Nolan Jones draws walk with bases-loaded to give Guardians 1-0 victory over White Sox in home opener

CLEVELAND (AP) — Nolan Jones drew a bases-loaded walk from Mike Clevinger in the ninth inning, and the Cleveland Guardians won their home opener 1-0 over the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday.

It was the first 1-0 game that ended with a walk-off walk since the Los Angeles Dodgers beat San Diego on May 1, 2009.

Carlos Santana reached on an infield single off first baseman Andrew Vaughn's glove starting the ninth for his second hit of the game. Kyle Manzardo and Jhonkensy Noel walked against Clevinger (0-2), Jones hit a 3-1 pitch just to the foul side of the right-field pole, then took a fastball low.

Cleveland, which had just three hits, got its 13th walk-off win in a home opener, its first since 2017 against the White Sox. It was the second game-ending RBI for Jones after his home run for Colorado against San Diego on June 11, 2023.

Coming off a walk-off defeat at Detroit, Chicago has lost six straight. The White Sox lost a post-1900 record 121 games last year.

Emmanuel Clase (2-0) — the fifth Cleveland pitcher of the game — pitched a hitless ninth, finishing a two-hitter.

Chicago's Shane Smith, a 25-year-old right-hander making his second major league appearance, didn't allow a hit until José Ramírez's slow-rolling infield single down the third-base line with two outs in the sixth. He allowed two hits in six innings.

Chicago's Luis Robert Jr. reached on an error to start the ninth, stole second and was on third base after a passed ball with two outs, but Clase struck out Matt Thaiss to keep the game scoreless.

Santana's single in the ninth made him among seven active players with 1,800 hits.

Chicago sends right-hander Sean Burke (1-1, 5.23 ERA) to the hill Wednesday. Cleveland counters with lefty Logan Allen (0-1, 6.75 ERA).

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Chicago White Sox pitcher Shane Smith reacts after Cleveland Guardians' José Ramírez hit a single in the sixth inning of a baseball game in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Cleveland Guardians' Lane Thomas is hit by a pitch in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Chicago White Sox's Shane Smith pitches in the first inning of a baseball game against the Cleveland Guardians in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Cleveland Guardians pitcher Ben Lively (39) pitches to Chicago White Sox's Andrew Vaughn, right, in the first inning of a baseball game in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Cleveland Guardians' José Ramírez tosses his bat after hitting a single in the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Chicago White Sox's Luis Robert Jr., left, is tagged out by Cleveland Guardians first baseman Carlos Santana (41) between first and second base on an attempted steal in the first inning of a baseball game in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Cleveland Guardians' Carlos Santana scores in front of Chicago White Sox catcher Matt Thaiss on a walk by Nolan Jones in the ninth inning of a baseball game in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Chicago White Sox pitcher Shane Smith looks to first base and Cleveland Guardians' José Ramírez after Ramírez hit a single in the sixth inning of a baseball game in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Cleveland Guardians' Nolan Jones celebrates with teammates after walking and bringing in the winning run in the ninth inning of a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Cleveland Guardians' Nolan Jones celebrates as he runs to first base with a walk in the ninth inning of a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox, brining in the winning run, in Cleveland, Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)