 and first-born children for upper deck seats. The Marlies are flourishing in the AHL. Next years World Junior Hockey Championships (co-hosted with Montreal) are sure to be the most successfully attended and celebrated ever. And yet, as a player, what would entice you to ply your trade in the Big Smoke?The crowds at the ACC for Leafs game are an embarrassment to hockeys most important market. The stories of the suits in the expensive seats, absent for starts of periods and reticent to loosen their ties even as Brian Burke undid his, are well known. The arena is eerily quiet compared to its contemporaries, a conservative and reserved audience in a sport and city renowned for its maniacal fandom. And this is not indicative of Toronto crowds, as we witnessed during the Raptors playoff appearance this year, rowdy afternoons at Jays games at Rogers Centre, and the masses that turned out this year and last in Maple Leaf/Raptors Square. But those involved fans (who make up the vast majority of Leafs Nation) enthusiasms are negatively tempered by the lower bowls reservations, reservations bred by alternately flawed and complacent approaches to building a competitive team and the absence of a winning presence. As a player who is passionate about his vocation, why would you want to commit to an environment that doesnt match that passion, especially when the home ice advantage can be such an important component of the game?Often in pieces that claim players like Thornton are interested in playing for the Leafs, the prospect of coming "home" is cited as a key factor. The very notion of "home" is a flawed premise in this lazy argument. Even if you call "home" somewhere in Southern Ontario, as a hockey player you probably havent lived there since you were 16. Thornton has lived in San Jose for nearly a decade, is a naturalized US citizen, has a wife, a mortgage, perhaps a few pets, maybe a café he really likes to go to, a favourite pizza place, a butcher who cuts his ribeyes to just the perfect thickness. But the Toronto Sun is going to tell him where his home is.For many players, one might suspect that playing at home in front of an overbearing hockey dad, mum and her new husband, and sycophantic high school acquaintances just a few blocks from where that girl broke your heart is the very definition of hell. And is working in your hometown really all that enticing? How many of you work in your hometowns? Hardly any. Youve all moved to Toronnto.
Authentic Enes Kanter Thunder Jersey. Thornton is from St. Thomas, Ontario, which would place his NHL "hometown" in Detroit or Buffalo as much as in Toronto, and yet those markets media dont seem to be making the "coming home" argument. Torontos hockey media is the most intense in all of professional sports. Maybe Montreals is equal, but half of the vitriol and conjecture there is in French, and only a fraction of NHLers understand it. (Reasonably, even those of us who are bilingual dont really understand it.) In Toronto, there is endless speculation, much of it even based in fact. Each flaw, each mistake (on and off the ice) is dissected and disseminated ad nauseum. Trade rumours are fabricated on a daily basis, the ubiquitous "NHL executive" noted as an unimpeachable source. The discussion of hockey in Toronto has become an insufferable wall of noise for an uninvested observer, so imagine if the discourse directly affected your family, your income, and your life.It seems a lot to ask of a player to endure such amplified attention, especially given the fact the Leafs have not been a competitive team since 2004. And that is final circle of the NHLs Hell: irrelevance. Toronto is still recovering from the John Ferguson Jr. era. They have some formidable pieces in Kessel, Morgan Reilly, and Jonathan Bernier; a young skilled forward, puck moving defenseman, and promising goaltender around which to build. They have a top-ten pick in the coming draft, some interesting if not spectacular prospects (Stuart Percy, Matt Finn), and some movable pieces (Nazem Kadri, Jake Gardiner). Brendan Shanahan emanates stability and hubris. But theyre still saddled with bad contracts (Dion Phaneuf, David Clarkson), a suspect coaching philosophy, and a lack of depth. And to watch the Kings, Blackhawks, and Rangers this spring is to know the Leafs are far removed from that level of hockey.So if you were an unrestricted free agent, or a player on the trading block with some say in his future, why would you come to Toronto? Consider Thornton: Youre in your mid-30s, never won a Cup, live in the perfection of Northern California, in a market that sustains you but doesnt invade you, and youd chose to move to Toronto, with its high taxes, magnified attention, and with as much of a chance of winning a Cup in the next five years as Quebec City? Toronto is a world-class city, cultured and cosmopolitan, a great place to live and make a life. The Joe Thorntons of the world should want to play home games at the ACC. The challenges of the market need to be offset by a tradition of winning and the only way for Toronto to do that is to build a stable and competitive franchise through hoarding draft picks and young controllable players, and eschewing the temptation of quick expensive fixes like Clarkson, or Thornton. The best thing for a successful NHL would be a dominant Toronto Maple Leafs team. Given the teams last decade, however, it seems like that wont happen until Hell freezes over. Fortunately for Toronto, most of it freezes over every January, so the wait may not be that long.
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