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Sports Briefing | Soccer: FIFa’s Player of Year Finalists Named

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 30 November 2012 | 15.03

Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta are the finalists for FIFA's world player of the year award. Messi would become the first player to win the award four times. The finalists for the women's award are the five-time winner Marta and the Americans Alex Morgan and Abby Wambach.

Goal

The Times's soccer blog has the world's game covered from all angles.

¶ San Jose Earthquakes forward Chris Wondolowski was voted Major League Soccer's most valuable player after scoring 27 goals to tie the season record set by Tampa Bay's Roy Lassiter in 1996. Thierry Henry of the Red Bulls was runner-up. (AP)

¶ The Brazilian soccer federation hired Luiz Felipe Scolari to coach the national team, 10 years after he led the nation to its fifth World Cup title at the 2002 tournament in South Korea and Japan. (AP)

¶ Senegal was banned from using its national stadium for 2014 World Cup qualifiers after rioting fans caused an African Cup of Nations match against Ivory Coast to be abandoned. (AP)

¶ Simon Fraser, the only Canadian member of the N.C.A.A., fell in the semifinals of the Division II men's soccer tournament, 3-1, to Saginaw Valley. (NYT)


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Ryan Torain and Kregg Lumpkin Join Giants as Running Backs

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Life can be humbling for a former N.F.L. running back hoping to return to the league.

Last week, Ryan Torain — a starter for the Washington Redskins in 2011 — was living in Chandler, Ariz., playing in a 7-on-7 football league and scouring the Internet on Sunday nights to see if any backs had gotten hurt. Kregg Lumpkin, who played in all 16 games for Tampa Bay last season, was doing his best to stay in shape while also pondering whether to accept a job offer in real estate in Atlanta.

Given those circumstances, it was hardly surprising that both players were ecstatic to be in the locker room at the Giants' training center Thursday, going through their first full workouts. The Giants signed Torain and Lumpkin on Tuesday after Andre Brown, the veteran backup to Ahmad Bradshaw, broke his leg in a victory over Green Bay.

Coach Tom Coughlin was noncommittal when asked how involved Torain or Lumpkin would be in the offense Monday night against Washington, but both players expressed confidence that they would be ready.

"It's definitely challenging, but there's nothing I would rather be doing right now," said Torain, who acknowledged that he found himself compulsively checking what injuries had cropped up around the league as he watched games each week.

"It's not that you wish anyone ill," he said. "But it's a rough business. I was always looking: Who needs a running back? What might be out there? I was just waiting for an opportunity."

Torain has battled injuries throughout his career but rushed for 742 yards and 4 touchdowns in 2010 with Washington. He played in eight games in 2011 but fell out of favor and was waived in December. He worked out for the Giants during their bye week earlier this month, then got a phone call Monday morning that the team wanted him to come back.

He flew from Arizona on Monday afternoon, landed around midnight and came to the center the next day. After a physical and another workout, he signed a contract Tuesday afternoon.

"I'm just 26," Torain said Thursday. "I still feel like I can be the kind of back I was."

At 28, Lumpkin has a less-impressive résumé — 124 career rushing yards — but is attractive to the Giants because of his blocking prowess and his special teams skills. Lumpkin had been actively looking for nonfootball jobs, he said, but was more than happy to put off an offer to join a mortgage company in favor of giving the N.F.L. another shot.

Once he went through the Tuesday workout and signed, Lumpkin immediately joined the classroom sessions that fullback Henry Hynoski has been holding to help the rookie running back David Wilson learn the team's pass-blocking sequences.

Lumpkin also said he was planning to reach out to D. J. Ware, a college teammate at Georgia who spent parts of five years with the Giants and now plays for Tampa Bay. "I'll pick his brain," Lumpkin said of learning the offense. "He can give me some pointers."

Lumpkin spent time on the kickoff return and punt return teams during Thursday's practice. Since Brown played on special teams in addition to backing up Bradshaw, that hole is also important for the Giants to fill.

"I've done special teams since I've been in the league, so I'm used to it," Lumpkin said. "That's where you have to make your money."

However the Giants fill Brown's role, it is difficult to imagine that his replacement will replicate his goal-line prowess. Brown had shown particular talent in that area, scoring 8 rushing touchdowns in 10 games this season, none longer than 2 yards.

Of course, Wilson will probably have a chance to carry the ball more, and Coughlin said expectations were high. "He's a first-round draft choice, a talented kid," Coughlin said. "Ratchet it up. He's ready to go."

Regardless of how well Wilson does, most N.F.L. teams operate with at least three running backs, so it figures that Torain or Lumpkin will get a tantalizing opportunity to restart his career. "We're all ready for it," Torain said. "We just want our chance again."


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N.F.L. Roundup: Brees’s Streak Ends in Loss to the Falcons

The Atlanta Falcons raced to a 17-0 lead against the New Orleans Saints, and the defense made it stand up, picking off five of Drew Brees's passes and ending his N.F.L.-record touchdown streak in a 23-13 victory Thursday night in Atlanta.

The Falcons (11-1) moved to the brink of clinching the N.F.C. South and dealt a big blow to the Saints (5-7) and their fading playoff hopes. William Moore had two of the five interceptions, which were the most of Brees's career and came four days after he had two passes picked off and returned for touchdowns in a loss to San Francisco.

Brees had thrown a touchdown pass in 54 consecutive games. He threw an apparent scoring pass to Darren Sproles late in the first half, but it was nullified by a penalty.

TITANS ADD A COACH Tennessee Coach Mike Munchak hired the veteran coach Tom Moore to help the Titans' offense after firing the offensive coordinator Chris Palmer and giving that job to Dowell Loggains.

Munchak said Loggains, 32, would call the plays starting Sunday against Houston. But Loggains had been the quarterbacks coach, and Munchak said the Titans needed more help in the building.

BANGED-UP BEARS Chicago return specialist Devin Hester and guard Chris Spencer were ruled out for Sunday's game against Seattle.

Both players were injured in a win over Minnesota last weekend. Hester had a concussion, and Spencer injured his knee.

Also against the Vikings, Bears running back Matt Forte, cornerback Charles Tillman and linebacker Lance Briggs sustained ankle injuries, and guard Lance Louis tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

Briggs, Forte, Tillman and tight end Kellen Davis (ankle) were limited in practice Thursday. Louis is out for the rest of the season.

HONEY BADGER ENTERS DRAFT The former Louisiana State defensive back Tyrann Mathieu announced that he was making himself eligible for the 2013 N.F.L. draft.

He was the most electrifying player on L.S.U.'s 13-1 team last season, returning two punts for touchdowns and two fumbles for touchdowns. His fierce style of play spawned his nickname, the Honey Badger, and he ended up winning the national defensive player of the year award and was a Heisman finalist.

In the off-season, he failed drug tests, prompting Coach Les Miles to dismiss him from the team. He checked into rehab and relied on the former N.B.A. player John Lucas as a mentor, but he apparently fell back into the same crowd when he returned to classes. He was arrested last month on a marijuana possession charge. LYNN ZINSER


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Georgia Defense Uses Approach of Alabama’s Nick Saban

ATHENS, Ga. — Todd Grantham stomped down the Georgia sideline toward his second-string defensive players, who were trudging off the field after surrendering a touchdown. He was not going to wait for them to get to the bench.

Grantham, the Bulldogs' defensive coordinator, met them out on the numbers on the field and poured venom into the ear holes of their helmets. His cheeks were flushed red, and he shook his fist with fury.

None of the players got a chance to make excuses for Georgia Tech's creeping within 32 points in the fourth quarter of an eventual 42-10 victory last Saturday.

"It's all about the process," Grantham said this week. "You have young players out there, and they need to be ready to play when called upon."

Alabama Coach Nick Saban could not have said it better. The Process, after all, is the foundation of Saban's philosophy, which is a regimen to be followed with no pampering allowed.

It is Grantham's philosophy as well.

Grantham, 46, was hired away from his alma mater, Virginia Tech, by Saban and worked for him at Michigan State from 1996 to 1998. Grantham was raised in the rolling hills of southwest Virginia, and Saban was raised in the rolling hills of northern West Virginia.

They not only speak the same language when it comes to the process but also take the same approach to their defenses. Both use the 3-4, and they believe just as much in size as they do speed.

The two men, still friends, will get a chance to reunite Saturday when No. 2 Alabama plays No. 3 Georgia in the Southeastern Conference championship game.

"Our preparation and a lot of things we do here philosophically is from my time from him," Grantham said. "Systematically, our roots are very similar, or the same as."

Saban and Grantham each use the same maxim when explaining their vision of football: "Big people beat up little people."

Alabama is known for having players who combine size and power, and now Georgia's defense, in its third season under Grantham, has the size and power to match up with Alabama's versatile offense. Georgia's defense, which was without various starters for the first half of the season because of suspensions or injuries, has allowed just 8.3 points per game in the last five games and just 19 total points in its last three SEC games.

"I've always been really close to Todd professionally and personally," Saban said. "If you're going to rank assistants, he's one of the two or three best I've ever had on our staff."

The Bulldogs' cornerbacks, Damian Swann (5 feet 11 inches) and Sanders Commings (6-2), are considered tall for their position. Defensive tackles John Jenkins and Kwame Geathers weigh 358 and 355 pounds. Outside linebacker Jarvis Jones weighs 241, making him the size of inside linebackers on many teams. Grantham and Saban believe in a balanced defense and leaving their outside linebackers free to pursue the quarterback.

In 2010, Grantham's first season, Georgia was 6-7, but linebacker Justin Houston was second in the SEC with 10 sacks. In 2011, Jones led the conference in sacks with 13 1/2. Jones has 10 1/2 sacks in 10 games this season, the third-highest total in the SEC.

In 2008, his first season as the defensive line coach with the Dallas Cowboys, Grantham's star player, the All-Pro end DeMarcus Ware, had a career-high 20 sacks.

"My whole thing is matchups," Grantham said. "How can we get the mismatch in the rush. You are trying to get your best player on their weakest link on offense."

Georgia and Alabama use two safeties in pass coverage because their front seven defenders are so big and physical that they do not have to commit a safety to run support. Both teams seek to build a wall up front and make the offense try to bounce outside, where plays can be contained.

"Little people can't block big people," Grantham said. "When you have big people, you don't have to commit all your defensive backs to the run game. You can play what I call a seven-and-a-half-man box. You got the extra half guy in the secondary because your guys up front can seal off gaps and hold the point.

"Big people beat up little people. It's why there are weight classifications in boxing."

Three years ago, there was a chance Grantham could have become Saban's defensive coordinator at Alabama. When Georgia made inquiries about hiring Kirby Smart, the Alabama defensive coordinator, who played at Georgia, Saban gauged Grantham's interest in leaving the Cowboys and coming back to college.

"Certainly, I would have considered working for Nick," Grantham said. "The thing about him is he is a discipline guy, so all you have to do when you are with him is coach.

"I learned as much from him in my three years at Michigan State as I did in pro ball."

Grantham has a chance Saturday to show his mentor how far he has come, but also to audition for a number of head coaching jobs that have opened.

"At any level, you're just trying to get out and do your own thing," Georgia linebacker Christian Robinson said. "But you also remember who taught you and where you came from. I think that this one is big for us and especially for him. Coach Grantham is a very competitive guy. He takes everything really personally.

"Coach to coach, I think it's a huge matchup for him."


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Louisville 20, Rutgers 17: B.C.S. Berth Slips From Rutgers’s Grip

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Teddy Bridgewater, the Louisville quarterback, had enough trouble walking back to his team's huddle, let alone dodging any kind of pass rush. His right ankle was sprained. And he was playing with a broken left wrist.

Fortunately for the Cardinals, Bridgewater throws a football with his right hand, and he came off the bench to lead Louisville to a 20-17 victory over Rutgers on Thursday, seizing for itself what would have been the first Bowl Championship Series berth for the Scarlet Knights.

What remained of a sellout crowd of 52,798 at High Point Solutions Stadium glumly watched the Cardinals (10-2, 5-2 Big East) celebrate an unlikely victory over Rutgers (9-3, 5-2), which failed to hang on to a 14-3 halftime lead.

"We just got outexecuted in the second half," said Khaseem Greene, Rutgers's senior linebacker. The Scarlet Knights will find out Sunday which bowl they will play in.

Louisville kicker John Wallace broke a 17-17 tie with a 29-yard field goal with 1 minute 41 seconds left. Bridgewater set it up with a 30-yard completion to Andrell Smith, one play after linebacker James Burgess intercepted a pass by Rutgers's Gary Nova.

Burgess caught the ball after it was inadvertently kicked in the air by the intended receiver, Tim Wright, who attributed the miscue to "a lack of concentration." Early in the fourth quarter, Wright dropped what would have been a go-ahead touchdown pass.

Rutgers had one last chance to at least tie the score in the final minute. Nova drove the Scarlet Knights to their 48-yard line, but Brandon Coleman, his intended receiver, broke off his route, leading to an interception by Terell Floyd.

"Just a miscommunication," Coleman said.

Twenty-one years after Rutgers began playing football in the Big East — and nine days after the university announced it would soon leave for the Big Ten — the Scarlet Knights were rolling toward an undisputed Big East championship.

But Bridgewater, who was 20 of 28 for 263 yards, ruined their bid. He completed 7 of 8 passes on a 90-yard touchdown drive that closed the deficit to 14-10. Bridgewater threw off his back foot for 26 yards on a third-and-12 from the Cardinals' 19.

Bridgewater was flushed from the pocket on another third-and-12 play that began at the Rutgers 14. He pushed a pass to running back Jeremy Wright, who dived into the end zone, silencing the crowd.

"The reality is this," said Kyle Flood, Rutgers's first-year coach. "They have a tremendous playmaker at quarterback."

Rutgers kick returner Jeremy Deering fumbled the kickoff, and Bridgewater immediately flipped a 20-yard touchdown pass to DeVante Parker, even though Parker was covered closely by cornerback Logan Ryan. Two touchdowns, 16 seconds.

"When there's a momentum swing in the game, the head coach has to find a way to swing the momentum back," Flood said. "And I didn't do that."

The Scarlet Knights' offense stalled, and Bridgewater got the ball back. He fired a pass that glanced off the fingertips of his intended receiver before settling into the arms of defensive back Lorenzo Waters, who returned it 29 yards.

Rutgers drove to the Louisville 29, but Tim Wright was stopped 2 yards short on a third-and-10 reception, and the redshirt freshman kicker Nick Borgese belted a 38-yard field goal that tied the score at 17, with 7 minutes 48 seconds left.

When the Louisville offense jogged onto the field for its first possession of the game, Bridgewater, who broke his left wrist late in a 23-20 overtime loss Saturday to Connecticut, stayed on the sidelines.

Will Stein, a senior, started at quarterback and helped the Cardinals pick up two first downs, the second on a sneak after he slid too soon on the previous play. But the Cardinals stalled, and the Scarlet Knights took over at their 15.

They scored in 12 seconds. Coleman, a 6-foot-6 receiver, found a seam between two defensive backs on a crossing pattern, latched onto a pass from Nova, broke a tackle and raced down the left sideline to complete an 85-yard play.

The crowd was energized and, perhaps, surprised. Rutgers had not scored a touchdown on its first possession in its first 11 games this season. Bridgewater entered the game after the Cardinals managed only one first down on its next two possessions. He and Stein alternated snaps and Louisville gained traction, but the Cardinals — who are also leaving the Big East, bound for the Atlantic Coast Conference — settled for a 20-yard field goal by Wallace. Still, a new tone had been set, and Louisville eventually brought the Scarlet Knights' regular season to an unsatisfying end.

"Everybody really wanted this — not for personal reasons," said Scott Vallone, a senior defensive lineman for Rutgers. "Everybody wanted it for each other."


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Wild Goalie Treated for Multiple Sclerosis

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Josh Harding didn't feel right. The Minnesota Wild goalie became dizzy during a workout on the ice about two months ago, and he started seeing big, black dots.

The neck problem he had was much more than that. Doctors diagnosed him with multiple sclerosis after a series of tests, and he's been undergoing treatment since then for the disease, which attacks the body's immune system and affects the central nervous system. Symptoms can include problems with balance, vision and fatigue. But the 28-year-old Harding, who resumed on-ice workouts two weeks ago without trouble, has no plans to end or alter his career.

He said his goal is to be ready if the NHL lockout ends soon.

"I'm going to do my part over here, skating regularly, working out regularly, getting back into shape and hopefully be good to go for training camp," Harding said after an informal workout on Thursday with some of his Wild teammates and other NHL players at the University of Minnesota. They've been trying to stay sharp at the local rinks while the labor dispute that's already prompted cancelation of about one-third of the scheduled games this season lingers.

When he was missing from the skating sessions a few weeks, his friends figured there might be some bad news coming.

"It's a pretty sad thing to hear when someone your own age and a friend and a teammate gets diagnosed with that," Wild left wing Zach Parise said, adding: "He's going to fight it. He doesn't want anyone feeling bad for him. He's not going to walk around with the `poor me' attitude either. You would never know anything was wrong with him."

Harding said he feels some fatigue during the day and has a tough time sleeping, but he said he's not worried about the long-term effect of the disease.

"We're not really looking at the future too much. We're going to treat it aggressively right now," he said. "We can't tell what three or five years is going to bring. With MS, you can't really know that. We're going to do everything on our part to reduce the risk of having an attack or anything."

Harding, who signed a three-year, $5.7 million contract this summer, has the Wild's support.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with Josh and his family," general manager Chuck Fletcher said in a statement distributed by the organization. "Josh's competitive fire has led him to a successful career in the NHL and we know he will approach this new battle in the same manner."

Harding played in a career-high 34 games last season. He missed the entire 2010-11 season after he tore anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee during an exhibition game in September. Harding was 13-12-4 with a 2.62 goals-against average and .917 save percentage over 30 starts in 2011-12. The resiliency he used to return from the knee injury will be necessary again.

"Obviously you've got to feel a little bit for Josh. That's news that no one really wants to hear," Wild center Darroll Powe said. "But he's done well with it, and he looks great out on the ice. He's maintained a positive attitude, so it's good to see."

Harding said he wanted to reveal his condition now to avoid the potential distraction during a season if the news came out then. He's also hopeful of raising awareness about the disease.

"Whoever is having a tough time with MS, if I cannot let this get me down and continue on to my goal, maybe that'll help them out," he said. "If I can help one person, that's all it takes for me. If I can help out 100, it's even better."

 


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The Neediest Cases: Outfitting a Harlem Basketball Team for a Tournament

Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The Milbank Flyers at the end of basketball practice at the Dunlevy Milbank Children's Center in Harlem, operated by the Children's Aid Society. More Photos »

The Milbank Flyers' basketball practices have an old, familiar ritual: the huddle.

The Neediest CasesFor the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

Previously recorded:

$2,182,809

Recorded Wed.:

$296,657

*Total:

$2,479,466

Last year to date:

$2,297,410

*Includes $140,351 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

The teenage boys gather in a circle, hear a few words of praise or strategy from the coach, and throw their hands in the air.

"One, two, three: Milbank!" they shout.

But what they yell next is more unusual.

"Four, five, six: Family!"

This type of kinship is one of the critical differences between a "basketball team" and a "basketball program," according to Roosevelt Byers, the head coach and athletic director at the Dunlevy Milbank Children's Center in Harlem. The Flyers fall into the category of program, he said proudly.

"Not only do we focus on what the kids do on the court, we focus on what they can do off the court," Mr. Byers said.

The Milbank Flyers consist of dozens of players organized by grade who meet as part of the after-school program at the Dunlevy Milbank Center, which also provides social, recreational, educational and health programs for hundreds of children and families in Central Harlem.

"We don't turn any kids away," Mr. Byers said. "Whether you're the best kid or a kid that's just learning how to play, here at Milbank you're going to learn how to play the right way."

Mr. Byers, who is 44, said that he, too, was a product of the Milbank Center, which is operated by the Children's Aid Society, one of the agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. He started going there when he was 7.

"Growing up in this community, I've seen the good, the bad, and now I'm seeing the better," he said.

Once a week, the gymnasium turns into a study hall, where volunteers from area colleges and universities conduct one-on-one tutoring sessions to improve the athletes' performance in school.

During a typical evening practice, many cheering parents are scattered throughout the gym, some seated in the bleachers and others on small folding chairs.

One of them is Shantell Wright, who said her 13-year-old son, Jequelle, is so fond of his teammates that they "are like his brothers." She said he emulates his fellow players, particularly the older students, more than he does professional athletes.

"It made me feel real good that he relied on something, and he felt good about going to school," Ms. Wright said.

Benjamin Mensah, who has two sons on Flyers teams, has high praise for the way basketball has become a tool for promoting community and youth development.

"I learned early on that I probably won't be the only person my son looks up to," Mr. Mensah said. "A lot of these coaches are hands-on with these kids; they've become somewhat like surrogate parents. I think they've given them positive reinforcement on what they want to do. They've been a part of having them realize their full potential."

Last spring, the seventh-grade boys' team qualified for a national Amateur Athletic Union tournament in Pennsylvania but did not have official uniforms, as many other teams did. Mr. Byers knew that for the players' families, the cost would be a burden; many of the families have low incomes, and many of the boys are being raised by single parents. Participation in the nearly yearlong basketball program is free.

To help, the Children's Aid Society drew a grant of $150 from the Neediest Cases Fund so that the team could buy uniforms for the playoffs. A representative at Modell's Sporting Goods printed jerseys at no cost, emblazoning "Milbank Flyers" on the front and the players' names across the back.

"For us to go out there with our brand-new uniforms really made a difference with our program," Mr. Byers said. "If the kid looks better, he's going to play better. The kids were really able to go out there and know they were a good team."

That team of seventh graders went on to place 17th nationally for the season.

"They're professional on and off the court," Mr. Byers said. "They don't play for the name that's on their back; they play for the name that's on their chest."


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On Baseball: On Drug Tests, Marvin Miller Wound Up at Odds With the Union

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 29 November 2012 | 15.03

There was poignancy in the timing of Marvin Miller's death, with the Major League Baseball Players Association holding its annual executive board meeting this week in Manhattan. Miller was the patriarch of the union, its first executive director and an extraordinary force who clearly deserves a place in the Hall of Fame. Few besides Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson have had a greater impact on baseball.

But Miller, at the end, 30 years removed from his formal leadership role, was stubbornly unyielding on the consuming issue of the moment. He believed the union never should have agreed to testing for steroids, openly questioning whether such drugs affected performance at all.

"He'd voice those objections all the time," Michael Weiner, the current executive director, said Wednesday at a briefing for reporters. "Marvin was never hesitant to tell you what you were doing wrong. But to Marvin's credit, that didn't mean he wouldn't also tell you what you were doing right.

"Marvin's view of the last collective bargaining agreement was it was a great agreement and he thought we had done a great job. He still thinks we made a huge mistake with respect to drug testing, going back to the first agreement in 2003 that permitted drug testing. But Marvin was the kind of guy that could state his opinions but not have them unnecessarily color his view."

The union's past resistance to testing, the reluctance of the commissioner's office to push for it and the failure of the news media to press the issue conspired to taint a generation. The untangling of that history has just begun. The new Hall of Fame ballot is loaded with suspects, and the subject, like toxic waste, will linger for years.

Keeping the game clean remains a challenge. On Tuesday, Philadelphia Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz became the eighth major leaguer in 2012 to be suspended for violating baseball's drug program.

Ruiz was suspended for 25 games for testing positive for an amphetamine, making him the second player, with Baltimore Orioles infielder Ryan Adams, to be suspended for stimulants. Six others have been suspended for 50 games for using performance-enhancing drugs, the most since 2007.

The last three — the former San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera, Oakland Athletics pitcher Bartolo Colon and San Diego Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal — tested positive for an elevated level of testosterone. So did the Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun, in October 2011, before his suspension was overturned last spring. Weiner said the union recognizes the trend.

"Testosterone appears to be a problem, the use of testosterone by some players, and there are things that we have talked about with the people that we involve in our program to make sure that our deterrent on testosterone is as strong as it can be," Weiner said.

"Frankly, a lot of things in this area are two-edged swords," he added. "We have more testosterone positives than in the past. Without getting into specifics that I shouldn't share, some of the detection of testosterone positives that we had, I don't think could have been done by any other program. In other words, the fact that we detected those shows that we do have strong deterrents in our program.

"I understand the fact that we've had a number of them suggests that people thought they could use. But we caught some people that I'm not sure any other drug program could have caught, in light of the sophistication of our testing, and we're going to make it more sophisticated. We really believe the best way to deter conduct is to make it more likely players will get caught. That's more important than focusing on the severity of the penalty, which is pretty severe as well."

Some players favor stricter penalties than are mandated in the current system, which starts with 50 games for the first positive test, 100 for the second and a lifetime ban for the third. On closer consideration, Weiner said, they usually reconsider.


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Simon Fraser Carries Canadian Flag to N.C.A.A. Soccer Final Four

EVANS, Ga. — The Canadian flag will flap in the breeze. The echoes of "O Canada" will waft through the stadium. Canada's maple leaf emblem will garnish players' jerseys, and their fans will futilely hunt for poutine — French fries covered in gravy and cheese, a favorite Canadian dish — at concession stands during the Division II men's soccer Final Four.

This could all unfold Thursday. Simon Fraser (19-1-1), the only Canadian university that belongs to the N.C.A.A., will play Saginaw Valley (Mich.) State (17-2-4) in a national semifinal. It is seeking to become the first team from Canada to win one of the N.C.A.A.'s championships. Lynn (18-2-1) faces Mercyhurst (17-5-1) in the opening semifinal.

"The fact that we're here is incredible," said Milton Richards, the newly arrived athletic director at the university's mountaintop campus in greater Vancouver, British Columbia.

The N.C.A.A., which for more than a century had restricted membership to institutions in the 50 states and United States territories, voted in 2008 to allow universities in Canada to join. Simon Fraser, named for an American explorer of Scottish ancestry, was the only one to do so, becoming a provisional member in 2010. The Clan, as the university's teams are known, became a full member this season, and finished the regular season ranked No. 1 in Division II's West regional (No. 2 in the national coaches' poll).

From the time of its founding in the mid-1960s, when its chancellor, Gordon Shrum, went against the grain in Canadian higher education by deciding to award athletic scholarships and stress organized sports, Simon Fraser has been ambitious on fields of play.

Blissfully unenlightened on the realities of American sports, Shrum declared then that the football squad would engage in the Rose Bowl game within a decade. The men's soccer team did, indeed, win the 1976 N.A.I.A. championship — in the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, Calif.

With its past membership in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, its current affiliation with the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, a far-flung student body (18 percent come from outside Canada) and aspirations to lift its profile academically and athletically, Simon Fraser seemed a logical candidate to seek N.C.A.A. admission.

The transition was fraught with headaches, though, small and large. Coaches had to receive a crash course on the N.C.A.A.'s thick rules manual, which is "Atlas Shrugged" in length compared with its Canadian counterpart.

The men's soccer coach, Alan Koch, who has worked at N.C.A.A. colleges, said he and other coaches at the university were accustomed to being permitted to call recruits as often as they liked. They had to start observing once-a-week phone contact, per N.C.A.A. regulations.

Simon Fraser also needed accreditation from a United States agency before joining the N.C.A.A. Given the university's good academic reputation, the process was modified to allow for it to conditionally join the organization in the meantime.

"People say how inflexible the N.C.A.A. is," Richards said. "They were flexible with us."

Still, Simon Fraser was disappointed this season when informed by the N.C.A.A. that it could not host early-round tournament games, a perk for being designated a top regional seed, because visiting players might encounter passport or visa problems on such short notice.

"This is all new," said Richards, who plans to consult Canadian authorities about dealing with those issues in future seasons. "There are growing pains."

Simon Fraser's unique circumstances provide an easy target for opposing fans. "They yell, 'Go back home,' " striker Carlo Basso said. Fans chanted "U-S-A" throughout one road game.

There has been no discernible reaction to the teams' nickname, though. The term in Scotland, Simon Fraser's ancestral land, is synonymous with family. In the United States, a slightly different spelling can cause discomfort. Koch said that when he was playing on the soccer team in the late 1990s, the team was identified over the public-address system at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., as the Clan. "Total silence," he said.

The teams carry a sense of extra responsibility. "You are playing, in a sense, for your country," said Basso, who is from Coquitlam, British Columbia.

Athletes belt out their national anthem before events. "I know the words better than the Swiss one," the team's Swiss defender Marco Voegeli said.

Both players said they had been attracted to Simon Fraser at least partly by its N.C.A.A. status. Another incentive, at least for those who wish to play professionally, is that Major League Soccer bars its teams from drafting players from the rosters of Canadian college association members.

As a result of its N.C.A.A. ties, Simon Fraser anticipates it will have greater geographic diversity on its teams, fueled partly by a pipeline from the United States. Americans who play for the Clan, or who compete against them, can experience the high altitude of sites that have become so shrouded in fog — hence the teams' mascot, McFogg the Dog — that the action becomes invisible from certain vantage points.

They might also encounter the wildlife that wanders nearby, including bears, cougars and coyotes.

Soon, soccer's Division II Final Four might gain even more international atmosphere. The N.C.A.A. is weighing a proposal in January that would permit universities in Mexico to apply, and two have expressed interest.


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Roundup: Mediators Join N.H.L. Talks as Report Details Teams’ Finances

League and players union officials met separately with federal mediators Wednesday in an effort to jump-start stalled negotiations on the 74th day of the N.H.L. lockout.

Commissioner Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr, the executive director of the union, were believed to be meeting with Scot L. Beckenbaugh and John Sweeney of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, but neither the league nor the union provided details.  "We expect that these discussions will resume on Thursday," Fehr said.

It was the first time the league and the union had met since a Nov. 21 bargaining session, when the union made a new proposal that moved within $182 million of the league's offer over a five-year deal. But Bettman said the two sides remained far apart.

Wednesday's meeting took place on the same day that Forbes magazine released its annual team valuation report.

The Maple Leafs top the list at $1 billion, the first N.H.L. team to reach that level. The Rangers are next, valued at $750 million, followed by the Montreal Canadiens at $575 million.

The least valuable of the 30 clubs were the St. Louis Blues at $130 million and the Phoenix Coyotes at $134 million, according to the magazine.

The Maple Leafs, the Rangers and the Canadiens generated 83 percent of the league's income last season, according to the valuations. Thirteen of the N.H.L.'s 30 clubs lost money.

That division may lie at the heart of Bettman's resistance to making a deal unless virtually all of the league's demands are accepted by the union.

Five teams lost $12 million or more last season, according to Forbes, and forcing player salaries as far down as possible could be of vital importance to their battered bottom line.

NEW COYOTES LEASE The Coyotes got a lift Tuesday night when the city council in Glendale, Ariz., approved a revised 20-year, $320 million arena lease agreement with Greg Jamison, who is seeking to buy the team.


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Roundup: Yankees and Pettitte Agree on One-Year Contract

The Yankees had no idea at this time last year that they would need the veteran left-hander Andy Pettitte to fill out their rotation, but at the end of the 2012 season, they knew they wanted him to be a part of their rotation in 2013. On Wednesday, the Yankees completed a one-year, $12 million deal with Pettitte, who was one of the team's most effective starters last season.

Pettitte, 40, will earn a substantial raise from the $2.5 million he made last season after returning from retirement. Although Pettitte missed three months with a fractured fibula, he compiled a 5-4 record with a 2.87 earned run average in 751/3 innings.

Pettitte allowed five earned runs in 132/3 innings in two postseason starts, against the Baltimore Orioles and the Detroit Tigers.

Although Pettitte did not pitch in 2011, he told reporters in a conference call that he had not decided whether this coming season, his 18th in the majors, would be his final one. Pettitte also said that Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman immediately petitioned for his return at the end of the season; he said that was a big factor in his decision to come back. At that time, Pettitte said his main concern was helping his son Josh pick a college, although he was leaning toward returning.

After his son signed a letter of intent to play baseball at Baylor, Pettitte consulted with his family and then focused on his return. He will probably move into the third spot in the rotation, behind C. C. Sabathia and the recently re-signed Hiroki Kuroda. Phil Hughes will probably take the fourth spot, with David Phelps and Ivan Nova competing for the final slot.

UPTON SAID TO LAND IN ATLANTA Outfielder B. J. Upton, one of the year's most prized free agents, agreed to terms with the Atlanta Braves on a five-year, $75 million deal, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The deal with Upton would be the largest free-agent contract ever given by the Braves and was pending a physical, the newspaper said.

Upton, 28, had spent his entire career with the Tampa Bay Rays, who took him with the second overall pick of the 2002 amateur draft.

The slick-fielding, right-handed-hitting Upton had a .246 batting average last season, with 31 stolen bases and a career-high 28 home runs.

Atlanta was expected to use Upton to replace the All-Star center fielder Michael Bourn, also a free agent and another prime target.

The only other major leaguers with as many homers and stolen bases as Upton in 2012 were the Brewers' Ryan Braun (41 homers, 30 steals) and the Angels' Mike Trout (30 homers, 49 steals). Holding Upton back from the highest echelon are his low batting average and his rate of strikeouts. He had a career-low on-base percentage of .298 last season and has struck out more than 160 times in each of the last three seasons. (REUTERS)

BROXTON HEADING BACK TO REDS Cincinnati signed Jonathan Broxton to a three-year, $21 million contract. Broxton joined the Reds in July in a trade with Kansas City and filled in as the closer when Aroldis Chapman was dealing with a tired shoulder. Now the Reds have the option of making Chapman a starter, which was the plan last season until Ryan Madson was injured. (AP)

MADSON JOINS ANGELS Ryan Madson agreed to a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Angels. Madson missed all of last season after having Tommy John surgery in April. Well ahead of schedule in his recovery, Madson said he expected to be the Angels' closer. (AP)


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Tool Kit: Video Gaming on the Pro Tour, for Glory but Little Gold

When Sean Plott was 15, he and his older brother, Nick, begged their mother to fly them from Kansas to Los Angeles for a video game tournament.

For Cara LaForge, their single mother, who was struggling to start a new business, the expense was steep. Her sons passionately insisted they could win, so she conceded. But there was a catch: "If you don't win, you're going to pay me back," she recalled.

They didn't win.

Ms. LaForge didn't make her sons pay her back, but in a way, they have. Eleven years later, she is the business manager at Sean Plott's company Day[9]TV, which broadcasts daily videos online geared toward gamers. The two brothers are celebrity personalities in the world of StarCraft II, a popular strategic game. Sean Plott was featured on Forbes's 30 under 30 list in 2011.

Video games have evolved from an eight-bit hobby to a $24 billion industry in 2011, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. As more people play games, more of them compete in structured competitive tournaments, complete with fans, sponsors and lucrative contracts. It's a long and tough slog, as Ms. LaForge's story suggests.

But just how crazy is it to encourage your gamers to get off the couch and hit the road to play for money? Maybe a little crazier than encouraging a child to become a professional bowler or chess master. Professional gamers follow a track similar to professional golfers, entering several tournaments a year and collecting prize money, said Brian Balsbaugh, founder of the eSports Management Group, an agency that serves pro gamers. (Yes, professional gaming has already advanced to the point where the top players have agents.) Major League Gaming — the scene's largest tournament organizer in North America — hosts four major competitions a year. In November, it held the Fall Championship in Dallas.

Although some players are paid handsomely — the top prize in Starcraft II is $25,000, and corporate sponsorships can pull in much more cash — for most, the prospect of making good money as a pro is still doubtful. Professional gaming's financial structure is top-heavy, so only the best players earn significant incomes of $100,000 to $200,000. "We're at a point where only about 40 people in the U.S. can make a living playing video games," said Sundance DiGiovanni, chief executive of Major League Gaming. "I'd like to get it to a hundred. I think we're a year or two away from that."

For a beginner, expenses like travel, hotels and registration fees can be costly, especially for a parent picking up the bill for a teenager with little income. Tom Taylor, who goes by Tsquared and is a champion at the shooter game Halo, recalled selling things like PlayStation games or Pokémon cards on eBay to pay his way.

To cover those costs, talented players can sign contracts to play for sponsored teams, like Mr. Taylor's squad, Str8 Rippin. The average salary for competitive gamers ranges from about $12,000 to $30,000, said Marcus Graham, a former pro and gaming personality who is also known as djWHEAT.

These players make the biggest commitments, playing about eight hours a day. Some sponsors have the players live together to build chemistry with teammates. Mr. Taylor, who ran team houses in Chicago and Orlando, Fla, said the practice time jumps to 10 to 14 hours a day as a tournament approaches.

A well-known team franchise like Evil Geniuses — considered the Yankees of pro gaming — can dole out lucrative contracts, over six figures for superstar players, said Alexander Garfield, the team's chief executive.

The most marketable stars — those with a mix of talent and charisma like Mr. Taylor and Kelly Kelley, a k a MrsViolence — can attract individual sponsorships independent of a team. SteelSeries, a maker of gaming accessories, signs deals for up to $80,000 that cover major expenses for the most prominent gamers, said Kim Rom, the company's chief marketing officer. SteelSeries also makes smaller deals with relative unknowns it thinks have potential. The company sponsors up to 200 gamers in the United States, though only about 20 pros get those top-notch deals, Mr. Rom said.

But while professional gaming is increasingly popular, in recent years the gaming world has had to rework its marketing approach. Organizers have sought to rebuild the scene since 2008, when a few leagues, like the Championship Gaming Series, folded. Before 2009, mainstream broadcasters like ESPN2 featured tournaments on television. Since then, the league has turned to the Web, rather than TV, for its lifeblood. This year, Major League Gaming began broadcasting on GameSpot.com, a division of CBS Interactive. That change in direction is an example of altered expectations — at least in the short term — for the kinds of careers professionals will have. It is also a warning that the odds of making it big are slim. Ken Yamauchi, the father of Coby Yamauchi, a 16-year-old professional and one of the scene's rising stars, said he always reminded young gamers, "Use this as a steppingstone. You expect to support a family, buy a house through gaming? It's not going to happen."

The smartest personalities build their brands enough to make the bulk of their money on peripheral jobs. The Plott brothers are popular eSports broadcasters, providing live commentary during matches. Many gamers also have sponsored YouTube channels and sign contracts with services like Twitch.tv, a Web site that streams tournament video. Morgan Romine, a former captain of the all-female team Frag Dolls, now works full time as an eSports liaison for Red 5 Studios, a video game maker based in California.

If the tournaments aren't a way to make money for college, one's experiences on the competitive circuit can look good on college applications.

"Colleges want to see kids who are passionate in one area," said Bev Taylor, founder of the Ivy Coach, a college admissions consultancy. But she suggests framing it in a way that emphasizes the community aspect of gaming. "They won't accept anyone they think will just sit in their dorm room all day," she said.

Once a player is accepted into college, gaming can still have its perks. Mona Zhang founded the Collegiate StarLeague while she was a freshman at Princeton, organizing intercollegiate tournaments for StarCraft II players. The league now has over 600 teams from schools like Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The league also gives out two "Excellence in eSports" scholarships, said Ms. Zhang, who has since graduated.

Competitive gaming even has its fingerprints on the corporate world. In 2011, Sean Plott helped start the After Hours Gaming League, a gaming tournament that pits teams from technology companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook against each other.

Mr. Plott describes it as "a modern twist to the corporate softball league." It's not going to make anyone rich, but it's fun. As video games were designed to be.


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Andy Pettitte and Yankees Are Close on One-Year Deal

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 28 November 2012 | 15.03

By Monday, when the Yankees arrive at the winter meetings in Nashville, they want to know how much they will pay Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera for the 2013 season. By determining those salaries, they will have a clearer picture for how much to spend in other transactions.

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Andy Pettitte was 5-4 this year, but he has not made more than 21 starts in a season since 2009.

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In Pettitte's case, the Yankees had to first know that he wanted to keep pitching. Now they have the answer.

Pettitte has informed the Yankees that he wants to keep playing, which is what the organization expected all along, and the sides are closing in on a one-year contract that would pay him at least $10 million. They also expect to have a deal soon with Rivera, who got $15 million last season, when he pitched nine games before tearing his right anterior cruciate ligament.

Pettitte's return is encouraging for the Yankees, who last week signed Hiroki Kuroda to a one-year, $15 million deal. With C. C. Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova, the Yankees have a five-man rotation under team control, with David Phelps and Michael Pineda, who is recovering from shoulder surgery, as insurance.

Pettitte, who turns 41 in June, missed much of last season after a line drive broke his left fibula in late June. He made 12 starts in the regular season, going 5-4 with a 2.87 earned run average, and pitched well in two postseason starts.

In other words, Pettitte was as reliable as ever when he pitched, though it is worth noting that he has not made more than 21 starts in a season since 2009. He missed time with a groin injury in 2010 and took a one-year retirement in 2011.

The Yankees are determined to bring their payroll under $189 million for 2014 to avoid severe tax penalties in future seasons, so one-year deals for Kuroda, Pettitte and Rivera make sense. They also have interest in keeping Raul Ibanez and Ichiro Suzuki, veteran hitters who would also be open to one-year contracts.

Resolving the status of catcher Russell Martin, who almost certainly will command a multiyear deal, is expected to be a priority before the end of the winter meetings.


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On Baseball: Steroid Era Players Pose Difficulty for Hall of Fame Voters

Donald Miralle/Getty Images

Because it is widely assumed that Barry Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs, he could face a tough road to enshrinement at the Hall of Fame.

The Houston Astros held a news conference Monday to celebrate the inclusion of Craig Biggio on the new Hall of Fame ballot. There were no such gatherings in San Francisco for Barry Bonds, or in Boston for Roger Clemens, or in New York for Mike Piazza, or in Chicago for Sammy Sosa.

The 2012 Hall of Fame ballot, which will be officially unveiled on Wednesday, includes all of those players, a collection of some of the most prominent performers in recent baseball history. A decade ago, all would have been locks for Cooperstown.

Now only Biggio is — or, at least, should be — after a 20-year career highlighted by 3,060 hits, four Gold Gloves and an extraordinary ability to reach base. He also has an important attribute that stands out among his peers on this ballot: he was never suspected of using steroids.

All these players spent most of their careers in the era before testing, so we do not really know if they were cheating. But Biggio did not have bulging muscles, so most people assume he was clean. The same could be said of another first-timer, the former pitcher Curt Schilling, who was more stocky than sculptured and was also considered clean.

But assumptions, with varying degrees of evidence, are part of the problem for the hundreds of baseball writers who will cast ballots in this election. Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Sosa were clearly Hall of Fame-caliber players, yet are widely assumed to have used performance-enhancing drugs. For many writers, even the whiff of such drug use means automatic disqualification.

That is partly why Biggio's longtime teammate, Jeff Bagwell, has not been elected despite credentials that include a better career on-base-plus-slugging percentage than Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. The muscle-bound Bagwell received 41.7 percent of the vote in 2010 and 56 percent last year, with 75 percent needed for election.

Bagwell may well reach Cooperstown; recent inductees like Andre Dawson, Bert Blyleven, Goose Gossage and Jim Rice all received a lower portion of the vote than Bagwell in their second year on the ballot. And Bagwell, like Piazza, has never been formally linked to steroid use. No report of a positive test (Sosa), no raided laboratory (Bonds), no trainer quoted in the Mitchell report (Clemens).

Mark McGwire, who hit 583 home runs, was presumed guilty even before his 2010 admission, based largely on his reticence before Congress in 2005. He has been on the ballot six years and never received more than 23.7 percent of the vote. If McGwire is a guide, then Bonds, Clemens and Sosa — and perhaps even Piazza — could face a tough road to enshrinement.

The Hall of Fame ballot is sent to members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America with 10 consecutive years in the organization. (Some organizations, like The New York Times, do not allow writers to vote.) The instructions are summarized in one sentence: "Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."

Those three words — integrity, sportsmanship, character — are critical to some voters.

"In each of those areas, players who used steroids fail the test — period," Scott Miller, of CBSSports.com, said in an e-mail. "I know it isn't the Hall of Choirboys. I know the stories about Ty Cobb and others who at times were miscreants. But I also know that the Steroid Era was one of the most shameful chapters in the game's history. It made a mockery out of the record book. It pushed retired legends into the shadows when they should have remained in the spotlight, and it put the spotlight on others who never should have been there."

Miller continued: "To me, just because the commissioner, the owners and the players' union abdicated their responsibility to the game for so long by looking the other way only increases the obligation for somebody, somewhere, to stand up for what's right. And if I can do that even from my small corner of the voting world, then I'm grateful to have that chance."

Miller's colleague, Danny Knobler, said he initially voted for McGwire, but felt bad about it and reconsidered. Knobler now has a zero-tolerance policy.

"I decided that for now, I will not vote for anyone where there is a reasonable belief that he could have used," Knobler wrote in an e-mail. "I know some people dissect a career and try to determine if a player would have been a Hall of Famer without help. While I respect that view, my feeling is that if I'm voting against you, it's because I believe there's a reasonable likelihood that you cheated the game. If that's the case, I don't want to vote you into the Hall of Fame."

Knobler acknowledged that he could change his stance someday, and if he does, he would probably vote for everyone based strictly on accomplishments. Candidates can spend 15 years on the Hall of Fame ballot, as long as they never fall below 5 percent in an election.

Attitudes can change with time. Blyleven started with 17.5 percent of the vote, in 1998, but his totals climbed as voters developed a deeper understanding of his statistics, partly at the urging of bloggers.

With the stars of this class, the numbers are not in doubt. The issues are murkier — morality, fair play — and leave the writers with an almost impossible choice. Do they reward suspected cheating or deny greatness, even if it came from a laboratory?

Here is a different question: what if a report surfaced tomorrow with hard evidence that an existing Hall of Famer used steroids? The fantasy of a pure Hall of Fame would be shattered, and the roster of inductees would look confusing with some stars still on the outside.

There are no right answers. But it seems most logical to elect the best players and hope that future generations understand the sobering context of the time.


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Dickey, in Contract Limbo, Speaks at a School

Librado Romero/The New York Times

R. A. Dickey promoted literacy Tuesday as he met with students at the Dream Charter School on East 103rd Street in Manhattan.

On Tuesday, nearly 100 children at the Dream Charter School on East 103rd Street in Manhattan shuttled into an auditorium in single file, sat down and then noisily chatted with one another, as fourth graders and fifth graders are apt to do when brought together for a school event.

Shortly after 10 a.m., the school's principal, Eve Colavito, clapped her hands, and the students came to attention. It was a special day, Colavito told her students. It's not often when a school is visited by a reigning Cy Young Award winner, who had quite a story to tell.

The Mets' ace, R. A. Dickey, who was at the school to promote literacy through the Capital One Bank Book by Book program, told the students that his love of reading had made his remarkable career possible. Reading taught him to dream, he said, it taught him imagination, and most important, it taught him patience, a virtue that may serve Dickey well these days during his ongoing and uncertain contract discussions with the Mets.

Although Dickey wore a Mets jersey at the event, the appearance was not arranged by the team. It remains possible that Dickey, who is signed only through the 2013 season, could be traded next week at the winter meetings if the Mets conclude that at age 38 he may never again have a season like the one he just did. They could decide that his best value to a team like the Mets, who have so many holes to fill, is in a trade that brings several prospects in return.

On the other hand, the Mets understand that Dickey, with his unusual personal story, has become one of the few players on the team that fans can rally around and that his departure would create considerable resentment in an already discontented fan base.

So that leaves Dickey where he is now, hoping that a quick resolution can be reached on a contract extension that will keep him a Met beyond next season.

Dickey's representatives are expected to meet with team officials at the winter meetings, and since they take place in Nashville, Dickey's hometown, the pitcher is also likely to attend.

"I have no problem with sitting in," Dickey said. "Being an older guy, I like to be involved probably more than most players. I wouldn't be hesitant to come and have a face-to-face."

However, Dickey reiterated, he is not willing to discuss a contract extension once the 2013 season starts. For now, he noted, he keeps in regular contact with his teammate David Wright, the third baseman, who is also signed only through 2013 and who, like Dickey, is in contract talks with the Mets. Those talks appeared to enter a new stage on Tuesday with the disclosure that the Mets have offered Wright a seven-year extension.

Dickey apparently did not know of that development when he spoke with reporters at the school. But he seemed to think that the Mets would move first to reach a deal with the 29-year-old Wright before turning their attention to him, and that he could not envision Wright's playing somewhere else.

"Imagine the Atlanta Braves without Chipper Jones," he said. "You just can't. I think they're going to reach an agreement."

But as to his own future in Queens, he seemed less certain. "I wish I could say it's 60-40 or 70-30, but the truth is I'm not really sure," he said. "Between the trade talks and where we are in our negotiations, I don't feel great, I don't feel terrible. I really don't know."

But even in limbo, he was a Mets booster on Tuesday. Soon after being introduced to the students, Dickey asked how many of them were Mets fans. About 30 percent of them raised their hands. He then asked how many were Yankee fans. Up went the hands of the remaining 70 percent.

"Y'all get out of here," he joked. The children laughed heartily. It was another good day for Dickey in what has been a very good year.


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Marvin Miller, Union Leader Who Changed Baseball, Dies at 95

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Marvin Miller addressing members of the Phillies and Red Sox during spring training in 1977.

Marvin Miller, an economist and labor leader who became one of the most important figures in baseball history by building the major league players union into a force that revolutionized the game and ultimately transformed all of professional sports, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.

His death was announced by the Major League Baseball Players Association. He had liver cancer, his daughter, Susan Miller, said.

When Mr. Miller was named the executive director of the association in 1966, club owners ruled much as they had since the 19th century. The reserve clause bound players to their teams for as long as the owners wanted them, leaving them with little bargaining power. Come contract time, a player could expect an ultimatum but not much more. The minimum salary was $6,000 and had barely budged for two decades. The average salary was $19,000. The pension plan was feeble, and player grievances could be heard only by the commissioner, who worked for the owners.

By the time Mr. Miller retired at the end of 1982, he had secured his place on baseball's Mount Rushmore by forging one of the strongest unions in America, creating a model for those in basketball, football and hockey.

Never had the dugout been so business-minded. The average player salary had reached $241,000, the pension plan had become generous, and players had won free agency and were hiring agents to issue their own demands. If they had a grievance, they could turn to an arbitrator.Peter Seitz, the arbitrator who invalidated the reserve clause and created free agency in 1975, called Mr. Miller "the Moses who had led Baseball's children of Israel out of the land of bondage."

But not only them. If Mr. Miller had one overarching achievement, it was to persuade professional athletes to cast aside the paternalism of the owners and to emerge as economic forces in their own right, often armed with immense bargaining power. The changes he wrought in baseball rippled through all of pro sports, and it could be said that he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the professional athlete of today, a kind of pop culture star able to command astronomical salaries and move from one team to another.

Still, though his contributions to baseball were compared to those of Babe Ruth, who made the home run an essential part of the game, and Branch Rickey, who broke the major leagues' color barrier when he signed Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Mr. Miller has not been recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

"There's been a concerted attempt to downplay the union," Mr. Miller told The New York Times, referring to the Hall, when he narrowly missed out on election in December 2010, the fifth time he had been on the ballot. "It's been about trying to rewrite history rather than record it. They decided a long time ago that they would downgrade any impact the union has had. And part of that plan was to keep me out of it."

A Series of Showdowns

Mr. Miller, an economist by training, had bargained on behalf of the steelworkers' union but lacked the charisma of fiery old-style labor leaders like the mineworkers' John L. Lewis or the New York City transport workers' Mike Quill. A silver-haired man with a mustache he had cultivated since he was 17, he was typically described as calm, patient, even-keeled. Nonetheless, he got results.

"Miller's goal was to get his ballplayers to think like steelworkers — to persuade members of the professional class to learn from members of the working class," Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker in 2010.

Everett M. Ehrlich, a business economist and an under secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, said that Mr. Miller's victories owed much to the changing structure of the game, particularly baseball's expansion to the West Coast and the South, which led to greater television and attendance revenue. The new money allowed many ball clubs to spend heavily on players no longer tied to their teams.

"Luck is the residue of opportunity and design," Mr. Ehrlich wrote on his blog in 2010, quoting Rickey. "Free agency," he added, "was an important accomplishment, and it made baseball better, but it also happened at a propitious moment. It takes nothing away from Miller to note that."

Though Mr. Miller never convinced the owners that they could prosper from an upheaval of baseball's economic order — they would discover that eventually — he outmaneuvered them at every turn. "I loved baseball and I loved a good fight, and in my mind, ballplayers were among the most exploited workers in America," Mr. Miller wrote in his memoir, "A Whole Different Ball Game" (1991), recalling his decision to take charge of the players association when it was in effect a company union.

He had his share of fights. The players went on strike for 13 days in 1972 (part of the exhibition season and nine regular-season days); they were locked out of spring training for almost a month in 1976; they struck for the final eight days of the 1980 exhibition season; and staged a 50-day strike that began in the middle of the 1981 regular season.

Mr. Miller was portrayed by many on the management side as a harbinger of economic ruin.

"There was about Miller a wariness one would find in an abused animal," Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner during most of Mr. Miller's tenure, wrote in his memoir, "Hardball" (1987). "It precluded trust or affection."

But Mr. Miller did win the trust of the ballplayers.


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Mets Offer David Wright a New Long-Term Deal

The Mets have taken a major step toward retaining their franchise player, making a seven-year contract offer to third baseman David Wright, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

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Keep up with the latest news on The Times's baseball blog.

Wright has said he wants to remain with the Mets, and unless he was soured by a fourth consecutive losing season, the offer gives him a chance. Wright is signed for next season at $16 million, and the new deal almost certainly represents a raise in a third-base market that has lately come into sharp focus.

Evan Longoria, the star third baseman for the Tampa Bay Rays, signed a six-year, $100 million contract on Monday that covers the 2017 through 2022 seasons, when he turns 37. Washington's Ryan Zimmerman signed a similar deal last spring, tying him to the Nationals through 2019, when he turns 35.

With seven years beyond his current contract, Wright would be signed with the Mets through 2020. He will turn 38 that December. Wright, a six-time All-Star, is already the Mets' career leader in hits, runs, runs batted in and total bases. He hit .306 last season with 21 home runs and 93 R.B.I., placing sixth in voting for the National League Most Valuable Player award. TYLER KEPNER


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An Appraisal: Baseball Says Goodbye to Unionist Who Stood for Players’ Rights

Marvin Miller called me about six weeks ago to say goodbye. He told me he had terminal liver cancer and wanted his close friends to know. He did not want us to view the news as tragic. He was 95, he said, and the last two years had been difficult. That call was as remarkable as Marvin was.

He was, in my opinion and that of most baseball savants, the most important figure in baseball in the last 40 years, yet many fans may not recognize his name. His death on Tuesday should give rise to some serious feelings of regret by those who failed to elect this good man, the former head of the players union, to membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame. More than anyone else, he transformed baseball.

Yet the failure of the Hall of Fame to recognize the enormous contribution Marvin Miller made to our great game cannot detract from the facts. The shame of his rejection should greatly embarrass those who voted to exclude him.

When he came on the scene at the players union in 1966, he found a group of ballplayers with no sense of how to achieve the kind of collective benefits that unions in this country had been seeking and realizing for their members for years. Miller had been a high official at the United Steelworkers union, and he brought to his baseball constituency the intense convictions of a dedicated trade unionist. He was soft-spoken and almost gentle, but his analytical skills were sharp. Before his arrival, the players were without experienced professional direction. Some players wanted the benefits of collective action but demanded Miller promise he would never call for a strike. Indeed, Phillies pitcher Robin Roberts claimed Miller had assured him and his colleagues of this. Miller, many times and firmly, denied any such promise.

As he took charge of the union, Miller was shocked to find how poorly the players were being treated by the owners. In an oral history interview he did that is — some irony here — at the Hall of Fame, he explained how he had to persuade players to stand with him in asking for substantially improved terms in their collective bargaining agreements. Along the way there were bitter strikes in 1972 and 1981 before the union was able to achieve the set of remarkable benefits that currently accrue to all major league baseball players. Today, the player pension and health benefits are so good and so well financed, the union is in many ways limited by law from seeking greater funding.

Miller and his successors, Donald Fehr and Michael Weiner, created a union that stands as a model. Their union is brilliantly led, honestly managed and extremely successful. The average member today earns more than $3 million per year. In many ways, this union is in control of baseball. And baseball is booming. It is not possible to ignore Miller's achievements.

Awash in cash, however, some players today may forget how much Miller did for them. While much was achieved through collective bargaining, his singular and most brilliant move was in the legal arena. With his attack on the so-called reserve clause, which bound players permanently to the team with which they originally signed a contract, Miller secured for his players the right to become free agents. It is the free agency victory that has transformed baseball and made the players so wealthy. Miller realized the players had to be free to sell their services to the high bidder and — after being rebuffed by the Supreme Court in the Flood v. Kuhn case — he persuaded an arbitrator to rule the reserve clause was limited in duration. Thus, a player who did not renew his contract would be free to sign with another team after one year. It is that ruling that set the players free to seek and receive enormous free agency contracts.

Miller, who was not a lawyer, was a superb tactician in legal matters. In his oral history interview, he also confirmed that the strategy of framing his battles with owners in moral terms was his idea. He portrayed the players as poor working-class good guys seeking only to be treated fairly while castigating the wealthy owners as evil and selfish moguls. It worked, and the public sided with the players.

Though we disagreed on some issues, especially when I argued collective bargaining had run its course and should be replaced with a greater union recognition of responsibility for the future economic development of the game, I respected and admired Miller for his dedication and brilliance.

I regret deeply he did not live to accept the honor of election to the Hall of Fame. I can only hope that error is soon corrected. Until it is, the Hall is diminished.

Fay Vincent was the commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1989 to 1992.


15.03 | 0 komentar | Read More

A Roster's Rebirth: A Year After Plane Crash, Rebuilt Russian Hockey Team Wins Again

Smirnov Vladimir/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

Photographs of the players and coaches who died are displayed at the team's arena, where a memorial bell is rung before each game.

After an airplane crash killed 37 players, coaches and support staff members of the Yaroslavl Lokomotiv hockey team on their way to its season-opening game last year, the organization decided not to play the Kontinental Hockey League season with members from its junior club. Instead, Lokomotiv would gradually rebuild with a mix of the prospects and more experienced European and North American players.

When it came time for Lokomotiv to return to the K.H.L., Russia's top league, the team turned to an unlikely candidate to take over as coach: Tom Rowe, an American and a former N.H.L. player.

A onetime Carolina Hurricanes assistant and American Hockey League head coach, Rowe faced the enormous task of leading a rebuilt franchise and trying to restore hope within Yaroslavl, a historic Russian city where hockey has united the community for decades.

"It is unlike anything that I've ever been through before, with the tragedy last year," said Rowe, 56, a Massachusetts native who was the first American-born N.H.L. player to score more than 30 goals in a season. "We don't talk about it too much, but we want to make the team that was here last year proud and continue the tradition that the organization has had since 1959. More than anything, the citizens of Yaroslavl have been incredible. It's not easy, but with their support it has been easier."

Under Rowe's leadership, Lokomotiv has quickly developed chemistry among a team of young Russians, accomplished Scandinavians and locked-out N.H.L. players. Goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who returned to his hometown club from the Colorado Avalanche two months ago, has been a catalyst, compiling a 7-2 record with three shutouts, a 1.63 goals-against average and a league-leading .951 save percentage.

Yaroslavl entered last weekend on a nine-game winning streak, but as Varlamov sat out with a minor injury, Lokomotiv lost to Lev Praha and HC Slovan Bratislava. Still, Lokomotiv is 22-7 and in third place in the Western Conference behind Alex Ovechkin's Dynamo Moscow and Ilya Kovalchuk's SKA St. Petersburg.

"I firmly believe that we're having the season we're having because of the guys last year," Rowe said, referring to those who died in the plane crash.

Yaroslavl, a city of about 600,000 that sits 160 miles northeast of Moscow, continues to mourn, with constant reminders of the lives lost when a failed takeoff resulted in the team plane's crashing into the bank of a Volga River tributary. At Arena 2000 in Yaroslavl, photographs of the players who died are prominently displayed. Before every home game, one of Yaroslavl's traditional bells, which the city has been known for producing since the 17th century, is lowered from above the ice and rung three times in memory of those who died. On the Yaroslavl jersey, a black ribbon inscribed with the date of the accident is yet another reminder.

Yaroslavl returned to the K.H.L. in a road game against Sibir Novosibirsk on Sept. 6, winning by 5-2 and drawing support from opposing fans that has continued.

"The first game that we played, against Sibir on the road, they were chanting 'Lokomotiv,' " defenseman Staffan Kronwall said. "I think all of us had chills during the national anthem, with the opponent's fans' singing our team's name."

The next day, on the anniversary of the plane crash, no league games were played. Memorials and vigils were held instead.

"At the start of the year, it was a little bit somber with the one-year anniversary," said defenseman Mark Flood, one of the team's two Canadians. "Since then, the fans have been incredible. It's a small community, and people come up to us on the street, just thanking us for having a team back. It's pretty neat, and we're all honored to be a part of it."

Rowe said it was still tough to get on the plane for road games.

"Leaving the airport, you think of the poor guys that were flying out that day," he said. "That goes through my mind every time when we're flying."

Honoring the legacy of the Yaroslavl hockey franchise has become a motivational theme for Rowe and his players. Lokomotiv has captured the Russian Super League title three times — in 1997, 2002 and 2003. The season before the plane crash, Yaroslavl was a K.H.L. conference finalist.

Varlamov is part of that legacy.

He moved to Yaroslavl in his early teens and is a product of the organization's rigorous development system. During the 2004-5 season, Varlamov made his debut on Lokomotiv's junior farm club, Lokomotiv-2. He rose to play for the elite team in 2006 and had a pivotal role in the club's run to the Russian Super League finals in 2008 before beginning his N.H.L. career with the Washington Capitals' organization the next season.


15.03 | 0 komentar | Read More

Big Plays and Saves Fill Giants’ Postgame Talk

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 27 November 2012 | 15.03

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Mondays in the N.F.L. are a fickle experience. For a team that is struggling, as the Giants were a few weeks back, the day after a game can be torturous, with players and coaches rehashing all that went wrong the day before.

But Mondays like this last one are significantly more pleasant. After destroying the Green Bay Packers, 38-10, and reasserting their role in a still-murky N.F.C. playoff picture, the Giants players reveled in the review of what could only be categorized as a complete effort. Everything — offense, defense and special teams — seemed to go right for the Giants.

How smooth a night was it? Even the jog to the tunnel after the game was extraordinary. That was when Martellus Bennett broke the fall of a fan who tumbled from the stands, a remarkable bit of awareness that the loquacious Bennett likened to the act of a superhero.

"I was walking into the locker room and some kids were like, 'Hey, Black Unicorn!' because that's what they call me," Bennett said Monday. "I was handing them my gloves and some guy, he was probably like 48 years older than the little kid that wanted the glove but he tried to take the glove."

Bennett shook his head. "The little kid like ducked and he went over the top of the little kid. And I just caught him.

"I caught him and then I was about to set him down gently, kind of like when Lois Lane is caught by Superman and then he kind of takes her down and sets her down so she can land on her feet," Bennett added. "But it didn't happen like that."

Bennett said his movie-star moment was derailed by a cameraman behind him who tripped him and sent everyone tumbling to the ground. Still, the catch most likely saved the fan from a serious injury and prompted Bennett to recall the "at least 10 or 12" other lives he had saved. They included a helpless ball boy who was "getting crushed" after Texas A&M fans stormed the court after a basketball game when Bennett was a student, as well as several of Bennett's cousins who, according to him, do not know how to swim and have nearly drowned. Bennett added that he was a certified lifeguard.

All those experiences, he said, made catching the fan routine for Bennett. "I was just doing my job in the neighborhood," he said.

Of course, even Bennett conceded that his powers are not so vast as to allow him to change positions from tight end to running back and solve the one negative that hung over the Giants' afternoon. Even as the Giants extolled their resurgent passing game and powerful ground attack, it was impossible to ignore the hole left by Andre Brown's injury.

Brown, a reserve running back who had developed into an important goal-line threat, broke his leg Sunday night and was placed on the short-term injured reserve Monday, a move that essentially ended his season, though he could potentially return if the Giants reach the Super Bowl.

The Giants are expected to consider signing a free agent to give them some depth before next Monday's game against Washington, but for now Ahmad Bradshaw is the starter and the rookie David Wilson is his lone backup.

"It is a great opportunity for him and I think for our team as well, in terms of what could develop here in this stage of the season for David," Coach Tom Coughlin said. "It's his time."

Coughlin also said that David Diehl, an offensive lineman, left the game with a lingering neck injury and safety Kenny Phillips aggravated his right knee, which had kept him out of the previous six games.

On Monday, Coughlin seemed as upbeat as his players. A year ago, the Giants waited until the very end of their season to surge, winning three of their last four games and then ripping through the playoffs. This year, after two losses created a familiar feeling of dread, the Giants responded by dismantling the Packers and putting themselves in position to put a stranglehold on the division with another victory against the Redskins.

"Was the timing good?" Coughlin said. "You bet it was."

Indeed, suddenly all seems right: the receivers went back to making plays. The running game found holes. And the defense besieged Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, giving the players confidence they can also contain Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III.

As Bennett said, it is a good week when you can save a life just by walking into the locker room.

"It was a pretty nice way to end a pretty good day," Bennett said.


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N.B.A. Roundup: With Fourth Straight Win, Spurs Drop the Wizards to 0-12

Boris Diaw scored 16 points, Tiago Splitter had 15 points and 12 rebounds and Tony Parker added 15 points to help the visiting San Antonio Spurs win their fourth straight over the still-winless Washington Wizards, 118-92, on Monday night.

The Wizards are the 12th team in N.B.A. history to start the season 0-12, according to Stats L.L.C., and are six away from equaling the futility record established by the Nets with their 0-18 start in 2009-10.

In their first 11 games, the Wizards lost by a total of just 72 points and never by more than 16, but the Spurs beat them by 26.

The Spurs had seven players in double figures, including Tim Duncan, who scored 14 points.

After winning the first four games of a six-game trip, the Spurs are now 8-1 on the road and 12-3 over all. This was their 13th straight win over Washington.

THUNDER 114, BOBCATS 69 Kevin Durant scored 18 points and Oklahoma City opened a 40-point halftime lead over visiting Charlotte in one of the most lopsided first halves in N.B.A. history.

Russell Westbrook had 12 points and 11 assists before he and the rest of the Thunder's starters were pulled less than five minutes into the second half and the Thunder leading, 79-25.

Oklahoma City's halftime lead, 64-24, was the fifth biggest in the shot-clock era and the largest since Golden State set the record with an 88-41 edge on Sacramento in November 1991, according to Stats.

BUCKS 93, BULLS 92 Ersan Ilyasova scored 14 of his 18 points in the second half and Milwaukee s overcame a 27-point deficit for a stunning win in Chicago.

Richard Hamilton scored a season-high 30 points for the Bulls but missed a shot at the buzzer that could have won. The Bucks snapped a nine-game losing streak to Chicago and prevented the Bulls from moving past them into first place in the Central Division.

Ilyasova scored 12 points in the fourth quarter, when Milwaukee outscored Chicago, 30-12. The Bucks played the entire fourth quarter with five reserves: Ilyasova, Epke Udoh, Beno Udrih, Mike Dunleavy and Doron Lamb.

GRIZZLIES 84, CAVALIERS 78 Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol scored 19 points apiece to help host Memphis overcome a lethargic performance and escape against Cleveland.

Rudy Gay added 15 points and Quincy Pondexter had 10 for N.B.A.-leading Memphis (10-2).

Anderson Varejao had 15 points and 22 rebounds to lead the Cavaliers, who lost their third straight and ninth in their last 10 games.

PISTON 108, BLAZERS 1O1 Brandon Knight scored 16 of his 26 points in the first half, outplaying Damian Lillard in a matchup of young guards and leading host Detroit to a victory over Portland.

JAZZ 105, NUGGETS 103 Al Jefferson scored a season-high 28 points and Derrick Favors made three free throws down the stretch, helping Utah remain unbeaten at home.


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