With the team on pace for a sixth consecutive losing season, the Detroit Tigers have fired Al Avila as executive vice president and general manager, it was announced Wednesday.
With the team on pace for a sixth consecutive losing season, Al Avila is out as executive vice president and general manager of the Detroit Tigers, it was announced Wednesday.
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS – APGA Tour star Kamaiu Johnson fired a sizzling five-under par 67 in the final round, including a clutch birdie on the final hole, to register a narrow, come-from-behind victory and capture the 2022 Mastercard APGA Tour Championship at TPC San Antonio Tuesday afternoon. One of the APGA Tour’s most recognizable players, Johnson won the $50,000 first prize – the largest in APGA Tour history – and APGA Tour Player of the Year honors as the winner of the season-long Lexus Cup Point Standings. The birdie on 18 put Johnson at 7-under-par for the tournament. Both Marcus Byrd of Kennesaw, Georgia, and Daniel Augustus of Bermuda had birdie putts on 18 to force a playoff. Neither player was able to convert, giving Johnson the one-stroke victory. The triumph also earned Johnson an exemption into early-stage events of the PGA TOUR Latinoamerica series with an opportunity to retain status based on performance. The Lexus Cup title also includes a full scholarship into Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School in September. Johnson’s rise to prominence came about in January of last year, when his PGA TOUR debut via exemption into the Farmers Insurance Open was ended early in tournament week by a positive COVID-19 test. The golf world rallied in support of the 29 year-old Tallahassee, Florida, native and he was invited to three PGA TOUR events in the ensuing months, fulfilling his dream of competing at the highest level. The victory is Johnson’s fourth APGA Tour win in the last three years having also won the Tour Championship in 2020. The winner of the APGA Tour’s Las Vegas stop each of the past two years, Johnson shot a 70-67-137, delivering the best round of the day at TPC San Antonio, the 7,106-yard, par-72 home of the PGA TOUR’s Valero Texas Open. On the par-5 18th, Johnson found a bunker 97 yards from the pin with his second shot. His sand wedge flew just beyond the hole and spun back to one foot, giving him a tap-in birdie. Two strokes back at the start of the day, Johnson started his round with a bogey but then notched birdies on five of the next eight holes to seize the lead. “It was definitely the shot of the day,” he stated about his third on 18. “Things have been trending in the right direction and I’m happy that it came together today at the Tour Championship. My goal was to win twice on the tour this year and take the Lexus Cup. I’ve been working hard with my team and I got it done.” Byrd and Augustus each won $15,000 from the $150,000 purse, also the largest in history for the APGA Tour, which has grown dramatically in recent years, now comprising 18 events offering over $800,000 in prize money. Willie Mack III of Grand Blanc, Michigan, the 2021 Mastercard APGA Tour Champion and Lexus Cup Player of the Year, finished fourth at 71-69-140. Tim O’Neal of Savannah, Georgia, and Joseph Hooks of Farmington Hills, Michigan, tied for fifth at 142. The Mastercard APGA Tour Championship was the 12th tournament of the landmark 2022 season. TPC San Antonio is the eighth TPC property to host the APGA Tour this year as part of its partnership with the PGA TOUR. The next tournament stop is the APGA Tour Cisco Invitational at famed Baltusrol Country Club in Springfield, New Jersey. This is a new event in 2022 and will have an invitational field of 18 players competing for the prize money of $125,000. The tour then heads into its four-event Farmers Insurance Fall Series in the St. Louis, Houston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles markets.
Infielder Vaughn Grissom, the top prospect in the Braves’ minor league system, was called up to the majors on Wednesday with Orlando Arcia placed on the injured list.
Browns receiver and returner Jakeem Grant has a torn Achilles and will miss the 2022 season.
W Series showcases women looking to climb the ladder of open-wheel racing, but if soon-to-be-three-time champion Jamie Chadwick can’t take that next step in her career, how is motorsport more broadly opening its doors to women?
The Celtics have the highest projected win total for next season at 54.5 at Caesars Sportsbook. They are followed by the Suns, Warriors, Bucks and Clippers to make up the top five.
Mike Thomas is a common sight at the side of his son, Justin, during practice rounds on the PGA TOUR. Mike, of course, pulls double duty as both the father and the lifelong swing coach for the former FedExCup champ, and he’s often seen holding a wedge while observing Justin’s swing. The story behind Mike’s club is a special one that illustrates the strong relationship between father and son. To occupy his hands during the long hours of practice days, Mike used to grab one of Justin’s wedges while Justin was practicing nearby. There was one problem. The habit used to aggravate his son. “I mean he just always had to have a club in his hand from my bag,” Justin Thomas told GolfWRX. “And to be perfectly honest, it just pissed me off that I would want to chip with a club and he would always grab a 56 or a 60 (degree wedge). So I’d have to go across the green and get it from him and it was happening every week and I was like, ‘I’m done with this. I’m just going to carry an extra wedge. This is your wedge, don’t touch my other ones.’” And that, as they say, is how this whole thing started. It was in 2019 when Justin gifted Mike one of his old Titleist Vokey SM6 wedges to carry around. Mike still carries the same club, but it looks a little different now. Since the 2019 Genesis Invitational at Riviera, Titleist’s Vokey wedge rep Aaron Dill – who’s the man behind many of the genius wedge stampings on the PGA TOUR – has been stamping important memories and events that Justin and Mike have shared together. “They call it my walker,” Mike said. “I think the first stamp on it was in LA. … It says ‘Meat Coma.’ And the story behind that is we would go to Baby Blue’s BBQ every year in LA, and we basically ate ourselves into a meat coma. “So AD, Aaron Dill with Vokey and Titleist, he put meat coma on there. I think he put ‘Meat Coma 2’ on there somewhere, too.” Other stampings mention tournaments by their trademarks, like ‘Milkshake Invitational’ for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, which is known for the milkshakes in the Muirfield Village clubhouse. There’s other memories like ‘COVID-19 Quarantine’ and ‘Raising Money for Kids.’ The most recently noteworthy addition is ‘2022 PGA Championship,’ where ‘Champion’ is highlighted in a different color to celebrate Justin’s victory. That’s one of Mike’s favorites. Mike says he never requests a stamping, but when Dill sees him at a tournament, he’ll track Mike down and make the appropriate updates to the wedge. There’s only one problem. They’re running out of room on the club. “He’s got a great imagination for that stuff,” Mike said about Dill. “Somehow he’ll remember where (Justin) was, and he’ll go, ‘OK, we have to put the Scottish Open, the British Open, we have put the Playoffs on there.’ He somehow remembers where he was at. I don’t.” Justin finds joy in looking back at the memories, too. “I like looking at (the stampings),” he says, “and just laughing at the memories.” To solve the space issue, Dill said he’s currently working on an apparatus that would allow him to sturdy the wedge and stamp on the clubface, something he’s obviously never done when building clubs for competition. This wedge is one of a kind, however, with more stories to tell than any other club on TOUR.
In many ways, Riley is your typical boy. Spunky. Spontaneous. Ready for anything, like catching lizards and frogs or jumping on the trampoline. So, when the 18-month-old started being a little “fussy,” his mom, Taylor Raney, says she thought he was just having one of his “moments.” And the bruises? Well, what kid doesn’t fall down or bump into something? When Riley started running a fever of 103 degrees, though, Taylor took him to a doctor who prescribed antibiotics for an ear infection. When the symptoms persisted five days later, she went to another physician, who thankfully decided to run some blood work. “I knew that 78,000 white blood cells was not normal,” recalls Taylor, who was studying to be a nurse. Within a day, Riley had been admitted to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer. Riley’s grandmother, Kim Raney, remembers six doctors walking into the room to deliver the news. “I thought my heart was going to hit the ground,” says Kim, who has worked at FedEx for 33 years. “ … And then that doctor smiled at his mama and … I’m here to tell you that you will see your son’s children.” Not that the next two-and-a-half years were easy. Riley had infusions of chemotherapy at St. Jude. He also took a cocktail of drug by mouth. “We had a pharmacy on our counter basically,” Taylor recalls. There were setbacks, too; infections and fevers that sent him back to the hospital. The family nearly spent one Christmas there. But Riley is now a cancer survivor, over a year removed from his last chemotherapy treatment that brought the nurses and doctors into his room at St. Jude to sing to him and throw confetti into the air. They all signed a “No More Chemo” poster, too. On Wednesday morning during the FedEx St. Jude Championship, Riley will be the focus of another celebration, one that marks the 10th anniversary of the Purple Eagle Program. FedEx started the program to honor a St. Jude patient who is also the child or relative of one of the more than 600,000 employees of the global express transportation company. Riley is this year’s honoree, and his name has been placed under the pilot’s window on a Cessna Caravan turbojet just like the ones that FedEx uses to fly packages to smaller towns in the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America. The plane, which was transported wingless through Memphis on I-240 and reassembled on the grounds of TPC Southwind is on display where the first event in the FedExCup Playoffs is being contested this week. All nine previous Purple Eagle recipients will be on hand as the rambunctious Riley, who enters kindergarten this year, unveils his logo. Taylor said the recognition almost validates the struggles her family of five endured. She and her husband Brennan have an older son, Brantley, who has Crohn’s disease, while the youngest, Finley, was just three weeks old when Riley was diagnosed. “I feel like that it’s extremely awesome for the company to do something like this,” Taylor said. “Not only are you honoring someone from St. Jude that’s been through a lot, but you’re also honoring your own employee who has made a huge career with you guys. I think that says a lot about your company.” The Purple Eagle program is the brainchild of Bill West Jr., the vice president of supplemental aircraft operations at FedEx Express and a 38-year employee of the company. He’d seen the delivery trucks on display at the tournament each year, and he thought having one of FedEx’s smaller delivery planes would be even more impactful. “Then the idea took root, I guess, as a way to further connect with the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and bring more awareness to the life-saving work that it does,” West said. “… And the dedication event is now 10 years strong, as we’re calling it. “And with all the 10 honorees returning for this anniversary event, it is just miraculous.” Riley is in remission now, and his family can take heart in the knowledge that about 90% of the children with ALL are cured, according to the St. Jude website. But some of the past Purple Eagle honorees, like 23-year-old Allie Allen, whose plane was dedicated in 2014, are still battling. She was 14 when she started having focal seizures. Allie said it was like she “spaced out” for a minute. She could hear and see everything, but she just couldn’t react. An EEG revealed seizure activity on the right side of her brain, and MRI showed a tumor the size of a golf ball. Doctors thought it was benign due to the circular shape, so the eighth-grader went with her dance team to a national competition, which they won. She returned to the reality of an eight-hour surgery and the news that the tumor was cancerous. She had 33 rounds of brain radiation at St. Jude before returning to high school. Three months later, she got another bad scan. “This time my whole brain lit up and there were only certain spots that were operable,” Allie said. Doctors told her she would not survive the assault and suggested she do the things on her bucket list while they considered treatment options. So, Allie and her family went to Disney World. When she returned and had another scan, her brain was completely clean. She says her doctors still can’t explain it. Her neurologist came to see her, crying, because it’s such a miracle that happened, Allie says. “Have you ever been to St. Jude before,” asks Allie who hopes to work in fundraising for the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities that support St. Jude. “I like to call it the Disney World of hospitals because it’s such a different atmosphere. It’s honestly amazing. They have this thing called the Alphabet Wall and it’s the ABCs of cancer that each patient writes their own letter, and my letter was letter for miracle. “It’s still up there.” But when Allie was 15, she was diagnosed with another brain tumor. Surgery followed, along with another 33 rounds of full brain and spine radiation. She lost her ability to walk and eat for a time. Doctors told her she probably wouldn’t be alive for her high school graduation. “I just graduated college,” says the Ole Miss alum proudly. “So, it truly is a miracle that I’m still here today and I’m getting married in December, too. I’m hitting all these big milestones that nobody ever thought I would be alive for.” Her fiancée is Parker Fleming, and as luck would have it, he happens to work in the IT department at FedEx. Allie still has a small tumor in her brain, as well as a cyst right next to it. There has been minimal growth for the past five or six years, though, and the doctors at St. Jude are in what she calls a “watch and waiting process.” She still has digestive issues from where the radiation burned through her stomach and suffers from alopecia that has nothing to do with the cancer. While treating Allie, the doctors at St. Jude have identified five new types of brain cancer. She is one of seven people in the world with hers, which they call a high grade neuroepithelial tumor MN1. There is no treatment yet, but the phenomenal St. Jude researchers are working to find one just as they follow Riley’s progress every year. Allie remembers feeling like a princess the day her plane was dedicated. Her father, who is a pilot at FedEx, was the one who got to tell her she was going to be a Purple Eagle honoree. “I was so excited,” she says. “… I love going every year and meeting all the new patients who are blessed to have their name on a plane as well, but also the fact that all of us are still alive is amazing.” Riley’s grandmother, the woman he calls Maw-Maw, started working at FedEx in the mail room, then moved to accounts receivable and later worked as a courier for 25 years. She now works as a dispatcher for FedEx’s massive fleet of delivery trucks. Kim was still learning the ropes of her most recent position when Riley got sick. She got the news he was headed to St. Jude at 10 p.m. on a Friday. One of her co-workers told her he’d cover her shift the next day. Her supervisor told her to go and be with her family and take as long as she needed. “I couldn’t have done it without my co-workers – that’s a fact,” says Kim, who, along with her husband, Dale, took care of Riley’s brothers while he was in the hospital. One of those co-workers encouraged Kim to submit an application for the Purple Eagle program. Her granddaughter, Maya, who has sickle cell disease, was the 2018 recipient. So, Kim filled out the form but promptly forgot about it until West came to a meeting to give her the news. “I just sat there because it went straight over my head,” Kim says. “I mean, everybody was looking at me, like how can you not be jumping up and down. … And I looked at my coworker and I said, did he just say, Riley? She said, Kim, yes, he did, and everybody started laughing.” Like her daughter-in-law, Kim was overwhelmed by the caring people at St. Jude, as well as its positive atmosphere. She said the first time she went to the hospital “it was like, oh my God. I felt like I was at home. I can’t explain it, … “You almost felt guilty from all the kindness,” Kim says, thinking about the homemade masks and blankets, even the food vouchers for the family which was never billed for Riley’s treatment. “You’re just kind of like, what can I do to pay y’all back?” The way Kim sees it, FedEx and St. Jude is a match made in heaven. “These are two of the world-renowned names,” she says. “People from all over the world come to St. Jude. But then what people don’t realize — and I’ve learned this from being a courier and being in dispatch now with trucks — people don’t realize what FedEx does for the world. “From medical supplies all over the world, the trucks that we take all over the United States for relief from hurricanes, tornadoes or fires, the truckloads of medical supplies that we send and the airplanes that we charter to fly stuff all over the world. “St. Jude and FedEx — that can’t be a better partnership.” West is thrilled to see how the Purple Eagle program has endured. He loves getting to know the recipients, and one of his favorite memories is of the first honoree, McKaylee. She had a rare and malignant brain tumor and wasn’t expected to live past 5 but she’s now 15 years old. Fredrick Smith, the founder of FedEx, was among those in attendance at the dedication that year. “She jumped up in his arms and said, ‘Thank you for my airplane,’” West remembers. That just about says it all, doesn’t it? FedEx Purple Eagle recipients For more infomation on FedEx Purple Eagle recipients click here.
After leading all rookies in touches a year ago, Harris is prepared to take on another vital role, including becoming more of a leader.
