this meet that is a tribute not only to his talent, but also the years hes put into enhancing team chemistry as a co-captain.His ambition is to finish well, and hes not fin

SAN DIEGO --?Boston Red Sox star?David Ortiz ended his All-Star Game career with quite a walk off.The popular Big Papi was embraced outside the dugout by nearly every member of the American League roster Tuesday night when he was replaced by a pinch runner and strolled back to the bench.Miguel Cabrera playfully tousled Ortizs hair. As Ortiz made his way through the scrum of players, he wrapped his Red Sox teammate Jackie Bradley Jr. in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground.Ortiz called the embraces something Ill never forget. ... You see all your boys.Catcher Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants clapped his bare hand against his mitt as Ortiz left the field.The American League beat the National League 4-2.Ortiz helped the Red Sox end their 86-year World Series title drought in 2004 and then helped them win the Series in 2007 and 2013, when he was chosen as MVP.Ortiz announced on Nov. 18, his 40th birthday, that 2016 would be his final season.Things are getting harder. ... As you get older, it gets a little difficult, he said after coming out of his 10th All-Star Game.Ortiz leads the majors in slugging percentage, on-base average and extra-base hits this year. Hes batting .332 with 22 home runs and 72 RBIs.The Red Sox are two games behind Baltimore in the AL East at the break.Ortiz drew a walk in the third inning from Miamis Jose Fernandez, who said a day earlier that hed groove a pitch for the slugger. Ortiz kidded with Fernandez on his way to first base after taking ball four.I was supposed to hit a home run in my second at-bat, Ortiz said. My boy told me he was going to throw me a fastball, and the first pitch was a changeup. I was like, I thought it was going to be a fastball?He told me yesterday all he was going to throw me was fastballs. He told me it was the catchers fault -- he called it. Then 3-2 he threw me a slider, and Im like, Are you trying to break my back? But he said it was the catchers fault.Fernandez called it an amazing experience.At first I was just throwing fastball, fastball, fastball, so I thought I should mix it up with a breaking pitch, and he took it, he said. I was nervous. I couldnt believe that I was actually pitching to him. We both looked at each other and smiled. We knew what was going on. It was great. He signed the jersey I brought for him. It was just special.A few moments after Ortiz reached first, AL manager Ned Yost sent in Edwin Encarnacion to run, and Ortiz left to a nice ovation.Yost said he told Ortiz before the game that he was going to get two at-bats, and if he reached on the second one, he would come out. If Ortiz hadnt reached, Yost planned to send him up for a third at-bat, wait for him to be announced and then send up a pinch hitter.But what he didnt know is, I wanted the team to go out and meet him, Yost said. So that was a cool moment, I thought.Big Papi addressed his teammates earlier in the day.I told them that it takes a lot of work to get to the All-Star Game, he said. You dont get here with a good name or a good family. You have to put up the numbers. I told them that they have to do that for their whole career.Asked about his career overall, he said: I have learned so much about this game, I would like to spread it out to the young kids in the game.Ortiz grounded out hard in his first at-bat in his finale.Its an unbelievable feeling to be around this guy, said Kansas City catcher Salvador Perez, who homered for the AL. Thats the guy we want to be.Ed Dickson Jersey .R. Smith realized how easily basketball can be taken from him, and he wasnt going to take his place in the NBA for granted anymore. Tyrone Swoopes Jersey . A knee to the thigh might have stung him the most, but his sixth straight double-double made up for the brief burst of pain. http://www.cheapseahawksjerseysauthentic.com/?tag=authentic-dk-metcalf-jersey .com) - Manchester City midfielder David Silva is expected to miss the next four weeks because of a calf problem. Ugo Amadi Jersey . Aduriz headed home Markel Susaetas cross in the sixth minute to open the scoring at San Mames Stadium. He bettered that with a long-range blast that went in off the goal frame in the 18th, and converted a penalty in the 72nd after Diego Mainz was sent off for fouling Aduriz with only the goalkeeper to beat. Cody Barton Jersey . Now, correct me if Im wrong but I saw one official distinctly pointing at the net indicating a good goal but after an inconclusive review they overturned the goal. Shouldnt the ruling on the ice (good goal) stand after an inconclusive review? Why was this overturned? James Veaudry Pembroke, ON -- Hey Kerry, Youll get a lot of these, but why was the Montreal goal against Nashville Saturday night overturned? Eller puts the puck on net and the on ice ruling from the ref behind the net is a Montreal goal.RIO DE JANEIRO -- In order to reach the starting blocks of the Olympic 50-meter freestyle final, Anthony Ervin had to get down on one knee. It wasnt a formal prayer, but rather a humble and fearless admission that he wasnt done learning at age 35.In pursuit of a third Olympic appearance 16 years after his first, Ervin migrated to Charlotte in the spring of 2016 to train with veteran head coach David Marsh and a stellar training group at the SwimMAC Carolina Elite club.Ive got no pixie dust, Marsh told Ervin, but he was happy to have him. Ervin commands respect among his fellow athletes for his fluid technique in the pool and the wisdom gained from diverse and sometimes wrenching experiences during a eight-year hiatus from the sport. He makes people around him laugh, he makes them think, and he makes them stare in wonder at the way he arrows through the water.Ervin was in need of help with one crucial flaw: His dive. Like a gymnasts early bobble on the balance beam, fractions lost on the start can cancel out the other 20-plus seconds of brilliant execution in the 50 free.The best in the water, the worst off the blocks, Marsh said. Tonys so good up on the surface of the water. We want to get him up there quick as we can.Marshs club has the use of a contraption called a Kistler machine, which overlays a starting block with force plates and measures a swimmers acceleration out of the dive through the first 15 meters. The coach tried adjusting Ervins feet, making subtle changes to pressure and weight shift.Finally, he decided to strip things down. Marsh took Ervin to the deep end of the pool, put a kickboard on the ground and had him kneel, point his hands and plunge, just as the coach would with a 10-year-old. Diving 101, Marsh said. Then we progressed to standing up -- literally, he did dives like a novice swimmer. We took it all the way back there, and somewhere in there, we found it.The deconstruction gave Ervin an average of about three-tenths of a second over the first 15 meters -- a pinch of pixie dust that has helped propel him into Friday nights 50-meter final, within reach of an individual Olympic medal for the second time since he tied Gary Hall Jr. for gold as a raw 19-year-old in Sydney in 2000.Ervin auctioned off that medal for tsunami relief in 2004 after the massive loss of life in Indonesia. He was done with elite sport and all its trappings at that point, done with people trying to mine his mixed racial and ethnic heritage to reach some greater conclusion. He had detoured into a different kind of fast lane, immersing himself in self-discovery via self-destruction, and navigating some riptides along the way.It gains so much momentum from your youth and it becomes an existential question: Did I exist just for this? Ervin told me of the disorientation he felt in his early 20s. What now? Where is the purpose? Sometimes theres no answers at all and theres this silence that can whisk something out of you. He filled the void by self-medicating with drugs, sex, a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit and progressively riskier motorcycle rides that brought him to a literal precipice. Ervin chronicled that journey in a recent memoir, Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian, written in alternating sections of first- and third-person with co-author Constantine Markides.Writing about the aftermath of one especially reckless trip, Ervin recalled, In one fell swoop, that sense of invincibility that Ive been feeling for so long evaporates in a snarling hangover of coke and Vodka and acid... I could have and should have died last night.In Berkeley last year, many months before thee book was released, Ervin gave me a preview of how forthright it would be, and added, I hope my parents are OK with it.dddddddddddd This week, his mother Sherry said she stood behind his right to tell the story but hopes he writes a sequel, or at least an epilogue. She didnt understand the depth of his darkness, and in retrospect, Im glad, she said on the phone from South Carolina. I wouldnt have been able to do anything about it, anyway. Anthony digs in his heels, and if you push him, he just digs harder.Tony, as hes known nearly everywhere in swimming except the official start sheets, was Sherry and Jack Ervins middle son of three, innately warm and generous and such an avid reader that Sherry found herself unable to carry through with the sternest punishment she tried to impose -- taking away his books. At 11, Ervin was diagnosed with a mild form of Tourettes Syndrome that had to be managed with medication.As a teenager, Ervins original spirit and his athletic talent alchemized into one ropy, elegant world-class sprinter who endeared himself to a series of coaches -- all of whom are invisibly embedded in his stroke.He will never fit into anyones system, but benefits from everyones system, said Mike Bottom, the University of Michigan head coach who was one of Ervins early mentors at Cal. Ervin returned there to train with mens and womens head coaches Dave Durden and Teri McKeever in his 2011 comeback, and also did a stint at Dave Salos Trojan Swim Club at the University of Southern California before alighting in Charlotte last spring.Teaching inner-city kids to swim was an important part of Ervins journey back to the pool, which makes it all the more fitting that he was willing to go back to a childhood space with Marsh to rebuild his dive. But that was just the final tweak after years of internal work to travel at great speed with little effort, as the coach put it.It shows on land as well. At the U.S. Olympic swim trials in Omaha last month, hundreds of children, senior citizens and adults in between lined up for an autograph and a few words from the man with the high-wattage smile and the inked arms. Behind Ervin was a giant cover image of his book, which depicts him underwater in the lotus position, floating taut but somehow comfortably -- which sums him up in general. He has transitioned into being a more public person without artificial packaging, a true feat in the world of Olympic sport, where narratives are often enhanced with a little helium.Maybe youve just gotta drink some of your own Kool-Aid to know youre gonna make it through, Ervin said, speaking of the dips and spikes of any athletes life, and specifically about himself. After all, you did become an Olympian, against all those odds. Neil deGrasse Tyson said its OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but if you do, just remember, some people have no boots.That being said, anyone whos an Olympian or an Olympic champion, they have their own boots.With understandable pride, Sherry Ervin said her son has already won by getting to Rio, whatever the outcome. He already has a 4x100 freestyle relay gold at this meet that is a tribute not only to his talent, but also the years hes put into enhancing team chemistry as a co-captain.His ambition is to finish well, and hes not finished yet, Marsh said after Ervin qualified for the 2016 team in Omaha. After all these years in the water, that finish could come down to the open mind that gave him a fresh start.[url=https