Day: October 24, 2018

Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts played the percentages Tuesday night with his team down by one run to the Boston Red Sox in the seventh inning of the opening game of this year’s Major League Baseball World Series.

He saw two runners on base, a right-handed pitcher on the mound and the Red Sox sending one of the hottest hitters in the playoffs, lefty-batting Dominican third baseman Rafael Devers, to the plate with two outs.

Roberts made a call to his bullpen, preferring to let Alex Wood try to take advantage of a lefty-lefty matchup to stamp out the brewing Red Sox rally and get his team to the eighth inning trailing only 5-4.

Red Sox Manager Alex Cora waited for Wood to enter the game, then countered with a move of his own, sending right-handed Dominican second baseman Eduardo Nuñez to hit for Devers.

It took two pitches for Nuñez to send a ball screaming into the cool Boston night, clearing the famed Green Monster wall in left field for a three-run home run that gave the Red Sox an 8-4 lead.

The Dodgers failed to mount any comeback as the Red Sox bullpen allowed no runners to reach base in the final two innings.

In a game started by two of the best pitchers in all of Major League Baseball, the teams combined for 19 hits and neither Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw nor Red Sox starter Chris Sale made it through the fifth inning before being replaced.

Game two of the best-of-seven series is Wednesday in Boston before the series shifts to Los Angeles on Friday.

The 2018 World Series marks the first time in more than a century the two franchises, both with rich histories, have squared off against each other in a championship. In 1916, the Boston Red Sox featured a young left-handed power hitter named Babe Ruth. Boston won that series against the Brooklyn Robins, as the Dodgers was known then, in five games.
…

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” a coming-of-age story about racism and injustice, overcame wizards and time travelers to be voted America’s best-loved novel by readers nationwide.

The 1961 book by Harper Lee emerged as No. 1 in PBS’ “The Great American Read” survey, whose results were announced Tuesday on the show’s finale. More than 4 million votes were cast in the six-month-long contest that put 100 titles to the test. Books that were published as a series were counted as a single entry.

The other top-five finishers in order of votes were Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series about a time-spanning love; J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” boy wizard tales; Jane Austen’s romance “Pride & Prejudice,” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” fantasy saga.

Lee’s slender, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel proved enduring enough to overcome the popularity of hefty epics adapted as blockbuster movie franchises (the Potter and Tolkien works) or for TV (”Outlander”).

Even “Pride & Prejudice,” the 200-year-old inspiration for numerous TV and movie versions and with an army of “Janeites” devoted to Austen, couldn’t best Harper’s novel.

It’s been more than five decades since the film based on “To Kill a Mockingbird” debuted, winning three Oscars, including a best-actor trophy for Gregory Peck’s portrayal of attorney Atticus Finch.

The book has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and remains a fixture on school reading lists. Set in the 1930s South, it centers on Finch and his young children, daughter Scout and son Jem.

When Finch defends an African-American man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman, the trial and its repercussions open Scout’s eyes to the world around her, good and bad.

Besides the TV series, “The Great American Read” initiative included a 50,000-member online book club and video content across PBS platforms, Facebook and YouTube that drew more than 5 million views.

The 100-book list voted on by readers was based on an initial survey of about 7,000 Americans, with an advisory panel of experts organizing the list. Books had to have been published in English but not written in the language, and one book or series per author was allowed.
…

A judge on Tuesday rejected Bill Cosby’s bid for a new trial or sentencing hearing, leading the comedian’s wife, Camille, to again accuse the judge of bias against her husband.

The ruling by the same judge that presided over Cosby’s trial also led the entertainer’s lawyers to file their appeal with the state Superior Court, the next step in trying to reverse his felony sex assault conviction.

Cosby is serving a three- to 10-year state prison term after a jury this year found he drugged and molested a woman in 2004. The defense wants the legally blind, 81-year-old actor released on bail while he appeals over alleged trial errors.

Cosby, in the meantime, is living in a single cell near the infirmary at the State Correctional Institution-Phoenix in suburban Philadelphia and has access to a day room, where he can watch television or eat meals, a state prisons spokeswoman said.

For now, he is the only person using that day room, spokeswoman Amy Worden said. Several inmates are assigned to help him with daily living tasks as part of their prison jobs, she said. Cosby has also had several visitors.

“He’s a high-profile inmate. You want to make sure that they’re safe and acclimated,” Worden said.

Wife’s attacks

Camille Cosby continued to issue searing attacks against Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill, as she has done since the first trial ended in a jury deadlock in June 2017. In the latest missive Tuesday, she again said he should have stepped down from the case because his wife has advocated for sex assault victims. O’Neill has heard the argument before and said his wife’s work has no bearing on his legal rulings.

The defense also renewed attacks on the judge over what they call his feud with a key pretrial witness, former county District Attorney Bruce Castor.

Castor had declined to arrest Cosby when the accuser first came forward in 2005 and said he’d promised Cosby he would never be charged. When a successor did, O’Neill ruled that any verbal promise Castor made wasn’t legally binding. In an affidavit attached to Tuesday’s appeal, Castor said he believed O’Neill’s ruling was influenced by a long-ago feud between them.

“Mr. Cosby had a right to have his petition reviewed and decided by a judge who could make a decision free of bias, or even the perception of bias, where the ability to prosecute hinged on the testimony of the 2005 district attorney,” his new lawyers, the latest of about 20 to work the criminal case, wrote in the appeal.

The defense also challenged O’Neill’s decisions to let five other accusers testify; let the jury hear portions of Cosby’s damaging deposition in the accuser’s related lawsuit; and declare Cosby a sexually violent predator who remained a threat to the community.
…