BASEBALL DAILY REPORT : AROUND THE MAJORS : Zimmer Quietly Calls It Quits

Without fanfare, Colorado Rockie coach Don Zimmer retired Tuesday night after 47 years in baseball as a player, manager and coach.

Zimmer, 64, left the bench in the fifth inning of Colorado’s 5-4 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, saying he didn’t want to make a big issue of his retirement.

“I kept waiting for him to tell me it was a joke,” Manager Don Baylor said. “I lost one of my best friends in the game. I looked over my shoulder in the sixth and he wasn’t there.”

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Terry Mulholland, who has struggled this season after returning to the San Francisco Giants as a free agent, will undergo surgery on his pitching elbow for the removal of bone chips today. . . . The Boston Red Sox signed outfielder Willie McGee, 36, to a minor league contract and sent him to extended spring training. . . . Baltimore pitcher Ben McDonald won his arbitration case and will receive $4.5 million from the Orioles this season. The club had offered $3.2 million. . . . The Toronto Blue Jays will be for sale soon after a Belgian brewer, Interbrew, clinched a $2.9-billion deal to take over its Canadian owners, John Labatt Ltd. . . . Facing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses this year because of the strike, baseball owners began three days of meetings in Minneapolis no closer to a new economic system than they were 2 1/2 years ago.