Manning’s New Deal With Suns Includes Share of Baseball Team

The Phoenix Suns signed unrestricted free agent Danny Manning to a six-year, guaranteed contract Thursday, taking a chance that Manning’s surgically repaired knees will last until he’s at least 35.

Manning, who played in 46 games last season before he tore his left anterior cruciate ligament Feb. 6, also was allowed to buy one share of the limited partnership that will run the Arizona Diamondbacks, a 1998 baseball expansion team.

Sun President Jerry Colangelo, the managing partner of the baseball team, said the $5-million share was a separate arrangement.

Terms of the contract, which could run seven years with an option, were not disclosed, but it was believed to be worth between $6 million and $8 million a year. It includes provisos that void it if Manning hurts himself jet-skiing or riding a dune buggy.

Golf

Lee Janzen, left off the U.S. Ryder Cup team by captain Lanny Wadkins, showed his ability at match play by beating Japan’s Katsuyoshi Tomori, 7 and 6, in 36 holes in the opening round of the World Match Play Championship in Virginia Water, England.

European Ryder Cup teammates Bernhard Langer, Colin Montgomerie and Costantino Rocca won the three other first-round matches.

John Cook, trying to make up for a miserable year at a tournament he won in 1992, shot an eight-under-par 64 and shared the second-round lead of the Las Vegas Invitational with Bob Tway. Cook and Tway were at 13 under, even though Tway is at 130 and Cook at 131 because they have played different courses.

Laura Davies and Rosie Jones share the first-round lead in the World Championship of Women’s Golf after shooting five-under-par 67s in Cheju Island, South Korea.

Olympics

Carl Lewis deserves special treatment in the scheduling of events at the 1996 Olympics, the head of track and field’s world governing body said.

However, Primo Nebiolo, president of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, stopped short of saying that the timetable would be changed in order to benefit the eight-time Olympic gold medalist.

Lewis wants to compete in the 100 meters, 200 meters and long jump, and wants the same scheduling consideration as Michael Johnson, who has asked the IAAF to rearrange the Atlanta timetable to help him try for an unprecedented gold-medal sweep in the 200 and 400.

Drug testing at next summer’s Atlanta Olympics could include a procedure to detect the human growth hormone, long considered a performance-enhancing drug used by track athletes and weightlifters.

The top two organizers of the 1996 Olympics were awarded 6% pay raises this week, pushing their combined salaries above $1.1 million, Games officials confirmed.

Billy Payne, president of ACOG, received a $37,874 pay hike that set his new annual salary at $669,112. ACOG’s chief operating officer, former banker A.D. Frazier, got a raise of $26,869 to $473,500.

College Hockey

The Maine hockey team, one victory short of winning the NCAA title last season, opens 1995-96 as the favorite to win a second consecutive Great Western Bank Freeze-Out.

The Black Bears will play Miami of Ohio at 4 p.m. today at the Forum. Michigan State plays Boston College in the other first-round game at 7 p.m. The tournament will shift to The Pond of Anaheim for Sunday’s closing games.

Tennis

Top-seeded Conchita Martinez of Spain and No. 4 Lindsay Davenport of the United States were upset at the Porsche Grand Prix tennis tournament in Filderstadt, Germany. Martinez was beaten by little-known Petra Begerow of Germany, 6-4, 6-3. Davenport lost to Chanda Rubin, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

Top-seeded Michael Chang turned in another quick victory in the $1-million Seiko Super tournament in Tokyo, beating Jakob Hlasek of Switzerland, 6-1, 6-3, in 56 minutes to advance to the quarterfinals. . . . Fourth-seeded David Wheaton survived four match points to defeat Israeli qualifier Noam Behr, 6-7 (5-7), 6-3, 7-6 (12-10), in the Israel Open at Tel Aviv. . . . Defending champion MaliVai Washington beat France’s Guy Forget, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4, to reach the quarterfinals of the Czech Indoor tournament in Prague.

Miscellany

Forum Boxing Inc. is close to signing a deal with The Pond of Anaheim that would move six to eight of its regular Monday night fights to The Pond, according to sources on both sides of the talks. Sources said the first fight of the series would probably be held in February and would feature a marquee fighter.

John Rodolph, 31, a world-record holder and wheelchair-racing Olympian, was hit and killed when a dump truck and pickup truck collided and slid into him in Rio Rancho, N.M.

Martina Navratilova spoke out in Portland, Me., against an anti-gay-rights measure on next month’s state ballot, saying it’s easier to mobilize voter opposition before the referendum than to fight the measure in the courts.

Jurisprudence

Former Florida State athletic director Bob Goin was cleared in Tallahassee of charges he violated ethics laws when he accepted a new roof from a contractor working on the school’s stadium expansion.

The state Ethics Commission reversed its earlier decision that found Goin had acted unethically when he got a cut-rate deal on a roof for his home. The controversy led to Goin’s ouster almost a year ago.

“Burnie,” the Miami Heat mascot convicted of aggravated assault for dragging a woman onto the court during an exhibition game last year, now faces a $1-million lawsuit stemming from the incident.