SPORTS BRIEFS: Darton baseball nips Andrew

Darton baseball beats Andrew

The Darton State College baseball team topped Andrew College 8-7 Tuesday in a Region 17 game. Pierce Smith earned the victory in relief after allowing just one run in two innings.

Kendall Herron went 2 for 4 with an RBI to lead the offense. Colton Thomas finished 1 for 5 with a pair of RBIs, while Landon Crowder went 2 for 4 with an RBI.

Worth County baseball falls to Cook in extra innings

The Worth County Rams lost despite Jake Jones’s spectacular day from both the mound and the plate as Cairo defeated Worth County 2-0 Tuesday night.

Jones reached base three times. He singled in the first and third innings.

Jones finished with nine strikeouts. He gave up just two hits over seven shutout innings.

Emerson Hancock got the win for Cairo. He pitched 5 1/3 shutout innings. He struck out five, walked two and surrendered eight hits.

Harvey treated for blood clot in bladder

The Matt Harvey mystery has been resolved.

The New York Mets right-hander has been suffering from a blood clot that was a result of a bladder infection. He had a procedure on Monday to eliminate the clot and Tuesday he was feeling like a new man.

On Monday, his status for Opening Day was in limbo, but by Tuesday it appeared the 27-year-old would take the mound on Sunday night in a rematch of last season’s World Series combatants when the Mets face the Kansas City Royals.

“It started with a bladder infection and it created a blood clot in the bladder,” Harvey told reporters after having a minor procedure Tuesday morning to make sure “everything was clear.”

According to MLB.com, Harvey blamed the infection on not using the bathroom enough.

“I guess the main issue is I hold my urine in for too long instead of peeing regularly,” Harvey told ESPN with a laugh. “I guess I have to retrain my bladder to use the restroom a little bit more instead of holding it in. I guess that’s what caused the bladder infection.”

He was supposed to start Tuesday’s exhibition game against Miami, but didn’t travel with the team. Harvey is expected to throw a few innings Wednesday in a final tune-up before Sunday’s opener in Kansas City.

TaxSlayer Bowl to be held on New Year’s Eve

The TaxSlayer Bowl is earlier — in terms of both date and time.

The 72nd TaxSlayer Bowl will move to New Year’s Eve this year and kick off at 11 a.m. That ends a 20-year streak of the game being played on either Jan. 1 or Jan. 2.

The game will be televised on ESPN and will be the lead-in to the first College Football Playoff semifinal. It matches a team from the SEC vs. a team from either the Big Ten, ACC or Notre Dame, but the likely matchup will be SEC vs. ACC or Notre Dame this season since Big Ten teams have been selected in the first two years of a six-year deal in which three teams are picked from the Big Ten and three from either the ACC or Notre Dame.

Georgia beat Penn State 24-17 in last year’s game.

NFL demands Times retract its concussion story

The National Football League is demanding The New York Times retract last week’s article that alleged the league’s concussion research was flawed and compared the league’s “handling of its health crisis to that of the tobacco industry, which was notorious for using questionable science to play down the dangers of cigarettes.”

Politico reported on Tuesday it had obtained a letter sent to the Times on Monday that called the story “false and defamatory” and issued a “demand that the story immediately be retracted.”

An ominous warning for reporters was also included in the letter, which requested “the Times’s reporters and editors who worked on this story preserve their notes, correspondence, emails, recordings and work papers and all other electronic and hard copy documents generated or received in connection with their work.”

In its story on March 24, the Times alluded to confidential documents citing more than 100 diagnosed concussions were not included in the studies that took place between 1996 through 2001. Concussions suffered by star quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Steve Young were among those omitted and not documented by NFL researchers.

The Times is standing its ground. Sports editor Jason Stallman told Politico there is “no reason to retract anything.”

“Our reporting showed that more than 100 such concussions — including some sustained by star players — were not included in the (NFL’s) data set, resulting in inaccurate findings,” Stallman said in a statement. He also noted that a co-owner of the New York Giants has direct ties to the tobacco industry and that “the N.F.L. and the tobacco industry shared lobbyists, lawyers and consultants.”

Politico asked league spokesman Joe Lockhart if the NFL will sue if the Times does not print a retraction.

“We won’t prejudge the reaction of The New York Times,” Lockhart said. “We make a strong argument for a retraction, one we expect to them to take seriously.”