Outfielder Alex Rios and relief pitcher Kelvin Herrera are infected.
Kelvin Herrera
Ed Zurga / Getty Images
Two members of the Kansas City Royals — outfielder Alex Rios and relief pitcher Kelvin Herrera — have contracted the chicken pox, the Kansas City Star reported. Each player could be out for up to two weeks.
The Royals, who are in good standing for the playoffs and expect to play into October, are taking precautions to keep the chickenpox from spreading to more players, according to the Star. Rios, who was scratched from Saturday's lineup about an hour before the game against the Tampa Bay Rays in Florida, is believed to be the first player to get sick. He was sent home via a private jet, the Star reported. Herrera soon reported similar symptoms and was quarantined and sent home.
Chickenpox is significantly more dangerous in adults than it is children, Rafael Harpaz of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Star. "The likelihood that they'll end up getting pneumonia is much higher. That's pretty rare in children. So there's a number of complications that are more common in adults than in children," he said.
The Royals have asked players to confirm with their parents that they are immune to chickenpox, or get vaccinated. The virus is highly contagious, and can be contracted through "air or bodily contact," which makes a baseball clubhouse an easy place for it to spread.
Alex Rios
Ed Zurga / Getty Images
During a press conference Tuesday, manager Ned Yost addressed Rios and Herrera's health and other members of the team were asked about whether they were concerned about getting sick. Yordano Ventura and recently acquired outfielder Jonny Gomes answered in jest:
Speculation and deception run rampant Tuesday as a federal judge prepares to make his decision in the Tom Brady vs. NFL saga this week.
Judge Richard Berman
Darren Ornitz / Reuters
Judge Richard Berman on Tuesday said he expects to announce his Deflategate decision in the lawsuit between the NFL and its players union on behalf of Tom Brady is expected within the week.
Fans and other stakeholders have been pinning for an end to the drawn out drama, in which the New England Patriots are accused of deflating footballs used in the AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts.
At a court hearing Tuesday, Berman hinted that could announce his decision later in the day or on Wednesday, although attorneys could appeal. The whole ordeal over Deflategate could also be booted back into NFL arbitration.
For fans, the legal back and forth and drawn out arbitration process has been taxing. And on Tuesday afternoon, as Deflategate pivoted to "Deflatewait," someone created a Twitter account with the handle @JudgeBerman, and posted the following tweet:
Anxious fans fell for it, and Berman's deputy immediately received "several phone calls from reporters" asking about the validity of the account. Over the phone, a person in Berman's court said he "definitely did not tweet that he's issuing a decision at four."
The practice of creating fake accounts to dupe users is a long-held tradition in Sports Twitter. Fans create accounts that look like those of national reporters, using deceptive character tricks, such as an uppercase "i" to substitute a lowercase "L" for a news-breaker like baseball reporter Ken Rosenthal.
But Tuesday's trolling still left those who wrongly believed a federal judge would break all established protocol to tweet a legal decision left wanting to know exactly how it would be disseminated.
Here's how the decision will likely unfold:
The decision will be filed to court records, which will be quickly available online. Based on Berman's previous decisions in similar cases, it will likely be about 20 pages in length. Everyone with access to an online records program such as PACER — Brady, Goodell, attorneys, and reporters alike — will then find out at about the same time.
News reports will then no doubt be sent into a frenzy — just watch out for the fake accounts.
Surfing isn’t just something you do on the internet.
Surfer collective Brown Girl Surf has uploaded a video about Ishita Malaviya, India's first female surfer, who is introducing the sport to young girls in the country.
Malaviya talks about how she learnt such a niche sport in India, and how she is passing on her knowledge to help youngsters fall in love with surfing too.
Veteran artist Jane Rosenberg said her instant fame after drawing a curious looking photo of the Patriots quarterback has been “a nightmare.”
Not even one month ago, veteran courtroom sketch artist Jane Rosenberg saw her portrayal of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady go viral immediately after a Deflategate hearing in a federal court in Manhattan.
Head coach Jay Gruden on Monday said Kirk Cousins will be the team’s 2015 starter.
Robert Griffin III
Matt Hazlett / Getty Images
After three seasons as the Washington Redskins's starting quarterback, Robert Griffin III – widely known as RG3 – was benched in favor of Kirk Cousins, head coach Jay Gruden announced during a press conference Monday.
"It's Kirk's team," Gruden said.
It has long been rumored that team owner Dan Snyder instructed the coaching staff to stick with RG3 as the starter no matter the circumstance. Tensions between the new coaching staff and the alleged demands of the front office reached a breaking point during a August 21 preseason match against the Lions, when Gruden kept RG3 in the game behind a alarmingly sub-par offensive line.
RG3 completed two of five passes and was sacked three times – for a combined 17 yards lost. He took several hard hits, and many wondered why Gruden let him get pounded.
RG3 left the game with a pinched nerve and a possible concussion. Later that week, the team announced that an NFL neurologist cleared RG3 to play. But, the next day, the same neurologist walked back his decision and the team announced their starter would sit out for "1 to 2 weeks" before being re-evaluated.
Reports later surfaced that Gruden was increasingly unhappy that team management wanted to stick with RG3 as starter. The ordeal led the 25-year-old quarterback to say, "I just work here," during a press conference.
Gruden on Monday praised Cousins's performance in offseason training camps over RG3's continually changing health status.
"Robert has done some great things, no question," he said. "But moving forward, with all the things we've studied over the course of training camp and [organized team activities], we just feel like Kirk has earned the right to be the starting quarterback for 2015."
Kirk Cousins
Matt Hazlett / Getty Images
The Redskins drafted RG3 in 2012, after his Heisman-winning season at Baylor University. The team traded away their first-round picks through 2014 and their second-round pick for 2012 to take the promising, mobile quarterback.
RG3 was named starting quarterback before Week 1 of his rookie season, and played 15 total games. He took a hit to the knee late in a game mid-season, and Cousins was brought out to finish the game and start against the Cleveland Browns while RG3 recovered. That year the Redskins earned their first playoff berth since 2007, but RG3 suffered a knee injury during the first round of the playoffs against the Seattle Seahawks and the team didn't advance.
In that playoff game game, then-head coach Mike Shanahan left RG3 in despite it being obvious to opposing players — not to mention viewers at home — that he was playing on a weakened knee. While attempting to recover a fumbled snap, RG3 planted his foot, but his knee gave out, tearing his ACL and LCL. The team has not appeared in the playoffs since.
The second-year starter performed poorly in 2013, and was shut down with three games left to go in the season. Cousins, his backup, finished out the year. In 2014, RG3 was again plagued by injuries, and was benched for Colt McCoy until he too was injured.
Overall, Cousins has started nine regular season games with Washington. In 2014, he completed 126 of 204 passes for a 61% completion rating. But he threw nine interceptions over those six games – with as many as four in one game. Cousins's statistics improved so far in the preseason.
"It's a good problem to have to have three quarterbacks that are competing and working their butts off and I feel like all three of them are capable quarterbacks," said Gruden.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I want to do this? " Freeman, 18, said. But the ride swiftly became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour day at the science and technology magnet school for that 10 minutes it would take him so that his local high school.
It once was that students with the longest bus rides were people that have rural addresses. Today, however, more and more of the longest school bus commutes are part of suburban students, willing to put in the time so that you can attend a prestigious magnet institution.
"Oh, I think it's worth it, " said Freeman, a older at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's one particular opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "
Sometimes the size of the trips that students are likely to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll tell you when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when little ones miss the bus, and I am taking them home. I'm contemplating, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair School Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have become routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest within Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and science that lure students from along the county.
School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under one hour. But that has no bearing on magnet school commutes, which in turn easily stretch longer. Students figure out how to make the best of the idea: One recent morning, a gang of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a small light clamped to a math textbook to analyze for a test. Another pupil strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music from other portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered an associate program that gave far-flung students safe places to settle if the roads were tied up with bad weather or incidents. But the program died out of lack of use, Gainous said. "We don't do that ever again, because the kids are so used to traveling or waiting with the school, " he said. "They only sleep or do their homework. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in most study time on the coach. But she's seen far much more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a full poster for spirit week, including glitter, during the commute for you to school.
"She had her glue in addition to her glitter. She would pour it on the glue and then pour it last the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single piece of glitter, " she said.
Grace's starting school is Chantilly. Like virtually any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman commuting time into "good targeted traffic days" and "bad traffic days to weeks. "
"Sometimes if traffic is absolutely good, we get there in 8 a. m., " a visit of about a half-hour, Grace said. "And sometimes we make it right before the bell rings" from 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned a multitude of car accidents and backups, Grace managed to get to school at 9: 25.
She sees the positives. "You make a lot of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't discover how to do and say, 'Here, aid me. ' There's some math whizzes around the bus. It's like study corridor. "
In Prince William Region, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is a lot more like those of old: No magnets school, he just lives within the rural, western part of the particular county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets about the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson High school graduation, near Manassas. Prince William is building a high school for western-area pupils, but it won't open until eventually 2004.
Until then, the kids just get used to the journey.
