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Sports briefs

6 min read

In the NHL

Nino Niederreiter scored his debut goal for the Nashville Predators, who beat the San Jose Sharks 4-1 in the Czech capital on Friday night in the NHL regular-season opener.

The teams will play again on Saturday at Prague’s O2 Arena as part of the league’s return to Europe for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kiefer Sherwood became the first player to score this season, putting Nashville on top 1:01 into the game. Eeli Tolvanen also scored and Matt Duchene finished it off with an empty-netter.

Tomas Hertl scored for San Jose in the first period, delighting the roaring crowd of 16,648 in his hometown.

In golf

Mito Pereira of Chile led a parade of players from the International team at the Presidents Cup in the Shriners Children’s Open on Friday, making birdie on half of his holes for an 8-under 63 that gave him a one-shot lead.

Pereira took care of the par 5s at the TPC Summerlin and putted for birdie on every hole except the par-4 12th, where he had to save par from a bunker left of the green.

His one lapse was on the seventh hole toward the end of his round when he ran a 20-foot birdie putt some 6 feet by the cup and three-putted for bogey.

Pereira was at 12-under 130, one shot ahead of Robby Shelton, who birdied the par-5 ninth on his final hole for a 63.

Right behind were 20-year-old Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim, top performers for the International team in their own right two weeks ago at Quail Hollow. Another shot back was Cam Davis of Australia, who also had a solid debut in the Presidents Cup.

  • Jodi Ewart Shadoff started out Friday as hot as she finished the day before at the LPGA Mediheal Championship. She finally hit a few bumps, but not before expanding her lead with a 3-under 69.

Ewart Shadoff opened with a 64 at The Saticoy Club by making four straight birdies over her last five holes. The 34-year-old from England added three birdies in her opening four holes and looked to be on her way.

She sprinkled in enough bogeys to slow her progress and still wound up with a four-shot lead over Paula Reto going into the weekend.

In soccer

Ten weeks after conquering Europe, England women proclaimed themselves ready for even more after beating the world champion United States 2-1 in a friendly at Wembley Stadium on Friday.

Lauren Hemp and Georgia Stanway scored to help England beat the U.S. for the first time since 2017 and less than 10 months before the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

Stanway’s penalty in the 33rd minute put the hosts in front for good before 76,893 fans. Victory extended England’s unbeaten run to 23 games under coach Sarina Wiegman.

In college football

Charlie Dean threw a pair of second-half touchdown passes, Borguet ran for more that 100 yards and Harvard beat Cornell 35-28 on Friday night.

Dean was 15-of-29 passing for 208 yards with a TD pass each to Tyler Neville and Scott Woods II in the third and fourth quarters. Aidan Borguet finished with a season-high 165 yards, and his 2-yard touchdown run capped an 11-play, 71-yard drive that lasted six minutes and stretched Harvard’s lead to 35-21 with 2:50 to play.

Kym Wimberly had five catches for 82 yards for Harvard (3-1, 2-0 Ivy League).

In baseball

Even with the homer heroics of sluggers like Aaron Judge and Albert Pujols, Major League Baseball wasn’t able to coax fans to ballparks at pre-pandemic levels this season, though attendance did jump substantially from the COVID-19 affected campaign in 2021.

The 30 MLB teams drew nearly 64.6 million fans for the regular season that ended Wednesday, which is up from the 45.3 million who attended games in 2021, according to baseball-reference.com. This year’s numbers are still down from the 68.5 million who attended games in 2019, which was the last season that wasn’t affected by the pandemic.

The 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers led baseball with 3.86 million fans flocking to Dodger Stadium for an average of 47,672 per contest. The Oakland Athletics – who lost 102 games, play in an aging stadium and are the constant subject of relocation rumors – finished last, drawing just 787,902 fans for an average of less than 10,000 per game.

The St. Louis Cardinals finished second, drawing 3.32 million fans. They were followed by the Yankees (3.14 million), defending World Series champion Braves (3.13 million) and Padres (2.99 million).

The Toronto Blue Jays saw the biggest jump in attendance, rising from 805,901 fans to about 2.65 million. They were followed by the Cardinals, Yankees, Mariners, Dodgers, and Mets, which all drew more than a million fans more than in 2021.

  • Higher velocity and increased shifts led to the major league batting average dropping to .243, its lowest since 1968.

Defensive shifts and 100 mph pitches set records this season, contributing to the worrisome offensive decline Major League Baseball is trying to address.

When the average dropped this low more than a half-century ago, MLB lowered the pitcher’s mound. Next year’s rules changes announced last month include the first restriction on shifts, a decision made over the objection of the players’ association.

“We’ve engaged in a process to develop rules that will bring back the best form of baseball,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said at the time.

The major league average was .269 in 2006 but fell to .254 in 2016 and .245 during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, then dropped by one point in each of the following years. The only seasons with lower averages than this year were the record low of .237 in 1968 along with 1967 and the deal-ball era seasons of 1884, 1888 and 1908.

Defensive shifts on balls in play totaled 66,961 this season, Sports Info Solutions said Monday, up from 59,063 last year and 2,349 in 2011. The major league-best Dodgers led this year with 2,912 shifts and NL Central champion Cleveland had the fewest at 1,600.

Batting average for left-handed hitters was .236 this year, down from .254 in 2016, when lefties were one point below the big league average.

Luis Arraez’s .316 average for Minnesota was the lowest by an American League batting champion since Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski hit .301 in 1968.

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