Nov 3, 2023 3 min read

Rangers, fans celebrate with victory parade

Tens of thousands Texas Rangers fans lined up and stacked dozens deep in some areas along a 2-mile route near the team’s ballpark for a parade Friday to celebrate the franchise’s first World Series championship.

“This is why we came back, for the parade,” All-Star second baseman Marcus Semien said.

The parade came two days after the Rangers wrapped up the World Series title with a 5-0 win on the road in Game 5 against the Arizona Diamondbacks. It came a week after Texas won the series opener at home on an 11th-inning homer by Adolis García after Corey Seager hit a two-run homer in the ninth inning to tie the game.

The Rangers won their first championship in their 63rd season as a franchise, which began as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961 before the team moved to Texas in 1972.

In the NFL

Deshaun Watson is going to try again.

Cleveland’s quarterback, who was sidelined for all but 12 plays in four October games with a curious and confusing right shoulder injury, will start Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said following Friday’s practice.

Watson has been dealing with a strained rotator cuff, an injury he first sustained on Sept. 24 against Tennessee. Watson missed three complete games and was on the field for less than one quarter on Oct. 22 against Indianapolis – his last start.

• New York Giants placekicker Graham Gano is going to have surgery on his left knee and will be placed on injured reserve.

Giants coach Brian Daboll announced the decision, adding the team has signed Cade York off the Tennessee Titans practice squad.

Daboll would not say whether York will kick on Sunday when the Giants (2-6) are in Las Vegas to play the Raiders (3-5). Veteran Randy Bullock also is on the Giants’ practice squad.

In Olympic sports

he International Olympic Committee on Friday moved to shut down suggestions that Italy could still manage to stage ice sliding events at its home 2026 Winter Games.

Organizers of the Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics acknowledged last month that bobsled, luge and skeleton events are set to be raced in neighboring Austria or Switzerland after scrapping a delayed and increasingly costly plan to revive the storied and scenic Cortina sliding track.

But Italian national and regional government officials have recently suggested that organizers could renovate another mothballed track in Cesana, which was used for the 2006 Turin Winter Games. That would still cost tens of millions of euros (dollars) but less than the Cortina plan.

But that’s a no-go, the IOC said Friday in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.

The Olympic body cited the lack of a viable future for the Cesana track which already led it “to be abandoned only six years” after the 2006 games.