
Reds acquire RHP Brian Van Belle from Red Sox
The Reds optioned Van Belle to Triple-A Louisville. The Red Sox had designated him for assignment on Wednesday.
Van Belle, 28, has yet to make his major league debut. He was 5-1 with a 2.29 ERA in 12 games (eight starts) this season at Triple-A Worcester.
Since breaking into Boston's system in 2021 out of Miami (FL), Van Belle is 37-19 with a 4.41 ERA in 115 games (84 starts) in the minor leagues. He has struck out 479 batters and walked 120 in 502 1/3 innings.
--Field Level Media
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Sun
11 minutes ago
- The Sun
Dana White announces major UFC protocol change which stunned fans after landing $7.7billion TV rights deal
DANA WHITE has confirmed a major change to UFC protocol following the promotion's last pay-per-view event. Mixed martial arts' premier promotion held its eighth PPV event, UFC 319, this past weekend. 6 6 6 6 Carlos Prates and Brit Lerone Murphy stole the show with their consecutive spinning back elbow knockouts of Geoff Neal and Aaron Pico respectively. Both men, unsurprisingly, received £37,000 ($50,000) bonuses for their viral knockouts. But what surprised MMA fans is that UFC commentator Joe Rogan told both men inside the octagon that they'd received a bonus. UFC protocol for the last few decades has been to inform fighters of their bonuses after the event has finished. And White has revealed that informing fighters of their bonus-winning finishes inside the cage will be a "new thing" going forward. He said: "Those two fights were like, yeah, holy s**t. "And I knew nothing before had beat it and if anything else else was crazier than those, I'd have paid the money. "I'd have just said, 'Alright.' When s**t like that happens again, yes, that will be a new thing that will happen moving forward. 6 'I mean, if those fights were the second fights on the entire night, I would have said the same thing. 'Somebody would had to been decapitated to [beat that], you know what I mean? "I don't know what would have been bigger than what happened in those fights.' UFC 319 was the promotion's first PPV event since the announcement of their whopping £ 5.7BILLION ($7.7B) North American broadcast deal with Paramount. From January 2026, all 43 of the promotion's yearly cards - including numbered events - will be available on the network's streaming platform, Paramount+. The deal has seen the UFC abandon the PPV model for the first time in its near 32-year history. When s**t like that happens again, yes, that will be a new thing that will happen moving forward." Dana White on the UFC's new bonus protocol 6 Upon the announcement of the seven-year-long agreement, White said: "This historic deal with Paramount and CBS is incredible for UFC fans and our athletes. "For the first time ever, fans in the US will have access to all UFC content without a Pay-Per-View Model, making it more affordable to view the greatest fights on a massive platform. "This deal puts the UFC among the biggest sports in the world. "The exposure provided by the Paramount and CBS networks under this new structure is a huge win for our athletes and anyone who watches and loves this sport."


The Guardian
13 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I went from world champ to mopping floors': Colin Cummings, the greatest air hockey player of all time
About an hour before our scheduled chat, Colin Cummings accompanies his polite request to delay with a photograph of an image familiar to parents worldwide, a grizzling newborn strapped to his front, resolutely refusing to succumb to her morning nap. Cummings has gone about this week's defence of his air hockey world title rather differently to his many others. Partly, that is thanks to baby Clara's arrival a couple of months ago, which has dominated most of the summer. The rest of it has been dictated by a job relocation to Hawaii where he has been given a three-year posting as a personnel officer in the US air force. The air hockey table at his Oahu home is the only professional-style playing surface in the whole multi-island state. Shorn of suitable playing partners, Cummings has geared up for his tilt at a sixth successive world crown in an unconventional manner. Irregular solo practises – increasingly infrequent since Clara's birth – have been the air hockey equivalent of a tennis player hitting balls against a wall. He has also attempted to keep track of opponents on the mainland through video streams of their matches, but his main physical activity of late involves surfing Hawaii's famous waves. Aged just 26, Cummings is already almost universally considered the air hockey GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). Two other players, Danny Hynes and Jesse Douty, are tied with his 12 world titles, but that pair are generally bracketed alongside a couple of others on the second rung of air hockey's all-time pyramid. But the general consensus is that Cummings, alone, stands at the top. It was he who, at 16, became the youngest ever world champion in the sport – and Cummings is absolutely adamant that air hockey is a sport. And it is he who has relinquished just one of the 13 world championships held over the past decade. Ask the man himself and he is in no doubt over his GOAT status: 'Oh hell yeah, bro, I got to be. I've even got a little goat sticker on my mallet.' Most people Cummings encounters are surprised to hear that air hockey even possesses a competitive life outside arcades and home basements. Played on a low-friction table, with opposing players attempting to hit the puck into goals using handheld mallets, the elite side of the sport has, in fact, been around for almost 50 years, beginning soon after air hockey's invention. Texas, North Carolina, Illinois and Idaho are America's four major competitive hubs, while the recent boom in barcades – drinking establishments featuring retro entertainment offerings – has provided a resurgence in pockets across the country. Aside from a Venezuelan contingent, and a smattering of Russians and Spaniards, air hockey tends to be an all-American affair. Cummings' route in began when his family relocated to Texas in 2009 and happened to move across the road from the world No 4 player. Invited over for a game by the man's son – who was the top-ranked Under-12 player – Cummings received a pasting and vowed not to let it happen again: 'I instantly knew I had to beat the kid. He was so cocky.' Within six months, the Cummings family found a small table of their own at a garage sale; half a year later, they had upgraded it to a professional-standard table. While Colin emerged as the star, air hockey quickly became something for the whole family to play. His younger brother Connor is ranked world No 3, while their father, Mike, is No 15. As he has done for close to a decade, Colin tops the pile. In the smallest of niche sporting ponds, the biochemistry graduate is a superstar. But unlike his world-beating peers – think Roger Federer, Lionel Messi or Oleksandr Usyk – he receives next to no external recognition. 'It's definitely a challenge,' he says, of his vastly contrasting lives on and off the air hockey table. 'I have to be versatile. 'I have my air force persona where I have to embody a leadership character. Then there's the air hockey champion persona where I walk into a room and people all want to meet me when I have no idea who they are. Then there's normal life. 'I remember when I won my first world title in 2015, I went back to my day job where I was a salad boy/janitor, just mopping the floor in a hair net. I'd gone from being world champion to mopping floors.' In the fledgling days of his relationship with his now-wife Meg, Cummings sent her a video link of an interview he did with CNN. 'She was like: 'You're the world champion? What the heck?' But she's very supportive.' So much so that husband and wife even joined forces to claim world doubles silver in 2022, although Cummings suggests that was a one-off: 'If I've not been playing at all in Hawaii, then she's definitely not been playing.' The furthest any possible discontent stretches is Meg forlornly enquiring whether they might vacation farther afield than Texas, where the world championships usually take place. That return to familiar soil does at least mean they can forego expensive hotel bills and stay with family for free during competition. In a sport that offers about $2,000 prize money for winning the world title, Cummings suggests he has 'at least broken even, if not made money' over the course of his career. When not based in Hawaii, he had also previously earned modest sums through sponsorship from small companies. The ultimate ambition is to 'break out of this niche bubble and turn into something that's multinational and well cemented'. The closest comparison, he says, would be to emulate the growth of table football or foosball – which has produced men and women's world champions from 10 different countries over the past two decades – and, eventually, table tennis. Until then, Cummings must content himself with the adulation of a select few and the ignorance of the masses. When he returns from this week's world championships, he intends to hold an exhibition tournament at home in Hawaii for his air force colleagues, who all believe they can beat him. 'So I'll toast them all,' he says. Wayne Gretzky never had to deal with such disrespect.


Daily Mail
38 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Man Scottie Scheffler drafted in to caddie for him earns eyewatering sum of money for four days' work
Scottie Scheffler may have been without Ted Scott on his bag once again at the weekend but the caddie's replacement stepped up just fine. The world No 1 was without his mainstay caddie as he teed it up at the BMW Championship last week after Scott had to leave the PGA Tour playoffs to rush back home to Louisiana for a family emergency earlier this month. However, unfortunately for his fellow pros, even that couldn't stop the recent Open champion as he rolled to yet another victory with substitute bagman Michael Cromie. And after stepping in for duty, Cromie, who usually caddies for six-time PGA Tour winner Chris Kirk, walked away from Caves Valley Golf Club with an eyewatering payday. Scheffler claimed the BMW Championship's staggering $3.6 million prize money for the victory - his fifth of the season - and in doing so, paid out a hefty sum to his replacement caddie. In golf it is customary for players to award their caddies a 10 percent cut of their winnings from tournaments, meaning, if Scheffler follows the rule, Cromie likely walked away with a $360,000 paycheck. That figure already surpasses what Cromie would have already banked for the entire 2025 season so far. The 33-year-old has been on the bag for Kirk since 2020 with the Tour professional pocketing $2,939,050 this season, according to the PGA Tour's official money list. The average on Tour is $1,977,255. However, American player failed to make the cut for the restricted 50-man field at the BMW Championship, that only sees the top players in the FedEx Cup standings compete before being whittled down again to 30 for this week's Tour Championship. Kirk agonizingly fell short, finishing 51st in the rankings and just one spot our of the BMW Championship's exclusive field. However, his exclusion freed up Cromie to caddie for Scheffler, who came from behind to win the tournament Sunday, beating Robert MacIntyre by two strokes in Maryland. 'He's a guy I can trust,' Scheffler told reporters or Cromie following Sunday's victory. 'He's one of Ted's good buddies. I'd just say it's pretty much as simple as that. Cromie is a guy that works hard. He does his prep work, and he was an easy guy for me to trust out there.' Scheffler added, 'I felt like we did a good job of talking through our shots and staying patient and keep doing the right things even when things were looking a little bit squirrelly there on the back nine. 'We did a good job of staying focused and continuing to hit shots at the right targets. Closed the tournament out nicely.' Scheffler will now head to East Lake where a massive $10 million prize awaits for the Tour's champion. However, it remains unclear whether Scott will return to Scheffler's bag n time for the Tour Championship, which tees off in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday, or whether Cromie will be called upon yet again. Scheffler acknowledged Scott's absence at the weekend but refused to divulge any details surrounding his trip home. 'Ted is at home with his family, and he's where he's supposed to be,' Scheffler told reporters. 'We're praying for them, and his family is doing all right. Cromie did a great job this week. It's not easy stepping in and trying to fill in for Ted. Those are some big shoes to fill.' If Cromie does stay on Scheffler's bag this week, it could turn into a lucrative couple of weeks' work if the four-time major winner maintains his usual imperious form. Said form has earned Scott an eye-watering amount over the past few years - more than most players Ahead of last week's tournament, Scheffler had already banked $20.36m in tournament prize money, giving Scott just over $2m for himself.