Mitchell Marsh faces a race to be in contention for the first Test against Pakistan next month after scans revealed he suffered a fractured hand after punching the dressing room wall at the WACA on Sunday.

Marsh's outburst came following his dismissal for 53 in the opening over of the final day of the Sheffield Shield match against Tasmania when he drove a return catch to Jackson Bird. That followed a dragged-on pull in the first innings.

While the exact length of Marsh's lay-off is still to be confirmed it would appear unlikely he can stake a claim to be retained for the Gabba Test which starts on November 21 following his Ashes recall last month.

He was given a public dressing down by Western Australia coach Adam Voges on Monday.

"It's disappointing that any Western Australian player has subjected himself to potentially missing games of cricket because of a moment of madness, particularly your captain," Voges told reporters. "It's not appropriate from any Western Australian cricketer, let alone the skipper."

While the injury is a dent in Marsh's international hopes, in the more immediate term it is a headache for Western Australia who lose their captain ahead of their second Sheffield Shield match against Victoria on Friday.

"We understand the frustrations that come from high-profile and high-performance sport but, look, he needs to be better," Voges said. "Mitch is a good person. This is one moment of frustration that hopefully doesn't cost him a long period out of the game, but it might do, and it's something that he needs to address."

Marsh was recalled to the Test team for the final match of the Ashes and responded with his maiden five-wicket haul, though he was far from certain to be retained at the start of the home season. However, a strong all-round showing in the Sheffield Shield matches over the next month would have put him in a strong position, with Australia keen to have an allrounder in the side to take the pressure off their three-pronged pace attack.

Cricket South Africa (CSA) chief executive Thabang Moroe has called on fans to show patience with the South Africa team as they trail 2-0 in the Test series in India, which comes after a loss in the T20I series.

South Africa made wide-ranging changes to their cricket structure following a poor performance at the World Cup, including the removal of a traditional coach role and the appointment, instead, of a football-style team manager. With several senior players also moving on, Moroe pointed out that the transitional phase was bound to be rocky.

"It was always going to be a difficult challenge taking on the top team in the world - certainly under their own conditions - in India at a time when we have introduced a new team structure," Moroe said in a press statement. "In the past two years we have had to bid farewell to some of the great names of international cricket such as AB de Villiers, Hashim Amla, Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn who between them played nearly 450 Test matches for the Proteas.

"You don't replace that kind of experience overnight and we need to give a new generation time to settle."

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South Africa haven't won a Test in India since February 2010, when they beat India by an innings in Nagpur. In most Tests since, they have not even managed to push India, and the only non-loss was in a game that was washed out. They seemed to have turned a corner in the first Test of the ongoing series, with centuries from Dean Elgar and Quinton de Kock helping them to a total of more than 400 in the first innings. But in every innings since, the inexperienced top order has collapsed and left them with little to fight with. It is symptomatic of a poor year across formats for South Africa, who also lost a Test series to Sri Lanka at home before the World Cup.

"These things take time and I am confident that we will already see improvement in our next Test series when England are our visitors during the festive season," Moroe said. "I am sure that our supporters will rally behind them on home turf. These are, in fact, exciting times for South African cricket with new names and faces coming to the fore. Our talent pipeline has produced the likes of Aiden Markram, Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi and Zubayr Hamza over the last few years and our development systems are clearly in good shape.

"There is a huge incentive on our young players to put pressure on the incumbents. There is nothing like good competition for places that brings out the best in all."

Moroe's sentiments were echoed by CSA's acting director of cricket, Corrie van Zyl.

"We need to appreciate the quality that is in this Indian side. This is an Indian team that has been together for some time now and is well accustomed to playing in their home conditions," van Zyl said. "I strongly believe we, as the Proteas, have the players to win games and the youngsters will come right. The team are constantly trying to find ways to win. It's not like they're not doing a great job with it. We believe in them that they're going to make the right decisions to do the best they can do to help us win Test matches."

The third and final Test of the series begins in Ranchi on Saturday.

IT'S THE AFTERNOON of Feb. 26, during a three-games-in-four-nights stretch, and Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside is on a roll. Tomorrow night, his Heat will host the Golden State Warriors, then fly to Houston to face the Rockets on Feb. 28. But now he's rattling off what time the Warriors game will end (10 p.m.), when they'll board their flight (11:30 or later), when they'll land in Houston (2 a.m.) and arrive at the hotel -- he figures it'll be 3 -- before playing the Rockets later that day. "And that's just what we've got tomorrow," he says.

Sleep matters, Whiteside says -- it matters a lot. It "could be the difference between you having a career game or playing terrible." But therein lies the conundrum of NBA life. For something so important, it's remarkably elusive. As Whiteside says: "It's just so hard to get the sleep that you need."

To fight back, he says he hopes to grab a few hours of sleep on the plane to Houston. He hopes the hotel bed there is OK, though that's never a guarantee. He hopes the melatonin he often takes will help him snooze, though that isn't easy after games. But even with that, is it possible within the current NBA schedule to obtain consistent, quality sleep?

"Nah," Whiteside says. "It's impossible. It's impossible."

Fatigue has long been a reality of life in the NBA, a league with teams that play 82 games in under six months and fly up to 50,000 miles per season -- roughly 20,000 more miles each season than NFL teams and far enough to circle the globe twice. Over the 2018-19 season, the average NBA team played every 2.07 days, had 13.3 back-to-back sets and flew the equivalent of 250 miles a day for 25 straight weeks.

Some in the league, from players and coaches to training personnel, have begun to suspect that the toll extracted by the NBA grind -- the combination of the sport's physical demands, the circadian disruptions, the six to eight months of travel across time zones -- is not fully appreciated. Some of those specialists have begun compiling data. And that data suggests that sleep deprivation is the NBA's silent scourge -- a pox on the bodies and minds of NBA athletes, with impacts both wide and deep.

One NBA GM calls it a "very big issue." Another GM adds, "We have a large population of vampires as it is -- add in the travel and it's more so. We all want better solutions to this." Says a third, "It is a real problem for the entire league."

When asked to address the issue, the NBA provided a statement that declared that "player health and wellness continues to be a major focus for the NBA" and noted its "significant game schedule changes, an investment in a new airline charter program, a focus on mental health and wellness, and the advancement of wearable technology. ... Sleep is an area we look at closely as part of this effort."

Still, despite the league's best efforts -- lengthening its schedule in recent years, reducing back-to-backs for five straight seasons (down to an average of 12.4 per team in the coming season), eliminating four-in-five stretches, reducing the nationally televised games that tip off at 10:30 p.m. ET, creating more rest days -- sleep deprivation remains what one high-ranking league source intimately involved with player health calls "our biggest issue without a solution."

"It's the dirty little secret that everybody knows about."

FROM HIS STALL in the visitors lockers in Staples Center, Tobias Harris looks around the room. He points at each of his teammates, even the team staffers, one by one, from left to right.

"You ask anybody in the room," Harris says. "The thing I talk about is sleep.

"I think in a couple years," he says, "[sleep deprivation] will be an issue that's talked about, like the NFL with concussions."

It's early in the 2017-18 season. Harris is with the Detroit Pistons, who've just fallen to the Los Angeles Lakers. And as Harris expounds on his favorite topic, Pistons guard Reggie Jackson, dressing in the next stall, shakes his head and groans. Jackson has heard this speech before. "Some guys joke, 'Oh, you have a bedtime,'" Harris says, dodging the shade. "But I've got to be able to function the next day at the top level." This is how Tobias Harris rolls: On off-days, he'll make sure he's done with everything by 6 p.m. so he can be in bed by 8:30 to achieve his nightly goal of nine hours of sleep. On game nights, he kick-starts his recovery as soon as the buzzer sounds. At his locker, he'll strap a breathing belt around his waist and slip a heart-rate monitor on his index finger. He knows the game has caused his body to release cortisol, a hormone that wakes him up, while suppressing melatonin, the hormone the body naturally produces to regulate sleep. He's out of balance. So for a few minutes, still wearing his jersey, adrenaline still flowing through his veins, he'll take several deep breaths, trying to slow his heart rate and breathing until they're aligned, monitoring his progress on an iPad.

He calls this his quiet time. The goal? Re-balance just enough so that once he settles into bed, he can quickly enter a deep, restorative sleep.

There's more. Harris travels with an electroencephalogram machine, examining his brain waves almost daily, engaging in daily 45-minute training sessions. He clips sensors onto each ear, another onto his temple, the three wires leading back into the EEG, then cues up a film or TV show; as the show plays, the EEG reads his brain waves. If they venture outside an optimal range for focus and concentration, the show doesn't play.

What Harris is doing is called neurofeedback. And although its efficacy has been debated by medical experts, Harris swears by it -- believes it arms him with knowledge in his ongoing battle against fatigue.

This has been Harris' routine for the past five seasons. But he's far from the only NBA player to feel the need to manage the impact of travel and sleep loss.

Take LeBron James. The four-time MVP famously says he invests seven figures a year on his fitness and physical well-being. But the one thing James has come to appreciate more than anything is sleep. In James' hotel rooms on the road, the temperature is set to 68-70 degrees, nearby electronics are shut off 30 to 45 minutes before he settles into bed -- and when that happens, a sleep app on his phone serenades him with the soothing sound of rain falling on leaves. As James said on a podcast with author and efficiency expert Tim Ferriss: "There's nothing more important than optimal REM sleep."

Swingman Andre Iguodala says he suffered sleep deprivation in the NBA for almost a decade before joining the Warriors in 2013. Now, after working with a sleep specialist, he avoids long naps that could sap his overnight sleep. He keeps his phone on airplane mode and TV off when he's in his bedroom. "It's not optimal sleep if you're sleeping on a plane," he says, "so that really don't count."

Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum began taking naps in high school and seeking nine hours of sleep a night. And in the NBA, he gets into bed as early as possible. "Lack of sleep messes up your recovery, messes up how you play, your cognitive function, your mindset, how you're moving on the court," McCollum says. "Sleep is everything."

Blazers wing Kent Bazemore has his own travel routine -- no electronics, blackout curtains -- all toward his nightly goal of seven hours a night. "You have to be cognizant of it, to make sure you get your body right."

A key to the longevity of 42-year-old Vince Carter, the NBA's oldest player? "Sleep. It's the No. 1 thing for me."

TIMOTHY ROYER STARED out the window of the Orlando Magic's charter bus as it made the trek toward a downtown Houston hotel. It was some absurdly late hour in the fall of 2015. The team had just arrived from another city, where the Magic had played hours before; they were there to wrap up a three-game road trip and close out the second game of a back-to-back set. The rest of the world was asleep. Royer, an athlete performance specialist who had worked with the Magic for the prior three years, was exhausted from the travel, nauseous and disoriented.

He looked around. The bus was exquisite. The players were millionaires, among the greatest athletes in the world. And still, on the basis of everything he'd seen and the data he'd been gathering since he joined the team, Royer had begun to believe that the grind of the NBA schedule was slowly undermining the physical gifts that had granted them a seat on the bus in the first place.

This is insane, he thought. Who could do this every single day?

It was an epiphany seven years in the making.

Royer, a clinical neuropsychologist with Neuropeak Pro, a company that specializes in athletic performance and recovery, had been introduced to the NBA in 2007 by journeyman center Chris Kaman. The two had met through a family friend in Michigan who believed Royer's use of neurofeedback could help Kaman, who'd struggled with focus and been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as a child.

"I think in a couple years, [sleep deprivation] will be an issue that's talked about, like the NFL with concussions."

Tobias Harris

Though medical experts dispute neurofeedback technology's ability to treat ADHD, Kaman would say that Royer "changed my life" and would later become an investor in Neurocore, the parent company of Neuropeak Pro. And half a dozen years later, as Royer and his team worked with more pro athletes across several sports, Royer, who specializes in attention disorders, sleep management, stress and anxiety, would land a consultant role with the Magic (owned by the DeVos family, who became chief investors in Neurocore eight years ago) for the 2012-13 season.

And it was then that Royer began traveling with the team -- and noting the absurdities of the NBA routine.

Royer was not a peer-reviewed scientist, was not engaging in rigorous, double-blind studies. He had not set out to study sleep deprivation and its physiological impacts. But what he'd seen had given him pause. He had begun to consider the NBA grind a form of shift work -- but well beyond employees working a graveyard shift several days a week. This was a group of employees working wildly different ranges of shifts in short time spans, coupled with onerous travel across multiple time zones.

That last element was crucial. Circadian rhythms, tied to the rising and setting of the sun, dictate daily sleep/wake cycles. If those rhythms are thrown off, every cell in the body is affected, so much so that the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified circadian disruption from shift work -- which affects, among others, emergency medical workers, military personnel, pilots, firefighters and law enforcement -- as a possible human carcinogen.

Zigzag across time zones and it's worse. "There's not a factory on the planet," Royer says, "that would move shift workers the way we move NBA players."

Still, until that moment on the bus in the small hours of the night, Royer had continued to believe that the NBA schedule and the league's approach to travel and sleep could be overhauled. Players could be educated and their sleep monitored. The number of games could be reduced. Travel schedules could be changed.

In the five years since, he has begun to believe that those measures, while helpful, are insufficient. Sleep deprivation, he believes, is more than just a hindrance to NBA players on the court. It likely is injuring them -- and shortening their lives.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION IS not just an NBA problem. It is, in fact, an everybody problem. In 2011, the CDC declared insufficient sleep to be a public health problem. Over the past 50 years, according to research conducted by Dr. Charles Czeisler, the director of sleep medicine at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, the national average sleep duration on work nights has fallen from eight and a half hours to less than seven. That has consequences.

As Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and founder and director of its Center for Human Sleep Science, says: "Based on the weight of probably now about 10,000 empirical scientific studies, the number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep or less without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number and expressed as a percent of the population, is zero."

Chronic sleep loss has been associated with higher risk for cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, heart attacks, Alzheimer's, dementia, depression, stroke, psychosis and suicide. As Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine in the department of neurology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, says, "Sleep deprivation ... doesn't only affect the brain -- it affects all your other organs. ... Think about it as punching your other organs."

So how much sleep do NBA players get per night during the season? Ballparking a figure is tricky, but Czeisler, who has worked with three NBA teams, says five hours per night is not an uncommon answer from players; he's had "very famous" players tell him that they sleep only three to four hours a night. Multiple factors contribute to this sleep deficit, not least the siren song of the NBA nightlife (though the "Tinderization" of the NBA has arguably minimized that effect). That said, one former and four current NBA athletic training staff members all separately say that six hours of sleep per 24-hour cycle is common among players, an estimate that combines the nightly sleep and the pregame nap that is typical for many NBA players.

And as for those naps? Sleep scientists suggest they are not all that beneficial.

"We have a circadian rhythm, and there are times when we have been designed to sleep and thus get optimal sleep," Walker says. "Trying to sleep during the day results in worse sleep quantity and quality and leads to significant poor health outcomes. We know this from hundreds of studies in nighttime shift workers."

"Based on ... about 10,000 empirical scientific studies, the number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep or less without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number ... is zero." Dr. Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

Czeisler, for his part, recommends eight to 10 hours of sleep per night for NBA players -- adults ages 26 to 64 are recommended to get seven to nine hours, according to the National Sleep Foundation -- but one current NBA team staffer, who has worked in the league for decades across multiple teams, says players aren't touching that number. When it comes to their sleep per night, on the basis of that staffer's data and personal observation, "it's on the low-to-very-low end."

As one NBA executive notes: If a person slept four or five hours a night over an extended period of time, they'd survive. "But we're not asking our players to just be alive. We're asking them to perform at an elite level against others at an elite level.

"There's a huge difference between those two things."

IN FALL 2012, when the Magic's Tim Royer had sought to improve player focus and reduce stress, he and his team began by gauging players' heart-rate variability, hormones and breathing patterns. The existing science at the time suggested a few things: for one, that levels of cortisol, a hormone naturally released to combat stress, would be normal at first but would turn erratic as the season progressed -- which tests confirmed. What Royer and his team didn't necessarily predict was how erratic players' testosterone levels would become over that time too.

Testosterone is vital for athletes. It's a foundational hormone that impacts speed, strength, muscle mass, mood. And while studies had already shown that sleeping about five hours a night for one week temporarily lowers testosterone levels in men by an equivalent of 11 years of aging, what Royer saw in NBA players stunned him all the more.

By January, just three months into the 2012-13 NBA season, the testosterone of one player in his 20s had dropped to that of a 50-year-old man. (Those reductions in testosterone, it's worth noting, are not permanent, but they do require multiple days of recovery to offset.) And as testosterone levels fell for more players, the injuries seemed to correspondingly accumulate.

Initially, Royer and his staff were focused on optimizing performance. But all the red flags began pointing in one direction -- toward minimizing the impacts of travel and sleep loss.

For her part, Dr. Eve Van Cauter, director of the Sleep, Metabolism and Health Center at the University of Chicago, notes that sleep loss leads to a decline in physical performance, eye-hand coordination, attention span -- almost everything one can measure. A sleep-deprived person at the top of a staircase is more likely to stumble and fall, she says. An equally exhausted NBA player jumping, landing, cutting and diving on a court? More likely, she says, to take a misstep that leads to an injury.

"Lack of sleep messes up your recovery, messes up how you play, your cognitive function, your mindset, how you're moving on the court. Sleep is everything."

CJ McCollum

As the years went on, Royer and his staff considered their efforts to counter sleep loss -- like deep-breathing exercises to optimize sleep -- to be all but a Band-Aid for a broken bone. By the 2014-15 season, Royer and his staff had fully committed to their investigation of sleep deprivation, tracking 18 players over multiple teams in each conference. When the season began, those players' testosterone levels ranked, on average, in the 88th percentile compared to males their own age. After two months of NBA play and travel, their levels had fallen to the 70th percentile; by March, the 32nd percentile -- a 64% drop in just five months.

That year, for the first time, Royer also began monitoring one Eastern Conference team's brain wave activity throughout the season. In a room at the team's practice facility, players would sit in large chairs, strapped to EEGs, results of their brain waves appearing on 60-inch flat-screen TVs in front of them. At normal cognitive levels to start the season, by April the team's players had levels collectively on par with some patients in their late 60s or early 70s who were experiencing deficits in processing speed and short-term memory. (Such short-term memory loss is temporary. Dr. Andrew Heyman, lead physician and owner of the Virginia Center for Health & Wellness, notes that mental faculties can return within a couple of weeks with seven to eight hours of nightly sleep, moderate exercise and proper diet.)

The next season, Royer and his team broadened their efforts, tracking hormones four times a season, heart-rate variability and breathing patterns not just for players but also for dozens of members of traveling parties for teams in both conferences. They found that those who simply traveled with the team showed similar declines to those of the players themselves. "That's when we stopped thinking, 'Oh, these guys are playing too much,'" Royer says. "It's not about playing. It's about traveling."

By the 2016-17 season, Royer and his staff had begun gauging players' sleep overnight with mobile polysomnographs or wearable devices throughout the season, and by the end saw that players were obtaining little, if any, restorative REM sleep.

If deep sleep is like cash in a wallet, REM sleep is like a retirement fund. In such a grinding schedule, with so much sleep debt, the players were all but bankrupt.

IN EARLY 2018, Royer and his staff, motivated by the data they'd collected from NBA players, turned to John Leopold, an independent statical consultant at DePuy Synthes, a provider of orthopedic and neuroscience products and services. (Neurocore -- Neuropeak Pro's parent company -- consulted with Leopold to analyze the data and provide results.) Royer and his team wondered most of all: Did the lower testosterone levels they'd uncovered correlate to an increased risk of injury? They provided Leopold with nearly 400 testosterone samples from more than 100 players across almost six years -- players who had cumulatively reported more than five dozen injuries during that span.

Two analyses were performed. A few weeks later, Royer and his staff got the full report. In both, factoring only data gathered from those players during that span, Leopold had found a "statistically significant increase in risk" when testosterone levels for players decreased below the 20th percentile for males their age.

Czeisler, the leading sleep researcher at Harvard, suspects there isn't another group that has collected the sort of data that Royer has. He says Royer's observations on the adverse impact of sleep deficiency on testosterone are "consistent" with what he would expect to see "based on the evidence of the adverse physiological impact of recurrent circadian disruption and sleep deficiency. There's no doubt to me that these things were happening."

Says Michele Roberts, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association: "It's not surprising that poor sleep patterns will negatively affect performance and, more importantly, can cause significant long-term health risks. In our last round of bargaining, we addressed some of these concerns through schedule adjustments, including by lengthening the season ... and by increasing the mandatory number of days off. We are anxious to see any new data analyzing the effects of sleep loss in professional sports so that we can continue our efforts."

Today, Royer believes his sample size is large enough to merit further scientific analysis. As of January, he is no longer with Neuropeak Pro for reasons he can't disclose, owing to the terms of his previous contract. But he's been a neuropsychologist for 25 years. Over that span, his team has gathered data on more than 50,000 individuals and worked from a database of more than 10,000 quantitative EEG tests, many of them from patients who suffer from sleep disorders, epilepsy, ADHD, dementia, autism or other neurodegenerative diseases. Since 2006, he and his staff have worked with more than 500 pro athletes across the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, golf, tennis, cricket, soccer and swimming. In the past six years alone, Royer says, he has worked with about 250 NBA players and consulted with eight teams.

Royer's team, again, doesn't even specialize in sleep; he stumbled upon the data only because he received behind-the-scenes access to an NBA team in part because that team was owned by the same people who helped fund his company. Beyond that, Royer himself is an imperfect messenger. He isn't a research scientist. He hasn't conducted a conclusive double-blind peer-reviewed study. But he is convinced that he's seeing the next major player health issue.

"We've been doing this for six years. We've been on the planes. We've been at the games. We've been on the road. ... I am 100 percent certain that what we're talking about is real."

HOUSTON -- The 2019 season has been a trying one for the Astros' Carlos Correa. Injuries have limited his availability and production, and even when he returned to the active list for the postseason, he struggled to find the timing at the plate that had made him one of the game's brightest young stars. That timing returned Sunday, and it was just in time for Houston.

Correa homered to the opposite field off Yankees lefty J.A. Happ on the first pitch of the bottom of the 11th inning, giving the Astros a desperately needed 3-2 win over New York on Sunday. As the series shifts to Yankee Stadium for Game 3 on Tuesday, both teams head east with one win on the board.

"Going into that last inning, I thought, 'I got this,'" Correa said. "I felt like I got this. And I had the right approach against [Happ]. I've been successful against him going the other way. And that's what I tried to do. I saw a good pitch down the middle, and I drove the other way."

The Astros might not have been in position for Correa's heroics if not for a great defensive play he made to prevent a run in the top of the sixth.

With two outs and runners on first and second, Brett Gardner struck a hard-hit liner at Houston second baseman Jose Altuve, and the ball took an in-between hop. Recognizing the difficulty of the play, Correa ranged over from his position at shortstop and corralled the errant ball. DJ LeMahieu raced around third toward the plate with what would have been the lead run. But the strong-armed Correa gunned him down at the plate.

"The second I saw him come over and make a clean catch of the ball and come up and ready to throw, honestly, I thought he was out," said Astros starter Justin Verlander, whose solid 6 2/3 innings got lost in the glare of Correa's night. "It went from 'Crap!' to 'We got this guy. We got an extra out!' It was just incredible."

According to Statcast, Correa covered 58 feet to retrieve the ball on the play and then unleashed an 87 mph throw to catcher Robinson Chirinos to get LeMahieu.

"As an infielder, I know how tough it is to catch a ball that's a line drive right at you in between," Correa said. "So as soon as I knew that it was going to crash in between, I was creeping over. When it hit him, and I saw the ball go my way, I just went after it. And I grabbed it, and when I looked up and I saw he was sending the runner, I thought, 'Oh, I got this guy.' So I threw him out. I don't know why he sent him, but thank you."

As the innings advanced, a Houston lineup that has struggled to score consistently in the face of elite pitching this October grew increasingly frustrated. Before Correa's winner, the Astros hit 19 balls with an exit velocity of at least 95 mph in the first two games of the series, but they had just five hits to show for them. The Yankees, on the other hand, had 14 hits on their 23 hard-hit balls.

At one point in the eighth, Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez, the favorite to win this season's AL Rookie of the Year award, struck out against lefty Zack Britton and snapped his bat by pounding it into the ground near home plate. When Correa's homer left the ballpark, it wasn't quite a catharsis because the ever-confident Astros felt it was due to happen anyway.

"We're just going to keep getting to the next at-bat, keep letting the next hitter do his job [against] the pitching that comes in," Astros manager AJ Hinch said. "It's all about winning today's game. And our guys are responding perfectly to the difficulty in beating those guys."

Correa hit .279 with 21 homers during the season but played in only 75 games, suffering fractured ribs in May and injuring his back in August. He wasn't cleared to rejoin the club for the playoffs until shortly before Houston started its ALDS series against the Rays. Correa played in only three big league games in September.

Although his defense has been sharp throughout October, the rust was apparent when he was at the plate. Entering Sunday, Correa was hitting .136 with a .318 OPS and one RBI in six postseason games. However, he felt so good in batting practice before Game 2 that his teammates in the dugout were telling him he would be the hero.

They were right, and, it turns out, Correa believed them.

"I mean, he knew he was gonna end it when the pitching change came in," Astros third baseman Alex Bregman said. "He told us. Then he did it."

Correa doubled in the second and in the sixth drove Yankees center fielder Brett Gardner to the fence with a deep drive to left-center. But the final proof that his swing might -- at last -- be coming around didn't manifest until the 11th, when he jumped on a Happ fastball and sent 43,359 orange-clad fans home happy. But no one was happier than Correa.

"It's huge. It's huge," he said. "We came to the ballpark knowing we had to win this game, no matter how we had to win this game. JV on the mound, and I knew our lineup was going to do what we do throughout the whole year, and that's put great at-bats together as a team. And we were able to do that today, and we got the win."

As young as the 24-year-old Correa still is, he has already joined a select group of hitters with multiple game-ending hits in postseason play. Correa has two of them now, with the other coming against the Yankees in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS. Only David Ortiz (three) had more. Alfonso Soriano, Edgar Renteria, Bernie Williams, Paul Blair and Goose Goslin also had two.

"Moments like this, like tonight make everything worth it," Correa said. "Nights of hard work, doing my rehab, not missing anything, it's all worth it when you look at moments like this."

Any win in October is big, but this one not only saved the Astros from falling into an 0-2 hole with three games looming in the Bronx but also set up Houston to grab the edge in the showdown with red-hot ace Gerrit Cole taking the mound Tuesday. That is a very different perspective than the one the Astros might have had on their flight to New York had Correa not come through on both sides of the ball.

But he did, and suddenly the Astros have their superstar shortstop back in fully functional form.

"We've always said he's a big part of our offense, big part of our defense, big part of our team," Hinch said. "He's usually hitting third, fourth or fifth, but on this team, we've pushed him down a little bit, coming back from injury.

"You can see the impact that we love so much about him. And you look at his RBI totals in the postseason, you look at his walk-offs, you look at the big moments. He's a pretty special man."

HOUSTON -- If it wasn't abundantly clear already, Game 2 of the American League Championship Series crystallized the ethos of the New York Yankees: They are not going to sit back idly and watch the Houston Astros wrest a World Series berth from their lifeless hands. They are going to be aggressive, and that aggressiveness might at times verge on recklessness. So be it. Wallflowers cannot, and will not, beat these Astros.

The Yankees' 3-2 loss in 11 innings Sunday night featured a rightfully assertive posture from the earliest moments of the game. They were facing Justin Verlander in the first of four games he and co-ace Gerrit Cole will start should the series extend to seven, and manager Aaron Boone knows the Yankees must pick off at least one of those to beat Houston. So with a 1-0 series lead in hand already and the opportunity to land a liver shot on the Astros, Boone lead-footed the gas pedal.

Runners on second and third, facing a one-run deficit in the second inning? Boone brought the infield in. Only seven outs from his starter, James Paxton? Boone yanked him. Reliever Chad Green cruising through two innings? Boone pulled him, too, because Adam Ottavino presented a superior matchup opportunity.

This is what constitutes managing in 2019. It's not purely analytics, and it's not some sort of abandonment of gut feeling, and it's certainly not overmanaging, which is a catch-all phrase used by those who think aggressive bullpen maneuvering and seeking out marginal advantages is a bad thing. Here's what it is: pragmatism.

Because -- at least based on his decision-making in the first two games of the ALCS -- Boone understands what the Yankees are and what they aren't, where they lag behind and where they excel. New York is a team with limited starting pitching and five relief pitchers it deeply trusts. That is a flawed pitching staff, but not so flawed that it can't beat the Astros.

To do so will simply take a deftness similar to what the Tampa Bay Rays showcased in their division-series matchup against Houston. Rays manager Kevin Cash deployed his bullpen with a brilliant touch. He understood the talent advantage the Astros possess would force his team to steal advantages wherever it could. The same goes for the Yankees, and while the overpowering and dominant version of Verlander did not pitch Sunday, the one that did show up was good enough to install a deep sense of urgency in New York.

"Certainly Verlander being on the hill, runs are going to be tough to come by," Boone said. "More often than not I'm going to play that really aggressively."

Play aggressively he did, much to the consternation of armchair managers and Monday morning quarterbacks who believe past success portends future success. Consider Boone's choice in the fifth inning to remove Green for Ottavino. Green had retired all six hitters he faced. Ottavino replaced him, hung a first-pitch slider and watched George Springer punish it for a tying home run.

This is a classic case of process not equaling outcome. Ottavino threw a bad pitch. That happens, and when it happens in the postseason it is exponentially magnified. That bad pitch, though, does not take the sound process of Boone's decision -- Springer destroys Green's bread-and-butter four-seam fastball; Ottavino is death on right-handed hitters -- and invalidate it. It means the right play didn't work. Which, in a seven-game series, admittedly can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Focusing solely on Green's performance also puts Game 2 in a vacuum instead of as one slice of a seven-piece pie. The balance between now and whatever games remain is admittedly difficult to strike, but the Yankees, with Game 3 starter Luis Severino not stretched out enough to pitch deep into games -- especially against a lineup as patient as Houston's -- and Game 4 looking like a bullpen affair, needed to weigh Green's usage accordingly.

Boone is juggling what the front office gave him -- and it's a roster that includes five left-handed relievers, which plays awfully well into the hands of the Astros, who were the best-hitting team against lefties in baseball this season. Boone knows this, and he knows it's the sort of thing that will haunt the Yankees at some point in the series, which only exacerbated his exigency in Game 2.

"You're playing it to win the game," Boone said. "You're not playing it to -- what if we go 13, you know? You're playing it to what gives us the best chance to win here. And the bottom line is we end up giving up a third run in the 11th inning."

So it went. The possibility of stealing both games at Minute Maid Park -- one of them started by Verlander -- was exciting enough that Boone emptied his handful of power relievers, going from Green to Ottavino to Tommy Kahnle to Zack Britton to Aroldis Chapman. They covered 20 outs and, Springer's home run off Ottavino excepted, did so with aplomb.

They'll also be ready for Game 3 on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium, when Cole gets his first start of the series. Boone will be suitably pushy in that game, too, if offered the opportunity to steal a win -- and even though it's at home, beating Cole in the postseason would constitute grand larceny.

Whatever the outcome in Game 3, Boone might well pray for rain, which is expected to come down in sheets Wednesday. That would allow him to bring back Masahiro Tanaka for Game 4 on full rest, go back to Paxton on full rest in Game 5 and push back the necessary bullpen game as long as possible.

It's not an easy road. The Yankees knew that going into the ALCS. As great a lineup as the Yankees have, as many talented arms as they can offer, the Astros are more talented and managed by AJ Hinch, one of the game's finest tacticians. Boone showed Sunday he's learning himself. He saw an opening. He went full bore. The offense didn't cooperate with any support beyond Aaron Judge's two-run home run, and come extra innings, it left Boone exposed, with CC Sabathia and Jonathan Loaisiga and J.A. Happ in to get the most important outs.

That's not a mistake. It's a solid plan that didn't work. The Yankees will take that. They're certainly not going to beat the Astros sitting back and waiting for the series to come to them.

HAUBSTADT, Ind. – The first thing Christopher Bell said when he revealed that he was becoming an owner/driver in the 410 sprint car ranks was that he wanted to contend in, and eventually win, big races.

Mission accomplished.

Bell ran down, passed and drove away from World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series point leader Brad Sweet Sunday night at Tri-State Speedway, taking the lead at lap 18 and pacing the remaining distance in the 40-lap feature for his fifth-career Outlaw win and first of the season.

It was a power performance befitting of the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship contender and three-time Chili Bowl Nationals winner, coming in his first Outlaw start since unveiling his No. 21 Mobil 1/Toyota Racing Development sprinter.

However, it surprised the Norman, Okla., native that it came at Tri-State, of all places.

“This track just changes so much. I’ve never gone good here before in my life,” Bell noted in victory lane. “This is the first time I’ve come to Haubstadt and been competitive. I learned a lot today. It starts off really, really slick here, and then as the cars run, the track gets churned up and then it gains a lot of grip.

“I definitely went to school tonight, and now I’ve started to like this place. I definitely like it tonight.”

Bell started third and watched from afar early on, as Sweet got the jump from the pole and led the early stages despite six cautions in the first 12 circuits that made for a rough-and-tumble start to the action.

However, after a spin by Hunter Schuerenberg which collected Donny Schatz and Critter Malone in its wake on the 12th revolution, the remaining distance went green-to-checkered – allowing Bell to pounce.

Bell outdueled Kerry Madsen on the lap-13 restart to hold the runner-up spot, then ran down Sweet shortly thereafter and used a sweeping turn-three slide job working lap 18 to take command for good.

After that, there was no one who could stay with Bell in any capacity.

By the halfway point, Bell had a second and a half in hand over the field, and as he worked through traffic seemingly effortlessly down the stretch Bell ballooned that gap to four seconds with nine to go.

All the while, 18th-starting Sheldon Haudenschild – who visited the work area before the initial start and had to roll from the tail of the field – was storming through traffic with a fast NOS Energy Drink No. 17.

He passed Madsen for the second position with seven laps left, but by then Bell was long gone.

Bell finished out the final laps and took the win by 3.781 seconds over Haudenschild, with Madsen holding on to complete the podium. Ian Madsen and Sweet finished fourth and fifth, respectively.

“I felt good all night long and I knew that our car was really close,” Bell said. “Honestly, we didn’t really change very much all night long. We just kept getting those shorts stints, and I still felt fine. I felt like I just needed to get some time underneath of us and get going.

“I was worried there that we were gonna run out of fuel (at the end), but it all worked out.”

Though he’s accrued a host of accomplishments in NASCAR stock car racing, Bell maintains that his World of Outlaws victories hold an extra-special place in his heart and on his career resume.

None rank higher than winning in his own equipment, however. Sunday night’s win stands on its own.

“To be able to have my own race car and do what we did … winning Outlaw races is something that I cherish. Those four that I had before tonight were four of my favorite wins in my career,” Bell explained. “So to get number five here, in my own race car, myself and Chad’s … obviously it’s his first Outlaw win; it’s his first Outlaw race. So thank you so much Chad. He and all of his guys work their tails off on this thing, but it’s a lot of fun cause we’re all friends.

“I’m just very thankful to be able to be here driving this thing. What a night.”

Of note, 10-time Outlaw champion Donny Schatz was involved in two of the night’s half-dozen cautions, coming from the tail of the field twice to finish 13th. He now trails Sweet by 30 points in the standings.

To view complete race results, advance to the next page.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- As disappointed as Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones was in his team's third straight loss, he was not ready to pin sole responsibility on head coach Jason Garrett.

The Cowboys opened the season 3-0 with one of the highest-scoring offenses in the NFL. With their 24-22 loss to the previously winless New York Jets on Sunday, they now find themselves in a bit of a freefall even if they are still tied with the Philadelphia Eagles atop the NFC East.

"I'm going to be very trite. I was a lot happier with what he had done the first three games than what's happened the last three games," Jones said. "But the big thing I want to say is it's not just him. This is across the board. That had a lot of input out there tonight to get in that spot."

Speaking on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas last week, Jones dispelled the possibility of Garrett getting fired in-season after some oddsmakers made him the second favorite to be fired behind Atlanta's Dan Quinn.

"Don't bet any money [on] that happening," Jones said. "You'll lose it."

Jones has made only one in-season coaching move, jettisoning Wade Phillips in favor of Garrett after a 1-7 start to the 2010 season. Garrett took over the job on a full-time basis in 2011 and has made the playoffs three times, but has not advanced past the divisional round.

He is in the final year of his contract, essentially coaching for his future.

"If you really look at it, you can't take one thing. It can be a list of 15 things with some having more of an emphasis on maybe the player, the execution, mistakes, breaks -- all of those kinds of things. Across the board we did not play well enough to win. Had we been able to tie this thing up, or win that thing at the end, it wouldn't be because we played well. You guys would be writing about a team that did not play well that won a game. Instead you're [writing] about a team that what usually happens to you when you don't play well. Am I thinking that this is what we are going to be or what we can do with our 10 games that we have remaining, here we are leading the NFC East? Not at all.

"I want to look at the things that we're doing right and we'll give a good look at making the adjustments or whatever the things that haven't gone good here."

The Cowboys were 3-3 after six games in 2018 and fell to 3-5 before turning their season around, winning the division and a playoff game.

"Ultimately everything that we want will be determined by what we do from this moment forward," Garrett said. "We just have to get back to work [Monday], take it one day at a time and try to get better as a football team."

HOUSTON -- A man in the Astros dugout who was not in uniform was hit by a foul ball off the bat of Houston's Michael Brantley during Game 2 of the American League Championship Series and exited with a towel over his head.

It was unclear who the person was, but he was not an Astros player or coach. A report by Fox, which was televising the game Sunday night, said he was a security officer. A team spokesman said the club did not have any details or an update on the man's condition.

Play between the Astros and New York Yankees was briefly halted after the incident in the fifth inning, and manager AJ Hinch came on the field to console a shaken-up Brantley.

Several Astros players were shown in the dugout looking distraught, as were Yankees players who had a view into Houston's dugout. Houston stars Carlos Correa and George Springer both could be seen putting their hands on their heads and then looking away seconds after the ball entered the dugout.

Play resumed after a couple of minutes and Brantley struck out but reached first on a wild pitch by Adam Ottavino.

The Astros extended the protective netting at Minute Maid Park to cover more of the seating area earlier this year, but there is no such protection for the dugouts. The move came after a 2-year-old girl suffered a skull fracture when she struck by a foul ball during a May game in Houston.