by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

ANAHEIM–The red hot Royals are eight games in first place in the American League Central with a half game lead over the second place Detroit Tigers. The A’s who are in the middle of a four game series with the Royals dropped the first game on Monday night 3-2. The Giants were swept over the weekend by the Royals in three games.

The Giants entertain the Chicago White Sox for two games starting on Tuesday night and the Sox come into AT&T with probably the rookie of the year Jose Abreu who has 31 home runs and is hitting .306. The Sox also have Chris Sale who’s 10-2 with an ERA of 2.14 and is a great left handed pitcher. You have a lot of stuff going on there and for the Giants to beat them it’s going to be tough.

The Giants haven’t played that well this year, it’s hard to win a pennant with Triple A players let’s face it the Giants Joe Panik at second and newly aquired catcher Andrew Susac the Giants have a bunch of kids there and they haven’t had a great year. Giant third baseman Pablo Sandoval and catcher Buster Posey haven’t had a great year.

The Giants swept by the Royals and the A’s could be battling the Royals tooth and nail in this four game series as the Royals have an All-Star team with such big boppers in the line up like, Lorenzo Cain .301, Jarrod Dyson .286, and Alex Gordon .279. The Royals are getting great pitching help from Wade Davis 6-2, Aaron Crow 5-1, James Shields 11-6.

Racer Tony Stewart under investigation: Kevin Ward’s death was due to “massive blunt trama” by New York medical authorites, Ward was ran over by NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, an Ontario medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Ward found that that Ward was killed by massive blunt trama as a result of Stewart’s car rear end catching Ward and dragging him and sending him to the sidelines face up. Some that watched the video say that Ward may not ever know what even hit him as the impact was forceful and quick and it was over in less than three seconds.

It was reported that Ward was dead before he even reached the hospital, Ward had been clipped by Stewart and spun out near the wall, Ward came out onto the race track pointing towards Stewart’s on coming car on the return lap and it appeared that Stewart swirved and his rear caught Ward and Ward was dragged a few feet and landed face up on the side of the dirt track. The coroner examiner didn’t say if Ward was dead when he was face up on the track but he was checked on the ambulance going to the hospital and it was reported that he was already dead.

Clippers ownership change should put the Sterling era to rest: The Clippers now are hoping that they can focus on playing hoops and forget about their problems from former owner Donald Sterling. The time that I was doing the play by play at the Clippers there was no indication from where we sat as broadcasters that Sterling harbored such feelings about minorities which he spoke about in the V.Stiviano recordings.

A couple of times when walking down the hallway he smiled at me and I smiled back, there are people here in the Southland that only speak Spanish and specifically those who worked at Staples Arena and they didn’t claim to have had a problem with him during those years when I worked there. There are about one million people who speak Spanish in the Southland and he never made any remarks or said anything about Spanish speaking people while I worked for the Clippers.

Most of the time Sterling came into the buidling really late and he owned the team so he could come in anytime he wanted. The Clippers sponsors who threatened to leave if Sterling didn’t leave will come back, right now the Clippers are the number one team and the Lakers have taken a back seat but that may not last long everybody loves a winner. Steve Ballmer an ex-Mircosoft CEO has taken over as owner of the Clippers, he bought the team for $2 billion from Sterling’s wife Shelly.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for L.A. Angels baseball and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com