NEWTON, Iowa (AP) — Christopher Bell won the NASCAR Xfinity series race Sunday at the Iowa Speedway, his fourth victory of the season and second straight in Newton.
Bell led 186 of 250 laps to claim his second short track win of 2019 by nearly two seconds. He also won at Bristol in April.

Pole-sitter Cole Custer was second, followed by Justin Allgaier and Harrison Burton. Zane Smith was fifth in just his fifth start in the series.

Custer briefly stole the lead with 32 laps left on a restart, but Bell quickly grabbed it back as the two cars made contact on Bell’s low pass. Bell then held Custer off on a restart with 10 to go by grabbing the high line.

NEW YORK (AP) — Paul DeJong tagged the Mets again, hitting a tiebreaking home run in the eighth inning that sent the St. Louis Cardinals over New York 4-3 on Sunday. The Cardinals won despite getting outhit 10-3. They took three of four in the series, and DeJong homered in each victory. DeJong is 30 for 83 (.361) with nine homers and 10 doubles against the Mets overall.
Paul Goldschmidt hit a prodigious home run off the facade of the second deck and scored twice for St. Louis, which went 5-5 on its season-long 10-game road trip.

Robinson Cano returned from the injured list and doubled and scored a run, and Dominic Smith had two hits in his first career start in the leadoff spot for New York, which is 5-5 over its last 10 games. Mets starter Jason Vargas exited in the fourth inning with a cramp in his left calf. He fouled a ball off his foot and was pulled during the at-bat. New York’s bullpen has allowed 15 earned runs over its last 20 1/3 innings.

Andrew Miller (3-2) pitched a scoreless seventh to earn the victory and Carlos Martinez went two innings for his second save. Goldschmidt’s first-inning homer was the only hit the Cardinals could muster in the first seven innings against Vargas and Wilmer Font. Dakota Hudson struggled early, falling behind eight of the first 12 batters, but rebounded to keep St. Louis in the game, allowing three runs over six innings. The Cardinals have won each of his last six starts.
UP NEXT
Cardinals: RHP Miles Mikolas (4-7, 4.83 ERA) opposes Miami’s RHP Elieser Hernandez (0-1, 5.87 ERA) to open a four-game series at home. Mikolas is 3-2 with a 3.00 ERA in five starts vs NL East opponents, but 1-5 with a 6.15 ERA in nine starts against all other divisions.
Mets: RHP Zack Wheeler (5-4, 4.87 ERA) looks to bounce back as New York opens a three-game series at NL East-leading Atlanta. Wheeler allowed a career-worst nine runs in 4 2/3 innings against the Yankees on June 11, although only five were earned. He’s opposed by RHP Mike Soroka (7-1, 1.92 ERA), who has not lost since April 18.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Austin Martin homered on Reid Detmers’ first pitch of the game and he went deep again in the seventh to break a tie in Vanderbilt’s 3-1 victory over Louisville on Sunday in the College World Series on Sunday. Drake Fellows came off a poor outing in the super regionals to pitch seven strong innings and help No. 2 national seed Vanderbilt (55-11) improve to 4-0 in its CWS openers. Martin homered twice for the second straight game, having hit two against Duke on June 9. He became the first player since Florida’s Harrison Bader in 2015 to lead off a CWS game with a homer when he drove Detmers’ initial offering out to left.

Martin’s two-run homer off Bryan Hoeing (3-4) in the seventh barely cleared the wall in left center, but it was long enough to break a 1-all tie after Julian Infante doubled. Fellows (13-1), a sixth-round draft pick of the San Diego Padres this month and the national wins leader, had worked the first four innings of an 18-5 loss to Duke in the super regional opener June 7. No. 7 Louisville (49-17) had base runners in six of Fellows’ seven innings but found a semblance of rhythm only in the fifth. No. 8 batter Justin Lavey started things with a double and scored on Henry Davis’ base hit to tie it. Lucas Dunn and Logan Wyatt followed with singles to load the bases with one out, but Fellows got a flyout and groundout to snuff the threat.

Fellows allowed six singles and a double, walked one and struck out six before the bullpen took over. All-SEC closer Tyler Brown worked the ninth for his 15th save. Detmers labored through the first three innings and he left with two outs in the sixth. Vanderbilt managed only one hit off the sophomore left-hander after Martin’s homer and JJ Bleday’s single in the first, but the ACC pitcher of the year walked a career-high six during his 102-pitch afternoon.

Vanderbilt caught a break in the sixth when Louisville’s Lavey popped up in the grass behind first base. Running with two outs, Danny Oriente came around from second. Infante, the Commodores’ first baseman, couldn’t make the catch, but the ball had floated just foul, and the call was upheld on a video review. Lavey ended up striking out, and the Cardinals had only three other batters reach base the rest of the way. They were just 3 for 16 with runners on base.
UP NEXT
Vanderbilt will play a Bracket 2 winners’ game Tuesday night against the winner of Sunday’s late game between Auburn and Mississippi State. Louisville plays an elimination game Tuesday afternoon against the Auburn-Mississippi State loser.

NEWTON, Iowa (AP) — NASCAR overturned a victory for the first time since 1960 on Sunday when Brett Moffitt was declared the winner of the Truck Series race at Iowa Speedway after Ross Chastain’s No. 44 truck failed a post-race inspection. Chastain led the final 141 laps of the 200-lap race. But series managing director Brad Moran said the No. 44 was too low when it was measured with NASCAR’s height sticks. Chastain’s team has until noon on Monday to appeal the decision. “The height sticks have warning yellows in them and reds and it was right off of all of them, so unfortunately it was extremely low,” Moran said.

The disqualification was the first under strict new rules put into place at the start of this season to deter the culture of cheating — and it delivered a much-needed win for Moffitt, a native Iowan racing at his hometown track. “I think, for the integrity of the sport, it’s the right thing to do,” said Moffitt, who never led a lap in the race. “Obviously I came out on the good end of it. If I was in Ross’s shoes, I wouldn’t be too thrilled about it.” The last time NASCAR disqualified an apparent race winner was April 17, 1960, when Emanuel Zervakis’ victory at Wilson Speedway in North Carolina was thrown out because of an oversized fuel tank.

NASCAR announced in February that thorough post-race inspections would take place right after the race at the track instead of midweek at the sanctioning body’s research and development center outside of Charlotte. Winning teams found in violation of the rules in previous seasons were penalized with post-race fines, point deductions and/or suspensions. But drivers didn’t have victories taken away from them until this year. The decision could prove to be devastating for Chastain’s season.

Chastain recently switched the championship he’d compete for in 2019 from the Xfinity Series to the Trucks, a risky move that left him at the bottom of the standings. The apparent win at Iowa meant that Chastain would only have to finish 20th or higher in the Truck standings to receive a playoff berth — and driver nicknamed “The Melon Man” was so thrilled about it that he smashed a watermelon to the ground in victory lane. Instead, Chastain was scored as though he finished last, and his victory and bonus points were stripped away. Chastain also lost the $50,000 he had won for taking first in the “Triple Truck Challenge” that Iowa was a part of.

Chastain, who spoke at a news conference after his apparent victory, could not be located for comment after his disqualification was announced. As for Moffitt, he said he was drinking beers in his motorhome on his way to the airport in nearby Des Moines and was “mad as hell” about losing when he got the call informing him that Chastain had been disqualified. Moffitt and his beer buzz were summoned back to the track for the second winner’s news conference of the day. “I went from drinking my sorrows away to being happy,” Moffitt said.