LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Chicago Cubs had a big night against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
One night after being shut out, the Cubs broke out for 14 runs and 15 hits in the final three innings of a 16-0 victory Saturday night, to hand the Dodgers their first home loss of the season and their worst home shutout loss in franchise history.
The Cubs finished 21 hits, including nine for extra bases.
“The boys came out swinging, and it was pretty cool to see,” said Chicago's Carson Kelly, who homered twice among his three hits and drove in three runs. “Kudos to our guys for working at-bats, really working counts, getting good pitches to drive and not missing them. We also ran the bases well and took our walks … I think it’s just the mentality of this team that we’re gonna fight to the end no matter what the score is.”
Michael Busch, once a top prospect in the Dodgers’ farm system, had four hits, including a homer and two doubles, and drove in three runs. The first baseman is batting .308 (12 for 39) with three homers, six doubles and 11 RBIs in 10 career games against the Dodgers.
Ian Happ had three hits and scored two runs, and Miguel Amaya replaced the injured Seiya Suzuki (right-wrist pain) in the fifth inning and homered among his two hits and drove in three runs.
Kelly keyed a five-run seventh inning by with a homer 384 feet over the left-field wall against Dodgers reliever Ben Casparius, and then crushed a 391-foot homer on a floater from infielder-turned-pitcher Miguel Rojas for a two-run shot in the ninth.
“You have to take a quick swing, not a big swing,” Kelly said, when asked how hard it is to homer off a 40-mph pitch. “You have to find the right timing of it.”
The Cubs pushed their major league-league-leading run total to 112, which is 21 more than the second-place New York Yankees (91), and they have outscored opponents by 41 runs, a margin nearly twice as much as any other team.
Busch, who homered off Dodgers starter Roki Sasaki for a 1-0 lead in the second, came within inches of a monster game when he was robbed of a grand slam by center fielder Andy Pages to end the third.
“I saw him (make the catch) — unfortunately,” said Busch, a former minor league teammate of Pages. “He’s a good player. I didn’t want him to do that, so we’re gonna have to have a conversation.”
Sasaki (0-1) left with a 1-0 deficit after allowing one run and four hits in five innings, striking out three and walking two. However, the Cubs then broke through against a Dodgers bullpen that entered with a 2.15 ERA, the fourth-best mark in baseball.
Busch doubled and scored on Justin Turner’s RBI single off Casparius for a 2-0 lead in the sixth, and Amaya (single), Busch (single), Dansby Swanson (single) and Nico Hoerner (sacrifice fly) drove in runs after Kelly’s leadoff homer in the seventh.
Kyle Tucker had a two-run single and Amaya a two-run homer in the eighth, and the Cubs teed off on Rojas in the ninth.
The offensive outburst backed a superb start by Cubs right-hander Ben Brown, who used only two pitches — a four-seam fastball that averaged 95.6 mph and a knuckle-curve that averaged 86.9 mph — to blank the Dodgers on five hits in six innings, striking out five and walking none.
Brown (2-1) gave up five runs and seven hits in four innings of his previous start, a no-decision against San Diego.
“Just trying to do the exact opposite of last week,” Brown said. “This past week was a grind working on things, mentally going through things, but I put in that effort, and it obviously showed tonight.
“I was able to slow the game down, slow the heart rate down, execute pitch by pitch and go back to where I was last year … when my stuff is there, we can get through lineups like that.”
AP MLB: https://www.apnews.com/hub/MLB
Chicago Cubs' Carson Kelly gestures as he rounds first after hitting a solo home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Saturday, April 12, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Chicago Cubs' Michael Busch, right scores on a sacrifice by Nico Hoerner as Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes stands at the plate during the seventh inning of a baseball game Saturday, April 12, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Chicago Cubs' Miguel Amaya, right, hits a two-run home run as Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes kneels at the plate during the eighth inning of a baseball game, Saturday, April 12, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
JDEIDEH, Lebanon (AP) — It was not how the Rev. Maroun Ghafari had envisioned this Holy Week — for years, he had held Easter sermons in his predominantly Christian village of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel.
This year, he is preaching from a Beirut suburb, beside a cardboard cutout depicting his church in Alma al-Shaab, now caught in the crossfire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters.
Since hostilities erupted last month between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group — in the shadow of the wider, U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — over 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, and more than 1 million have been forced to flee their homes.
Among those displaced from the war-torn south are thousands of Christians. They now find themselves far from their ancestral churches in Lebanon, where Christians have maintained a strong presence through centuries of Byzantine, Arab and Ottoman conquest and plenty of modern-day crises.
Christians are estimated to make up around a third of Lebanon's population of roughly 5.5 million people. With 12 Christian sects, the country is home to the largest proportion of Christians of any nation in the Arab world.
Christian villagers who stayed behind in southern Lebanon, ignoring Israel’s blanket evacuation warnings for the area, have increasingly hardened into enclaves surrounded by fierce clashes.
And though villagers in Alma al-Shaab had been uprooted before, in the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war, this time around, they were adamant they wouldn't leave, even as airstrikes came closer and closer.
The villagers huddled in their church for protection as Israeli warplanes pounded large swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon while Israeli troops stepped up a ground invasion and Hezbollah kept firing rockets at Israel.
In his annual Easter homily, Patriarch Beshara al-Rai of Lebanon’s Maronite Church blamed both Hezbollah and Israel for the suffering wrought by the war.
“The country is going through a critical situation due to Iranian interference through Hezbollah and Israeli aggression,” he said. “Our hearts bleed for the victims of the conflict imposed on Lebanon.”
Ghafari’s brother, 70-year-old Sami Ghafari, was among the villagers who sought refuge at the church in Alma al-Shaab.
But he dashed out briefly on March 8 to tend to his garden, and was killed by an Israeli drone strike. His killing prompted the remaining villagers — including his brother — to pack up their belongings.
The U.N. peacekeepers in the area — a force known as UNIFIL that has monitored the region for nearly five decades — evacuated them to the northern suburbs of Beirut.
“We wanted to stay, but it was always possible that one of us could be targeted or killed at any moment,” the Rev. Maroun Ghafari told The Associated Press from St. Anthony Church in the northern Beirut suburb of Jdeideh, where the displaced from Alma al-Shaab came to worship on Saturday.
“Everyone is tired, and we see that war brings nothing but destruction, death and displacement.”
For many Lebanese Christians, it's a tradition on Holy Saturday — the day between Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus, and Easter Sunday, which marks his resurrection according to the Gospels — to visit the graves of their loved ones.
This year, displaced Christians could only reflect from afar.
Nabila Farah, dressed in black for the Saturday service at St. Anthony Church, was among the last to leave Alma al-Shaab. She still feels heartbroken, a month later.
“You miss the smell of home, the lovely traditions and customs, the sounds of the bells of three churches ringing,” she said, reminiscing about her village. “As much as we experience the Easter atmosphere here, it will never be as it is over there.”
Those who remain face other challenges.
Marius Khairallah, a priest in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, where much of the Christian community has hunkered down, says that he and his congregants are staying put "not out of stubbornness, but out of a sense of mission, to remain alongside their fellow faithful, as witnesses.”
“A significant number of parishioners have been displaced or are absent,” he said. "Yet churches still open their doors. Prayers are still raised — even with fewer voices."
Worries are mounting among Christians in the area as the Lebanese army — which seeks to stay neutral in the Israel-Hezbollah war — pulls out from parts of southern Lebanon, leaving them exposed to Israeli forces pushing deeper into the territory.
St. Antony's main priest, the Rev. Dori Fayyad, used his Good Friday sermon to take solemn note of the war’s widening toll on the southern Lebanese Christians, as the faithful recited prayers in Arabic and Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus.
“Today, you understand what the cross means, not as an idea, not as a concept, but because you are going through it,” he told the fully packed pews, the crowd so thick that dozens had to stand or crouch on the back stairs.
Some wiped away tears as Fayyad named one by one the southern churches, illustrated in the cardboard cutouts next to the pulpit.
“These churches in these villages are not only places of worship,” he said. “They are silent witnesses to suffering and to faith.”
Associated Press video journalist Ali Sharafeddine in Jdeideh, Lebanon, contributed to this report.
A girl kisses a cross held by a priest during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Parishioners walk in a procession after a Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
