OAKLAND, Calif. -- R.A. Dickey thought it was a safe pitch to a major league rookie. It turned out to be one of his few mistakes.Dickey gave up three home runs, though two of them were solo, and the Toronto Blue Jays lost 5-4 to the Oakland Athletics on Saturday.If you got the ball up in the air today it was going to go, Dickey said. Thats the first slow knuckleball Ive thrown in four years that got hit out for a home run. I thought it would be a safe pitch. I was trying to find the speed it was moving most and today it was the harder one.Dickey (7-10), who had won three of his previous four starts, said he felt good all day. The three-run shot by Ryon Healy, his first major league hit, stood out.If I can subtract that homer, we win the game, Dickey said. The ball was only out by 4 or 5 feet. Im not sure he got all of it and, in retrospect, theres not a lot of history on the guy. I stuck with the harder one after that and got better results.Dickey allowed five runs on five hits in his six innings. He walked three and struck out four.Its a home run park during the day and thats what got us today, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. There wasnt a lot of break early on but he found his groove. He was giving up fly balls and that can be your enemy.Josh Thole, who had two hits and drove in a pair of runs, ended a 77 at-bat streak without an extra base hit with a two-run double in the second. Four of his five RBI have come in his last two games.Im tweaking things and Im feeling comfortable, Thole said. Ill ride it as long as I can.Khris Davis hit two home runs and Sonny Gray snapped a 12-game winless drought for the As.Davis was 2 for 4 in his ninth career multi-homer game, three of which came this season. The As have homered six times in two games, three of them by Davis.The Blue Jays, whod won eight of nine games going into the All-Star break, lost to Oakland for a second straight day to start the second half.Gray (4-8) ended a career-worst seven game skid. He was 0-7 with a 6.16 ERA over his previous 12 starts. He allowed three runs on six hits and four walks in six innings.Edwin Encarnacion hit his 24th homer leading off the top of the third for Toronto. Justin Smoak hit a solo homer, his 10th, off Ryan Madson, who pitched the ninth for his 19th save.CHALLENGING TIMESA day after a replay ruling on a play at the plate figured prominently in an As 8-7 win, home plate was the center of two more challenges -- on the same play. After Gibbons challenge overturned an As scoring play in the bottom of the seventh inning, As manager Bob Melvin challenged the reversal, contending that catcher Thole blocked Marcus Semiens path to the plate. Replay officials rejected Melvins argument. On Friday, Josh Reddick scored the tiebreaking run on a play at the plate that was overturned on a challenge.UP NEXTBlue Jays: LHP J.A. Happ is 6-0 with a 2.73 ERA over his last six starts. The Blue Jays are averaging 10.1 runs over that stretch. Happ (12-3, 3.36 ERA) has already tied his career high for wins in a season and opens the second half on pace to win 20 games.Athletics: In his last seven starts, LHP Rich Hill is 6-0 with a 2.05 ERA with no home runs allowed. He is 1-0 with a 3.00 ERA in two starts since coming off the disabled list (left groin strain) on July 1. He is 1-1 with a 4.76 ERA in 10 career appearances against Toronto. Authentic Soccer Jerseys Cheap .25 million option on reliever Jose Veras. Discount Football Jerseys . -- Whether Jeremy Hill deserves a prominent role in LSUs offence this early in the season is a matter for debate. http://www.cheapsoccerjerseyswholesale.com/ . Ibaka equaled a career high with 20 rebounds, adding four blocked shots and 15 points as the Thunder smothered the Milwaukee Bucks offence in a 92-79 victory Saturday night. Cheap Soccer Jerseys . "I was fortunate to play many years at this level with a great organization and unbelievable teammates," said Hejduk in a statement. Cheap Nike Soccer Jerseys . MLS Commissioner Don Garber and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez also will attend the session, which was announced Monday. The league has discussed placing its next two expansion teams in Miami and Atlanta. ARLINGTON, Va. -- When Matt Niskanen contemplated skipping a trip to the gym over the summer, he remembered what happened in May.As the offseason went on, Niskanen thought less and less about the Washington Capitals loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. Instead, he let the memory of the second-round playoff exit fuel him from time to time.That hurt, it lingers, and I think you can use that as motivation, he said. That kind of stuff creeps into your mind, and it pushes you.Several months removed from another painful playoff loss, the Capitals came to training camp ready to harness whatever energy they could from it while also preparing to move past it and focus on another run at the Cup this season. Almost the entire roster is back from the Presidents Trophy-winning team that ran roughshod over the NHL during the regular season, and with Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and goaltender Braden Holtby in their primes, there isnt time to waste on reflection and hindsight.You need to see where things went awry and try to rectify it, said veteran winger Justin Williams, one of several players with one year left on his contract. We set a standard with having successful teams, a team every year fans can look at and say, You know, we legitimately have a chance to win it again. As players, we embrace that, and we respect it, and we know that these opportunities that we have in front of us arent forever.Along with Williams, winger T.J. Oshie and defenseman Karl Alzner could be unrestricted free agents July 1. Restricted free-agent center Evgeny Kuznetsov will get a big raise on a new deal, and Washingtons salary cap picture will get more difficult as the years go on. Ovechkin just turned 31, and though he led the league in goal-scoring last season, theres no certainty as to how long his Hall of Fame-caliber production will keep up.?After winning the division by 16 points and losing in the second round (again), general manager Brian MacLellan doesnt think theres a bigger burden to win this year, wwith so many unknowns on the horizon.ddddddddddddI think theres pressure every year, he said. Last year, we were a contender, theres pressure. Same pressure this year. We have a goal of winning a championship. We know were close, and we need to pursue it, and well do everything we can to get there.Alzner was just starting to get over the early exit when pictures of the Penguins celebrating with the Cup filled his social media feeds. The ironman whose groin injury forced him out of the deciding Game 6 and led to sports hernia surgery scoffed at the notion that Pittsburghs winning makes the loss easier to take.Its worse, in my opinion, because then you really think, OK, if I could have got past that team, then the Cup was ours, said Alzner, whos still working his way back to 100 percent. I think that all of us in the room thought that we were going to win that last year.Being great in the regular season and losing in the first or second round has become the Capitals reputation the past decade. The 2015-16 team was perhaps the best on paper, which made the late stumble into summer that much more confounding.As more top players trickle back into town after playing in the World Cup of Hockey, associate coach Todd Reirden expects the staff to impart lessons about the past season on the full group. Early in camp, the mood is light, with players eager to make a fresh start and learn from losing to the Penguins.Asked what the Capitals can do to improve, Williams deadpanned: We can finish the season with a win. Thats it.Thats a challenge that cant be accomplished until spring. Players, coaches and fans might want to fast-forward until then, but Washington has to again get there first.Youve got to be patient, center Jay Beagle said. The game has to develop. Weve got new guys, so we want to go into this year making sure were playing our best going into the end of the year and in the playoffs. 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