Costly errors by Rocchio and Brennan send Guardians home trailing the Yankees 2-0 in the ALCS

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Costly errors by Rocchio and Brennan send Guardians home trailing the Yankees 2-0 in the ALCS

2024-10-16 12:57 Last Updated At：13:00

NEW YORK (AP) — Sloppy play has the Cleveland Guardians facing a big deficit the American League Championship Series.

Cleveland's rookie shortstop Brayan Rocchio and right fielder Will Brennan committed costly errors Tuesday night, allowing runs to score as the New York Yankees beat the Guardians 6-3 to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

The Guardians are playing in their sixth ALCS and face a two-game deficit for the first time as the series shifts to Cleveland for Game 3 on Thursday night after an off day.

Rocchio, who committed 12 errors in 462 chances during the regular season, dropped a pop up off the bat of slugger Aaron Judge in the first inning, allowing New York’s first run to score. With runners on second and third, Rocchio took several steps to the right side of the infield and was to the right side of second when Judge’s pop-up caromed off the webbing of his glove and allowed Gleyber Torres to score, putting Cleveland in an early hole.

“Obviously I wasn’t able to catch it,” Rocchio said through a translator. “No excuse, I need to make that play, but I think I was in position the best way because I thought I was under the ball and (at the) last minute I was leaning towards second base.”

Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt didn't think it was an easy play.

“That ball was up in the air for quite a while with the wind, tough play,” Vogt said. “Those things happen.”

Brennan, who made a sliding catch in foul territory on Giancarlo Stanton for the second out of the first inning, struggled to play a carom on a double by Anthony Rizzo in the sixth after Cleveland had cut its deficit to 3-2 an inning earlier.

Rizzo's line drive that bounded off the low side wall and deflected to Brennan. The ball went off Brennan’s hand and that allowed Anthony Volpe to score from first, extending New York's lead to 4-2.

“I just kind of sped up knowing that Volpe can run a little bit,” Brennan said. “Just kind of misplayed it a little bit some. Something I don’t normally do and it just happened to happen in that situation.”

Brennan played 80 of his 98 games in right field and committed two errors in 132 chances during the regular season. Overall, he committed two errors in 161 chances.

The miscues by Rocchio and Brennan came after Cleveland committed just one error in its first six postseason games.

“We didn’t play Cleveland baseball today,” left fielder Steven Kwan said. “We got a couple of errors. Obviously we pride ourselves on our defense. So if we want to win some games, we’re going to have to play Guard ball.”

The Guardians committed 87 errors in the regular season and were tied with Tampa Bay for ninth in the American League.

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Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5 and more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 20:17 Last Updated At：20:21

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and wounding at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a previous figure of two and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Haseloff said Friday that authorities believed the man acted alone.

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland. Geir Moulson contributed from Berlin.