Nick Kurtz and Jeff McNeil power the A's to an 11-2 victory over the struggling Pirates

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nick Kurtz hit two homers and drove in five runs, Jeff McNeil also went deep and knocked in four, and the Athletics beat the scuffling Pittsburgh Pirates 11-2 on Monday night.

J.T. Ginn pitched six strong innings for the A's, who returned to their regular temporary home in California after going 4-2 on a homestand at their Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas, where the big league club plans to move into a new stadium in 2028.

McNeil went 3 for 4 and snapped an 0-for-20 slump with an RBI single in the second. Kurtz followed with an opposite-field homer to left for a 3-0 lead and finished 3 for 5.

McNeil hit his third homer to make it 5-1 in the fourth and added an RBI single in the seventh before Kurtz followed with a three-run shot to left. Eight of Kurtz's 18 home runs have come in June.

Lawrence Butler sparked the five-run seventh with an RBI double after Zack Gelof reached on a two-out error by second baseman Brandon Lowe.

Ginn (5-3) allowed just an unearned run and six hits with two walks, throwing 98 pitches.

Kurtz had the first of three straight singles to load the bases in the first before Jared Jones (1-1) came back to strike out the side. Henry Bolte hit a one-out double before McNeil drove him in during a three-run second.

Jones permitted five runs and eight hits over four innings in his fourth start this season.

Tyler Soderstrom singled in front of Jacob Wilson's ground-rule double to begin the fifth against Pirates reliever Carmen Mlodzinski. Gelof upped the majors' longest current hitting streak to 19 games with an RBI single for a 6-1 lead.

Jake Mangum had an RBI single in the fourth for the Pirates, and Endy Rodríguez went 3 for 3 with a solo homer in the eighth.

The Athletics (36-36) moved within a half-game of the first-place Mariners in the AL West.

Pittsburgh (36-37) has lost eight of 10. The Pirates are 9-19 all-time against the A's.

Pirates RHP Mitch Keller (5-4, 5.14 ERA) starts Tuesday opposite Athletics RHP Jack Perkins (2-3, 6.25).

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Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Jared Jones throws to an Athletics batter during the first inning of a baseball game Monday, June 15, 2026, in West Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Scott Marshall)

Athletics' Henry Bolte, left, slides into home plate and scores during the second inning of a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Monday, June 15, 2026, in West Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Scott Marshall)

Athletics pitcher J.T. Ginn throws to a Pittsburgh Pirates batter during the first inning of a baseball game Monday, June 15, 2026, in West Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Scott Marshall)

Athletics' Nick Kurtz, right, hits a two-run home run during the second inning of a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Monday, June 15, 2026, in West Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Scott Marshall)

Athletics' Tyler Soderstrom, left, Lawrence Butler (4), and Henry Bolte celebrate the Athletics win over the Pittsburgh Pirates in a baseball game Monday, June 15, 2026, in West Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Scott Marshall)

A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.

The sheriff's office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.

The victims had been conducting a tandem jump in which two people are harnessed together, according to a social media post by Aerial Arts Moab, an acrobatics company that described Lewis as “co-owner and best friend.”

Lewis also owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered tandem jumps to inexperienced customers who would be harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute. Promotional videos on the company’s website show pairs of people stepping off the edges of towering cliffs and briefly plummeting before their parachutes open.

In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.

“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”

Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins confirmed the other person who was killed was Danny Joe Kregle, a 68-year-old father and grandfather who was described by a family member as an accomplished businessman.

“Danny had a wonderful sense of humor and was always looking for ways to make people laugh,” relative Sydney Laverty told The Times-Independent. “One of his greatest joys was performing magic tricks alongside his granddaughter.”

Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.

He went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line like it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.

“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late night show.

Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the sheriff's office.

Though there's no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in California's Yosemite National Park.

A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.

Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.

“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.

Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.

“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it's the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing: `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.'”

No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.

Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China's Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.

In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) above the Nevada desert.

FILE - Andy Lewis appears during Madonna's halftime performance at the NFL Super Bowl XLVI football game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, Feb. 5, 2012, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

FILE - U.S. slackliner Andy Lewis of Calif. balances on a slackline in Bangkok, Thailand, July 23, 2014. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)