said. I will go everywhere and anywhere to beg for the money. That is my | Forum

MINNEAPOLIS -- Phil Hughes carved up a lineup for the second straight outing, and this time the New York Yankees actually gave him some run support to reward him for his efforts. Nemanja Matic Manchester United Jersey . Hughes appears to be finding himself on the mound of late, and it couldnt come at a better time for the Yankees with Hiroki Kuroda suddenly ailing. Robinson Cano homered for the third straight game and Hughes gave up one run on six hits in seven innings, lifting the New York Yankees to a 7-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday night. Hughes (4-7) struck out three and walked two. "You want to keep that ball rolling," said Hughes, who gave up two runs in eight innings of a 2-0 loss to Kansas City last week. "Hopefully its the start of a good stretch I can roll off here." Kuroda left the Twin Cities to get an MRI on his left hip flexor. Manager Joe Girardi said the test came back clean, but Kuroda will miss his next scheduled start on Friday as a precaution. Ivan Nova will start in his place and Kuroda will be evaluated after that. "He was a little tender after the game Sunday," Girardi said. "Its good news. He said he felt better today, but we thought wed get it checked out." Kuroda is 7-6 with a rotation-leading 2.95 ERA this season. Cano followed up a two-homer performance Monday by going 2 for 4 with three RBIs and Alberto Gonzalez had two hits and three RBIs as well for the Yankees. New York has broken out for 17 runs in the first two games of the series to snap a five-game skid. Samuel Deduno (4-3) gave up three runs on five hits in six innings for the Twins. Brian Dozier had a two-run double in the ninth, but the Twins couldnt get much going against Hughes and lost for the eighth time in 11 games. Mariano Rivera got one out in the ninth for his 27th save. Hughes entered the outing with three straight losses, tying the longest skid of his career. But the Yankees did not give him a single run of support in his previous two starts. Without injured stars Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson, the Yankees have struggled mightily to sustain any kind of offence. They made up for it on Tuesday. Cano is the only mainstay still standing, and hes starting to put this nameless lineup on his back. He has hit four homers in the last three games, the last one a 405-foot, three-run drive onto the veranda behind the right field bleachers that broke the game open in New Yorks four-run seventh inning. But it was the light-hitting Gonzalez who got the Yankees going. Starting at shortstop for the injured Jayson Nix, Gonzalez had not driven in a run since joining the Yankees from the Chicago Cubs. Gonzalez got on the board with a two-run double down the right field line in the fifth inning. Deduno then misplayed a slow roller up the first baseline from Ichiro Suzuki, bobbling the ball just before it was set to roll foul and allowing Gonzalez to score for a 3-1 lead. Gonzalez then made a superb play in the field, running on a dead sprint with his back to home plate and laying out at the last second to snare a shallow pop fly from Joe Mauer that would have dropped in for a bloop single. "I feel very happy, very pleased to finally get the opportunity to be able to support my team," Gonzalez said through an interpreter. "Finally, the moment I was waiting for." Mauer snapped an 0-for-18 skid with an RBI single in the third inning to get the Twins on top 1-0. The Twins had a golden chance to extend the lead in the fourth inning when they opened with runners on second and third and none out. But Hughes steadied himself, striking out Chris Parmelee and Aaron Hicks and getting Pedro Florimon to groundout to end the inning unscathed. "To get out of that inning it felt like it really swung the momentum in our favour just to get out of that inning without putting up a score and give our guys a chance to come back from that," Hughes said. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire agreed. "That took the wind out of our sails," he said. Hughes only allowed two baserunners the rest of the way to pick up just his second victory since May 10. NOTES: The Twins gave Rivera a retirement gift in a pregame ceremony: a rocking chair made in part from broken bats with the inscription, "Chair of Broken Dreams." Rivera smiled widely. "I was expecting someone to do something like that with broken bats, but that was, that was awesome," he said. "That was great. That was wonderful. Made me laugh a lot." ... Nix did not play because of a sore right hamstring. He is day to day. ... Gardenhire said he was going to give struggling RHP Jared Burton a breather from his setup man role. He said he would look to get Burton into some situations where there was less pressure to help him try to regain his confidence. ... The Yankees will send LHP CC Sabathia (8-6, 4.15) to the mound for Game 3 on Thursday against RHP P.J. Walters (2-4, 6.03). David Beckham Jersey . -- Nathan Pancel scored twice as the Sudbury Wolves defeated the North Bay Battalion 4-2 on Saturday in Ontario Hockey League action. Marouane Fellaini Manchester United Jersey .ca! Hi Kerry, Its another day and here we are looking at another dubious hit to the head. In this case Blue Jackets forward Brandon Dubinsky elbowed Saku Koivu in the head about a second after he dished off the puck to a teammate, knocking him unconscious. http:///...ester-united-jersey/ . Once again Jordan Cieciwa (@FitCityJordan) and I (@LynchOnSports) go head to head in our picks. Last weekend at UFC Fight Night 32 my #TeamLynch got the best of #TeamJC by a score of 9-6. Let us know which side youre on for UFC 167 use the hashtag #TeamLynch or #TeamJC on Twitter. TORONTO -- International Ice Hockey Federation President Rene Fasel feels better about the chances of having NHL players compete at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea than he did earlier this year. The league doesnt sound nearly as confident and may be looking six years ahead to China instead.In May at the IIHF world championship, Fasel said he thought there was a 60 percent chance the NHL and NHL Players Association would pass on the opportunity to participate in a sixth straight Olympics. Whether the best hockey players in the world go to South Korea in about 16 months is up to the league and union, though Russian star Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals has said he will go no matter what .I think it is 50-50 chance, Fasel told The Associated Press on Tuesday ahead of Game 1 of the World Cup of Hockey final.NHL officials, however, sounded an ominous tone.Time is very short to make a decision and Im not sure there has been a lot of progress made in the past six months, and Im not sure theres any prospect for progress being made, Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said. On the basis on that, Im more negative today than I was two weeks ago.Money is a big factor in the deliberations.NHL players have not and will not get paid for participating in the Olympics, but their travel expenses and insurance have been covered in the past. The International Olympic Committee is not expected to pay for travel and insurance costs to get NHL players to the previous five Olympics.The IOCs position, obviously, didnt make it any easier, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said.The IOC spent about $14 million to cover travel and insurance costs for NHL players for the 2014 Olympics. Fasel expects the bill would be about $10 million for the next Olympics because he said it wont be necessary to charter planes to South Korea as it was to get players to Sochi, Russia.While the leaggue doesnt sound eager about going to South Korea, it does sound very interested in tapping into Chinas huge market in 2022. Javier Hernandez Jersey. When the IOC awarded the Beijing Games, it certainly created a bigger opportunity than we thought existed potentially before, Daly said. But it is also possible that you dont go to one Olympics and you do go to the other. I dont think anybody has ruled that out as a possibility.Fasel, saying he is simply at fan at the World Cup of Hockey in Toronto, intends to beg for $10 million to cover expenses for NHL players to be at the 2018 Olympics.He hopes to persuade national Olympic committees and hockey federations to donate the funds to keep the games best players on the biggest stage in sports. To make up the shortfall, Fasel acknowledged the IIHF could possibly use some of the $40 million it gets from the IOC every four years and make cuts from its development programs for boys and girls.Our job at the IIHF is find solution, Fasel said. I will go everywhere and anywhere to beg for the money. That is my job.Fasel said he had Olympic-related discussions with Bettman and NHLPA Executive Director Don Fehr on Sept. 19 in Toronto, and plans to meet with them again in November.Gary would like to make decision before end of the year, Fasel said.Mike Babcock, who has led Canada to gold at the last two Olympics and is hoping to add a World Cup of Hockey title to his collection of accomplishments this week, made his preference clear before the puck dropped Tuesday night.The World Cup is great. Its not the Olympics, Babcock said in an unsolicited comparison of the two events. Lets not get confused.---Follow Larry Lage at www.twitter.com/larrylage and follow his work at www.bigstory.ap.org/content/larry-lage ' ' '