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‘It’s been humbling’: Pedro Grifol reflects on his 1st season as Chicago White Sox manager — and looks ahead to 2024

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

During Pedro Grifol’s introductory news conference on Nov. 3 at Guaranteed Rate Field, the Chicago White Sox manager spoke of earning the trust of fans.As the 2023 season nears a close, Grifol said, “I don’t think we’ve done that whatsoever.”The Sox hoped to bounce back after a disappointing 2022 season and contend for the American League Central title. Instead, they have 96 losses and are 37 games under .500 after their 1-0 victory against the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.Grifol looked back at his first year as a big-league manager and ahead to 2024 during an interview with the Tribune on Tuesday at Nationals Park in Washington.“I said a lot of things at my press conference that didn’t happen,” Grifol said. “They didn’t happen this year. And I’m going to be better for it, I guarantee you that.“We’re all going to be better for it.”Grifol’s path to becoming a major-league manager featured 10 seaso...

Column: Theo Epstein’s tree is growing as baseball looks for creative approaches in front offices

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

When former Chicago Cubs employee Jeff Greenberg left the Blackhawks on Thursday to become general manager of the Detroit Tigers, he became the 10th member of the Theo Epstein executive tree to be hired as a GM or president of baseball operations.Six remain in top front-office roles, including three who could see their teams playing in the 2023 postseason — Cubs President Jed Hoyer, Seattle Mariners President Jerry Dipoto and Arizona Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen.It might not be quite as impressive as the Bill Walsh coaching tree in football, but Epstein is only 49, and some of his former proteges are still climbing the ladder in their respective organizations.Epstein became the youngest GM in baseball in 2002 when he took over the Boston Red Sox. He won a World Series in 2004, breaking an 86-year drought, and another in 2007 before taking over as Cubs president in 2011 and winning a third ring in 2016.Tigers President Scott Harris, whom Epstein hired as director of baseball oper...

Revolution secure a playoff spot with a 2-2 tie in Chicago

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

The New England Revolution secured a berth in the MLS Cup playoffs for the fourth time in five years with a 2-2 draw against the Chicago Fire on Saturday night at Soldier Field.The Revolution improved to 13-6-10 and entered into a four-way tie for third place in the Eastern Conference while extending their September winless streak (0-1-3) to four games with five remaining.The Revolution are 3-6-6 on the road this season and begin a two game homestand on Sept. 30 against Charlotte FC at Gillette Stadium.“Obviously the main goal is to get into the playoffs and give yourself a chance but we are not satisfied with that,” said Revolution interim head coach Clint Peay. “We want the highest seed possible and we still have a couple of tough games to go and that is going to be our goal moving forward.”Peay said prior to match that he wanted add some new wrinkles to the attack without altering the “DNA” of the team during his first full week of practice. Peay made only two changes to the Star...

Russian airstrikes kill 2 and wound 3 in southern Ukraine as war enters 20th month

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian airstrikes on Sunday killed two people and wounded three others in southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, the region’s governor reported Sunday as the war in Ukraine entered a 20th month. According to Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin, Russian forces struck the city of Beryslav, destroying an unspecified number of private houses. A woman was killed and three people were wounded, including a police officer, he said. Another airstrike also killed a 67-year-old man in the village of Lvove, Prokudin said without specifying the type of weapons used in the attack. The communities hit both are located in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Kherson region, where the Dnieper River that bisects the province has marked a battle line since Russian troops withdrew across it in November 2022, a retreat that boosted the invaded country’s morale. The Russians regrouped on the river’s eastern bank and regularly shell cities and villages across the river, inc...

The Supreme Court will hear a case with a lot of ‘buts’ & ‘ifs’ over the meaning of ‘and’

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s hard to imagine a less contentious or more innocent word than “and.” But how to interpret that simple conjunction has prompted a complicated legal fight that lands in the Supreme Court on Oct. 2, the first day of its new term. What the justices decide could affect thousands of prison sentences each year.Federal courts across the country disagree about whether the word, as it is used in a bipartisan 2018 criminal justice overhaul, indeed means “and” or whether it means “or.” Even an appellate panel that upheld a longer sentence called the structure of the provision “perplexing.”The Supreme Court has stepped in to settle the dispute.It’s the kind of task the justices — and maybe their English teachers — love. The case requires the close parsing of a part of a federal statute, the First Step Act, which aimed in part to reduce mandatory minimum sentences and give judges more discretion.In particular, the justices will be examining a so-called safety va...

India had been riding a geopolitical high. But it comes to the UN with a mess on its hands

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

NEW DELHI (AP) — The Group of 20 Summit, hosted by India earlier this month, couldn’t have gone better for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His pledge to make the African Union a permanent member became reality. And under his leadership, the fractured grouping signed off on a final statement. It was seen as a foreign policy triumph for Modi and set the tone for India as a great emerging power.Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was expected to seize on India’s geopolitical high in his speech at the United Nations on Tuesday. But circumstances have changed — quite abruptly — and India comes to the General Assembly podium with a diplomatic mess on its hands.On Monday, Canadian leader Justin Trudeau made a shocking claim: India may have been involved in the killing of a Sikh Canadian citizen in a Vancouver suburb in June.Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” of links to New Delhi, which India angrily rejected as absurd. It has been a free fall since: Each expelled a diplomat...

A fire in a commercial building south of Benin’s capital killed at least 35 people

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

A fire in a commercial building south of Benin’s capital has killed at least 35 people, authorities said, as they started an investigation. The gutted and burned ruins of a building in Seme-Podji, 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of the capital Porto-Novo, and the charred remains of cars and motorcycles was all that could be seen in the aftermath of the fire in footage by Benin’s public broadcaster. A fire official told broadcaster ORTB that the accident happened at a site known for the storage and handling of gasoline. Passersby rescued three people before firefighters arrived, the official, Dallys Ahouangbegnon, added.The fire broke out on Saturday morning and was “probably started during the unloading of bags of gasoline,” Beninese prosecutor Adam-Bongle Abdoubaki said in a statement published on local outlet benin-news.com.The dead included one child while more than a dozen people were injured, he said. Abdoubaki added that a crisis unit was set up to keep the victims’ famili...

The US is set to open embassies in the Cook Islands and Niue as Biden hosts a Pacific leaders summit

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to announce the opening of new U.S. embassies on Cook Islands and Niue on Monday as the Democratic administration aims to demonstrate to Pacific Island leaders that it remains committed to increasing American presence in the region.The announcement about the new diplomatic missions in the South Pacific comes as Biden prepares to welcome leaders to Washington for the two-day U.S.-Pacific Island Forum Summit. Talks are expected to heavily focus on the impact of climate change in the region.Biden has put a premium on improving relations in the Pacific amid rising U.S. concern about China’s growing military and economic influence. Plans about the embassies were confirmed by two senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity before the formal announcement.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would use the summit to strengthen “ties with the Pacific Islands and discuss how we address com...

Canada to get rare asteroid sample after NASA-led mission drops cargo to Earth on Sunday

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

Seven years after it blasted into space to snag a sample of an asteroid, a spacecraft is set to deliver its rare cargo on Sunday — and Canada is getting a piece of the interstellar bounty.The NASA-led mission launched OSIRIS-REx into space in 2016 to collect from the surface of an asteroid material that scientists hope will offer them insight into the formation of the solar system. The spacecraft began orbiting the asteroid — called Bennu — in 2018 and grabbed a sample in 2020. It started its return trip to Earth in 2021, and a capsule with the rocks and space dust is expected to land in the Utah desert on Sunday, before the spacecraft continues on a mission to another asteroid.Canada contributed a laser altimeter to the mission — a device that measures altitude and distance — that has allowed Bennu to become the “most precisely surveyed body in our solar system,” says Cameron Dickinson, a staff engineer at Canadian space company MDA Ltd., which designed the Canadian com...

NASA’s first asteroid samples streaking toward Earth after release from spacecraft

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:32:03 GMT

A space capsule carrying NASA’s first asteroid samples streaked toward a touchdown in the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.Flying by Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The capsule was expected to parachute down four hours later onto the military’s Utah Test and Training Range.Scientists anticipated getting at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu. About a teaspoon was returned by Japan, the only other country to bring back asteroid samples.The pristine samples are believed to be the leftover building blocks from the dawn of our solar system and will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed.Osiris-Rex rocketed away on the $1 billion mission in 2016. It reached Bennu two years later and, using a long stick vacuum, grabbed dust and pebbles from the small roundish space rock in 2020. By the time it returned Sunday, the spacecraft had traveled 4 billion miles (6.2 ...