PITTSBURGH (AP) Cole Hamels‘ stuff was just as filthy as Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon remembered. The changeup. The breaking ball. All of it.If the newly acquired veteran pitcher can figure out his fastball too http://www.stlouiscardinalsteamshop.com/authentic-jason-motte-jersey , the NL Central leaders will be that much tougher to hang with heading down the stretch. Hamels shut down the Pittsburgh Pirates over five effective innings in his return to the National League on Wednesday night as the Cubs jumped out early and cruised to a 9-2 victory.Hamels (6-9), brought over in a trade with Texas last week, gave up one unearned run on three hits. The four-time All-Star struck out nine and walked two to pick up his first win for a National League team in more than three years.”You want to be able to win a game for a new team and the guys here,” Hamels said. ”They’ve been playing outstanding baseball all season and you just kind of want to get in the mix. For them to be able to put up the runs early, kind of made my job a little bit easier.”Chicago brought in the 34-year-old Hamels to give its patchwork starting rotation a boost. The left-hander struggled at times for the Rangers this season and came in having won just twice since Memorial Day. His new teammates did their best to put him at ease, staking him to a four-run lead before he even took the mound.The Cubs batted around in the first against Nick Kingham (5-6) despite having the ball leave the infield just once. A pair of Pittsburgh errors helped , so did a wild pitch and a hit by pitch by Kingham, who is a leading candidate to lose his spot in the starting rotation after the Pirates traded for Chris Archer on Tuesday.”It was a rough first inning all the way around,” Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle said. ”There were some balls not hit hard that were well placed. We didn’t handle the ball well and (Kingham) had a guy caught and didn’t execute a play. His overall execution wasn’t what we’ve seen in the past.”Willson Contreras went 3 for 4 with a home run and three RBIs for the Cubs. Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist had three hits apiece while Kyle Schwarber and Javy Baez each added two hits and an RBI for Chicago. Reliever Brandon Kintzler worked 1 1/3 innings of scoreless relief on his 34th birthday a day after arriving in a trade from Washington.The centerpiece of Chicago’s deadline moves, however, was Hamels.Though he never retired Pittsburgh in order and needed 95 pitches to record 15 outs, he had little trouble earning his 153rd career win and first for a National League team since pitching a complete-game shutout against the Cubs on July 25, 2015 while playing for the Philadelphia Phillies.Hamels hit 96 mph on the radar gun and reminded his manager of the player who helped the Phillies to a World Series title in 2008 against Maddon and the Tampa Bay Rays. A decade later, Maddon finds himself sharing a dugout with Hamels instead.”I’m really looking forward to this Yadier Molina Jersey ,” Maddon said. ”He’s very capable of getting on a nice role with high-end stuff because his stuff is still (good).”Francisco Cervelli went 3 for 3 with an RBI for Pittsburgh and Starling Marte added two hits but the Pirates never threatened after falling into the early hole to lose for just the fifth time in their last 21 games.SCARY MOMENTHome plate umpire Chris Guccione exited in the top of the third inning after a foul ball off the bat of Heyward smacked Guccione’s mask. He was steadied in the moment by Pittsburgh catcher Cervelli and attempted to stay in the game before going to be evaluated by medical staff. Guccione did not return, with Ed Hickox taking his place behind the plate.TRAINER’S ROOMCubs: 3B Kris Bryant (left shoulder inflammation) has not been cleared to return to baseball activities but manager Joe Maddon said he does not anticipate Bryant needing much time to be game-ready once he’s given the go-ahead by trainers. … RHP Yu Darvish (right triceps tendinitis) will have another bullpen session on Saturday.Pirates: OF Corey Dickerson (strained left hamstring) is on track to come off the 10-day disabled list on Saturday. … 1B Josh Bell (strained left oblique) is doing core work but remains out indefinitely. .. IF Jung Ho Kang developed a recurrence of left wrist discomfort while working out at the team’s minor-league complex in Bradenton, Florida. The team will meet with Kang’s representatives before determining the appropriate steps.UP NEXTCubs: Return to Wrigley Field for a four-game weekend series against San Diego starting Thursday. Mike Montgomery (3-4, 4.03 ERA) faces Robbie Erlin (1-3, 3.47) in the opener.Pirates: Archer will make his 178th career start – and first for someone other than Tampa Bay – on Friday when the Pirates begin a three-game set with St. Louis.— NEW YORK (AP) At 13, Charlie Fish in Cincinnati has just been given the parental go-ahead to use social media for the first time. He’s also a competitive golfer, avid ”SportsCenter” watcher and well aware of the attention received by offensive tweets posted years ago by some Major League Baseball players, some when they were teenagers themselves.But is he old enough and mature enough to put all of those things together?Some parents have seized on posts by Milwaukee Brewer Josh Hader, Atlanta Brave Sean Newcomb and Washington National Trea Turner as teaching moments about how living life online means your posts may never go away. They’re just not sure whether their young, uber-sharers are listening.Charlie’s dad, Bill Fish, is hopeful that Charlie gets it. He’ll hope the same for his 9-year-old son when he, too, reaches the magical Fish family age of 13 and is allowed on Snapchat http://www.stlouiscardinalsteamshop.com/authentic-brett-cecil-jersey , Instagram or whatever the stream du jour will be.”Charlie came to me about the story and how dumb the players were to be racist on Twitter,” said the senior Fish, who once captained the Xavier University baseball team. ”I tried to convey that while only your buddies may see what you put online at this point, you never know when something could come back to bite you.”Fish uses a shorthand with his kids that’s popular among parents, one that seems old fashioned: ”My stance is to never put out anything you wouldn’t want your grandmother to read.” Those words are easy, but as a former head of a company focused on reputation management, Fish knows a thing or two about how old social media posts can rear later in life.”You wouldn’t believe how many parents came to us after colleges dug up things their children posted online while going through the application process,” he said. ”For these baseball players to be raked over the coals for something they said six or seven years ago seems a little unfair, but at the same time a great lesson to talk about what should and what shouldn’t be put on social media.”What grandma may not know, along with youthful social media natives, is at the heart of the baseball controversy, along with why someone would make racist, sexist or anti-gay statements to begin with. Deleted tweets, private messages – just about anything – can be unearthed these days . For kids Adam Wainwright Jersey , the potential dangers of that are endless, from college admissions to rookie job interviews, both rites of passage likely not on the mind yet for 13-year-old Charlie.”Last year, there was a widely reported case of 10 students who had been accepted to Harvard who had those acceptance rescinded because of racist social media posts. The posts were supposedly in a private chat,” said psychologist Shane Owens, who treats adolescents, college students and young adults in Commack, New York. ”Most kids are not able to appreciate the long-term consequences of their actions.”Josef Blumenfeld in Natick, Massachusetts, outside Boston, is a communications expert serving educational technology companies. He’s also the father of two girls, 15 and 17. His oldest is on Twitter and posts a lot about makeup, youth activism and mental health, and the Boston Bruins.”We talk about their social media activity all the time Michael Wacha Jersey ,” he said. ”We often point to something `not smart’ that someone they know did on social media. They roll their eyes, but we keep doing it.”The recent baseball tweets gone viral have not surfaced in their chats, but the subject of old posts resurfacing certainly has.”Even disappearing photos on Instagram are discoverable,” Blumenfeld said.The challenge for parents is to recognize that their kids may not consider social media a form of speech, said Ari Yares, a psychologist, parenting coach and father of four in suburban Washington, D.C.”We keep talking to our kids about how, just like the spoken word, you can’t take back what you say online. It’s always out there,” he said. ”The challenge in having these conversations with kids is that from a developmental perspective they don’t always see the impact that their actions can have.”Another important lesson of the ball player tweets is helping young people understand ”even their idols have done bad things that they regret,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill-Cornell Medical College. ”No one http://www.stlouiscardinalsteamshop.com/authentic-ozzie-smith-jersey , including them, is immune to the negative consequences of making impulsive choices that did not take into account possible bad outcomes in the future.”But are the regrets sincere, asks Maureen Paschal, who has four kids ranging from 14 to 24. She, too, has brought up the baseball tweets with some in her brood.”My kids and I agreed that those players would have seemed more sincere in their apologies if they had cleaned up their social media accounts when they matured enough to see how awful those tweets were,” said Paschal, in Charlotte, North Carolina. ”Cleaning up after they were caught isn’t a very convincing argument for their change of heart.”
