Yankee Great Reynolds Dead From Cancer at 77

Former New York Yankees remembered teammate Allie Reynolds on Tuesday as a top-notch pitcher and an extremely tough competitor.

Reynolds, a star right-hander for the Yankees--as both starter and reliever--on six World Series championship teams from 1947-54, died Tuesday of cancer in Oklahoma City. He was 77.

“He was a dominating pitcher,” said Bobby Brown, the former American League president who played third base behind Reynolds for the Yankees. “He was as good as any pitcher that pitched during his time. He was extremely instrumental in the success of the Yankees.”

Reynolds compiled a 182-107 record with 49 saves and a 3.30 earned-run average in 13 years with Cleveland and New York. In 1951, he became the first American League pitcher to throw two no-hitters in a season. Then in 1952, he went 20-8 and led the league with a 2.06 ERA, 160 strikeouts and six shutouts.

Reynolds, known as “Chief,” was 7-2 with four saves and a 2.79 ERA in 15 World Series games, going 2-1 in the Yankees’ seven-game victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952. He won the deciding game at Ebbets Field that year in relief.

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Bobby Valentine, who will be the first American-born manager in Japanese baseball history, and his new team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, announced the signings of veterans Pete Incaviglia and Julio Franco and left-handed pitcher Eric Hillman to contracts for the 1995 season.

Incaviglia and Franco played for Valentine when he managed the Texas Rangers and Hillman pitched for him last season with the New York Mets’ Norfolk, Va., farm club.

Hockey

Silence continued to dominate NHL labor relations. League officials and representatives of the players’ association did not talk, although they had been expected to speak briefly and possibly set up a meeting.

The union continues to reject overtures that involve relinquishing salary arbitration if the league drops its payroll tax. Owners claim players’ concessions on a rookie cap and entry-level salary scale won’t sufficiently slow salary growth, but players contend they have given up enough benefits for owners to realize substantial savings.

Commissioner Gary Bettman has the NHL Board of Governors’ authorization to cancel the season, but league sources maintain he is not poised to exercise that power this week. A 50-game season now appears unlikely, but a schedule of 44 or 42 games would be possible if the lockout extended beyond Jan. 1. Bettman and Bob Goodenow, executive director of the NHLPA, have not met since Dec. 6.

Miscellany

Two-time heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, 32, will get to fight in Nevada again if the state athletic commission accepts the recommendation of its medical advisory board.

Holyfield’s license to fight in Nevada was suspended after he was diagnosed with a minor heart problem.

The five-member medical advisory board voted unanimously to lift the suspension and allow him to be licensed, and to monitor his workouts and keep track of his medical records.

Holyfield recently had tests at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and received medical clearance to return to the ring.

Doctors were monitoring a small hemorrhage in jockey Marco Castaneda’s brain as the jockey remained in guarded condition after a spill during a race Monday at Bay Meadows in San Mateo.

Brian Beach, Castaneda’s agent, said the veteran jockey’s vital signs have remained good since he was admitted to the hospital after Monday’s accident in the ninth race. The spill injured three other jockeys. Castaneda has been able to move his extremities and respond to commands, Beach said.

The United States will play Austria in a first-round Fed Cup tennis match April 22-23 at Aventura, Fla. The women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup is going by a shortened name and streamlined format, consisting of a World Group of eight nations competing at home and away, the final to be held in November. The event has previously been contested during one week at one site.

Another ski race fell victim to lack of snow as a men’s World Cup downhill race scheduled for Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on Jan. 6 was canceled by the sport’s governing body. The International Ski Federation also said a men’s giant slalom was rescheduled at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, on Jan. 6. Kranjska Gora originally had races Dec. 21-22.

A Japanese court ordered a high school and its baseball coach to pay $487,000 to the parents of a boy who died of heart failure after collapsing at a strenuous baseball practice.

The Mito District Court ruled that the coach and Tsuchiura Nihon University High shared responsibility in the 1988 death of Hiroyuki Saito, 16. Saito collapsed after running a series of 200-meter sprints.