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Craig Albernaz still has bruising underneath his right eye. He has a welt sprawled across his cheek beneath that. The first-year Baltimore Orioles manager is recovering from a broken jaw and at least seven facial fractures after absorbing a line-drive foul ball on Monday.

Albernaz revealed Tuesday that he doesn’t need surgery.

“I just have to eat baby food for six weeks,” he said.

Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt, Albernaz’s former boss and longtime friend, heard that and acted accordingly, making over the the visiting manager's office at Progressive Field ahead of Thursday’s series opener between the Orioles and Guardians.

“He called it a gift?” Albernaz said inquisitively pregame, as captured on video by News 5 Cleveland’s Mason Horodyski.

After a pause and a cartoonish facial expression, the 43-year-old skipper continued: “That’s ironic that he said ‘a gift.’ Oh, if you guys [haven’t] seen it, I would go into my office.

“When I showed up, everything was kid-sized. So my desk was smaller, my chair smaller, the other desk where people sit [is] small. And my bathroom is electric right now. It’s a ‘Spider-Man’ shower curtain, ‘Spider-Man’ shower mat and then ‘Bluey’ and kids stuff everywhere. It’s awesome.”

For those not familiar, “Bluey” is a popular animated television series that follows a family of dogs. Albernaz has three young children, including a toddler daughter, Gigi.

“You’re a fan of ‘Bluey,’ right?” a reporter asked Albernaz.

“Are you not a fan of “Bluey”? Albernaz said, deadpan. “I question anyone, their life experiences and also who they are as a person if they don’t like ‘Bluey.’

“Yes, ‘Bluey’ is the greatest show of all time.”

Albernaz and Vogt go way back. In 2025, Albernaz was Vogt’s associate manager in Cleveland. In 2024, Albernaz was Vogt’s bench coach. The Guardians won the AL Central both seasons.

Long before that, from 2007-12, Albernaz and Vogt were minor-league catchers in the Tampa Bay Rays’ system. Their relationship is colored with a good bit of fun, including the kind that’s poked at each other.

Albernaz is already scheming how he’s going to get Vogt back. He proposed that the visiting clubhouse manager pack up everything in the makeshift Cleveland office and send it to Baltimore.

Vogt will get the shipping receipt, a mischievous Albernaz plotted.

“He’s two-time [American League] Manager of the Year, he can get off his wallet one time,” Albernaz joked.

It took some wonky tiebreakers, but Duke football won its first outright ACC championship since 1962 last season. The Blue Devils rewarded the man that led them there with an extension on Thursday.

The school announced that it’s extended head coach Manny Diaz through the 2032 season.

This story is being updated.

Desmond Bane was keeping the Magic alive Wednesday night in a play-in tournament matchup deciding the Eastern Conference’s No. 7 seed. Philadelphia 76ers star Tyrese Maxey broke his spell.

Bane, who scored a valiant 34 points and accounted for four of Orlando’s seven 3s, fueled a comeback that nearly erased an 11-point Sixers lead.

Before Bane could complete the turnaround, Maxey waved his wand in the fourth quarter.

Poof.

The two-time All-Star guard pocketed nine of Philadelphia’s next 11 points, including seven in a row. Maxey finished with 31 points and six assists, and veteran center Andre Drummond sunk a 3-pointer that put an exclamation point on a 109-97 victory.

With the win, the Sixers now have the No. 7 seed and a date with the rival Boston Celtics, the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed, in the first round of the playoffs. The Magic, meanwhile, are in jeopardy of missing out on the main bracket. Orlando’s season will be on the line Friday night, when it will welcome in a Charlotte Hornets squad buzzing after it opened the play-in tournament with an overtime win over the Miami Heat on Tuesday.

The Sixers won two of the their three regular-season games against the Magic, although, before Wednesday, the teams hadn’t met since Jan. 9.

Both teams haven’t been at full strength most of this season. Wednesday marked just the 25th time Orlando’s top-two scorers, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, shared the court. Wagner, though, remained on the increasingly lenient minutes restriction he’s managed since returning from a midseason high ankle sprain.

Likewise, Philadelphia has had its three max players — Joel Embiid, Paul George and Maxey — on the floor together for just 21 games in 2025-26. The Sixers were notably missing Embiid on Wednesday, as the one-time league MVP is still recovering from an emergency appendectomy.

The Sixers were in the driver’s seat for the majority of the first half Wednesday. They made seven triples over the opening two quarters, and three of them came from wing Kelly Oubre Jr. in the first frame. His third 3-pointer beat the shot and game clock to give Philadelphia a 28-24 advantage heading into the second quarter.

Oubre and Tyrese Maxey starred for Nick Nurse’s squad early, but others eventually stepped up. Paul George paired a mid-range jumper with a 3-pointer, and Quentin Grimes delivered an and-1, as the Sixers kept their foot on the gas.

Despite struggling from beyond the arc — the Magic converted just 3-of-11 triples in the first half — and being held back by untimely turnovers, Orlando hung around. Jamahl Mosley’s crew was spearheaded by Bane and Banchero. Along the way, the Magic did most of their work in the paint and at the free-throw line. In fact, eight of Bane’s 19 first-half points came from charity stripe.

Banchero swung an extra pass to Jalen Suggs to set up a go-ahead 3 late in the second quarter. The Sixers, however, closed the first half up 59-55, courtesy of a 9-2 run that saw VJ Edgecombe spin through contact and score a layup, plus Drummond net his 33rd 3-pointer of the season.

In the third quarter’s infancy, Philadelphia strung together an 8-0 run to pull ahead 67-60. Oubre capped that surge with another 3.

Later, the Sixers stretched their lead to 11. Defense helped them establish that cushion. Adem Bona got the Xfinity Mobile Arena crowd going with a pair of blocks, the first of which denied Orlando’s Wendell Carter Jr. Then George poked the ball free from Banchero, setting the stage for a Edgecombe layup in transition.

Bane’s Herculean effort restored the drama. A self-made 6-0 run from Orlando’s big offseason acquisition pulled the Magic within three in the third quarter.

Then a Bane triple in the fourth made it a two-point game.

That’s when Maxey hit the accelerator. In a blink, the Sixers were in control again. They held on down the stretch and returned to the playoffs after missing out last season.

The Magic would have had home-court advantage Wednesday had they defeated the Celtics in their regular-season finale. Boston was resting its core, but Orlando failed to capitalize, instead watching its five-game win streak come to an end at the hands of Luka Garza, Baylor Scheierman and Ron Harper Jr.

Because of that loss, and Philadelphia topping the Milwaukee Bucks in game No. 82, the Sixers hosted Wednesday’s play-in game.

Whoever wins Friday’s play-in game between Orlando and Charlotte will claim the No. 8 seed and take on the top-seeded Detroit Pistons in the opening round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.

The seven-game suspension Los Angeles Angels outfielder and designated hitter Jorge Soler was appealing in the wake of his April 7 fight with Atlanta Braves pitcher Reynaldo López has been reduced to four games, according tomultiplereports Wednesday.

Soler will reportedly start serving that suspension Wednesday night, when the Angels will play the third game of their four-game road series against the New York Yankees.

Soler piled up three home runs and eight RBI over six games while appealing his initial suspension.

A day after the fracas in Anaheim, where benches and bullpens cleared to break things up, an appealing López reportedly reached an agreement with MLB to reduce his initial seven-game suspension to five games.

Both players were hit with disclosed fines.

This story is being updated.

Mike Trout’s sustained excellence has often been hidden behind the mediocrity of the team he’s starred for over the past decade and a half. But there are times when he’s afforded the spotlight his talent deserves. A trip to New York to play the Yankees this week paved the way for more of those opportunities, and Trout has made the most of them, reminding the world of his Hall of Fame trajectory.

In the top of the first inning Tuesday, the three-time AL MVP and 11-time All-Star hit his third home run in two days, and his fifth of the young season. The 34-year-old took a 94-mph four-seam fastball from Ryan Weathers on a 432-foot ride well over the center-field wall in Yankee Stadium.

He accounted for the first of three straight Angels homers that jumpstarted their 7-1 victory.

Trout has now taken part in a back-to-back-to-back home-run sequence six times in his 16-season career, according to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, who cited Elias Sports and noted that Trout is tied with Adrián Beltré and J.D. Drew for the most such instances by a player during at least the expansion era (1961).

Trout’s power transferred to outfielder Jo Adell, who launched a 445-foot blast on Weathers’ next pitch, and then to designated hitter Jorge Soler, who lifted a 399-foot long ball in the subsequent at-bat.

All three taters tattooed Weathers’ four-seam fastball.

Weathers remained in the game and actually went five innings, piling up 10 strikeouts along the way. That didn’t necessarily soften the blow of the five total runs he allowed, though. Oswald Peraza also homered off him in the top of the fourth.

While Tuesday’s contest was lopsided, the Angels (9-9) and Yankees (9-8) started the week off with a bang. Monday’s series opener doubled as the second game since 1900 to feature MLB’s top-four active home-run leaders. The other arrived in 1956, when Gil Hodges and Duke Snider of the then-Brooklyn Dodgers faced off against Stan Musial and Hank Sauer of the St. Louis Cardinals on June 12 of that year.

The Dodgers won that game in St. Louis 6-4, with Snider fittingly hit a two-run dinger in the top of the first inning.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the game’s current leaders in that department — Trout, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Paul Goldschmidt — shared the diamond.

Trout and Judge put on a show, each homering twice. Yankees outfield Trent Grisham deposited a pair of big flies as well, including one that tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, setting the stage for a walk-off, 11-10 win soon after.

On Tuesday, Trout headlined the power-charged series.

A Division I Committee on Infractions hearing panel determined that Iowa will have to vacate four wins from its 10-win 2023 season, the NCAA announced Tuesday. The penalty stems from the Cade McNamara tampering case, for which Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz and assistant coach Jon Budmayr already served self-imposed one-game suspensions at the beginning of the 2024 season.

While Ferentz previously took ownership of the misstep, and Iowa agreed on the violations in the case — the program contacted McNamara and his father in 2022, while McNamara was at Michigan and before he entered the transfer portal — the tampering case was ultimately resolved through an infractions hearing because Iowa didn't agree with the vacation of records penalty.

In its release Tuesday, the NCAA outlined the full list of prescribed penalties as such:

• One year of probation

• A fine of $25,000 (self-imposed by the school)

• A two-week ban on all football recruiting communication during the 2026 calendar year (self-imposed by the school)

• A 24-day reduction in recruiting person days, including two weeks during which Ferentz was prohibited from off-campus recruiting activity in 2025, as well as four days during which Budmayr was prohibited from recruiting during the 2025 spring evaluation period (self-imposed by the school)

• A vacation of all records in which the student-athlete competed while ineligible

• A one-game suspension for Ferentz and Budmayr during the 2024 football season (self-imposed by the school)

Matthew Holst via Getty Images

Throughout November 2022, when McNamara was backing up J.J. McCarthy at Michigan, Budmayr had 13 phone calls with McNamara and/or his father, in addition to sending two text messages, per the NCAA.

Budmayr, then an offensive analyst and now entering his third season as Iowa’s wide receivers coach, set up a phone call between McNamara and Ferentz, who, according to the NCAA’s findings, assured McNamara he’d have a home at Iowa.

Near the end of the month, McNamara put his name in the transfer portal. A few days after that, he committed to Iowa.

When a student-athlete transfers to a school that tampered, that student-athlete becomes ineligible until they’re reinstated, per current NCAA rules. In this case, according to the NCAA’s findings, McNamara participated in the 2023 season before being reinstated.

McNamara started the first five games before suffering a season-ending ACL tear against Michigan State. The Hawkeyes went 4-1 along the way, hence the vacation of four of their wins that season.

Deacon Hill replaced McNamara as Iowa’s QB1, and defense and special teams carried the program to its eighth 10-plus-win season in Ferentz’s soon-to-be 28-season tenure.

But, due to Tuesday’s decision, Ferentz technically now has only seven of those campaigns to his name.

Ferentz was dismayed by the ruling.

"I am disappointed by the NCAA's decision today," Ferentz said in a statement, via ESPN. "Throughout the process, our program has been open and honest about my mistake — contacting a potential player in the hours before it was permissible by NCAA rules.

"I felt it was important to make amends for the issue, which is why I voluntarily served a one-game suspension to start the 2023 season. I believe today's decision by the NCAA vacating four wins in our 2023 season is overly harsh and inconsistent with the violation.

"As I tell our team and staff, it is how you respond and move forward that defines you. Our focus is on the 2026 season and that is how we are moving forward."

Ferentz has the support of his higher-ups, as both university president Barb Wilson and athletic director Beth Goetz communicated similar feelings in a joint statement.

"We are very disappointed in today's ruling by the Committee on Infractions," the statement said, per ESPN. "Throughout this nearly two-and-a-half-year process, the University has fully cooperated with the NCAA enforcement staff. More importantly, when the facts revealed that violations had taken place, the institution and the head coach publicly accepted full responsibility and self-imposed several significant sanctions, something few others have done.

“We believe the decision of adding the penalty of the forfeiture of wins is unwarranted. The matter is now closed, and we have moved forward."