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Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
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Reuters
OSAKA, Japan - Bobby Valentine wants to see a series between the best team from Japan and Major League Baseball.
The former New York Mets manager, whose Chiba Lotte Marines completed a four-game sweep of the Japan Series on Wednesday, says Japanese professional baseball has closed the gap on the majors.
“Watching our guys all season and the World Series on TV, I can tell you the level of play is equal,” Valentine said after becoming the first foreigner to manage a Japan Series champion. “Such a competition would be great, and it’s time to do battle.”
Valentine, who managed the Mets in their World Series loss five years ago to the Yankees, is in the second year of a three-year contract with the Marines. He’s the only foreigner to manage in the Japan Series and only the fifth to head a team in the 70-year history of the league.
“It’s as good a team as I’ve ever managed,” he said. “I’d put them up against the winner of the World Series, and I know we’d win at least a couple of games.”
Valentine, the only man to manage in both the World Series and the Japan Series, brushed aside the World Baseball Classic, a 16-nation World Cup-style tournament to be held in March featuring professional players from the major leagues and Japan.
“I’m not talking about all-star exhibition games,” Valentine said. “I’m talking about two battle-proven teams who have played a season together and know how to play baseball.
“If the people making all the big decisions in baseball don’t know the difference between all-star exhibition games and a competition between true champions, they shouldn’t be in the decision-making process to begin with.”
Valentine says he’ll keep pushing the idea but knows it would be hard to get by the players unions of both leagues.
“But they’d make a fortune from the TV,” Valentine said. “It would be the biggest contract ever.”
Major League Baseball has never been keen on the idea, and Valentine suggested a more direct approach to staging such an event.
“Maybe it’s just time for our owner to make the challenge to the owner of the team that wins the World Series,” Valentine said.
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“We started in spring training with a dream to be here for the last game,” Valentine said. “We wanted to win the last game and we did.”
Since Japanese baseball went to a two-league system in 1950, only six teams have swept the Japan Series.
Valentine is in his second stint with the Marines. He guided the team to a second-place finish in 1995.
Lee hit a two-run homer in the second inning at Koshien Stadium to give the Marines a 2-0 lead, then had a run-scoring double in the third.
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
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