BASEBALL
Cards trade Garcia
The trade the St. Louis Cardinals entered the winter expecting to make didn't take long to pull off, not with the Atlanta Braves collecting starting pitching. The Cardinals sent lefty Jaime Garcia to Atlanta on Thursday afternoon in exchange for several prospects, including a pitcher. The deal was first reported by ESPN.com. Garcia, 30, is entering the final year of his contract and will earn $12 million in the coming season. The Cardinals were open to trading the left-hander because of the number of starters they had in place for the coming season. Lance Lynn is set to return from missing a season due to elbow injury, and the team also intends to have Michael Wacha prepare to start and to stretch out former closer Trevor Rosenthal as a possible starter. Lynn's return alone means the rotation is set with Adam Wainwright, Carlos Martinez, rookie Alex Reyes, Mike Leake, and former All-Star Lynn.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Indiana coach resigns
Indiana coach Kevin Wilson abruptly resigned Thursday, less than a week after the Hoosiers became bowl-eligible for the second consecutive season. Athletic Director Fred Glass made the announcement during a hastily arranged news conference and cited "philosophical differences" with Wilson. There were reports that Wilson had pushed players to return from injury and Glass said the issue was looked into by a law firm hired by the university. "I understand there's been a lot of back-and-forth about former players and those sorts of things," he said. "I'll just tell you we have no outstanding claims of medical cases." Glass also said no potential NCAA violations were involved. He said he and Wilson met early Thursday and continued a discussion they'd been having "for a few weeks," with both concluding a change was needed. Wilson went 26-47 in six seasons in his first college head coaching job. His agent did not return messages left seeking comment.
TENNIS
Match fixing probed
Spanish authorities have detained 34 people, including six tennis players, involved in a tennis match-fixing network that made more than half-a-million dollars from lower-tier tournaments in Spain and Portugal. Police said Thursday that Operation Futures probed several Futures and Challenger tournaments in Iberia for the past several months and found evidence that results were rigged. The tennis players were not identified, but authorities said they were ranked between 800 and 1,200 in the world. Their Spanish rankings ranged between 30 and 300. Police said they found evidence of match-fixing attempts in 17 men's tournaments in five cities, including Madrid, Seville and Porto. Authorities said the two alleged leaders of the network were among those detained across 12 Spanish cities. The leaders were based in Seville and La Coruna. All those detained were Spaniards and are expected to remain free pending trial. If convicted of corruption in sports, they could face prison sentences of up to four years. The investigation began after a tip given by a player to the Tennis Integrity Unit, the sport's anti-corruption body. Authorities took the case forward after noticing an unusually large number of online bets related to the suspected tournaments.
BASKETBALL
Sportsman of Year
LeBron James said he has never been driven by individual awards. So the Cavaliers' star, four-time league MVP and three-time NBA champion didn't know how to react Thursday when Sports Illustrated announced his selection as the magazine's Sportsperson of the Year for 2016. Also chosen in 2012, James joined golfer Tiger Woods as the only two-time winners of the award. "I know it's a great achievement and I've heard the history of it and how honored I should be to get it," James said after the Cavs' shootaround at Cleveland Clinic Courts. "For me, you guys know how I am about individual awards -- it doesn't hit me or anything of that magnitude. But I'm honored that they have chosen me." James returned to the Cavs in 2014 after winning two titles in four years with the Miami Heat. In June the Akron native led the Cavs to the NBA championship, rallying them from a 3-1 deficit against the Golden State Warriors to break the city's 52-year title drought.
HORSE RACING
Chrome to race Dec. 17
California Chrome is scheduled to make the next-to-last start of his career on Dec. 17 at Los Alamitos, the Orange County, Calif., track where the world's richest thoroughbred has been based for nearly three years. The track says California Chrome will run in the $100,000 Winter Challenge at 1 1/16 miles. It will serve as the 5-year-old horse's prep for the $12 million Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 28 at Gulfstream Park in Florida. California Chrome has never raced at his home track. The World Cup is set to be California Chrome's last career race before he retires to stud in Kentucky. Trained by Art Sherman, California Chrome has won 15 of 25 career races and earned a record $14,452,650. He won Horse of the Year honors in 2014 and is a contender again this year.
SOCCER
Abuse claims grow
At least 350 people have come forward to report abuse at the hands of youth soccer coaches in Britain during the past two weeks, the police said Thursday, deepening a child sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed English soccer. The scandal emerged last month after at least six former professional players publicly said that they had been molested as boys in youth programs. The head of the English soccer players' union last week said that at least 20 more former players had come forward, many of them privately. The National Police Chiefs' Council on Thursday said that police forces had received a "significant" number of calls since those first public revelations, and a children's charity for victims of abuse said that a new telephone help line it had set up had received 860 calls in its first week, 60 of which were referred to the police or to social services. The 350 figure cited by the National Police Chiefs' Council is based on existing investigations as well as the referrals from the help line, officials said. At that size, the scale of the accusations may be even greater than those involving the British television celebrity Jimmy Savile, who, after his death, was found to have sexually abused 72 victims, including children. Referrals made to the police through calls to the soccer charity help line are more than three times as many as those made in the Savile case, according to the charity, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Peter Wanless, the charity's chief executive, said the number of soccer players speaking out had caught the entire nation's attention. "We have had a staggering surge in calls to our football hotline, which reveals the worrying extent of abuse that had been going on within the sport," he said in a statement.
Sports on 12/02/2016