LeMahieu's single in the 10th inning gives the Yankees 4-3 win over the Blue Jays

NEW YORK (AP) — DJ LeMahieu hit a game-winning single through a five-man infield in the 10th inning to give the New York Yankees a rain-delayed 4-3 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday.

Juan Soto launched a tiebreaking homer in the seventh and Gleyber Torres had two hits for the Yankees, who won for the seventh time in eight games. New York remained tied atop the AL East with Baltimore, which won 9-5 at Cleveland.

“That was a really good win,” manager Aaron Boone said.

Aaron Judge was intentionally walked three times by the last-place Blue Jays, who purposely gave him a free pass with the bases empty in the second inning Saturday.

“It’s nothing against my pitchers, our pitchers — or nothing against anyone else in their lineup,” Toronto manager John Schneider said. “It’s singularly focused around how talented Aaron is and the numbers that he’s put up basically at an historic pace. So, the less times he can swing, the better.”

The previous Yankees batter to receive three intentional walks in a game was Bernie Williams against Tampa Bay in September 1999.

“It sucks. You want him at the plate," Soto said. "To see them pass him over, it makes me mad. I don’t like that. I want them to challenge him and see what he can really do. But it is what it is. It’s part of the game and they are trying to win, too. You respect that.”

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole returned to the mound after missing his scheduled start in Philadelphia last Tuesday due to general body fatigue. The right-hander struggled during a lengthy second inning but rebounded to pitch into the sixth, retiring 10 of his last 11 batters.

"I thought he got really settled in as he went,” Boone said.

Cole allowed two runs and six hits in 5 2/3 innings, striking out four without a walk. The reigning AL Cy Young Award winner missed the first 75 games of the season with nerve inflammation and edema in his right elbow that had sidelined him since spring training.

“Certainly I’m in a better spot physically than I was the other day,” Cole said. “It was definitely beneficial to have a few extra days.”

Boone and Yankees hitting coach James Rowson were ejected by plate umpire Tripp Gibson in the seventh for arguing balls and strikes. It was the sixth ejection this season for Boone, most in the majors, and the 39th of his managing career. He has led the big leagues in that category each of the last four seasons.

“I was going a little bit early at Tripp,” Boone said. “Really didn’t say much other than, `That’s down.' But he told me four innings ago, ‘That’s enough.’”

Rain halted play in the eighth for 1 hour, 49 minutes.

Trent Grisham sacrificed automatic runner Anthony Volpe to third base in the bottom of the 10th. Toronto moved an outfielder into the infield to try to keep the Yankees from scoring, but LeMahieu sent a sharp grounder up the middle against Bowden Francis (4-3) to spark a celebration.

“DJ hits a lot of groundballs. Just kind of taking your chances really and trying not to get to Soto or Judge again,” Schneider said. “He hit it on the ground, just found a hole.”

LeMahieu also had a tying sacrifice fly in a two-run sixth as New York erased a 2-0 deficit. He's finally started to deliver some big swings lately after slumping at the plate this season following his return from a foot injury.

“I feel like I’m taking some pretty good swings and feeling much better at the plate,” LeMahieu said.

Mark Leiter Jr. (3-4) threw 1 1/3 scoreless innings for the win.

Soto's solo homer off the top of the left-center fence gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the seventh. Alejandro Kirk tied it with a sacrifice fly in the eighth.

Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doubled to extend his hitting streak to 17 games but was thrown out attempting to steal one batter later. Guerrero is batting .508 (32 for 63) during the streak with 19 extra-base hits.

Toronto rookie Yariel Rodríguez allowed four hits over 4 2/3 shutout innings in his 11th major league start.

Kirk and rookie Addison Barger hit consecutive doubles as Toronto sent seven batters to the plate against Cole in the second. Barger scored on a two-out single by Ernie Clement, who finished with three hits.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Blue Jays: OF George Springer was rested. He struck out as a pinch hitter in the 10th and stayed in the game.

Yankees: Soto came up favoring his right hand after sliding headfirst into second base on an eighth-inning double. Athletic trainers came out to check on Soto, but he remained in the game. The slugger has been nursing a bruised hand since late June. “Just go out there and swing the bat. Worry about the pain after,” Soto said.

UP NEXT

Blue Jays: Return home to begin a three-game series against Baltimore on Tuesday night, when RHP Chris Bassitt (8-10, 4.02 ERA) faces the Orioles for the second consecutive start. RHP Grayson Rodriguez (13-4, 3.86) pitches for Baltimore.

Yankees: Rookie RHP Luis Gil (11-5, 3.20 ERA) faces Angles RHP Davis Daniel (1-2, 4.91) on Tuesday night in the Bronx.

A previous version of this story was corrected to indicate that Soto’s homer gave the Yankees the lead.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

New York Yankees' DJ LeMahieu hits a sacrifice fly during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Yankees' Anthony Volpe, left, scores past Toronto Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk, right, on a sacrifice fly hit by DJ LeMahieu during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Members of the ground crew cover the field during a rain delay in the eighth inning of a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Members of the ground crew cover the field during a rain delay in the eighth inning of a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Toronto Blue Jays' Alejandro Kirk hits a sacrifice fly during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Yankees' Juan Soto, right, celebrates after his solo home run with Aaron Judge, left, during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Toronto Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr. reacts as he flies out during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Yankees' Juan Soto reacts after hitting a solo home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Yankees' Juan Soto, right, hits a solo home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Yankees' DJ LeMahieu, center, celebrates with teammates after hitting a walkoff RBI single during the 10th inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Yankees' DJ LeMahieu reacts after hitting a walk-off RBI single during the tenth inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Teammates dump water on New York Yankees' DJ LeMahieu after he hit a walk-off RBI single during the tenth inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Teammates celebrate with New York Yankees' DJ LeMahieu, center, after he hit a walkoff RBI single during the 10th inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Yankees' Anthony Volpe reacts as he scores on a single hit by DJ LeMahieu during the 10th inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Teammates celebrate with New York Yankees' DJ LeMahieu, center, after he hit a walkoff RBI single during the 10th inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Arms raised high. Banners denouncing the war in Gaza. Crowds united in song and wrapped in keffiyehs, the black-and-white checkered scarves that have become a badge of Palestinian identity.

It could have been any other pro-Palestinian rally erupting over the Israel-Hamas war if it weren’t for the fact that these thousands of protesters were actually soccer fans at a league match in Santiago, the capital of Chile.

Although the players darting across the field had names like José and Antonio and grew up in a Spanish-speaking South American nation, their fervor for the Palestinian cause and red, white, black and green-colored jerseys underscored how Chile's storied soccer club serves as an entry point for the world’s largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East to connect with an ancestral home thousands of miles away.

“It’s more than just a club, it takes you into the history of the Palestinians,” said Bryan Carrasco, captain of Chile's legendary Club Deportivo Palestino.

As the bloodiest war in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages in the Gaza Strip, the club's electric game atmosphere, viewing parties and pre-match political stunts have increasingly tapped into a sense of collective Palestinian grief in this new era of war and displacement.

“We're united in the face of the war,” said Diego Khamis, director of the country's Palestinian community. “It's daily suffering.”

In a sport where authorities penalize athletes for flaunting political positions, particularly on such explosive issues as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Club Palestino is an unabashed exception that wears its pro-Palestinian politics on its sleeve — and on its torso, stadium seats and anywhere else it can find.

The club's brazen gestures have caused offense before. Chile's Football Federation fined the club in 2014 after the number “1” on the back of their shirts was shaped as a map of Palestine before Israel's creation in 1948.

But players' fierce pride in their Palestinian identity has otherwise caused little controversy in this country of 19 million, home to 500,000 ethnic Palestinians.

“It’s our roots and it feels like home,” said Jaime Barakat, a Palestino fan and shawarma vendor.

Leftist President Gabriel Boric, who called Israel a “genocidal, murderous state” on the campaign trail in 2021, has harshly criticized Israel’s campaign in Gaza. His government recalled the Israeli ambassador and joined South Africa's case accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice — allegations that Israel denies.

Israel has pushed back, castigating Chile for what it sees as an insufficient response to Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people and led to the abduction of 250 others.

The country's small Jewish population of 16,000 is unsettled. “Boric, who frequently speaks of peace, has imported the Middle East conflict to Chile,” the Jewish Community of Chile said in a statement.

Chile's Palestinians say the Mideast conflict was imported decades before Boric, spurring waves of displacement that forged the surprising history of Arab immigration to this Pacific coast nation from the late 1800s as the Ottoman Empire crumbled and the Zionist movement took root.

In 1920, the League of Nations approved the British Mandate of Palestine, unleashing tensions over Britain’s Balfour Declaration that promised historic Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people. More Palestinians crossed the Atlantic and braved treks across the Andes by mule to reach far-flung Chile. That same year, Club Palestino was created by a group of Palestinian soccer enthusiasts who gathered one winter day in Chile’s southern city of Osorno.

“My father told me they came here because there were more possibilities,” said 90-year-old Juan Sabaj Dhimes in Patronato, a historically Palestinian neighborhood in the capital, with its coffee shops and hookah bars splashed in the colors of the Palestinian national flag and plastered with Palestino club crests.

Chile's Palestinian community exploded after the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — in which more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were pushed from their homes in what Arabs call the Nakba, or “catastrophe," and dispersed all over the world.

Chile was then an upwardly mobile nation among poorer neighbors seeking to attract migrants to populate the country. Palestinian descendants say the arid land, coastal desert and fresh figs and olives conjured an earlier generation’s nostalgia for historic Palestine.

“The climate is one of the things that most captivated the Palestinians who arrived,” said Mauricio Abu-Ghosh, former president of Chile's Palestinian Federation.

The scrappy soccer club went professional in 1947, becoming the pride of the community. Rocketing to Chile's top division and clinching five official titles, its appeal soon stretched to the Middle East, where the descendants of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan still congregate in camps and cafes to catch Palestino matches broadcast by satellite network Al Jazeera.

The team's political message also won supporters across Chile — a soccer-crazed country with a spirit of social activism and an ex-protest leader as president — and beyond.

Despite of being a small soccer club, with an average of only about 2,000 spectators per game, Deportivo Palestino — winner of five official titles and a regular fixture in continental tournaments — is the third most followed Chilean club on Instagram, with more than 741,000 followers, only behind eternal rivals Universidad de Chile (791,000) and Colo-Colo (2.3 million).

“They tell us about the violence suffered by their people,” said 20-year-old Chilean fan Luis Torres at Palestino's home stadium in Santiago. “It makes me angry, sad, so we're here to bring a bit of joy.”

Joy has been harder to come by in the Palestinian diaspora since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack triggered Israel's bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 40,000 Palestinians and spawned a humanitarian catastrophe.

Palestinians streaming out of church in Patronato on a recent Sunday said they had prayed for the safety of their families in Gaza. “We all have cousins, siblings, grandparents who still live there,” said Khamis.

The war has wrenched Palestino, forcing the club's training school in Gaza to shut down and disrupting programs it supports across the occupied West Bank.

But within Chile it has breathed new life into players and fans. Before kickoff, the team now rushes the pitch clad in keffiyehs, brandishing anti-war banners and taking a knee.

In May the team abandoned one little pre-match ritual of emerging on the field holding hands with child mascots. Instead, players extended their arms to the side, grasping at empty space.

It was a subtle gesture — a tribute to the “invisible children” killed in Gaza, the team later explained — that could have been lost entirely on ordinary soccer fans.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Mauricio Abu Ghosh, former president of Chile's Palestinian Federation, representing Palestinians living in Chile, gives an interview at Cafe Beit-Jala in Santiago, Chile, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. The Club Palestino soccer club in Chile went professional in 1947 and its appeal stretched to the Middle East, where the descendants of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan still congregate in camps and cafes to catch Palestino matches broadcast by satellite network Al Jazeera. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

Mauricio Abu Ghosh, former president of Chile's Palestinian Federation, representing Palestinians living in Chile, right, stands outside Cafe Beit-Jala where he met with friends in Santiago, Chile, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024. The Club Palestino soccer club in Chile went professional in 1947 and its appeal stretched to the Middle East, where the descendants of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan still congregate in camps and cafes to catch Palestino matches broadcast by satellite network Al Jazeera. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

A Club Palestino fan waves a Palestinian flag during a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

Club Palestino soccer team fans celebrate their second goal against Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

A Club Palestino fan wears a keffiyeh during a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

Club Palestino soccer team fans celebrate their second goal against Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

Club Palestino's Nicolas Linares plays in a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

A Club Palestino player wears socks with an outline of territory Palestinians claim as theirs during a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

Club Palestino soccer team fans watch their team play Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

Club Palestino soccer team fans watch their team's game with Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

Club Palestino supporters watch a local league match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

Club Palestino soccer team fans celebrate their victory over Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)