BASEBALL
David Hamilton and Christian Koss both had two RBI and Brayan Bello struck out 10 as the Portland Sea Dogs beat the Harrisburg Senators 7-1 in an Eastern League game Tuesday night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Bello pitched five shutout innings, allowing four hits and walking one in his season debut.
Tyreque Reed hit an RBI double in the first inning for Portland. Nick Sogard tallied two hits and scored twice.
Jake Alu singled to drive in a runner in the eighth for Harrisburg. Steven Fuentes picked up the loss on the mound.
SOCCER
U.S. WOMEN’S NATIONAL TEAM: Rose Lavelle and Catarina Macario each scored a pair of first-half goals, and the U.S. women’s national team beat Uzbekistan 9-0 in Chester, Pennsylvania to extend the team’s unbeaten streak to 67 games on American soil.
Trinity Rodman, who came in as a second-half substitute, scored her first international goal for the United States. The 2021 U.S. Soccer Young Player of the Year is the daughter of former NBA player Dennis Rodman.
Mallory Pugh, Midge Purce and Ashley Sanchez also scored for the United States, which opened the game with its youngest starting lineup – averaging 24.98 years – since 2007.
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Villarreal stunned six-time European champion Bayern Munich to reach the Champions League semifinals for the first time in 16 years thanks to Samuel Chukwueze’s 88th-minute goal that salvaged a 1-1 draw and a 2-1 aggregate victory.
Villarreal’s 1-0 lead from the first leg was wiped out by Robert Lewandowski seven minutes into the second half, but Chukwueze completed a counterattack within four minutes of coming off the bench to extend the Spanish team’s surprising run in the competition.
• Chelsea’s title defense in the Champions League ended despite a 3-2 win against Real Madrid , with Karim Benzema spoiling the English team’s comeback by scoring in extra time to put the Spanish powerhouse back into the semifinals.
Benzema had scored a hat trick in the first leg to give Madrid a 3-1 lead, then got the decisive goal at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium with a header off a cross by Vinícius Júnior six minutes into extra time.
FIFA: Former FIFA officials Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini will go on trial for fraud and other offenses in June, Switzerland’s federal criminal court said.
The trial will be before a panel of three judges on 11 days from June 8-22. The trial will begin more than 6 1/2 years after criminal proceedings were opened, first against Blatter for a 2011 payment of 2 million Swiss francs (then $2 million) he authorized FIFA to make to Platini.
Platini made a written request to FIFA in January 2011 to be paid backdated additional salary for working as a presidential adviser in Blatter’s first term, from 1998-2002. The allegations revealed by Swiss federal prosecutors in September 2015 removed Blatter early from the FIFA presidency and ultimately ended Platini’s campaign to succeed him. Platini was also ousted as UEFA president after he was banned from soccer because of the payment.
Blatter has been charged with fraud, mismanagement, misappropriation of FIFA funds and forgery of a document. Platini has been charged with fraud, misappropriation, forgery and as an accomplice to Blatter’s alleged mismanagement.
TENNIS
MONTE CARLO MASTERS: Novak Djokovic opened his clay-court season with a surprising loss to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina at the Monte Carlo Masters on Tuesday in Monaco.
Davidovich Fokina stunned the top-ranked Serb 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-1 in the second round to hand Djokovic another setback as he tries to move on from the controversy surrounding his refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19. It makes for rare back-to-back losses for Djokovic, who had not played since being eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Dubai Tennis Championships in Febrary – his only previous tournament this year after he was barred from playing at the Australian Open.
Djokovic had beaten Davidovich Fokina in straight sets twice last year, in Rome and at the Tokyo Olympics.
Djokovic could not defend his Australian Open title in January after he was deported from the country for not being vaccinated. He had to skip tournaments in Indian Wells, California, and Miami because he couldn’t travel to the United States for the same reason.
USTA: Lew Sherr has been selected as the chief executive officer and executive director of the USTA.
The national governing body for tennis in the United States announced the hiring Tuesday, saying Sherr will start his new role on May 2. He has been with the association for 13 years, the past decade as its chief revenue officer. Sherr will work with the USTA board to set the strategy for tennis’ growth in the U.S., and to make sure the sport continues its trend toward an increasingly diverse player and fan base.
Sherr has helped drive all revenue streams for the USTA to record levels, including overall sponsorship, broadcast revenue, and attendance and ticketing revenue.
RETIREMENT: Four-time Grand Slam singles champion Kim Clijsters has retired from professional tennis again. The 38-year-old Clijsters, who ended her second retirement in 2019 after a seven-year hiatus, announced that she will “no longer play official tournaments.”
The former No. 1 Clijsters, who already is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, won the U.S. Open for the first time in 2005 and walked away from tennis two years later at age 23 shortly before getting married. The Belgian player then took about two years off while having a daughter but returned and won the 2009 U.S. Open. She won another championship at Flushing Meadows in 2010, then added an Australian Open title the following season and moved back atop the rankings.
Clijsters, who has three children with her husband, Brian Lynch, left the tour again in 2012. They live in suburban New Jersey.
AUTO RACING
INDYCAR: Jimmie Johnson doesn’t intend to let a fractured right hand keep him off the track.
On Tuesday, the seven-time NASCAR champion who has become an IndyCar Series regular announced on Twitter he had surgery Monday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, to repair the injury he suffered in a practice crash last weekend.
“From Long Beach to the operating room,” Johnson wrote before citing his plan to test next week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Good news is I plan to be ready for the @IMS test in 9 days and Barber on May 1st. Thank you to all the medical staff involved.”
Testing is to be held on the Brickyard’s historic 2.5-mile oval next Wednesday and Thursday. The series won’t race again until stopping at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama.
GOLF
LPGA: Shirley Spork, one of the 13 founders of the LPGA Tour who learned two weeks ago she would be inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame, died, the LPGA said. She was 94.
The LPGA said she died in Palm Springs, California, where she had been living and taught into her 90s.
While she never won on the LPGA Tour – her best finish was runner-up in the 1962 LPGA Championship at Stardust Country Club in Las Vegas – Spork’s impact stretched across seven decades of starting the tour and teaching the game.
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