ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Taylor Ward hit a grand slam to help the Angels erase an early 6-0 deficit, and Los Angeles beat the Oakland Athletics 8-6 on Sunday to avoid a four-game sweep.
Ward's fourth-inning slam into the Oakland bullpen in left field off Osvaldo Bido (2-2) was the fourth of his career and the fourth by an Angel this season. His previous grand slam was on May 4, 2022, also against Oakland. He has 16 homers this season.
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Los Angeles Angels second baseman Brandon Drury cools off during the second inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Nolan Schanuel, left, celebrates after hitting a single next to Oakland Athletics first baseman Seth Brown, right, during the first inning of a baseball game, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels relief pitcher Luis Garcia celebrates after the final out of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Oakland Athletics shortstop Max Schuemann throws out Los Angeles Angels' Brandon Drury at first during the sixth inning of a baseball game, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels shortstop Zach Neto, left, and right fielder Jo Adell, right, celebrate after their win in a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Taylor Ward tosses his bat after hitting a single during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Taylor Ward (3) celebrates his grand slam with manager Ron Washington (37) during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Taylor Ward (3) celebrates his grand slam with third base coach Eric Young Sr. during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
“It’s one of the most amazing feelings in baseball, besides maybe hitting a walk-off grand slam,” Ward said.
Brent Rooker hit a bases-clearing double in a six-run third inning for the A's, who had won eight of 10 and had already secured their fourth straight series win.
Luis Garcia, pressed into duty as Los Angeles' closer after Carlos Estevez was traded to Philadelphia a day earlier, retired the side on nine pitches in the ninth for his fourth save.
Roansy Contreras (2-1) pitched 1 1/3 innings of scoreless relief.
Bido walked Zach Neto, Nolan Schanuel and Luis Rengifo before Ward took him deep with two outs, putting the Angels ahead 7-6 and ending his day. Bido allowed seven runs on six hits in 3 2/3 innings.
“We came out and swung the bats well in the third. Got a six-run lead,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “It was a long inning. Our starter sat for a little while. Leadoff hit by Neto and he hits (Jo) Adell. Similar game happened to us up in Oakland where you let them back into that game. Offensively, we couldn’t get anything more going on the rest of the game. We were one strike away. We hung a slider to Ward and it changed the outcome of the game.”
Willie Calhoun had a two-run single that got Los Angeles within 6-3 in the third.
Angels starter Jose Siriano was pulled after allowing four hits and a walk in the third. He was charged with six runs, three earned, in 2 2/3 innings.
A fielding error by Angels second baseman Brandon Drury on a grounder by Miguel Andujar allowed the first Oakland run to score.
“I was attacking the zone and continued attacking the zone,” Soriano said through an interpreter. “We had an error but those, you can’t do anything about it and that’s part of the game. I kept doing my thing.”
UP NEXT
Athletics: LHP JP Sears (7-8, 4.81 ERA) will make his team-high 22nd start on Tuesday against the San Francisco Giants. He’s won three of his last four starts and has a career high in wins.
Angels: RHP Griffin Canning (3-10, 2.91) will start Tuesday against Colorado. Canning is 1-0 with a 2.31 ERA in two career starts against the Rockies.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Los Angeles Angels second baseman Brandon Drury cools off during the second inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Nolan Schanuel, left, celebrates after hitting a single next to Oakland Athletics first baseman Seth Brown, right, during the first inning of a baseball game, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels relief pitcher Luis Garcia celebrates after the final out of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Oakland Athletics shortstop Max Schuemann throws out Los Angeles Angels' Brandon Drury at first during the sixth inning of a baseball game, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels shortstop Zach Neto, left, and right fielder Jo Adell, right, celebrate after their win in a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Taylor Ward tosses his bat after hitting a single during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Taylor Ward (3) celebrates his grand slam with manager Ron Washington (37) during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
Los Angeles Angels' Taylor Ward (3) celebrates his grand slam with third base coach Eric Young Sr. during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Sunday, July 28, 2024, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will begin deploying as many as 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the southern border in the coming days, U.S. officials said Wednesday, putting in motion plans President Donald Trump laid out in executive orders shortly after he took office to crack down on immigration.
Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses was expected to sign the deployment orders on Wednesday, but it wasn't yet clear which troops or units will go, and the total could fluctuate. It remains to be seen if they will end up doing law enforcement, which would put American troops in a dramatically different role for the first time in decades.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement has not yet been made.
The active duty forces would join the roughly 2,500 U.S. National Guard and Reserve forces already there. There are currently no active duty troops working along the border.
The troops are expected to be used to support border patrol agents, with logistics, transportation and construction of barriers. They have done similar duties in the past, when both Trump and former President Joe Biden sent active duty troops to the border.
Troops are prohibited by law from doing law enforcement duties under the Posse Comitatus Act, but that may change. Trump has directed through executive order that the incoming secretary of defense and incoming homeland security chief report back within 90 days if they think an 1807 law called the Insurrection Act should be invoked. That would allow those troops to be used in civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil.
The last time the act was invoked was in 1992 during rioting in Los Angeles in protest of the acquittal of four police officers charged with beating Rodney King.
The widely expected deployment, coming in Trump’s first week in office, was an early step in his long-touted plan to expand the use of the military along the border. In one of his first orders on Monday, Trump directed the defense secretary to come up with a plan to “seal the borders” and repel “unlawful mass migration.”
On Tuesday, just as Trump fired the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Linda Fagan, the service announced it was surging more cutter ships, aircraft and personnel to the “Gulf of America” — a nod to the president’s directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump said during his inaugural address on Monday that “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came.”
Military personnel have been sent to the border almost continuously since the 1990s to help address migration. drug trafficking and transnational crime.
In executive orders signed Monday, Trump suggested the military would help the Department of Homeland Security with “detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services.”
In his first term, Trump ordered active duty troops to the border in response to a caravan of migrants slowly making its way through Mexico toward the United States in 2018. More than 7,000 active duty troops were sent to Texas, Arizona and California, including military police, an assault helicopter battalion, various communications, medical and headquarters units, combat engineers, planners and public affairs units.
At the time, the Pentagon was adamant that active duty troops would not do law enforcement. So they spent much of their time transporting border patrol agents to and along the border, helping them erect additional vehicle barriers and fencing along the border, assisting them with communications and providing some security for border agent camps.
The military also provided border patrol agents with medical care, pre-packaged meals and temporary housing.
It's also not yet clear if the Trump administration will order the military to use bases to house detained migrants.
Bases previously have been used for that purpose, and after the 2021 fall of Kabul to the Taliban, they were used to host thousands of Afghan evacuees. The facilities struggled to support the influx.
In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, to prepare to house as many as 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children, but the additional space ultimately wasn’t needed and Goodfellow was determined not to have the infrastructure necessary to support the surge.
In March 2021, the Biden administration greenlighted using property at Fort Bliss, Texas, for a detention facility to provide beds for up to 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children as border crossings increased from Mexico.
The facility, operated by DHS, was quickly overrun, with far too few case managers for the thousands of children that arrived, exposure to extreme weather and dust and unsanitary conditions, a 2022 inspector general report found.
Construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Members of the Mexican National Guard patrol as construction crews replace sections of one of two border walls separating Mexico from the United States, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Volunteers talk in a tent along a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Dogs are near a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)