TORONTO — George Springer put Toronto ahead with a three-run homer in the seventh inning and the Toronto Blue Jays advanced to the World Series for the first time since 1993 by beating the Seattle Mariners 4-3 in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on Monday night.

It was the first go-ahead homer in Game 7 history when a team trailed by multiple runs in the seventh inning or later.

The Blue Jays will host Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1 on Friday night when the World Series comes to Canada for the third time. The defending champion Dodgers swept Milwaukee in the NLCS.

The Blue Jays were playing in a Game 7 for the first time since losing at home to Kansas City in the 1985 ALCS.

Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez each hit a solo home run for the Mariners in the team’s first Game 7 but Seattle failed to reach its first World Series, leaving the heartbroken Mariners as the only major league team without a pennant.

Addison Barger walked to begin the seventh and Isiah Kiner-Falefa followed with a single. Seattle right-hander Bryan Woo was removed after Andrés Giménez advanced the runners with a sacrifice bunt, and Springer greeted Eduard Bazardo with his fourth homer of this postseason, a 381-foot drive to left field that got the sellout crowd of 44,770 roaring.

Toronto went 54-27 at home in the regular season and 4-2 at home in the AL playoffs.

Making his first bullpen appearance since Game 5 of the 2021 Division Series, Kevin Gausman pitched one inning of scoreless relief, working around three walks, to earn the win for Toronto.

Fellow starter Chris Bassitt pitched a perfect eighth and Jeff Hoffman finished for his second save this postseason.

Rodríguez opened the game with a double and scored on a one-out single by Josh Naylor. Daulton Varsho tied it with an RBI single off George Kirby in the bottom half before Rodríguez restored the lead for Seattle with a leadoff homer in the third.

Raleigh, who led the majors with 60 homers in the regular season, made it 3-1 with a leadoff homer against Louis Varland in the fifth.

Raleigh has 10 home runs in 15 career games at Rogers Centre, three of them in the postseason. He also homered at Toronto in Game 1 of a 2022 Wild Card Series and Game 1 of this year’s ALCS.

Naylor was called out to end the first after umpires ruled he interfered with Ernie Clement’s relay to first base on a double play by jumping into the throw and deflecting it.

Kirby allowed one run and four hits in four innings. He walked one and struck out three.

Blue Jays starter Shane Bieber permitted two runs and seven hits in 3 2/3 innings. He walked one and struck out five.

Toronto slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. arrived at the stadium wearing a Maple Leafs hockey jersey with Auston Matthews’ name and number. The star forward is 0-6 in Game 7s with Toronto during his 10 seasons in the NHL.

Toronto Blue Jays players celebrate on the field after defeating the Seattle Mariners in game seven of the American League Championship Series at the Rogers Centre on Oct. 20, 2025 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images)

NEW YORK – After dominating the New York Rangers without scoring for much of the night, rookie Danila Yurov finally gave the Minnesota Wild the conclusion they desperately needed.

Yurov scored his first NHL goal in the third period on the way to a 3-1 win over the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden, and an end to their three-game losing streak.

With the game tied 1-1, Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin stopped Marcus Johansson’s wraparound attempt, but the puck was loose in the crease just long enough for Yurov to sweep it over the line. Wild teammate Vladimir Tarasenko collected the puck from the referee to give to Yurov as a souvenir.

Jonas Brodin scored his first goal of the season early in the game, and goalie Filip Gustavsson turned aside most of the Rangers’ sporadic offense, recording 22 saves for his second win of the season. He preserved the lead midway through the third, gloving a point-blank shot by Rangers star Mika Zibanejad on the goal line.

Kirill Kaprizov added an empty-net goal late.

The win — their first on this road trip — was a just reward for the second game in a row where the Wild have been dominant but have struggled to find goals from all of their offense. Nonetheless, they improved to 3-3-1 with the come-from-behind victory.

Trailing 1-0 early, the Wild drew even when Brodin blasted a low shot from the top of the left circle. On its way to the net, the puck deflected off a Ranger’s stick, then off the stick blade of Shesterkin, before ramping into the upper right corner. It was Brodin’s first goal of the season.

Minnesota controlled long stretches of the first period, outshooting the Rangers 12-2 at one point. They appeared, briefly, to take the lead past the halfway point of the first when David Jiricek sailed a pass across the offensive zone. The puck was deflected into the air, and Vinnie Hinostroza batted it into the net on a bounce.

Officials immediately waved no goal due to Hinostroza playing the puck with a high stick. The Wild did not challenge the call.

They outshot the Rangers 17-5 in period one, posting more shots in the opening 20 minutes than they had mustered for the entire games at Washington (14) and Philadelphia (16).

The Rangers, who were 0-3 at home coming into this game and had been shut out in all three of those contests, needed less than a minute to end that drought, when Artemi Panarin found some clean ice in the offensive zone and snapped off a shot that beat Gustavsson on the glove side.

About the only other thing to get the New York crowd involved in the first period came in the final minute, when defenseman Braden Schneider leveled Marcus Foligno with an open-ice check in the neutral zone, dropping Foligno to the ice and snapping his stick in half. Foligno returned for the second period, apparently no worse for wear.

There was an unplanned stoppage early in the second period, when a Kaprizov shot hit Shesterkin up high, stunning the goalie and damaging his throat protector. He skated to the Rangers’ bench and was attended to by the trainer and the equipment man, then returned to the game.

The game was halted a second time with the Wild on a power play, when a Hinostroza shot hit Rangers center Noah Laba in the face. He dropped to a knee immediately and left a trail of blood on the ice before being helped to the trainers’ room.

Laba returned for the third period wearing a full cage face mask.

Shesterkin had 29 saves for the Rangers, who are celebrating the franchise’s 100th season with several nods to the team’s founding in 1926. That included the team wearing throwback jerseys, live big band music between periods and an ice crew wearing Roaring ‘20s style bow ties, suspenders and Gatsby hats.

The Wild’s five-game road trip concludes on Wednesday evening with a 6 p.m. CDT visit to the New Jersey Devils in Newark.

Briefly

Foligno honored his recently-deceased great uncle, Eddie Giacomin, with a sticker on his helmet Monday night. Giacomin, who died Sept. 14 at age 86, was a hall of fame goaltender with the Rangers and Red Wings from 1965 until he retired in 1978. His number 1 jersey was retired by the Rangers in 1989. Foligno also plans to wear the sticker on April 5 when the Wild visit Detroit.

J.T. Miller #8 of the New York Rangers lands on Filip Gustavsson #32 of the Minnesota Wild during the second period at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 20, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

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Ramsey County will pay $875,000 to settle a data practices lawsuit brought by a Little Canada couple who had their foster care license revoked and planned adoption terminated following allegations the woman abused one of their foster children.

The county received a report in May 2019 that Amy Waters injured one of the three foster children placed with Waters and her husband John Waters on a pre-adoptive basis, according to the county.

According to the lawsuit, the county charged Amy Waters with gross misdemeanor malicious punishment of a child at the urging of Kathryn Fiega, a child protection investigator employed by Ramsey County. Fiega also regularly contacted Clay County officials urging them to remove the children from the Waters home, according to the complaint.

The Waterses allege Fiega failed to follow statutory interview procedures or county guidelines to investigate the injury.

The criminal charge eventually was dismissed. But the couple’s foster care license was revoked and the children were removed from their home, according to the complaint; the Waterses never regained placement of the three foster children, who now live in different states.

Following the abuse report, the Waterses made multiple requests under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act for information related to the report and the county’s criminal and child protection investigations, according to the lawsuit. The couple said it took the county three months to respond and that the records provided were incomplete and heavily redacted.

“There is clear and convincing evidence that Ramsey County had knowledge that the CPS record contained facts that would have been vital to Ms. Waters defending against the criminal charges and to Plaintiffs in their (Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings) appeal,” the complaint said.

“The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office dismissed the criminal charges against Ms. Waters on December 17, 2019, after reviewing the records disclosed by Ramsey County, on the grounds that the State could not prove the criminal charges against Ms. Waters beyond a reasonable doubt,” said the complaint.

As part of the settlement agreement, county officials agreed to provide the Waterses with a copy of the criminal case file on Amy Waters, as well as other documentation of the abuse investigation. The parties also will work on a letter stating the factual circumstances of Amy’s maltreatment appeal, and the Waterses will get a summary of the actions the county takes to improve CPS investigative methods and train its staff on data practices.

The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners last week unanimously approved the settlement, which admits no liability.

County officials declined to comment on the settlement Monday and the Waterses’ lawyer could not be reached.

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Microplastics seem to be nearly everywhere, including, according to a recently released survey, Minnesota lakes.

The survey comes from the Environment Minnesota Research & Policy Center, an affiliate of the national public interest advocacy group PIRG. Following a protocol put out by microplastic scientists, staff and volunteers examined 40 waterways throughout Minnesota and identified microplastics in every lake sampled.

Melissa Maurer-Jones, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota Duluth’s chemistry and biochemistry department, said she was not surprised by the findings.

“The reality is, we live in a plastic world,” she said. “Lots of things that we use every day or wear on our bodies contain plastics. And just by the simple fact that there’s lots of uses of plastics, it means that small microplastics shed from these things and end up in our environmental systems.”

Katelynn Rolfes, a conservation advocate with Environment Minnesota, authored the survey, which was released last week. The microplastics they found were mostly plastic fibers, so small that the naked eye can hardly see them. They didn’t find any plastic microbeads, which have been banned since 2015 in personal care products.

She agreed that the results weren’t surprising, but she found them sobering. She hopes their research sets off alarm bells and spurs Minnesotans to take action.

“Nothing that we use for only a couple of minutes should be present in our world, in our environment, for hundreds of years,” Rolfes said.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency , microplastics have been found in every ecosystem on the planet, including in food, beverages, and human and animal tissue. A study published earlier this year found that microplastics are even accumulating in human brains.

Microplastics are a growing area of concern for scientists around the world. And there’s still a lot of unknowns. But Maurer-Jones said they’re starting to understand that they could potentially cause problems.

Plastic isn’t going away, but Minnesotans can look for ways to limit the plastic materials they use and make sure they are disposed of properly. Maurer-Jones said one step local governments could take would be to find ways to limit the amount of single-use plastic bags.

She encouraged Minnesotans to pay attention as more research comes out.

“Freshwater systems are not as well studied as some of the marine systems, and we’re only catching up now,” Maurer-Jones said. “The more we know about what’s happening and what influences the number of particles that we’re finding in these systems will help us be more strategic in trying to eliminate, reduce, or remediate some of this waste.”

Fortunately, she said Minnesotans likely don’t have to be concerned about swimming in lakes. As long as you’re not drinking too much lake water by accident, swimmers will only have a minor skin exposure, which should not cause any major health problems.

“Your exposure to microplastics in lakes — I don’t know if it’s going to be on the same level as what you would be exposed to if you are eating something from a Styrofoam takeout container.”

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