Texas Rangers slugger Joey Gallo earned a place in baseball's history books with a major league first on Wednesday.

Gallo hit a two-run shot into the Allegheny River in the third inning of the Rangers' 9-6 win at the Pittsburgh Pirates, becoming the first player in major league history to hit 100 home runs before reaching 100 singles (he has 93).

The blast, estimated at 443 feet, was Gallo's 100th career home run in his 377th game, making him the fastest player to 100 homers in American League history.

"Yeah, that's pretty crazy," Gallo said. "Like, if you would have told me that I would do that three years ago, I would think you were crazy. Pretty cool accomplishment, honestly. Be in the history books forever, so that's pretty special."

In setting the American League record, Gallo surpassed Mark McGwire, who hit his 100th homer in his 393rd game with the Oakland Athletics. Ryan Howard owns the major league record, recording his 100th in his 325th game with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Before Gallo hit his 100th, the player with the fewest singles in reaching that milestone was journeyman first baseman Russell Branyan, who had 172 singles when he hit his 100th home in 2004 while with the Milwaukee Brewers.

Gallo, 25, made his MLB debut in 2015 with the Rangers. Wednesday's blast was his 12th homer this season.

The Chicago Cubs have recalled Addison Russell, who will start at second base and bat eighth Wednesday night against the Miami Marlins. It will be his first game since Sept. 19.

Russell, 25, was suspended 40 games in September for violating the league's domestic abuse policy after an investigation into allegations of emotional, verbal and physical abuse made by his ex-wife, Melisa Reidy.

In 130 games last season, Russell hit .250 with 51 runs scored and 38 RBIs. Russell played 12 games at Triple-A Iowa before the recall, batting .222 with three home runs and 13 RBIs.

The Cubs said they have been monitoring Russell's mandated counseling and are calling his return to the Cubs a "conditional second chance."

The move comes as Ben Zobrist takes an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons.

The Cubs also placed reliever Pedro Strop on the injured list with a Grade 2 left hamstring strain and activated left-handed reliever Mike Montgomery.

World and British Open titles crown career of the greatest British female player of he modern era
By ALAN THATCHER and SEAN REUTHE

England’s former world champion Laura Massaro has announced that she will retire from professional squash at the end of the 2018-19 season.

Preston-based Massaro, 35, is the most successful female English player of the modern era and, in 2014, became the first Englishwoman in 15 years to lift the PSA World Championship title.

She also won the historic British Open twice, ending a 22-year wait for a female English player in 2013, while she captured her second British Open crown in 2017, becoming the first Englishwoman since 1951 to win squash’s longest-running tournament on two occasions.

The only Englishwoman to win both the World Championship and British Open titles – trophies which she held at the same time – Massaro also topped the PSA Women’s World Rankings for four months in 2016, making her one of just three female English players to hold the No.1 ranking.

A tough, uncompromising player, Massaro has always made life difficult for her opponents. Playing a brand of hard, high-paced, pressure squash, she has thrived on the adrenalin of big-match occasions where her discipline and dedication have shone through. 

Massaro has been ever-present in the world’s top 10 since May 2008 and, since turning professional in 2000, has won 23 PSA Tour titles from 43 finals, with her most recent trophy win coming at the Monte Carlo Classic last December, where she beat World No.9 Tesni Evans in the final.

Massaro has played 543 matches on the PSA Tour, winning 371 of them, and her final two PSA tournaments will be the Manchester Open – which begins tomorrow – and the Allam British Open as she brings the curtain down on a glittering career.

Away from the PSA Tour, Massaro also has three Commonwealth Games silver medals and four British Nationals titles to her name, while she led England to the Women’s World Team Championships crown in 2014 after four runner-up finishes at the tournament.

“I’ve been really lucky to have a healthy body, a really long career, and it’s probably been more that I’ve ever expected in terms of titles and my achievements in the game,” Massaro said.

“There’s no point in trying to chase the world’s best when my best level of squash is probably behind me, and it’s going to be very hard to get that back. I’ve always gone after being the best in the world and winning titles. But I think it’s time to hang up the racket, give a little bit back now and watch these amazing youngsters do their thing on court.

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“I’m hugely proud of what I achieved, I always wanted to be successful, I wanted to hang up my racket feeling that I couldn’t have achieved any more in the game than I have, whether it was titles or the level of play.

“That’s down to everyone that’s helped me in my career. There are too many people to mention, but DP [David Pearson] and Danny [husband Massaro] go without saying. I owe my level of squash to them, along with all the other coaches who have helped me on my way.

“They, along with the physios, fasciotherapists, Caroline, Jade, Vicky and Sylvan, have helped my movement be so efficient and given me my longevity, along with Mark Campbell, who has given me the strength and fitness to maintain my level. Without all of them, my career wouldn’t have been what it has been.

“I also want to say thank you to my family and friends who have been there supporting me in the ups and downs of my career since I was a young junior player.”

PSA Chief Executive Alex Gough said: “Laura has always been a consummate professional. Her success on the tour has been testament to her hard-work and unwavering mental strength.

“Laura has been an incredible role model for aspiring squash players, and everyone at the PSA wishes her well for the future.”

Massaro will appear as the No.5 and No.8 seed at this month’s Manchester Open and British Open, respectively.

The Manchester Open takes place between May 9-13 at the National Squash Centre, while the British Open will be held between May 20-26 at the University of Hull’s new sports complex.

Laura Massaro Biography:

Date of birth: 2nd November 1983 (age 35)
Birthplace: Great Yarmouth, UK
Resides: Preston, Lancashire, UK
Plays: Right-handed
Coaches: David Pearson (DP) and Danny Massaro (husband)

Laura Massaro Achievements:

World Champion – 2014 Penang, Malaysia (first Englishwoman to win the title for 15 years)
World No.1 – January 2016
World Series Finals Champion – 2016 & 2017 Dubai
British Open Champion – 2013 & 2017 Hull (2013 became the first English woman to win the title in 22 years, in 2017 became the first Englishwoman since 1951 to win the title twice)
US Open Champion – 2011, 2015
Commonwealth Games Silver Medallist – 2010 Doubles, 2014 Singles & Doubles
British National Champion – 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017
23 Professional Tour Titles

FOOTNOTE: What’s your favourite Laura Massaro match? Readers are invited to comment below. 
 

Pictures courtesy of PSA, England Squash and Patrick Lauson

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Australian driver James McFadden will fill in for Kasey Kahne in the Wicked Energy Gum No. 9 car for the next several races.

McFadden will debut in the No. 9 machine at the World of Outlaws Patriot Nationals in Charlotte on May 24-25.

Kahne, who is recovering from an injury sustained in a crash at Williams Grove Speedway earlier this season, will continue to be hands-on with the car and travel with the team.

An exact return date for Kahne to climb back behind the wheel will be announced at a later date.

Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino said he could leave the club and "go home" if they manage to win the Champions League this season.

Spurs could reach their first ever Champions League final if they overturn a 1-0 deficit against Ajax in the semifinal second-leg on Wednesday.

Pochettino, who has guided Spurs to three consecutive top three Premier League finishes, hinted that he is prepared to walk away from the club if he manages to secure European success.

"Winning the Champions League? It would be fantastic, no? Close the five-year chapter and go home," he told a news conference.

"To win the Champions League with Tottenham, in this circumstance, in this season, maybe I need to think a little bit to do something different in the future, for sure. Because to repeat this miracle, you know."

Pochettino had been heavily linked with the Manchester United job before Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was appointed manager on a permanent basis in March.

Philippe Coutinho is "not a Barcelona player" and will be the first casualty of their shambolic Champions League exit to Liverpool, while the board are set to meet to decide coach Ernesto Valverde's fate, sources have told ESPN FC.

- Ogden: Liverpool comeback tops any night Anfield's ever seen
- Hunter: Barca were the 'dopes' in shock loss at Liverpool
- Liverpool ratings: Origi, Fabinho top list of heroes vs. Barca
- Barcelona ratings: Alba 3/10 as his mistakes start collapse

Sources also confirmed that a number of the coaching staff are disappointed with Coutinho's performances this season. The Brazilian is the club's record signing at €160 million but his displays against his former side across both legs of the semifinal strengthened the idea that his time at Camp Nou is up.

"Coutinho is not a Barcelona player, that's been made clear," a club source told ESPN FC.

The ex-Liverpool playmaker started the season well but his form and confidence have fallen off a cliff since an injury in October. He's been unable to re-find his best form since and the source bemoaned that "he has added nothing. He will leave in the summer."

ESPN FC first revealed in March that Barcelona were ready to listen to offers north of €105m for Coutinho and his performances against Liverpool have done nothing to change their plans. He was taken off before the hour mark in both matches, jeered by Barca fans last week and Liverpool supporters on Tuesday. The Catalan club made a huge effort to sign him but there's now an acknowledgment that things have not worked out.

While the reaction in the heat of the moment has seen Coutinho singled out inside the club, the board, headed by president Josep Maria Bartomeu, will try to deal with the fallout from the Liverpool loss in the coming days in a more cool-headed manner.

Diario Sport called the 4-0 defeat the "biggest embarrassment" in the club's history and Bartomeu says there will be time to reflect on how they recover from a second successive European humiliation. They also surrendered a three-goal lead against Roma last year.

"There will be time for a deep reflection and to give explanations," he said after the game. "There's a Copa del Rey final to play in three weeks [against Valencia on May 25].

"Last year, in Rome, the same thing happened and it's not easy to explain. We will try to do so internally. We have to pick ourselves up and apologise to all the Barcelona supporters."

The board will talk in the coming days and Valverde's future will be up for debate. The former Athletic Bilbao boss has won back-to-back league titles but those who are most critical of him at the club point to the fact this is the second time in a year that Barcelona have chucked away a huge advantage.

However, as suggested by Bartomeu, the board do not want to rush into making a decision. But there will be talks to see if they can respond to a question which they still don't have an obvious answer: who could replace Valverde?

There are not many options available who would be capable of leading the required regeneration. Barcelona's starting XI at Anfield included seven players aged 30 or over.

"We have to see how Valverde deals with this tricky situation," a club source said on Wednesday. "The fans are really upset and disappointed with what happened and on Sunday there's a league game against Getafe. It will be interesting to see how the supporters react."

To begin properly, we have to start at the end.

In getting to the heart of Barcelona's inability -- again -- to protect a three-goal lead, we have to start with Liverpool's fourth. Bear with me.

Long ago, Liverpool had a boot room at their training ground. It was the place, literally, where the squad's football boots were stored. But because it was informal, warm, more communal than the manager's office, the Reds' coaching staff used to meet there.

Legend has it that it was the kingdom of wisdom. Men like Bill Shankly, Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran, Roy Evans and Bob Paisley used to share a cuppa, perhaps a crafty smoke, but above all they shared knowledge. They built a footballing empire on common sense and wit. They worked out how to keep their robust, daring, all-conquering team sharp, motivated and one step ahead of the competition.

- Ogden: Liverpool comeback tops any night Anfield's ever seen
- Liverpool ratings: Origi, Fabinho top list of heroes vs. Barca
- Barcelona ratings: Alba 3/10 as his mistakes start collapse
- Social reaction: LeBron, Mourinho stunned by comeback

A phrase grew out of that boot-room culture, one that Paisley used to repeat to his footballers, who won him six league titles, five UEFA trophies among which were the jewels: three European Cups. "Find the dope," he told his men. "Find the dope!"

What that meant was that his Liverpool needed to be the team that never switched off. Like sharks, they hunted down the moment when a rival, even just one of them, switched off. Paisley told them that opponents, facing Liverpool's withering pace and passing, relentless, hungry and ambitious football, would tire -- mentally before physically. He told them that they would have a "dopey" moment -- be it just before half-time, when the referee stopped play or when the ball went out of play -- and that his Liverpool were required to pounce on that with ruthless, unerring predatorial lust.

Those words were originally uttered by Paisley decades before Trent Alexander-Arnold was born, but now you see where I'm going. Now you see why, in analysing Barcelona's remarkable collapse, their seemingly lemming-like procession over another cliff a year after Rome, it's important to start with the end.

The goal that put Liverpool in the Champions League final in Madrid, the goal that smashed Blaugrana dreams, was the goal that showed that Barca were the dopes.

Ernesto Valverde's side, like in the first leg, were getting the runaround. Liverpool's high press, wave after wave of red, was not only working, it was beginning to gnaw away at Barcelona's psyche. You could see the thought bubbles over Barca heads: "Oh, no! Not again!" Really, you could. Written in capital letters and with exclamation marks.

Valverde didn't pick the right XI. His contention that it would be "absurd" not to try to dominate possession was betrayed by his own unwillingness to risk Arthur.

The Brazilian has the one-touch/two-touch Xavi-esque skills to keep the ball moving, to turn the tide of pressure, to offer passing solutions. He did it at Camp Nou when Manchester United, briefly, threatened to do exactly this to Barcelona. He's small, inexperienced, not flawless -- but football brave. He represents the ethos this squad had, not too long ago, but is now patching up like a bicycle tire where the leaks have band-aids over them.

But, back to the dopes.

The Georginio Wijnaldum goals were coming; Liverpool were sending smoke signals, homing pigeons with written messages tied to their legs, spirit mediums were trying to get through to the Barcelona bench. But none of it was to any avail. They wouldn't listen. The Dutchman's up-and-at-'em style ruffled the Spanish champions so badly that he scored twice more quickly than it takes to brew a cup of tea.

And then the stage of the game arrived when either side could still qualify; the stage of the match when, even at 3-0 down, Barcelona still, if they were street smart, carried a huge advantage. One of their goals, thanks to playing away from home, would buy two of Liverpool's. If Valverde's mob had made it 3-1, then Liverpool needed two more -- more than they eventually scored even when they were flying.

But instead of this team boxing clever, instead of Barca understanding that however rattled and shaken they felt the advantage was not fully down the drain, they flunked the examination.

Just look at when Alexander-Arnold is about to relinquish the corner, he spots that Barcelona are the dopes and that Origi is wide awake. He takes such a brilliant centre that it's reminiscent of Lionel Messi. I hope they exchanged shirts at the end. It was witty, sharp -- streetwise. Paisley, in that blessed instant, would have been grinning down from the heavens.

But what of Barcelona? The reason I put so much emphasis on this moment isn't at all because it's the instant in which the lights went out, the dream faded and everyone was told to go home to misery and what Valverde called "penitence." No, the reason for the emphasis is that this is apparently the era of determination, of focus, of intensity at Camp Nou.

Nobody pretended that this is an era equal to the peak of Messi, Dani Alves, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, David Villa, Carles Puyol, Sergio Busquets and Eric Abidal. Nor did anyone, least of all Valverde, pretend that Barcelona had a coach for all the ages like Pep Guardiola is, was and will always be.

However, this is an epoch when Valverde has set up his team, all season, to work to cover Busquets' lack of running power. This is the Barca era when blue-collar concepts like a twin organising midfielder system -- doble pivote, in Spanish football language -- was not only an antidote to ageing and to lower grade possession play, it was specifically implemented to protect Barcelona against the maulings, like this one, that had been suffered in the past few seasons against Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and Roma.

Above all -- and this casts in a terrible light on how Barcelona were thinking and behaving when that fourth goal went in -- Valverde's Barca were, they told us, united in a desire to follow flag-bearing Messi to glory, possibly to Treble glory. Lesser members of the squad were "getting gritty," working harder, inspired by the genius of the Argentine No. 10. All season long, Barcelona have been acting 180-degree opposite to the 79th minute when they went to sleep at Anfield.

All those themes of focus, determination, intensity and aggression have been true enough to arrange an eighth title in 10 years, to put Barcelona into what now looks like a slightly precarious Copa del Rey final. They also put Valverde's Blaugrana within one more goal of the Champions League final, whether in defeat at Anfield or the error of Ousmane Dembele, who must now be feeling a hot, red burn of humiliation at his feeble miss to extend the lead to 4-0 at Camp Nou last week.

The communal attitude, the "all for one" ethic, the grit, the "let's do it for Messi" level of physical commitment: those attributes that have made Barcelona dominant in Spain again this season, they'd never have allowed the Keystone Kops moment of which Alexander-Arnold and Origi took advantage. What happened? How did these hard-nosed, mission-inspired, elite professionals allow their pants to be pulled down?

When the corner was taken, Barcelona were statuesque. Nobody was alert, nobody was on the move; mild discussions about positional duties were taking place. It looked like any request for a teammate to move a few yards needed to filed in triplicate and signed off a day before. Liverpool were brutally brilliant, Barcelona were bogged down in penalty-box bureaucracy.

Through fatigue, through the haunting memories of a previous three-goal lead tossed away, they had become the dopes.

Arguably, there were notable differences here from those three humiliations in Paris, Turin and Rome. While Barcelona took a beating and deservedly exited, they competed well enough this time that Messi wasn't a shadow, that clear-cut scoring chances were created and scorned and that Alisson -- who's now a hex for the Blaugrana -- needed to produce four very good saves from Messi (twice), Philippe Coutinho and Jordi Alba.

Last week, before the first leg, I wrote in this column that: "One reason for writing so scathingly about Barcelona's weekend performance is the clash against Jurgen Klopp's red machine already felt like Superman meeting kryptonite for the first time. In case you're not familiar with the 81-year-old extraterrestrial, he went by the name Clark Kent and has made millions for DC Comics and Hollywood filmmakers. He left mortals standing, but kryptonite mysteriously weakened him -- just as Liverpool's pressing, athleticism, high-tempo passing, three-man front line and height at set pieces can potentially do to Barcelona."

Frankly, though I was accurate, it feels like I underplayed it now. Barcelona's 43-year inability to knock Liverpool out of Europe continues. Guardiola's words this week that Klopp's Liverpool are the best rivals he has faced now look nothing like Manchester City self-congratulation on being English champions-elect, but more like a loud warning -- unheeded -- for Valverde & Co.