LOS ANGELES (AP) — After spending the first seven years of his big league career back East, Jack Flaherty came home. He joined a winning team in the Los Angeles Dodgers and helped make a bit of playoff history.
Flaherty combined on a three-hitter and Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers tied the postseason record of 33 consecutive scoreless innings by routing the New York Mets 9-0 Sunday night in the NL Championship Series opener.
“I saw some family out there when I was warming up and I had gone to games here with them before, so it just kind of lets you relax a little bit,” he said. “Felt I tried to do too much the last couple times out in some big games. Just allowed me to be myself and just go out and pitch and trust my stuff and trust the guys behind me.”
Los Angeles knocked out a wild Kodai Senga in the second inning, built a six-run lead by the fourth and matched the scoreless record set by Baltimore Orioles pitchers over the first four games of the 1966 World Series against the Dodgers.
Backed by chants of “MVP! MVP!” Shohei Ohtani was 2 for 4 with a walk while scoring two runs and driving in another.
Mookie Betts added a three-run double in the eighth in the largest shutout victory margin in Dodgers postseason history, also the Mets’ most one-sided postseason shutout defeat.
“Our energy all started with Jack,” Betts said. “Jack really gave it to us today.”
Game 2 of the best-of-seven series is Monday afternoon.
Flaherty allowed two hits over seven innings in the Dodgers’ first scoreless postseason start of seven-plus innings since Clayton Kershaw’s eight innings in the 2020 NL Wild Card Series.
“It was just a pitching clinic,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I thought he did a great job of filling up the strike zone with his complete mix. Once we caught a lead, he did a great job of just going after those guys and attacking. For us to get seven innings in a long series was huge.”
Flaherty left to a standing ovation from the sellout crowd of 53,503. The 28-year-old right-hander from nearby Burbank returned home from Detroit at the July 30 trade deadline and has been a steadying presence in a rotation hard-hit by injuries.
“He’s got an aura about him,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “He’s super competitive, super focused.”
Flaherty got a hug from Roberts and then the pitcher hugged his mother who sat behind home plate. Some of his buddies from their Little League days in the San Fernando Valley were on hand, too.
“This game is a lot of fun and I’ve been lucky to do it since I was a little kid,” Flaherty said. “As high pressure as they get, I just tell the guys it’s going to be fun. We’ve got to remember that sometimes.”
Flaherty retired his first nine batters, extending the Dodgers streak of consecutive hitters retired to 28, before walking Francisco Lindor leading off the fourth. New York’s only hits off him were a pair of singles by Jesse Winker and Jose Iglesias in the fifth. Flaherty struck out six.
“He was getting ahead with his fastball and then the slider, the breaking ball, the slow curve kept us off-balance, but he was getting ahead and making pitches,” rookie Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He tried to make us chase, which we did the first time through the order. Then he was just on.”
Daniel Hudson and Ben Casparius pitched an inning each.
Lindor was 0 for 3 with a walk and a strikeout and Pete Alonso went hitless in three at-bats with a walk and a strikeout.
The Dodgers rallied from the brink of elimination against San Diego to win the NL Division Series in five games with shutouts in the last two games.
They opened their pursuit of a record 25th NL pennant by chasing Senga after 1 1/3 innings of his just third overall start in a year decimated by injuries. The Japanese right-hander walked four of his first eight batters, including three in a row in a 14-pitch span in the first inning.
“He didn’t have it,” Mendoza said. “He didn’t have the life on his fastball and a lot of balls out of hand, non-competitive pitches, especially the split. You could tell that the way that they were taking those pitches they were balls out of the hand.”
Senga walked the bases loaded with one out in the first, when just seven of his 23 pitches were thrown for strikes. Max Muncy singled up the middle, scoring Betts and a hobbled Freddie Freeman, who touched the plate with his left foot to protect his sprained right ankle. He staggered into the arms of Betts, who steadied the much bigger and taller Freeman.
Ohtani chased Senga with an RBI single in the second and the Dodgers tacked on three runs in the fourth off reliever David Peterson as Tommy Edman and Freeman had RBI singles.
UP NEXT
Mets Sean Manaea starts Game 2 after winning Game 3 of the NL Division Series against Philadelphia. It’ll be the first time the Dodgers face a lefty starter in this postseason. The Dodgers didn’t say who will start a bullpen game for them.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is accuses the Civil Service Employees Association of antisemitism, because of a mailer that features a photo of Blakeman altered to include devil horns on his head.
The mailer is part of a dispute between Blakeman and the CSEA over health benefits.
Blakeman, who is a Jew, called the devil horns an old antisemitic slur. The union also sponsored a billboard with Blakeman in a clown costume.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The conservancy that oversees a storied but aging ocean liner and its landlord have resolved a years-old rent dispute that will clear the way for a Florida county to turn the historic ship into the world’s largest artificial reef.
A federal judge had ruled in June that the SS United States Conservancy had until Sept. 12 to present plans to move the ship, a 1,000-foot ocean liner that still holds the transatlantic speed record it set more than 70 years ago. That deadline, though, came and went after the conservancy filed a lawsuit that accused Penn Warehousing of sabotaging its efforts to sell the vessel.
The conservancy had reached a tentative agreement earlier this month with Okaloosa County on Florida’s coastal Panhandle, a deal that was contingent upon the rent dispute being settled through court-imposed mediation. The deal resolving that dispute was announced Friday.
Conservancy and county officials gathered Saturday at the Philadelphia pier where the ship is berthed for a small transfer of title ceremony, although the deal with Okaloosa County still needs final approval from a federal judge, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Okaloosa officials plan to sink the ship and create what supporters hope will be a barnacle-encrusted star in the county’s constellation of more than 500 artificial reefs, making it a signature diving attraction that could generate millions of dollars a year in local tourism spending for scuba shops, charter fishing boats and hotels.
“We can tell you that you will not be lost, you will not be forgotten, you will no longer be neglected and abused,” conservancy board member Thomas Watkins said in a farewell to the ship. “You will be rightly honored, cherished, and loved in a new home and in a new dimension. You will no longer be sailing the seas, but you will be surrounded and caressed by them.”
Officials have said the deal to buy the ship could cost more than $10 million. The lengthy process of cleaning, transporting and sinking the vessel is expected to take at least 1.5 years.
The rent dispute stemmed from an August 2021 decision by Penn Warehousing to double the ship’s daily dockage to $1,700, an increase the conservancy refused to accept. The firm had said through its attorneys that it wants to regain access to the berth so it can replace the ship with a commercial customer that will provide jobs and tax revenues to the city.
When the conservancy continued to pay its previous rate, set in 2011, Penn Warehousing terminated the lease in March 2022. After much legal wrangling, U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody held a bench trial in January but also encouraged the two sides to reach a settlement instead of leaving it up to her.
She ultimately ruled that the conservancy’s failure to pay the new rate did not amount to a contract breach or entitle Penn Warehousing to damages. However, she found that under Pennsylvania contract law, the berthing agreement is terminable at will with reasonable notice.
Christened in 1952, the SS United States was once considered a beacon of American engineering, doubling as a military vessel that could carry thousands of troops. On its maiden voyage in 1952, it shattered the transatlantic speed record in both directions, when it reached an average speed of 36 knots, or just over 41 mph (66 kph), The Associated Press reported from aboard the ship.
On that voyage, the ship crossed the Atlantic in three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes, besting the RMS Queen Mary’s time by 10 hours. To this day, the SS United States holds the transatlantic speed record for an ocean liner.
The SS United States became a reserve ship in 1969 and later bounced to various private owners who hoped to redevelop it. But they eventually found their plans to be too expensive or poorly timed, leaving the vessel looming for years on south Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Florida residents were continuing to repair the damage from Hurricane Milton and figure out what to do next Friday after the storm smashed through coastal communities and tore homes to pieces, flooded streets and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes.
At least eight people were dead, but many expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared densely populated Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialized.
Arriving just two weeks after the devastating Hurricane Helene, the system knocked out power to more than 3 million customers, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off the Tampa Bay Rays ‘ baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.
A flood of vehicles headed south Thursday evening on Interstate 75, the main highway that runs through the middle of the state, as relief workers and evacuated residents headed toward the aftermath. At times, some cars even drove on the left shoulder of the road. Bucket trucks and fuel tankers streamed by, along with portable bathroom trailers and a convoy of emergency vehicles.
As residents raced back to find out whether their homes were destroyed or spared, finding gas was still a challenge. Fuel stations were still closed as far away as Ocala, more than a two and a half hour drive north of where the storm made landfall as a Category 3 storm near Siesta Key in Sarasota County on Wednesday night.
As the cleanup continued, the state’s vital tourism industry was beginning to return to normal.
Florida theme parks including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld planned to reopen Friday after an assessment of the effects of the storm.
Orlando International Airport, the state’s busiest, said departures for domestic flights and international flights would resume Friday, after resuming domestic arrivals Thursday evening. The airport had minor damage, including a few leaks and downed trees.
Milton prevented Simon Forster, his wife and their two children from returning to Scotland as planned Wednesday evening, so they enjoyed an extra two days of their two-week vacation on a bustling International Drive in Orlando’s tourism district on Thursday. Hurricanes seem to follow them since 2022’s Hurricane Ian kept them from returning to Scotland after another Orlando vacation.
“Two extra days here, there are worse places we could be,” he said.
Natasha Shannon and her husband, Terry, were just feeling lucky to be alive. Hurricane Milton peeled the tin roof off of their cinderblock home in their neighborhood a few blocks north of the Manatee River, about a 45-minute drive south of Tampa. She pushed him to leave as the storm barreled toward them Wednesday night after he resisted evacuating their three-bedroom house where he grew up and where the couple lived with their three kids and two grandchildren. She believes the decision saved their lives.
They returned to find the roof of their home scattered in sheets across the street, the wooden beams of what was their ceiling exposed to the sky. Inside, fiberglass insulation hung down in shreds, their belongings soaked by the rain and littered with chunks of shattered drywall.
“It ain’t much, but it was ours. What little bit we did have is gone,” she said. “It’s gone.”
With shelters no longer available and the cost of a hotel room out of reach, they plan to cram into Terry Shannon’s mother’s house for now. After that, they’re not sure.
“I don’t have no answers,” Natasha Shannon said. “What is my next move? What am I going to do?”

BOSTON, Mass. (AP) — Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who raised their 11 children after he was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family’s legacy for decades thereafter, died on Thursday, her family said. She was 96.
“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III posted on X. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week.”
“Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the family statement said.
President Joe Biden called her “an American icon — a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service.”
“For over 50 years, Ethel traveled, marched, boycotted, and stood up for human rights around the world with her signature iron will and grace,” Biden said.
The Kennedy matriarch, mother to Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining members of a family generation that included President John F. Kennedy. Her family said she had recently enjoyed seeing many of her relatives before falling ill.
A millionaire’s daughter who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured more death by the age of 40, for the whole world to see, than most people would in a lifetime.
She was by Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. Her brother-in-law had been assassinated in Dallas less than five years earlier.
Her parents were killed in a plane crash in 1955, and her brother died in a 1966 crash. Her son David Kennedy overdosed, son Michael Kennedy died in a skiing accident and nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash. Another nephew, Michael Skakel, was found guilty of murder before the Connecticut Supreme Court ultimately vacated his conviction. And in 2019, her granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an apparent overdose.
“One wonders how much this family must be expected to absorb,” family friend Philip Johnson, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, told the Boston Herald after Michael Kennedy’s death.
Ethel Kennedy sustained herself through faith and devotion to family.
“She was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant, and we are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy; her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saorise and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie. Please keep our mother in your hearts and prayers,” the family statement said.
Ethel’s mother-in-law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, initially wondered how she would handle so much tragedy.
“I knew how difficult it was going to be for her to raise that big family without the guiding role and influence that Bobby would have provided,” Rose recalled in her memoir, “Times to Remember.” “And, of course, she realized this too, fully and keenly. Yet she did not give way.”
Ethel Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights soon after her husband’s death and advocated for causes including gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband’s assassination. When her filmmaker daughter Rory brought it up in the 2012 HBO documentary, “Ethel,” she couldn’t share her grief.
“When we lost Daddy …” she began, then teared up and asked that her youngest daughter “talk about something else.”
Many of her progeny became well known. Daughter Kathleen became lieutenant governor of Maryland; Joseph represented Massachusetts in Congress; Courtney married Paul Hill, who had been wrongfully convicted of an Irish Republican Army bombing; Kerry became a human rights activist and president of the RFK center; Christopher ran for Illinois governor; Max served as a prosecutor in Philadelphia and Douglas reported for Fox News Channel.
Her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also became a national figure — first as an environmental lawyer and more recently as a conspiracy theorist spreading false theories about vaccines. He ran for president as an independent after briefly challenging Biden, and his name remained on ballots in multiple states after he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.
Ethel Kennedy did not comment publicly on her son’s actions, although several other family members denounced him.
Decades earlier, she seemed to thrive on her in-laws’ rising power, enthusiastically backing the 1960 campaign and hosting some of the era’s most well-attended parties at their Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia, including one where historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was pushed fully clothed into the swimming pool. In the Kennedy spirit, she also was a highly competitive tennis player.
“Petite and peppy Ethel, who doesn’t look one bit the outdoorsy type, considers outdoor activity so important for the children that she has arranged her busy Cabinet-wife schedule so she can personally take them on two daily outings,” The Washington Post reported in 1962.
Accompanying her husband on a round-the-world goodwill tour, she said it was important for Americans to meet ordinary people overseas.
“People have a distinct liking for Americans,” she told the Post. “But the Communists have been so vocal, it was a surprise for some Asians to hear America’s point of view. It is good for Americans to travel and get our viewpoint across.”
She divided her time between homes in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Palm Beach, Florida, after Hickory Hill, which they bought from John and Jackie Kennedy in 1957, was sold in 2009 for $8.25 million.
Born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, she grew up in a 31-room English country manor house in Greenwich, Connecticut, as the sixth of seven children of coal magnate George and Ann Brannack Skakel. She met Robert Kennedy through his sister Jean, her roommate at Manhattanville College.
The newlyweds moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he finished his last year of law school at the University of Virginia, and helped expand her world view by introducing her to people like Ralph Bunche, the first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize. They decided the safest place for him to stay during his visit was in their home.
“He was so charming and non-complaining, but they did throw things at our house all night long. It was so unthinkable and outrageous, but you got a little taste of what Black people in our country had to go through at that time,” she said in the documentary.
Robert Kennedy became chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee in 1957, and then was appointed attorney general by his brother in 1960.
She supported his successful 1964 campaign for the U.S. Senate in New York and his subsequent presidential bid. Pregnant with their 11th child when he was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan, her look of shock and horror was captured in images that remained indelible decades later.
The assassination traumatized the family, especially son David Kennedy, just 12 years old when he watched the news in a hotel room. He never recovered, struggling with addiction for years before overdosing in 1984.
In 2021, she said Sirhan should not be released from prison, a view not shared by some others in her family. Two years later, a California panel denied him parole.
Although Ethel Kennedy was linked to several men after her husband’s death, most notably the singer Andy Williams, she never remarried.
On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., she visited Indianapolis, where a monument commemorates the speech her husband gave that night in 1968, credited with averting rioting in the city.
“Of all the Kennedy women, she was the one I would end up admiring the most,” Harry Belafonte would write of her. “She wasn’t playacting. She looked at you and immediately got what you were about. Often in the coming years, when Bobby was balking at something we wanted him to do for the movement, I’d take my case to Ethel. ‘We have to talk to him,’ she’d say, and she would.”
In 2008, she joined brother-in-law Ted Kennedy and niece Caroline Kennedy in endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president, likening him to her late husband. She later went to the Obama White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom and meet Pope Francis. Obama called her “a dear friend with a passion for justice, an irrepressible spirit, and a great sense of humor.”
“She touched the lives of countless people around the world with her generosity and grace, and was an emblem of enduring faith and hope, even in the face of unimaginable grief,” Obama said on social media, one of many high-profile eulogies.
Obama and former President Bill Clinton held her hands as they climbed stairs to lay a wreath at President Kennedy’s grave site on the 50th anniversary of his death. Clinton remembered her on Thursday as a “fierce fighter for justice and equality” who built “one of the most effective human rights organizations in the world.”
The center she founded still advances human rights through litigation, advocacy, education and inspiration, giving annual awards to journalists, authors and others who have made significant contributions to human rights.
She also was active in the Coalition of Gun Control, Special Olympics, and the Earth Conservation Corps. And she showed up in person, participating in a 2016 demonstration in support of higher pay for farmworkers in Florida and a 2018 hunger strike against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“She could be found anywhere human dignity was at stake, from picket lines to prisons, on every corner of the map,” Clinton said. “She was fearless and indefatigable, a true force of nature, guided by the teachings of her faith that call upon all of us to serve others.”