May 23, 2018 4 min read

Washington Pony

Marthinsen & Salvitti defeated Chambers Insurance, 10-4, in Washington Pony League action.

Marthinsen & Salvitti raised its record to 6-2. Chambers Insurance fell to 3-6.

Gordon leads

hall induction

Jeff Gordon didn’t give much thought to NASCAR while racing sprint cars in Indiana as a teenager.

He was too busy trying to get into open wheel racing.

But when Gordon’s career stalled, he headed South to try his hand at stock car racing and went on to win 93 Cup races – third on the career list – and four championships while helping NASCAR move from a predominantly regional sport to the mainstream in the 1990s. Gordon was honored for his career achievements Wednesday when he was selected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Gordon said it all feels “surreal,” considering he never thought this was the direction his life would take.

“I came down to North Carolina hoping and dreaming of something, but I didn’t know much about NASCAR racing,” Gordon said. “Everything was IndyCar, open wheel, sprint car and midget racing to me. I knew about the Daytona 500 and I knew who Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt were – but that was it.”

Gordon, a first-ballot Hall of Famer, received 96 percent of the votes from the committee, meaning only two of the 57 voters didn’t vote for him. Only Petty (200) and Bobby Pearson (105) have won more Cup races than Gordon.

Car owners Jack Roush and Roger Penske also were selected to the Hall of Fame, along with drivers Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki.

Roush has won a record 325 races across NASCAR’s three national series, including five national series owner championships, while his drivers have won three championships. He helped Matt Kenseth (2003) and Kurt Busch (2004) emerge into premier series champions and jumpstarted the careers of Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle.

But the 76-year-old Roush his fondest memory in racing was when Mark Martin won the first Cup race for him as an owner in Rockingham, North Carolina, in 1989.

In the majors

Justin Verlander got some run support for the first time in nearly a month and led the Houston Astros over the San Francisco Giants 4-1. Verlander struck out nine and walked one in six innings, allowing one run and three hits as he improved to 6-2.

• Drew Butera had a two-run single in the 10th inning and the Kansas City Royals earned a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. Butera’s RBIs were his first since May 2.
• Christian Villanueva hit a two-run double, Tyson Ross pitched into the seventh inning and the San Diego Padres defeated the Washington Nationals 3-1 to salvage the finale of a three-game series.

W&J player honored

Washington & Jefferson senior Bryce Schnatterly earned the Eastern College Athletic Conference Division III Pitcher of the Year award as well as spots on the American Baseball Coaches Association All-Mideast Region First Team and D3baseball.com All-Mideast Region Third Team.

The ECAC Division III Pitcher of the Year honor is Schnatterly’s second major award this year after being named the Presidents’ Athletic Conference Pitcher of the Year. Schnatterly and junior Mullen Socha each landed on the All-ECAC Division III Honorable Mention team.

Now a three-time All-PAC pitcher, Schnatterly led the PAC with a 1.98 earned-run average and finished with a 7-0 record, including a 1.82 ERA and a 5-0 mark against conference opponents.