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ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Although Jered Weaver is pitching with a fraction of his early-career velocity, the veteran right-hander still gets victories with craft and guile.And he never lost his curious mastery over the Chicago White Sox.Albert Pujols hit a pair of two-run homers, Weaver pitched seven strong innings and the Los Angeles Angels completed an emphatic three-game sweep of the White Sox with an 8-1 victory Sunday.After their worst first half since 1992, the injury-plagued Halos (40-52) returned from the All-Star break by outscoring Chicago 16-1. Los Angeles also escaped sole possession of last place in the AL West, pulling even with Oakland.Our motto is just to go out there and have some fun, Weaver said. Obviously were not in the position wed like to be, but thats not going to deter from going out there and competing. A sweep against a team like this is a step in the right direction.During the Angels first series sweep since mid-May, Hector Santiago, Matt Shoemaker and Weaver (8-7) became the first consecutive Los Angeles starters to go seven innings since July 2015.With his fastball showing a bit more speed than usual after 10 days off, Weaver beat the White Sox for the eighth time in his last eight starts against them since 2011, giving up just six hits.Im still trying to get stronger, but my body is feeling a lot better, Weaver said. Its not fun going out there and having to trick people and throw pitches that you wouldnt necessarily (want to) throw in certain counts. To have a little more of a fastball and being able to locate it keeps guys off your secondary pitches a little bit more.Pujols connected in the first and fourth innings of his 53rd multi-homer game. He has 577 career homers as he pursues Mark McGwire (583) for 10th place on baseballs career list.Obviously we didnt have a great first half, but thats the way you want to start the second half, Pujols said.Five Angels drove in a run while lighting up Jacob Turner (0-1) over the first five innings. He yielded seven hits and eight runs in his debut for the White Sox, who have lost four straight.Chicago never threatened to do much against Weaver, who repeatedly tricked overeager hitters into harmless popups.You sit there and you marvel at the fact that its not going very hard, White Sox manager Robin Ventura said. Speed isnt anything to alarm you about, but he almost throws it under that, anything thats a comfortable hitting speed. He takes a little off. Big curveball. Nothing seems to be in the middle of the plate.Omar Narvaez got his first big-league hit in his first at-bat, and he scored Chicagos first run since July 9 on Adam Eatons double moments later in the third inning. The run ended a 34-inning scoreless streak for the White Sox, who have lost six of eight.We need to score runs, Ventura said. Scoring one in a series is not going to do it for us.GOT HIS NUMBERPujols improved to 4 for 4 with three homers and six RBI in his career against Turner, who hadnt pitched in the big leagues since 2014. He got promoted from Triple-A Charlotte for a spot start because Ventura decided to give an extra day of rest to All-Star Game starter Chris Sale.BIG BLASTSPujols opened the scoring with a 431-foot homer, his first since July 2. His second homer drove in Mike Trout, who snapped his longest hitless streak of the season (0 for 10) with a double off the wall moments earlier.FIRST TASTEAlong with Narvaez, White Sox right-hander Carson Fulmer also made his big-league debut, tossing two innings of one-hit relief. The 22-year-old Fulmer, the eighth overall pick in the 2015 draft, was called up from Double-A Birmingham before the series. It was impressive, Ventura said.TRAINERS ROOMWhite Sox: 3B Matt Davidson (broken foot) was transferred to the 60-day disabled list to make room for Turner on the roster.Angels: Geovany Soto was scratched before the game with discomfort in his left knee.UP NEXTWhite Sox: Sale (14-3, 3.38 ERA) goes after his sixth victory in seven starts when Chicago begins a three-game series in Seattle.Angels: Nick Tropeano (3-2, 3.12 ERA) will make his third start since returning to the rotation in early July when Los Angeles hosts Texas. Soccer Jerseys 2020 . Scott Kazmir allowed four hits in seven shutout innings, Michael Brantley hit a two-run homer in a three-run first inning and the Indians maintained their hold on an AL wild-card spot with a 4-1 win over the Houston Astros on Saturday night. Soccer Jerseys .J. -- Marshawn Lynch said Thursday it will be good to get back to football after the Seattle quiet talking running back wrapped up his final mandatory media session of Super Bowl week. https://www.cheapsoccerjerseysjustwholesale.com/ . Howard Ganz, an MLB lawyer, said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos that Rodriguezs claims do not come "remotely close" to what is needed to overturn an arbitration decision in federal court. Authentic Soccer Jerseys . "It doesnt get any better than that," Giambi said. "Im speechless." The Indians are roaring toward October. Giambi belted a two-run, pinch-hit homer with two outs in the ninth inning to give Cleveland a shocking 5-4 win over the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night, keeping the Indians up with the lead pack in the AL wild-card race. Wholesale Soccer Jerseys . After a lengthy wait, persistent rain finally forced the postponement of the Nationals game against the Miami Marlins on Saturday night. The teams, and a few thousand fans, waited nearly four hours from the 7:05 scheduled start time before an announcement was made shortly before 11 p. Mike Bottom got the call in his Omaha, Nebraska, hotel room between preliminary heats and finals on the last day of the U.S. Olympic swim trials in early July. He can tell you exactly what happened next.Bottom swung his feet from the bed onto the floor. His free hand clapped onto his head, as if it might spin off. He kept his speech controlled and his responses befitting the son of a naval officer.Yes, sir, Bottom said. No, sir. You can count on me, sir.The University of Michigan and Club Wolverine head coach hung up, turned to associate coach Josh White, and repeated the other end of the conversation: National team director Frank Busch had just named him to the staff of the 2016 Olympic mens team.Both men started crying. Gratification deferred for 36 years had finally arrived.As a 24-year-old in 1980, Bottom qualified to swim the 100-meter butterfly for an Olympic team that didnt compete because of the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games. Bottom earned two degrees in psychology, worked outside the sport for a decade, then returned to channel the energy of his diverted aspirations into other athletes.Since then, over the course of coaching stints at Auburn University, the University of Southern California (his alma mater), the University of California-Berkeley, and The Race Club, a private Florida-based training program, Bottom has helped several dozen swimmers from multiple countries qualify for the Summer Games. He is best known for molding sprint freestylers, including 50-meter Olympic gold medalists Gary Hall and Anthony Ervin and silver medalist Duje Draganja of Croatia.Thanks to those individual associations, hes been on the Olympic pool deck for various highlights, including Hall and Ervins historic first-place tie at the Sydney Games in 2000.Hall called Bottom a genius psychologist [who] applied his talent to the measurable outcome of swimming.Mike can assess a team of 25 individual personalities and know exactly what motivates each one in varying ways, Hall wrote in an email. Some need to be yelled at, some need to be coddled. No coach, that I know of, has been as effective as Mike Bottom in tailoring approaches in coaching, sports psychology and motivation.Yet Bottom had long ago made peace with the fact that he might never go to an Olympics as an official member of the U.S. delegation.Coaching assistants are chosen at the discretion of the national team director and the U.S. mens and womens head coaches, though selections are usually roughly based on each coachs success in getting athletes on the team. Like the swimmers themselves, coaches can see opportunities slip away by fractions of seconds. Bottom also said he probably didnt lobby hard enough for himself. It just wasnt his main motivation.Had I made the team in 80, I dont think this is what I have chosen to do, he said. I get to see joy in a way thats even greater than personal joy. One is looking at yourself. The other is looking outward. Its driven me to try to give that experience to as many people as I can.Bottom, a married father of three daughters, succeeded current Arizona State University and head mens Olympic coach Bob Bowman at Michigan in 2008 and now oversees both the mens and womens teams. White, an endurance guru with a PhD in human performance, has helped draw distance swimmers to Ann Arbor. Wolverines Connor Jaeger (1,500-meter freestyle) and Sean Ryan (10-kilometer open water) qualified for the Rio-bound U.S. team.At Cal, Bottom also worked with defending Olympic 100-meter ffreestyle champion Nathan Adrian, who will try to retain his title next month, and the 35-year-old Ervin, who will compete in the 50 freestyle 16 years after he tied Hall for gold.ddddddddddddBottoms Olympic journey began at one of the strangest swim meets ever held: the 1980 trials in Irvine, California, in late July, which began a few days after the actual Olympic swimming competition had concluded in Moscow.American officials wanted to make a competitive point, so they moved the dates of the trials, posted the times from Moscow atop the scoreboard during each event and kept a running medal table. In todays terminology, it was a virtual Olympics.Our coaches did an incredible job of keeping us focused on finishing the job, said Glenn Mills, who swam for the powerhouse Cincinnati Pepsi Marlins team and won the 200-meter breaststroke at the 1980 trials. Everybody was fighting to win and do world records and do what they could.Three world records were set and a number of virtual medals were won in Irvine. Afterward, the team went to Hollywood to be outfitted in official gear, and then on to the White House to meet then-President Jimmy Carter, who had imposed the boycott.The 1980 swimmers had a range of reactions to the boycott and virtual Games, but Bottom, who has three generations of Navy men in his family tree and whose father was a Korean War veteran, tried to view it through a constructive prism.This was the way I thought about it: If we didnt go, I would be giving up something of meaning for my country, Bottom said. The Vietnam War was so close. Local guys I grew up with had gone. That was na?ve, but that was my viewpoint.Years later, with Russia still occupying Afghanistan, Bottom had reason to question his own thinking. But he said he still feels privileged to have shaken Carters hand.Every member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team received the Congressional Gold Medal from Carter, but like many aspects of that teams existence, it came with an asterisk. Congress declared its intention to give the athletes its highest civilian honor (not to be confused with the Medal of Honor awarded for military valor), but proper protocol wasnt followed and the medals werent recorded in official government paperwork. The medal status was formally upgraded in 2007 after two team members researched the issue.Bottoms brothers Joe and Dave also were accomplished elite swimmers. Joe held the world record in the 100-meter butterfly and won Olympic silver in the event in 1976. Dave, a former American record holder in the 100-meter backstroke, was a captain of the Stanford University team.Their father, George, died when Mike was 26, and amid the familys sense of loss was the knowledge of what could have been in the summer of 1980. But Bottom has never felt sorry for himself.Mike hasnt dwelled on it at all, because hes been so focused on getting other people there, said Mills, a coach and producer of instructional videos. When talking about motivating kids, its a benefit to teaching -- its not just about winning and getting medals and going to meets. Its about setting goals and making them.Bottom appreciates the fact that many people in the sport wanted this for him as much as he has wanted it for them.Everyone can relate to the disappointment of almost getting there and having that dream vanish, he said. My story taps into a lot of peoples stories. ' ' '