CHICAGO -- New Chicago Cubs closer Craig Kimbrel took his first step toward returning to the majors Tuesday afternoon, throwing a 1-2-3 seventh inning for Triple-A Iowa. Kimbrel threw eight pitches total -- four fastballs and four curves.

"I heard that he did really well," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said from Wrigley Field. "It's just about health. If the guy is healthy and he's ready to rock n' roll, you put him in the ninth inning."

Kimbrel induced a fly out and groundout before striking out his last batter, reportedly reaching 95 or 96 mph on the radar gun.

The Cubs still won't put a timeline on him coming up. The team will know more as he recovers from each outing.

Kimbrel will pitch again on Thursday or Friday, according to general manager Jed Hoyer.

"He's felt good, but we're not going to rush to judgment on any one outing," Hoyer said.

Kimbrel signed a 3-year, $43 million deal earlier this month and will take over closing duties as soon as he's ready. An eight-pitch outing on Tuesday was a good sign, but perhaps it went too quickly.

"It's one of the challenges when these guys go down on these rehab assignments, actually getting enough work in," Hoyer said with a smile. "Good first outing in a real game."

This is the moment Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Benoit Paire started playing foot-tennis during their first-round match at the Halle Open.

Paire lost his racquet while serving in the third game of the second set, so instead kicked the ball over to his opponent.

Tsonga went on to win the match 6-4 7-5.

Roger Federer will meet Jo-Wilfried Tsonga next after beginning his grass-court season with a 7-6 (7-1) 6-3 win over Australia's John Millman in Halle.

Federer, 37, lost to Millman at last year's US Open and was given a thorough work-out by the world number 57.

Neither offered up any break points in the first set and, after Federer had swept the tie-break, the Swiss secured the only break of the second set.

Tsonga beat Federer in an epic five-set comeback at Wimbledon in 2011.

The French world number 77, who overcame compatriot Benoit Paire 6-4 7-5 in his own first-round match, also beat Federer in the pair's two most recent matches.

In total, Federer leads their head-to-head record by 11 wins to six.

"It is always important to win your first game on grass, because otherwise the grass season can be very short," said Federer, a 20-time Grand Slam champion, after his win.

German Alex Zverev, who hurt his knee in his win over Robin Haase on Monday, has withdrawn from the tournament's doubles draw.

The second seed however remains in the singles and will take on American Steve Johnson on Thursday.

Defending champion Borna Coric coasted to a comfortable 7-6 (7-2) 6-3 win over Spain's Jaume Munar and will play Portugal's Joao Sousa next.

Returning to his roots, Bubba Wallace is racing the entire Bojangles’ Summer Shootout this year at Charlotte Motor Speedway in his Legend Car. Why commit to all 10 rounds of racing, and what drew him to come back?

Video Courtesy of Legends Nation.

CONCORD, N.C. – Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Sonoma Raceway will mark the end of an era in the sport, with legendary driver/announcer Darrell Waltrip hanging up his microphone after 19 years in the TV booth.

In honor of Waltrip’s last call, Roush Fenway Racing and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will pay homage to the former driver and Hall of Famer with a special chrome numbered paint scheme on the No. 17 Ford Mustang.

“Darrell Waltrip has meant a great deal to our sport as both a competitor and a member of the broadcast media,” said Jack Roush, a fellow member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. “The thing that stands out to me about Darrell is that after I just announced I was starting the team with Mark Martin, I was invited into a driver’s meeting that season. Darrell Waltrip was one of the first to welcome me into the fold and say ‘come on in Jack, we are going to have a lot of fun with you’ and we sure have over the years.”

Waltrip piloted the No. 17 car in NASCAR’s premiere series from 1987 to 1998, sporting some of the most iconic paint schemes in the sports history.

Current No. 17 driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has long been a fan of Waltrip and this will mark the third time he has paid tribute to Waltrip on the No. 17, the first two coming at the Darlington throwback events.

“With as much as he’s done in the sport on and off the track, Darrell will definitely be missed,” Stenhouse said. “I have enjoyed all the sit-downs and seeing his passion that he has for the sport. I’ve gotten to pay homage to him with two Darlington throwback schemes so it will be extra special to drive his iconic paint scheme for his last appearance in the booth.”

In 2016 Stenhouse sported an orange and white Ford, with blue numbers that gave nod to Waltrip’s first winning car from 1975. The second came in 2017 with a car carrying the paint scheme from Waltrip’s 1997 NASCAR Cup season; one of Stenhouse’s favorite paint schemes along with the all-chrome variety Waltrip also ran that same season.

The Ford will also feature Roush Performance on the hood and Stenhouse’s primary sponsor Fastenal on the quarter panel and decklid.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Eastbound Dragway, a true showplace in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, has entered into a multi-year sanctioning agreement with the International Hot Rod Ass’n

The eighth-mile dragway is part of Eastbound Int’l Speedway and Concert Park, a state-of-the-art, 55-acre Motorsport Park. In addition to drag racing, the complex features NASCAR and INEX-sanctioned racing on a three-eighths-mile asphalt track, Monster Trucks, motocross and a world-class musical entertainment venue.

Located 1,200 miles northeast of Maine in Avondale NL, the picturesque community is named for the meeting of the waters. At Eastbound, there is often the meeting of the racers who compete in everything from dragsters and stock cars to motorcycles and snowmobiles.

Among the most popular events has been the “take it to the track” program to get racing off the streets.

“Every year, we’ve seen an increase in people involved,” Eastbound Park Director of Events Mike James said. “We worked with the local police who were concerned about the safety of street racing. We had burnouts on the oval and we opened up the drag strip. Thousands of people showed up, people who had never been on the drag strip before. They got a really good feel of what it’s like to be on the drag strip. It was incredible to see cars stretched all the way down the 1/8-mile.”

The history of drag racing in the area dates back to the 1960s, starting on an old U.S. Air Force strip.

Eastbound first opened in 2014 with a major Nashville-style music festival. Since then, the facility has hosted such acts as Rascal Flats, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Little Big Town.

However, racing is first on the marquee and James does a tour educating school children about math and science in the sport. He has 26 scheduled visits to school which introduces the sport to over 10,000 students.

“We’re a new track, only around five years,” James said. “Some tracks have been around 50-60 years. They have grandparents, fathers and so on. We were like, ‘Let’s go educate the kids because they don’t have anyone educating them about racing.’ We go in explain to them the simple aerodynamics, air flow and such. The kids are blown away with the simple math and science used in racing. We’ve had so many requests to do this at schools.”

One of his inspiring stories is that of 2017 track champion Darien Legge, then 11 years old, making it to the championship round in Junior Dragster at the IHRA Summit SuperSeries World Finals.

“The whole story of a little boy turning the drag racing world upside down, an 11-year-old to be able to take down the best junior drivers in the world, you should see their reaction,” James said. “We look to see some of them in the junior dragster ranks the next couple of years.”

Legge repeated as Eastbound track champion for the IHRA Summit SuperSeries in 2018 as did the Top division champion Dave Anthony. Curtis Mitchell was the Mod division champion.

PHILADELPHIA -- The Philadelphia Flyers continued to shore up their defense by acquiring veteran Justin Braun from the San Jose Sharks for two draft picks.

Philadelphia on Tuesday sent a 2019 second-round pick and 2019 third-round pick to San Jose for Braun. The Sharks were looking to clear salary-cap space after re-signing defenseman Erik Karlsson for $92 million over eight years.

Braun, 32, counts $3.8 million against the salary cap this season in the last year of his contract. He joins a remade Flyers blue line that includes fellow right-handed-shooting defenseman Matt Niskanen, who was acquired from Washington in a trade last week.

Braun is a defense-minded player who kills penalties. He had two goals and 14 assists and averaged 20:18 in 78 games last season with the Sharks.

England 397 for 6 (Morgan 148, Bairstow 90, Naib 3-68) beat Afghanistan 247 for 8 (Shahidi 76, Archer 3-52) by 150 runs

As it happened

That England decimated another attack, posted a massive total and batted their opponents out of the game is only surprising to someone who hasn't followed Eoin Morgan's side over the past four years. But even for avid enthusiasts of the 50-over game, the brutality of Tuesday's assault, led by the England captain himself, was so gruesome one might have been forgiven for wanting to look away by the end of the first innings. England blitzed their way to 397, 198 scored in the final 15, 148 smashed by Morgan in 16 overs he was at the crease. Afghanistan were reduced to batting out the overs, which, admirably though they did so, still meant they came up short by 150 runs in the end.

Watch on Hotstar (India only): England v Afghanistan - match highlights

The records tumbled off the page far easier than they rolled off the tongue: most sixes by an ODI player for Morgan (17) - most sixes by an ODI team (25), highest score for England at a World Cup (397), most expensive bowling figures at a World Cup for Rashid Khan (9-0-110-0) and the most sixes conceded by an individual bowler (Rashid Khan with 11). Morgan took the attack to Afghanistan almost as soon as he walked in to bat; the platform had been set in the first 30 overs by Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root, and the only thing they lacked was the impetus required to push a 300-score into something far more daunting.

Fair to say that was achieved, then. With Morgan hitting just about every fourth ball of his innings for six - 17 were deposited over the rope in 71 balls - Afghanistan were up against a man who had prepared for an innings like this by nursing for four years. Rashid Khan, who Gulbadin Naib had held back for this stage of the innings, had the heaviest punishment inflicted upon him, seeing the ball fly to the fence no fewer than 11 times. He conceded 74 in his last four overs, and 110 overall, with Afghanistan paying the price of failing to take early wickets. With the Morgan given the freedom of Old Trafford in the final 20, carnage was always possible.

ALSO READ - Eoin Morgan: Beyond the sixes, the heartbeat of 'new' England

Prior to the bloodbath, however, England had been curiously sedate, as if wary of finding themselves turned over on a day they couldn't quite field their best eleven. Jason Roy had been ruled out with a hamstring injury, and (ridiculous as it sounds now) Morgan's availability wasn't quite a guarantee, still not fully recovered from the back injury that had kept him from batting against West Indies.

The first Powerplay saw England score 46 runs - the lowest since the 2015 World Cup - with Mujeeb ur Rehman keeping things tight at one end and Dawlat Zadran removing James Vince after the batsman had played a characteristically charming cameo.

Bairstow and Root, who ended up with an anonymous 88 in the larger context, began to push through the gears, but it still wasn't the no-consequences cricket England have championed in the past four years. They were holding something back, you sensed, but when Morgan walked in after Bairstow fell 10 runs short of his hundred, the hosts were finally free.

What could Gulbadin Naib know of the beast he unleashed when he overstepped second ball of the 32nd over. It seemed like just another sloppy error - it wasn't like Afghanistan hadn't made plenty of those in the field anyway. Catches had been put down, ones had been allowed to turn into twos and balls had been dived over. But that no-ball meant Morgan would have a free-hit off the eighth ball he faced - he had scored just one off seven till then. He clubbed it over cow corner for six, and then treated every ball that followed as if it were a free-hit.

This may be Afghanistan's heaviest defeat in the tournament, but there was much to admire about how they went about their innings. Fully aware they wouldn't chase it down, they opted not to address the target at all, instead putting together a fine ODI innings in its own right, the type they've lacked in the tournament thus far. It's been a competition marked by unrest, infighting, accusations and recriminations, but this is the Afghanistan fans were hoping would turn up all tournament. It was more representative of the Afghanistan of 2019; what we've seen much too often at this World Cup thus far is the lazy, uninformed caricature.

Naib, surprisingly opening the batting alongside Noor Ali Zadran, strung together a breezy little innings of 37 that meant, somewhat amusingly, that Afghanistan had outscored England in the first Powerplay. While these were small victories, they'd be the biggest Afghanistan were likely to enjoy; England's bowlers are much too good to allow the type of carnage that was required for Afghanistan to get anywhere near what England had posted.

Hashmatullah Shahidi, as is his wont, took charge of the middle overs, preventing things from falling apart while building partnerships with Rahmat Shah and Asghar Afghan, the occasional acceleration giving off the impression they would tee off from time to time, but never quite managing to do so. Jofra Archer and Mark Wood kept Afghanistan on their toes with express pace, and a couple of damaged helmets had the scars to prove it. Ultimately, however, the scarring belonged to the bowlers who had fronted up to an England captain in the sort of form most cricketers are happy to find themselves in once in a lifetime.

That they ended up with 247, the highest score by an Afghanistan side at a World Cup, will be scant consolation as their tournament begins to draw to a close. England's, on the other hand, may only just have begun.

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