DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Ryan Newman was involved in a ghastly crash on the final lap of the Daytona 500 on Monday night, sending him to a nearby hospital and leaving fellow NASCAR drivers and fans across the sport in an excruciating wait to learn how seriously he was hurt.

Safety crews rushed to Newman's No. 6 Ford and worked to extricate the 42-year-old driver from his seat. The car was on fire as it skidded to a stop and had to be turned onto its tires before they could get him out.

Fox opted not to broadcast Newman's removal, which was shielded by large black screens put up by track crews. He was eventually placed in a waiting ambulance and taken directly to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach.

Ryan Blaney, who locked bumpers with Newman and turned him sideways, sounded crestfallen. Corey LaJoie, who slammed into Newman's sideways car at full speed, watched a replay and insisted he had no way to avoid the contact. Fox Sports analyst and four-time Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon may have summed it up best.

"Safety's come a long way in this sport, but sometimes we are reminded that it is a very dangerous sport," Gordon said quietly as the broadcast came to a close with Newman's condition still unknown.

Breathtaking crashes are common at Daytona International Speedway, where drivers racing for position at 200 mph and in tight quarters often make contact.

Austin Dillon memorably crashed into the catch fence on the final lap of the 2015 July race at Daytona and remarkably walked away unscathed. Dillon's car went airborne and tore down part of the fence and injured several fans. Dillon's torn car, with its engine already resting on another part of the track, ended up on its roof and then was smashed into by Brad Keselowski's car.

Newman's wreck looked just as awful.

Blaney turned him hard right and into the outside wall. His car immediately flipped and was sliding on its side when LaJoie rammed into it.

"I got a big push there that last coming to the white," LaJoie said after the race. "I don't know who was pushing me and I kind of stalled out and I don't know who hooked Newman. I was hoping he would kind of bounce off the fence to the left, but he didn't and I hit him ... it was some scary stuff. Don't' get me wrong. My car was on fire. My seat belts grabbed all sorts of areas, but it was a good day for us. I hope Ryan is OK."

Denny Hamlin won the race for Joe Gibbs Racing, his second straight victory in the season opener and third in the last five years. The team celebrated near the start-finish line and again when confetti flew in victory lane, prompting Gibbs to later apologize.

"Some people may have saw us and said, 'Those guys are celebrating when there's a serious issue going on,'" Gibbs said. "I apologize to everybody. We really didn't know. We got in the winner's circle and then that's when people told us. I wanted to explain that to everyone.

"That's what makes it so hard. Such a close-knit community, you know everybody. ... If you think about all the wrecks that we've had over the last how many number of years, some of them have been real serious. We've been real fortunate."

It wasn't the first flipping crash for Newman at Daytona or at another superspeedway, Talladega. His car went airborne and flipped repeatedly in the 2003 Daytona 500. He landed on his roof in that one and did again at Talladega in 2009.

He's been a harsh critic of NASCAR's struggles to keep cars on the ground, even getting fined for public comments the sanctioning body considered negative. In 2010, he said fans shouldn't even go to the track to see races at Talladega Superspeedway.

The Indiana native, who graduated with an engineering degree from Purdue, said earlier during Speedweeks that he felt renewed in his second year at Roush Fenway Racing.

"It's all about competitiveness and fun," he said. "I want to have fun with my life. If I can have fun in this garage doing it and get paid what I feel like I deserve to get paid, then I'm all for it. It's got to be fun and it's got be rewarding in more ways than one.

"I'm doing it past when I said I was going to do it 10 years ago. I don't know how to give the answer anymore, I really don't. I always said 40 and I'm 42 now."

Newman also announced last week he and his wife had split after 16 years of marriage. They have two daughters together and both girls were at his side in the moments before Sunday's race began, only to be delayed a day by rain.

"I feel just renewed in general, the team, the people, the opportunities, the sponsors," he said. "All that makes a big difference to me. We've got to perform better. Just because we performed better than they had done in the past doesn't mean it's up to my standards and my goals.

"I feel like we need to step it up and that's a big part of me wanting to continue doing what I'm doing."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Houston Rockets are doubling down on small ball and planning to use their two remaining roster openings on 33-year-old forwards DeMarre Carroll and Jeff Green, league sources told ESPN.

Green, a free agent, plans to sign with the Rockets on Tuesday, league sources told ESPN. He will sign a 10-day contract with the team, giving him a chance to become comfortable with the fit before committing to a deal for the rest of the season, sources said.

Carroll agreed to a contract buyout with the San Antonio Spurs on Monday, his agent, Mark Bartelstein of Priority Sports, told ESPN. Carroll will sign with the Rockets upon clearing waivers, league sources told ESPN.

The Rockets traded center Clint Capela to the Atlanta Hawks at the trade deadline, acquiring forward Robert Covington. Houston is preparing for the postseason with one of the smallest rosters the league has seen in years.

Carroll joined the Spurs on a three-year contract this summer as part of a sign-and-trade deal with the Brooklyn Nets and Washington Wizards, but he never found traction in the Spurs' lineup. The contract buyout with the Spurs included negotiations on guaranteed money of $2.3 million for the rest of this season, $6.65 million in 2020-2021 and $1.35 million in 2021-22.

The Jazz waived Green in late December after signing him to a one-year free-agent deal in July. He averaged 7.8 points and 2.7 rebounds in 30 games.

Green has career averages of 13 points and 4.4 rebounds per game while playing for eight franchises. Green was a teammate of Rockets stars James Harden and Russell Westbrook when they began their careers with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Oddsmakers think Houston Astros batters could be sore this season.

On Monday, sportsbook William Hill set the over/under on number of Astros batters to get plunked this season at 83.5.

In the past five seasons, only nine teams have been hit by pitches more than 83.5 times, but, with the anger over the sign-stealing scandal involving Houston, there is plenty of reason to believe the Astros will be targeted frequently.

Enough opposing players and managers have expressed their displeasure with the Astros that new Houston manager Dusty Baker has publicly urged MLB to protect Astros hitters from intentionally being beaned.

"I'm depending on the league to try to put a stop to this seemingly premeditated retaliation that I'm hearing about," Baker told reporters Saturday. "And in most instances in life, you get kind of reprimanded when you have premeditated anything. I'm just hoping that the league puts a stop to this before somebody gets hurt."

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Sunday that, independent of the Houston situation, he has been planning to increase the disciplinary ramifications for intentionally throwing at batters and will meet with managers this week to address the issue.

"[It's] simply not appropriate to express frustration you have growing out of the Astros' situation by putting someone physically at risk by throwing at them," Manfred told ESPN. "It's simply not acceptable."

Last season, teams were hit by an average of 66.1 pitches, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The Astros were hit 66 times last season.

Nick Bogdanovich, director of trading for William Hill U.S. sportsbooks, said he and his staff looked at how many times Astros batters were hit by a pitch over the past three seasons and the league high from last year.

"The trading team and I debated how this could play out and chose a number in the middle," Bogdanovich told ESPN.

In 2008, Cleveland Indians batters were hit 103 times, the most in the modern era. William Hill has the odds of the Astros getting hit 101-110 times at 9-2. The Astros getting hit more than 150 times this season is 200-1.

Utilityman Brock Holt has agreed to a deal with the Milwaukee Brewers, a source confirmed to ESPN's Jeff Passan.

The Athletic first reported the news.

Holt, a versatile four-position player, spent seven years with the Boston Red Sox, becoming a fan favorite with his rambunctious style and flair for the dramatic.

A left-hander, Holt is a career .271 hitter, with 206 RBIs and 23 home runs. He's coming off a season in which he hit .297 with a .771 OPS in 87 games after missing the first two months with a scratched cornea and shoulder impingement.

Primarily an infielder, Holt, who made $3.58 million last season, played every position except pitcher and catcher for the Red Sox.

Holt, 31, was never an everyday player and missed significant time with injuries, including a concussion in 2016 that had lingering effects in 2017.

Holt twice hit for the cycle with the Red Sox, including a memorable game against the New York Yankees in the 2018 ALDS, when he became the first player to accomplish the feat in a postseason game.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- This being Florida, and Florida being the cradle of American absurdity, the sight of a man peeling off his shirt, walking to a place where he was guaranteed to be noticed, pirouetting to show off the tattoo on his left collarbone, slipping on a new shirt and slinking away, satisfied, mission accomplished, felt entirely appropriate. Actually, that's a lie. What Jose Altuve did Monday morning in front of a group of reporters was spectacular even by Florida's standards. This is the Houston Astros ' existence. They have morphed into such a circus, such a farfetched big top, that they are seeing Florida and telling it to hold their Shiner Bock.

The insertion of ink into this spectacle came Saturday, when Astros shortstop Carlos Correa told MLB Network that Altuve did not want his jersey ripped off after hitting a pennant-winning home run last year because a) his wife did not like when teammates did that and b) he didn't want to show a bad tattoo. As chef's kiss as it would have been for Altuve's tattoo to say NO RAGRETS, alas it was something far more innocent: Melanie, the name of his 3-year-old daughter, next to a pink heart.

This did not exactly fit Correa's description of bad tattoo, but taste is relative -- and Altuve later admitted that the original version of the tattoo he got in San Francisco last fall during a road series needed touching up, which seemed to intimate that Version 1.0 was indeed bad. The capital-M did match the sliver of a letter that peeked out from under Altuve's jersey at times during the 2019 postseason, nullifying yet another conspiracy theory: that Altuve had gotten the tattoo over the weekend to corroborate Correa's story. This is where we are.

Less than a week into spring training, life with the Astros and all that orbits around their sign-stealing scandal is a witch's brew of ludicrous, sad, darkly humorous and tedious. The monotony of a typical spring has been replaced by the predictability of another big-name player lobbing Sequoia's worth of shade at the Astros. Monday included Mike Trout, universally regarded as the best player in the baseball and the game's ostensible face, calling it "sad for baseball."

"When is it going to end?" one Astros player asked Monday, and the answer depressed him: No time soon.

And that's less because of amusing little sub-stories, like the Altuve tattoo, and more due to the runaway-train nature of the fallout from Houston's cheating in 2017 and 2018. There is anger, inside the sport and out, and it is the most intransigent sort: righteous, moral, vitriolic. The Astros and Major League Baseball have tried to stanch the bleeding and instead have only deepened the wound through a combination of ill-conceived words, questionable accountability and disproportionate punishment.

What makes this calamity so fascinating are the many layers to this lack of punishment, which in recent days has been as prevalent a complaint from players as any. That in and of itself is fascinating -- the almost self-selected bifurcation of the MLB Players Association into 1,160 players on one side and the 40 Houston Astros on the other -- but lost amid the criticism of the players and commissioner Rob Manfred's grant of immunity is an important truth.

It's a dissatisfying one, too, for those who see the incongruity in Manfred's report calling the trash-can thwaps a "player-driven scheme" and then not disciplining the players in any form. Player-on-player crime and bad press conferences and telestrator breakdowns of tattoos are one thing. Entirely different is how the case wends its way into the murky waters of labor law, and how the decision to ignore an email placed baseball in such a precarious place.

Flash back to Sept. 15, 2017. The Boston Red Sox had been caught decoding sign sequences in their video room and using a cell phone to pass them along to those on the bench via Apple Watch. MLB fined the Red Sox -- players escaped discipline from that episode, too -- and sent a memo to all 30 teams. The memo, according to sources, included a line that said: "Finally, each Club's General Manager and Field Manager will be held accountable for ensuring that the rules outlined in this memorandum are followed by players and Club personnel."

This is a vitally important sentence, because with it MLB placed the onus on teams -- and, in the Astros' case, general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch -- to alert players that they would face discipline if caught using technology to steal signs. During MLB's investigation into the Astros' sign stealing, the league learned, according to a report Manfred issued in January, that "Luhnow failed to take any adequate steps to ensure that his Club was in compliance with the rules." Similarly, players interviewed said Hinch had not informed them of the potential for discipline.

In doing so, the players had not received proper notice required by employers to union employees subject to actionable discipline. Notice is a key tenet of labor law, and without it, the standing of any potential discipline is flimsy.

Now, it's more than reasonable to suggest that MLB's incentive for offering immunity to players had as much to do with its desire for an expedient decision as it did the lack of notice. The sooner the league wrapped up its investigation, the sooner Manfred could issue his report. The sooner Manfred issued his report, the sooner the embarrassment of a World Series champion cheating could be put to bed.

What the league didn't figure was that indemnifying players would cause as severe a backlash as it has. The reality is MLB faced a catch-22. To illustrate that, consider an alternative course of action in which the league, believing that the on-the-record statements of Mike Fiers to The Athletic, the surfeit of video evidence confirming the banging scheme and the testimony of front-office officials, Hinch and coaches would be enough to make a strong case, sought discipline against the players.

There are two tracks here to understand. The first is the extent of such discipline. "I am a precedent guy," Manfred said at a press conference Sunday, and what he means by that is the league's discipline almost always adheres to prior standards. One could argue, fairly, that a disgraced World Series champion warrants a deviation from precedent, but then the ability for that to hold up in a grievance hearing that players surely would have pursued makes any discipline tenuous. Because the sign-stealing and trash-can-banging would be considered an on-field issue, and on-field issues rarely involve long suspensions, Manfred would have been hemmed in by how potentially minimal the suspensions he pursued would actually be.

Even more crucial would be the aforementioned lack of notice. Four labor lawyers with first-hand knowledge of the grievance process agreed: the lack of notice from the Astros to their players would have made any case pursued by the league practically DOA. Yes, grievance hearings do now and again end with surprising results, but the probability tilted significantly toward any potential suspension being overturned, the lawyers said.

Facing that reality, the league made a value judgment: It would offer the players immunity in hopes of gathering the full story of the Astros' sign-stealing exploits and rely upon the details of Manfred's report to bend the public toward the idea that the league had sought and delivered justice.

Even if this was the best of a bad situation, it has backfired catastrophically. The outspokenness of players, whose own union agreed to give Astros players immunity, has been unwavering and unflattering. The Astros players, amid apologies that in many cases offered contrition, have been steadfast in the belief that they did not deserve discipline. The league, recognizing the futility of trotting out a legal argument to satiate the frothing masses, has instead tried to rely upon Manfred to dowse a multitude of brushfires.

In some cases, the effort has been practical, but a lesson learned in times of crisis is that even the slightest misstep can color the intentions. During an interview Sunday, ESPN's Karl Ravech asked Manfred about the possibility of stripping the Astros of their title. In the middle of his slippery-slope defense, Manfred said: "The idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile act."

The blowback against Manfred was immediate. To trivialize a championship by calling it a piece of metal at a moment when everything he says will be dissected, when his motivations and intentions are in question, when his sport is in peril, gave a tanker truck of fuel to those who already think ill of him because he wants to change the game's playoff structure and contract a quarter of the minor leagues.

Fair or not, all of these things are inextricably tied together, because Manfred is supposed to be the sport's shepherd and his positions on those ancillary issues inform the public's opinion of him. A strong commissioner can guide a sport through a crisis. A weak commissioner can exacerbate it.

Manfred's ultimate story is far from told. He can rescue his reputation and tilt this scandal away from catastrophe, but it is not entirely in his hands. The league's report on the allegations that the Boston Red Sox stole signs electronically in 2018 is imminent. Alex Cora, the former Red Sox manager and Astros bench coach, likely will face discipline. He has yet to tell his story publicly. Neither has Carlos Beltran, the former Astros player whom Manfred's report said teamed up with Cora to implement the trash-can scheme.

All of that is to come. On Monday, the story was far less serious, silly even. Jose Altuve had a tattoo. What it may lack in beauty it makes up for in sentimentality. After Altuve finished his media availability and changed, there was a clang. A small fire extinguisher on the wall adjacent his locker had fallen to the ground. Though it was unclear whether Altuve or a nearby cameraman had knocked it over, the metaphor wasn't lost on anyone. Monday may not have required its use, but there are plenty of brushfires to come yet.

Kim Clijsters produced a remarkable display in her first WTA match in nearly eight years, which ended in a 6-2 7-6 (8-6) defeat by Australian Open finalist Garbine Muguruza in Dubai.

The Belgian, 36, went toe-to-toe with Muguruza from the baseline, produced several stunning winners and came from a double-break down in the second set.

But Muguruza finally saw off Clijsters with a big serve in the tie-break.

This is the Belgian's second comeback, having first retired in 2007.

Back then, injuries and the intention to marry and have a child resulted in the 2005 US Open champion stepping away from the sport.

Clijsters made a successful return to tennis in 2009, adding two more titles at Flushing Meadows and an Australian Open crown in 2011 before announcing her plan to quit the sport again in 2012.

The Belgian, who now has three children, announced in September 2019 her decision to make a second comeback.

As a former world number one, Clijsters is eligible for unlimited wildcards at WTA tournaments, and she can choose the number of events she wishes to compete in - which she said was a major factor in her decision.

Muguruza praises Clijsters display

Clijsters, who has also won three Tour finals, lacked sharpness in the first set before going 3-0 down at the start of the next.

But she then began to find the sweet spots with her groundstrokes as Muguruza struggled with her own serve.

The Spaniard recovered her form and took the set to a tie-break, which was decided by a huge first serve.

The Belgian said: "I had a good feeling out there, I felt a pace I can handle. I felt like I was able to go toe-to-toe with her from the baseline.

"I have patience. I'm going to work my way into it and fight. We'll see what happens."

Former Wimbledon champion Muguruza added: "A player that can play incredible can play incredible again."

Gloucester say they are "looking after" Danny Cipriani following abuse he received on social media while grieving for ex-girlfriend Caroline Flack.

The television presenter was found dead in her London home on Saturday.

A lawyer for the family later confirmed she had taken her own life.

Cipriani tweeted soon after the news of Flack's death emerged, describing her as a "kind soul" and accusing sections of the media of lying which led to her being bullied.

The England fly-half then received criticism on the social media platform, before later revealing that he had missed a phone call from Flack before she died because he was playing.

Cipriani did not specify when she called or which game he was referring to, but the 32-year-old featured in Gloucester's Premiership defeat by Exeter on Friday.

Gloucester chief executive Lance Bradley told BBC Points West the game with Sale on 28 February will raise awareness of mental health and look to turn "an awful negative into something positive".

"It [the idea] came about over the weekend with the terribly sad news about Caroline Flack, and obviously one of our players was very close to her, Danny Cipriani," added Bradley.

"I texted Danny over the weekend to make sure he was OK. We believe in looking after each other. He's clearly very upset about it.

"We're going to make our next home game a day on which we focus on mental health and we'll do it in support of a mental health charity. We're in the early stages of planning it. We haven't decided exactly which charity but we'll raise some money for them and raise some awareness of it."

Bradley said the club would now have a closer focus on mental health moving forward.

"What's important is that this won't be a one-off game where we shine a light on something and then move on to something else," he added. "This is going to become part of what we do.

"We try to look after all of our colleagues. There are some people who think social media means you can say what you like and that it doesn't make any difference.

"I don't think that's true. It's OK to be disappointed in a result. It's OK to say you don't think somebody is playing well. It's not OK for personal criticism.

"They're people too. They feel things. We all have an obligation to think about what we say and be kind to people."

Barnet Council "considered" terminating its £22.9m loan to redevelop Saracens' stadium after the club's relegation but instead have frozen further payments.

Saracens will be relegated from the Premiership in June for persistently breaching salary cap rules.

The council put a "temporary stop" on the loan - to fund a new West Stand at Allianz Park - last month.

It will now demand to see a "robust revised business plan" if Saracens are to access any more of the loan.

Stadium owners Saracens Copthall LLP (SCLLP) have already accessed £3.2m of the loan.

Building work has not yet begun on the West Stand and the report said Premiership champions Saracens and SCLLP are "taking stock" of their plans, which is expected to take until the end of this month.

Council papers show that although terminating the loan was an option, it was not recommended because there was concern that any "conflict with the club" could make it difficult to recover the money already borrowed if required.

A report from Barnet council said: "The agreement allows the council to terminate the loan if 'any event occurs (or circumstances exist) which, in the opinion of the Lender, has or is likely to have a Material Adverse Effect'.

"However, terminating the loan before the club have had a chance to take stock of the current position could put the council in conflict with the club, which is likely to make it harder to recover the £3.2m already drawn down.

"Putting the council in conflict with the club may also jeopardise any community benefits brought by the development of the West Stand."

An update for the Financial Performance and Contracts Committee shows that the temporary suspension on drawdowns came immediately after media speculation began about Saracens' relegation.

The freeze came into force before the relegation was confirmed by Premiership Rugby on 18 January.

The report added: "No further drawdowns will be approved until a way forward has been agreed between the council, SCLLP and the club. Interest will continue to accrue on the £3.2m already drawn down.

"Should SCLLP wish to pursue the development of the West Stand, the council will require a robust revised business plan, subject to independent due diligence, before any further loan drawdowns are made."

Minutes from the meeting show that a local resident accused the council of entering into a "reckless" agreement and asked if there would be an "independent inquiry" into the loan.

The council said there will not be an inquiry.

Saracens declined to comment when contacted by BBC Sport on Monday.

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. – When details of the Dave Steele World Non-Wing Sprint Car Championship 125 were announced, it was assumed Kody Swanson would eventually throw his name in the hat with those wanting to compete.

Swanson, originally from Kingsburg, Calif., but now calls Zionsville, Ind., home, has feasted on non-winged asphalt sprint car racing during his career. He captured his first Little 500 in 2016 for the legendary Hoffman Auto Racing team. Since then he has found victory lane an additional two times including his past season.

In 2019 Swanson found victory lane with the Auto Value Super Sprints in Marne, Mich., on July 20 and captured another non-winged asphalt sprint car victory in Anderson, Ind., a couple of weeks later.

Swanson has found most of his success the past two seasons behind the wheel of the potent Gene Nolen owned, yellow Beast chassis No. 20, with Bill Tranter V-6 engines.

However, Swanson finds himself behind the wheel of an unfamiliar machine to close out Florida Speedweeks with two non-winged pavement sprint car events at Showtime Speedway on Feb. 19-20.

With only a few days left until the fast approaching events, Swanson has become the latest driver to confirm participation in the inaugural Dave Steele World Non-Wing Sprint Car Championship 125. Swanson will behind the wheel of the Doran Enterprises No. 77 for these events. This car has most recently been wheeled by Eric Gordon.

Swanson was very interested in the event when he learned details of the event.

“I like pavement sprint cars,” Swanson explained. ”I’m glad to see them having a resurgence, especially without the wings. And it’s a chance to race in the month of February when there’s snow on the ground here in the Midwest, which piques my interest anyway. It’s a 125-lap race and a chance to honor a friend (Dave Steele) is something I’m excited to be a part of.”

The three-time Little 500 champion will be in an unfamiliar car for this event, but he is already familiar with the team as he competed for them at Daytona Int’l Speedway this past November.

”I was fortunate enough to run for the Doran Racing team at the Historic 24 Hours of Daytona last fall,” Swanson explained. “I stayed in contact with them and I’m looking forward to racing sprint cars with them. Through a discussion, they asked me if I had any interest in going. I didn’t have anyone that was planning on going yet. It was nice reconnecting and hopefully we’ll have some fun racing together again.”

Interestingly, the Doran Racing team car is a Beast chassis with a Bill Tranter V-6, much like the Nolen Racing car he typically drives.

“I’ve never been to Showtime before but I’m trying to do my homework on the place,” Swanson said. “I’m looking forward to seeing it in person and giving it a shot. I’m really looking forward to racing for the Doran Racing team again and giving it our best shot.”

The event, scheduled for Feb. 19-20, will air live thanks to SPEED SPORT Network broadcast partner Low Budget TV. Click here for viewing options and Low Budget TV subscription details.