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Lugo placed the Red Sox in a hole they couldn't climb out of by botching an easy and necessary play. The shortstop fumbled the transfer after getting a forceout at second, negating a possible double play and allowing an extra run that created the deficit the Sox fought all afternoon but never could surmount.
The Sox sauntered into Tropicana Field having taken early command of their division, and they headed for New York and the new Yankee Stadium hoping they hadn't let the Rays off the mat. The Rays limped into the series, and they exited having "picked up the intensity dial," Rays manager Joe Maddon said.
"We have 140-something games left," second baseman Dustin Pedroia said. "I don't think anybody is hitting the panic button because we got beat three out of four. You can't sit back and say, 'Oh, no, we lost three out of four. The season is over, let's go home.' We're going to be fine."
The Sox had chances to even the series throughout yesterday's closing game, but the deciding play happened early on. The Rays had taken a 2-1 lead in the fourth when Rays catcher Michel Hernandez came to the plate with men on first and third and one out.
Penny needed a reprieve. Hernandez gave it to him: a ground ball to second base. "That's exactly what we were hoping they'd do," Sox manager Terry Francona said. "Hit it right to Pedey so we could turn two and get the heck off the field."
Pedroia fielded the ball, shuffled, and flipped underhand to Lugo. Hernandez lumbered like a catcher to first. It was perfect, except, "you play middle infield, you kind of miss the exchange sometimes," Pedroia said.
Lugo tried to transfer the ball from glove to hand but the ball trickled out and rolled into the outfield. Akinori Iwamura scampered home from third. The Rays led, 3-1, their tenuous lead made secure for ace James Shields.
"Just dropped the ball," Lugo said. "That's a big play for us. We turn that double play, it would have been different. I just dropped it. That play, we have to turn it. For us to win games, we have to turn that play."
Penny absolved Lugo afterward, but anger dominated his initial emotions. He kicked dirt on the mound and howled, then punched the inside of his glove.
The missed chance capped a frustrating inning for Penny. The two Rays who had started the rally - Iwamura and Jason Bartlett - both reached on bloop hits, Iwamura's a double that landed on the left-field line and Bartlett's a jam shot to center that left him holding only the knob of the bat. "That's baseball," Penny said.
Even with the obstacles, Penny gave the Sox their first quality start in almost a week, allowing three runs in six innings. He chastised himself for the two walks he issued, both of which led to runs. But he at last mixed his best stuff with proper command. His fastball buzzed into the lower half of the strike zone, which is what he needs for success.
"All his pitches were much better," catcher Jason Varitek said.
Penny, who allowed four earned runs in 2 2/3 innings his previous start, seemed at one point as if he might be headed for another early shower after Carlos Pena clobbered an RBI double to the left-field corner in the first.
Penny settled, though. He struck out five of the next nine batters after Pena's double and rolled into the fourth with the score tied.
"Obviously, we needed that double play ball, and we just didn't get it," Pedroia said. "It happens to everybody."
Lugo's drop would stand as the most costly missed chance by the Sox, but not the only one. Delcarmen could have kept the Sox within two by continuing his season-long scoreless streak in the seventh. Instead, he loaded the bases with one out by hitting Pena, then forced in a run by drilling Pat Burrell in the ribs.
"I just didn't have any feel," Delcarmen said.
Hunter Jones wiggled out of the jam, and the Sox nearly knotted it in the eighth after Kevin Youkilis hit a two-run homer, his team-leading sixth this season.
J.D. Drew followed with a single, his third hit of the day, and Jason Bay drew a walk. The Sox trailed by a run, the tying run on second base, reliever Dan Wheeler on the ropes. Mike Lowell popped up and jogged toward first. Before he reached the base, the ball had settled into the right fielder's glove and he had slammed his helmet to the turf.
"We were two hits away from changing that game," Varitek said. "We got some guys on base, hit some line outs. On the flip side, they got some guys on base and had some balls fall."
"It seems like we were that one hit away this series that we needed to get us a win," Pedroia said. "We just didn't get it this series. Hopefully, we can get it the next series."
Online videos showing students from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, confronting and mocking members of the Indigenous People's March in Washington, D.C., on Friday have brought widespread condemnation against them and their school.
Apologizing on behalf of CovCath and the Diocese of Covington, a spokesperson said Saturday that students involved could be expelled.
The videos show one person among a group of CovCath students face to face and smirking at an Indigenous People's marcher singing and playing a hand drum near the Lincoln Memorial. The marcher was identified as Nathan Phillips, an Omaha Nation elder and Vietnam veteran. Others surrounding the small group of marchers are shown laughing and taking pictures or videos with their phones.
Some in the group are wearing "Make America Great Again" caps and clothing. A few can be seen wearing Covington Catholic spirit wear and some others can be seen wearing Cincinnati Bengals clothing.
Phillips, 64, told The Washington Post he felt threatened by the teens and that they suddenly swarmed around him and his group. He said he was singing the American Indian Movement song of unity that serves as a ceremony to send the spirits home.
"We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C. We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips. This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person. The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion. We know this incident also has tainted the entire witness of the March for Life and express our most sincere apologies to all those who attended the March and all those who support the pro-life movement.
The Covington Catholic website shows the students were in Washington, D.C. for the March for Life.
The hashtag #nathanphillips has gone viral with condemnation of the students' actions. Rep. Debra Haaland from New Mexico was among the most vocal.
In a separate video, Phillips, a former director of the Native Youth Alliance, according to Indian Country Today , said the students approached him chanting, "Build that wall. Build that wall."
"We're not supposed to have walls here. This is indigenous land. We don't have walls here," Phillips said.
He called on young people to put their energy to better use, like "helping those who are hungry."
Haaland, who with Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) became the first Native American women elected to Congress last fall, said the video was difficult to watch, the Post reported.
Since the videos appeared online, the social media pages for Covington Catholic and some Covington Catholic faculty members have been set to private.
Eighteen big-league scouts are pressed against a chain-like fence behind home plate, eyes and radar guns trained on the mound, the whole pack of them as crammed in as straphangers on a rush-hour subway. The object of their fascination is a 6-0, 195-pound kid who wears No. 21 in the white and green of St. Joseph Regional High School of Montvale, N.J., a sleepy-eyed senior who is almost completely ambidextrous, writes right-handed and passes a football the same way, but throws a baseball lefthanded, with as gifted an arm as you will see.
On a chilly, windswept day at Ramapo High School in Franklin Lakes, N.J., 18-year-old Robert Kaminsky doesn't disappoint his audience, pitching a three-hit shutout and striking out 15 hitters, doing nothing to diminish his status as a likely first-round selection in baseball's June draft, and one of the best hardball stories around.
Go ahead and name the last time you ran across a high-school lefthander who has a 94 MPH fastball and a hammer of a curveball, a Jewish kid whose prized possession is a Sandy Koufax baseball card that he keeps in an acrylic case on his bedroom shelf.
"Sandy Koufax was a Jewish guy playing baseball, and so am I, and that's rare," Kaminsky says. "Even being in the same sentence with him would be an incredible honor."
It would be ludicrous, of course, to compare a high-school senior to a man who isn't merely a Hall of Famer, but in the middle of most discussions about the greatest pitchers in baseball history. Nobody is putting that on Rob Kaminsky, but have you seen the stop-action photos of his delivery, the way his left elbow leads the same way Koufax's did? The way the ball comes out of his hand and the wicked drop of his three-quarter overhand breaking ball?
"He's a major-league curveball right now," says Frank Rendini, a Jersey-based scout for the Seattle Mariners.
Adds an NL scout who asked to remain nameless, "There's no question about his ability. The big point he has in his favor is that he's a pitcher more than a thrower. He understands you don't have to break the radar gun to win. For the most part he can put the ball right where he wants. That's not something you see from very many kids his age."
The scout smiles and talks about the obsession in scouting departments these days with drafting tall pitchers.
"We may have to waive the 6-foot rule for this kid," the scout says.
After Saturday's 4-1, four-hit victory over Wayne Hills, Kaminsky's record for the season is 4-0 with an 0.00 ERA (the Wayne Hills' run was unearned), and 54 strikeouts and five walks in 26 innings. He has seven career no-hitters, the most recent of them coming in a five-inning, 10-0 decision over arch-rival Don Bosco that gave St. Joseph coach Frank Salvano his 556th career victory, more than any Bergen County baseball coach in history. St. Joe's alums include John Flaherty, the former big-league catcher and current Yankee broadcaster, though Salvano says Kaminsky, who is also a first-rate centerfielder and the team's best hitter (he's hitting .440 with 13 home runs and 70 RBI in his career), compares with any of them.
All this, and Kaminsky has even has set up a Strikeout Challenge, getting pledges for every strikeout this season, with proceeds going to the pediatric cancer unit at Englewood Hospital in his hometown.
"I've been doing this 26 years and he's not just the best player I've ever coached; he's one of the best people I've ever coached," Salvano says. "If you walked in our locker room, you couldn't tell Rob from anybody else. He just wants to be one of the guys and help his team win games."
Sandy Koufax has had a special place in the Kaminsky family for decades. Rob's father, Alan Kaminsky, a civil litigator for Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith in downtown Manhattan, grew up idolizing Koufax, having learned from his own father, Bernard, about Koufax opting not to pitch on Yom Kippur in Game 1 of the 1965 World Series against the Twins.
"(That) decision has been a source of inspiration for legions of sports fans, both Jews and non-Jews, (and) has taken on legendary significance," says Alan Kaminsky, who also deeply admired the way Koufax handled his acclaim, and gracefully retired at the peak of his career.
Still, Sandy Koufax was the last thing anybody had in mind when Bernard, Alan and five-year-old Robert went out in the back yard one day and were astounded to see the little kid catch one towering pop fly after another.
"Five-year-old kids are not supposed to be able to do that," Bernard Kaminsky told Alan.
The youngest of Alan and Donna Kaminsky's three children, Robert excelled in Little League, switch-hitting and sometimes throwing lefty, sometimes righty.
"I could throw pretty well righty, but I didn't really know where the ball was going," Rob Kaminsky says. A coach told him that if really could throw just as well or better lefty, he might as well be a lefty. By the time Kaminsky was 12, he was working with Rendini, the Mariners' scout, at a baseball complex in Clifton, N.J. called Lefty's.
The scout was impressed with the kid's poise and athleticism, and even then told a couple of Kaminsky's uncles, "He is going to be a good one." Rendini was no less taken by Kaminsky's makeup when he saw him at the 15-strikeout game in Ramapo, the way he managed the game, and his emotions.
"His work ethic is second to none," Rendini says. "He wants to get better. He's always open to ideas. He's not one of those kids who says, 'I don't have to listen to you.' He's trying to fulfill his dream, and he goes about the game very professionally."
The New Jersey Gatorade player of the year as a junior, Kaminsky has signed a letter of intent to enroll at the University of North Carolina, though whether he gets there will hinge in large part on how high he is drafted (Baseball America projects him as the No. 26 pick in the first round, rating him the third best high-school lefthander). Kaminsky, who is being advised by Casey Close, Derek Jeter's longtime agent, insists that nothing has been determined – that he fell in love with North Carolina, and plans to become a Tar Heel, but is ruling out nothing.
"I'm looking for answers, the same as you," Kaminsky says. "It's a pretty good choice to have either way."
In the meantime, Rob Kaminsky has one goal foremost in mind. In last year's state semifinal, Don Bosco beat St. Joseph's, 2-0, scoring the only runs Kaminsky gave up the whole season.
"That left a very bitter taste in my mouth," Kaminsky says. "The only thing that matters right now is winning a state championship."
At his first start of the spring, Kaminsky drew about 1,000 fans to the game, and the customary knot of scouts. The crowds and the scouts keep coming, with their radar guns and evaluation forms, a kid's baseball future hinging, at least in part, on their jottings. You'd think it would be immensely unnerving, but Kaminsky seems oblivious, going about his routine as if he were pitching in an empty sandlot.
His love of the game runs so deep that his entire Bar Mitzvah five years ago was baseball-themed, complete with Robert and his friends belting out a rousing rendition of John Fogerty's "Centerfield" on the dance floor.
His respect for the game, say coaches who have worked with and against him, is no less deep.
"Baseball is a humbling game," Kaminsky says. "I don't really notice who's there or who's behind the plate or who is watching. I'm just trying to put my team in a position to win the game every time I'm out there."
Major League Baseball's June free-agent draft is scheduled to begin June 6, the same day that St. Joseph Regional hopes to play in the state championship game. Rob Kaminsky, the kid honored to be in the same sentence with Sandy Koufax, doesn't want to get too far ahead of himself. There are lots of games to play before then, lots of good teams that will want to knock them off. College life, a baseball future of vast promise, is still ahead of him. The plan is for Robert Kaminsky to start the championship game, using his left arm.
"It's all about the team," Robert Kaminsky says. "I'd rather give up five runs and win than give up two runs and lose the way we did last year."
Thano Chaltas, and his son, B.J. Chaltas, clad in N.Y. Jets jerseys, were gliding along on a double-decker train to Giants Stadium Sunday morning instead of sitting in traffic near the George Washington Bridge.
Chaltas' wife, Alison, though not a major football fan, prefers the New England Patriots.
"This is so much easier and less stressful than driving," said Thano Chaltas, a 44-year-old Stamford resident. "It takes the mystery out of whether it is going to take an hour or an hour-and-a-half to get out of there after the game."
The Chaltas family was among the 200 Jets and Patriots fans on the New Haven line who rode the service Sunday morning to watch the Jets beat the Patriots 16-9.
Altogether, 328 fans boarding from New Haven to Rye, N.Y., bought passes for the three trains to the Meadowlands Sport Complex in New Jersey, a new service offered during the 2009 season for all Jets and Giants home games with a 1 p.m. start.
Trains will depart at 8:05 a.m., 9:05 a.m. and 9:50 a.m., stopping in Bridgeport, Fairfield, Westport, South Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich. Tickets cost the same as an off-peak, round-trip ticket to Grand Central Station, plus the $7.75 round-trip fare from Pennsylvania Station to the Meadowlands.
In Larchmont, N.Y., Wayne Chrebet, a former Jets wide receiver from 1995 to 2005, boarded the train and signed autographs on visors, jerseys and other memorabilia. Chrebet predicted the Jets could win the division if they played to their potential.
"I love this," Chrebet said. "I think the train service works out great for a lot of fans."
Jay Sistrunk, a Bridgeport resident and Patriots fan, marveled at the wide seats and relatively pristine multi-level railroad cars, and said the service would make attending games more pleasurable.
"We don't have anything like this on the New Haven line," Sistrunk, 28, said. "The only thing that's missing is food and waitresses in Tom Brady jerseys."
Jets fans shouted the "J-E-T-S" chant during the trip to the sports complex, which takes about 212 hours from New Haven.
Ben Brandt, 23, and Matt Tierney, Patriots fans from West Haven, attempted to rile nearby Jets fans by chanting "P-A-T-S."
"If we had to drive from West Haven we probably would have had to wake up at 7 a.m.," Tierney said. "It's pretty great to be able to do this now and not have the stress of getting in and out."
Justin Matteo, 34, of Pelham, N.Y., and his buddy Al Loureiro, 30, of New Rochelle, N.Y., bantered with neighboring passengers Kristina Bostley, 22, and Charnette Porter, 24, both from Trumbull. "I like this because you get to meet other passengers and become friends," Loureiro said. "It's like tailgating on wheels."
Matteo, a die-hard Jets fan who used to coach high school football, said it was the first Jets game he had attended since 2001.
"The Jets are looking great," Matteo said. "The defense was hitting people like they haven't for the past 10 to 12 years last week."
Offering the service involves the cooperation of the Connecticut Department of Transportation, Metro-North Railroad, New Jersey Transit and Long Island Railroad.
The transit agencies plan to continue the service as a three- to four-season trial, which could be continued or expanded if it becomes popular, said Howard Permut, president of Metro-North Railroad.
To enable New Jersey Transit rail cars to run on the New Haven line required $35,000 to install magnets on parts of the track where gaps exist in the overhead wires.
In June, New Jersey Transit completed a $200 million rail spur into the Meadowlands, including a new station and 21 1/2 miles of track.
"This is two things: providing a new service for fans from Connecticut and Westchester (N.Y.) and also an example of cooperation between different transit agencies to carry passengers over longer distances," Permut said. "We fully intend to carry on the pilot though we have to watch our money very carefully."
Kate and Tammer Azzouz of Stamford said they would do more traveling by rail if it was quicker and if the prices could be kept down.
"I think if it could be kept less expensive and competitive with airlines like Jet Blue it would work well," Kate Azzouz said.
BEIJING — Xie Zhenqing spent 12 years transforming a collection of ramshackle houses into Red Star, a privately run, low-cost school for 1,400 children of migrants from poor rural areas. It took just a few hours this month for a government-dispatched demolition crew to turn the place into a jagged pile of bricks.
Red Star is one of 30 technically illegal private schools in Beijing that have been torn down or closed in recent weeks in an official campaign billed as a war against unsafe and unhygienic school buildings. In all, more than 30,000 students have lost their classrooms this summer. Advocates for the migrants warn that many of the capital’s 130 other unlicensed schools could be next.
Some observers see other motives behind the campaign, including the municipal government’s unceasing pursuit of land sales to fill its coffers. The site where Red Star once stood is already surrounded by a crop of expensive high-rise apartment towers and a new subway station.
But school administrators, parents and many Beijingers view the bulldozing as nothing more than a roughshod exercise in population control. According to the Beijing Bureau of Statistics, more than one-third of the capital’s 19.6 million residents are migrants from China’s rural hinterland, a figure that has grown by about 6 million just since 2000.
Numbers like these worry the governing Communist Party, which has a particular aversion to the specter of urban slums and their potential as cauldrons for social instability.
Though the quality of education they offer may be questionable, private schools like Red Star are often the only option for the children of low-skilled migrant laborers, who for the most part are ineligible for the free public education available to legal Beijing residents. Known derisively as “waidi ren,” or outsiders, the migrants are the cut-rate muscle that makes it eminently affordable for better-off Chinese to dine out, hire full-time nannies and ride new subway lines in places like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
“The middle class hates to see that kind of poverty, but they can’t live without their cheap labor,” said Kam Wing Chan, a professor at the University of Washington who studies China’s rural-migrant policies.
To manage the huge population flows — and its own fears — the government relies on an internal passport and registration system dating from the Mao years that ties access to education, health care and pensions to the birthplace of a person’s parent. The hukou system, as it is called, has created a two-tiered population in many Chinese cities: those with legal residency and those without.
Though urbanization is a central tenet of the party’s latest five-year economic plan for the country, Mr. Chan says, the 250 million rural migrants who are expected to move to cities in the next 15 years could become a source of social unrest unless the hukou system is reformed. “Having that many second-class citizens in Chinese cities is dangerous,” he said.
Obtaining an urban residence permit, called a hukou, is possible only for those with deep pockets or top-notch connections, so struggling migrants live in a gray zone of pay-as-you-go medical care, dingy rented rooms and unregistered schools where the education is middling at best. Byzantine property ownership and bank-loan rules mean that most rural hukou holders are frozen out of the housing market even if they can afford a down payment on an apartment.
The challenges become even more heart-rending after middle school, when the children of migrants must either return to their parents’ hometown for high school — and thus live separated from their parents — or drop out. “It’s a cruel, unfair system that stops people from pursuing their dreams,” said Song Yingquan, a researcher at the Rural Education Action Project, an advocacy group.
Policy makers have been discussing hukou reform for two decades, but beyond limited experiments in Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu and a smattering of second-tier cities, the National People’s Congress, China’s lawmaking body, has declined to act.
Resistance comes from factory owners who want migrant laborers to remain insecure and cheap to exploit, and from urban elites who fear an even greater deluge of migrants from the countryside if it becomes easier to live in the city. But the most formidable opposition may be that of local governments, which worry about paying for the health care, education and other benefits that migrants and their children would qualify for as legal residents.

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