Category: Новини

Miguel Cabrera’s pursuit of a rare baseball feat — a 3,000th career hit — remained on hold Thursday, with the New York Yankees taking heat for intentionally walking the Detroit Tigers slugger. 

Cabrera needs one hit to become just the 33rd player in Major League Baseball history to reach the 3,000-hit milestone, and Tigers fans in Detroit were primed to witness the feat on Thursday. 

They reacted with jeers and boos and chants of “Yankees suck!” when Cabrera, with 2,999 career hits, came to the plate in the eighth inning and Yankees manager Aaron Boone gave the signal for him to be intentionally walked. 

Cabrera had already flied out in the first inning and struck out in two more at-bats. 

With two out and runners at second and third base, Boone opted to walk the two-time Most Valuable Player to load the bases and set up a left-hander vs. left-hander matchup between his pitcher Lucas Luetge and Detroit batter Austin Meadows. 

Boone acknowledged that the decision to issue an intentional walk was “a little more gut-wrenching than usual.” 

“The left-on-left, I felt like the matchup — I just liked it a little bit better in that situation and it came down to a baseball call for me there,” Boone said. 

It didn’t pay off, however. Meadows smacked a two-run double that gave the Tigers a 3-0 lead and an eventual 3-0 win. 

Cabrera took it all in stride. 

“It’s baseball,” he told reporters, noting he had missed three chances to reach the 3,000-hit milestone earlier in the game. 

“I know history is very important,” Cabrera said in comments posted on MLB.com. “But we need to win first. It’s not about me. It’s about the team.” 

Cabrera, 39, could become the first Venezuelan MLB player to reach 3,000 hits. 

Dominican Albert Pujols is the only active MLB player who has reached the milestone.
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Onstage, they dance through hoops and perform acrobatics with smiles on their faces. Off it, they hold anguished phone calls with family back in Ukraine.

Dancers Anna and Olga have found a sense of calm performing in a circus near New York, but they are still living the war they fled thousands of miles away.

“I spent a month without a full night’s sleep. We couldn’t go out to buy food — we were stressed and shaken all the time. It was scary,” recalls Anna Starykh, who left Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February.

Now the 21-year-old is performing with the Flip Circus in the New York City suburb of Yonkers, where she can sleep without being woken by explosions.

More than 4,500 miles away from Kyiv, in a parking lot near the banks of the Hudson River, Starykh and her friends prepare to perform with colleagues from across Europe and South America.

The stage has become their sanctuary.

“Work really helps (us) to calm down and stay positive,” she tells AFP.

Their concern for their family members back home is palpable, though.

“I don’t know in which situation they will be next day, next week, next month. I cry about this,” says 22-year-old Olga Rezekina, who also fled Ukraine after the invasion began and whose parents and brother live in Odesa.

Rezekina and Starykh arrived in the United States with 20-year-old Anastasiia Savych, a Flip Circus veteran who had returned to Ukraine with other circus members to renew her visa when Russian tanks crossed the border Feb. 24.

All are graduates of the Bingo Circus Theater, a circus academy in Ukraine. Rezekina and Starykh joined Flip to replace two of Savych’s male colleagues, who were mobilized to fight and stayed in Ukraine.

On the day of the invasion, Savych left Kyiv for Poland on the train.

“I never saw the capital so empty. No cars, no people outside. Everything was closed. It was like in a horror movie,” she tells AFP.

Two other Ukrainian dancers in their troupe fled via Romania and joined up with them in America on March 10.

‘Leave problems backstage’

They are among more than 5 million people who have left Ukraine since the invasion, according to United Nations estimates.

“When I just arrived here, I felt guilty,” says Savych, whose mother convinced her that she would not be able help the family by staying in Ukraine.

Now she waits to hear that the war is over and that “we won,” Savych says.

“I’m 20 years old and want stay young and not speak about the war,” she tells AFP.

The three friends all have similar but different dreams for the future.

“Live and be safe,” says Starykh, when asked hers. “Traveling around the world,” says Rezekina, while Savych hopes to live permanently in the U.S.

Alexa Vazquez, who helps run Flip — the circus was founded by her family in Mexico more than 50 years ago — says it was difficult getting the women out of Ukraine with airports closed.

“To have these girls here with right now safe means a world to us, especially to me, because they are friends, they are family. We can support them in any way possible,” she tells AFP.

The Ukrainians appear several times in the show, in which animals do not perform.

“People come and they want to look at a good show. You can leave your problems backstage,” concludes Rezekina. 
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Cristiano Ronaldo took to social media on Monday to say one of his newborn twins has died. 

“It is with our deepest sadness we have to announce that our baby boy has passed away,” the Manchester United striker wrote in a post also signed by his partner, Georgina Rodriguez. 

“It is the greatest pain that any parents can feel.” 

 

Ronaldo announced last year that the couple was expecting twins. 

“Only the birth of our baby girl gives us the strength to live this moment with some hope and happiness,” he wrote on the social-media post. 

“We are all devastated at this loss,” the post added, “and we kindly ask for privacy at this very difficult time. Our baby boy, you are our angel. We will always love you.” 

The family had four children before the twins. 

 
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