The Winnipeg Goldeyes sent staff ace Matt Rusch to the mound hoping to get back on the winning track. It turned out they did most of the heavy lifting before Rusch even threw a pitch. The Goldeyes sent 12 men to the plate in an eight-run first inning on their way to a 12-1 rout of the Sioux Falls Canaries on Thursday to earn a series split. Casey Haerther and Amos Ramon started the big inning with a pair of two-run singles. Then in his second at bat of the inning, Ryan Scoma capped off the frame with a bases-clearing, two-out double that plated three Goldeyes runs. Scoma had two hits in the first, along with Fehlandt Lentini, who also scored twice. The eight-run, seven-hit first was the Goldeyes highest single-inning output of the season in both categories. "You really cant ask for anything better than that," said Goldeyes pitching coach Jamie Vermilyea on the TSN 1290 post-game show. "It takes a lot of pressure of the pitcher and he can just go out there and throw strikes." With the score 8-1, Lentini led off the fourth with a home run over the left field wall. The solo shot was the Goldeyes centerfielders third home run of the season. They extended their lead to double digits later in the inning when Josh Mazzola hit a RBI triple off the wall. Mazzola scored on the play when the throw to third was off the mark. Casey Haerther hit his fifth home run of the season in the ninth to finish off the scoring. Matt Rusch picked up the win for the Goldeyes. He went 7 2/3 innings, the longest start for a Winnipeg starter all season. Rusch struck out seven and improved his record to 4-0. The Goldeyes also snapped a streak of seven straight games with an error. "He took advantage of their hitters being overly aggressive," Vermilyea said. "He had command of all of his pitches and he definitely got better as the game went on." Canaries starter Jordan Whatcott went four innings and dropped to 0-5 on the season. He allowed 10 earned runs on 10 hits, while walking one and striking out three. The Goldeyes will head to Fargo to finish up their road trip with a three game weekend series against the RedHawks. Left-hander Mark Hardy will look to improve his record to 4-0 in the series opener on Friday. The action starts with the pregame show with Paul Edmonds at 6:30pm ct on TSN 1290. Custom Astros Jersey China . The judges scored it 48-47, 48-47, 49-46 for Jones (19-1). It was the champions closest call. Despite the loss, it was a remarkable show by the confident Swedish challenger, who had the best of the early rounds and then hung on in the fourth and fifth. Custom Astros T-shirts . It was the kind of score that might make everyone else wonder which course he was playing. Except that Graeme McDowell saw the whole thing. 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With the amount of money given to players by their clubs these days, it is a wonder that so many of those teams allow the sport to continue to take away many of their assets so they can play for a different team in the middle of their season. In November, espnWs weekly essay series will focus on giving.I first heard of Chinese Olympic swimmer Fu Yuanhui when someone on Facebook posted an article about her with the caption: I want to be her best friend. I winced and moved on. For days, I did not click on the link, until I saw even more people posting about her -- always with the same words. Shes amazing. I love her. Too real.Oh, no, I thought. Oh no. I knew exactly where this was going. But I clicked anyway.When I was in elementary school, I was the only Asian in my grade. On the playground, my classmates pretended to be Chinese, saying things like ching-chong-chaw and doing kung-fu. At my desk, I seethed but could not explain why -- only that it came from some deep feeling that my classmates were pretending to be Chinese the way kids pretend to be aliens or superheroes.One afternoon, my classmates had gathered around me, fascinated by my eyes. Theyre different, one of them announced, and then they all stepped in closer. I wondered if I had became a caricature by being fully Asian and half-Chinese.When I grew older, the narrative changed. After college, I spent some time studying Chinese in China, in an attempt to understand my mothers culture. The majority of my male classmates had arrived on a different quest: They wanted a girlfriend.Chinese women are beautiful, one of my classmates told me. He handed me his phone. The contacts list was filled with the names of women hed met clubbing. The album was packed with photographs of him wrapped around each of the women hed met, their faces green and silver from the flashing lights of the clubs.I cant speak the language, I hate the food here and I miss my family, he told me as he swiped through each picture so quickly the faces blurred together, but Im not going home until I get a girlfriend.Theyre different from American women, my apartment mate explained when I asked him about the allure. Theyre more feminine and more submissive. Perfect wife material.Chinese women had evolved to mean sexy. I couldnt decide if that was better or worse. Really, it was just about the same as being a caricature, but now served with a side of submission and breaasts.ddddddddddddith all of that in mind, I read all the stories and watched interviews of Fu Yuanhui, expecting a celebrity swimmer who was polite and poster beautiful.The unexpected happened: I too fell in love. I, too, wanted Fu Yuanhui to be my best friend. She wasnt poster-pretty. She was something far better: She was human.When Fu Yuanhui heard shed come in third at the 100-meter backstroke finals at the Rio Olympics, she gasped for air, stuttered and then mangled her lanyard from the sheer joy of winning. Her bubbling, over-the-top delight with life was infectious. In the photographs, while other athletes posed for the camera, smiles frozen in place, she clutched her medal mouth open in a silent roar of happiness. She made faces, grinned maniacally.The moment I truly fell for her was during the womens 4x100-meter medley relay when she emerged from the pool doubled over in pain. Her period left her feeling weak, she told the reporter, and she didnt swim her best. Then, she apologized for her performance and moved on.Never mind the cultural taboo that exists around periods, particularly in China, where tampons are hard to come by. Never mind the cultural taboos about periods that exist around the world. Fu Yuanhui swam in pain; she felt like she underperformed; she apologized; and that was all simply all there was to it.Fu Yuanhui didnt give us pretty, she gave us joy so fierce you could feel its power blasting through the camera lens. She didnt give us pitch-perfect celebrity-speak molded to showcase her best self to the press. She gave us herself, her incandescent happiness, her earthly pain.She showed us its possible to be loved by the world for simply being yourself. And for this, we loved her, for this we continue to love her: Fu Yuanhui, champion swimmer, champion human.Shalene Gupta is currently working on a novel about growing up Chinese-Indian in Minnesota. A former Fortune reporter, with an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School, she is currently a freelance writer living in Boston. Follow her @ShaleneGupta ' ' '