BASEBALL
Ortiz, Red Sox sign deal
David Ortiz and the Red Sox have agreed to a contract for next year with options for the following two years, a move that means the popular slugger will probably finish his career in Boston. Ortiz, the World Series Most Valuable Player last season, has helped lead the Red Sox to three Major League Baseball championships in the past 10 years. Affectionately known as “Big Papi,” he batted .309 with 30 home runs and 103 RBIs in 137 games last season. The 38-year-old Dominican designated hitter has 431 homers during his major league career and has made nine MLB All-Star teams in 11 years with Boston. The Red Sox announced the deal Sunday night. It includes a club or vesting option for 2016, and a club option for 2017.
BOXING
Mickey Duff dies at 84
Mickey Duff, the celebrated British boxing manager and promoter, has died. He was 84. The London Ex-Boxers’ Association says Duff, who was born in Krakow, Poland, died in his sleep early on Saturday. The association says on its Web site that “this is truly is the end of a golden era in British Boxing.” Duff, who moved to England in the late 1930s, won 61 of 69 professional fights before retiring from the ring at the age of 19. He went on to manage 16 world champions, including Frank Bruno, Joe Calzaghe, Jim Watt and Alan Minter. In 1999, Duff was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, which describes him as “one of the most knowledgeable and accomplished men in the history of the sport.”
SOCCER
Engelaar betters Rooney
Not to be outdone by Wayne Rooney’s dazzling long-range goal at the weekend, Dutch international Orlando Engelaar scored with a wonder strike from even farther away for A-League side Melbourne Heart. Engelaar’s audacious effort, his fourth of the season for his club, was similar to Saturday’s breathtaking effort by Rooney, which came in a 2-0 win for Manchester United against West Ham in the Premier League. However, whereas the England international hit his shot from inside the West Ham half, Engelaar tried his luck from just inside his own half on Sunday. The 14-time Dutch international glanced up and saw Central Coast Mariners goalkeeper Liam Reddy off his line before executing a shot that arrowed into the net just under the crossbar. Mobbed by his teammates, he realized he had done something out of the ordinary. “Yeah, of course, you realize right at that moment you have done something special, that’s nice to remember,” Engelaar said after his side lost 2-1. Engelaar said there was an element of luck about his strike, which has become a hit on YouTube.
FOOTBALL
Busy week for NFL owners
NFL owners could be making plenty of news this week at their spring meetings. They will consider 13 playing rules proposals and seven bylaws. They will discuss expanding the playoff field from 12 to 14 teams, although a vote on such a move is uncertain. Some changes seem to be sure things: extending the height of the goal posts 5 feet to help determine if kicks are good; eliminating overtime in preseason games; placing fixed TV cameras on the goal lines, end lines and sidelines to help replay reviews. Perhaps the juiciest suggestions came from the Patriots. They want to move the line of scrimmage to the 25 for extra points, and to allow coaches to challenge any calls except on scoring plays, which are automatically reviewed.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier