Boggs Re-Signs With Yankees for $4 Million

The New York Yankees re-signed free agent third baseman Wade Boggs to a two-year contract worth about $4 million Tuesday.

The Yankees can now continue in their attempt to acquire first baseman Tino Martinez from Seattle and might have already done so.

A trade for Martinez was called off Sunday when New York withdrew third baseman Russ Davis from the package, which included pitcher Sterling Hitchcock. Seattle insisted Davis be part of the deal and, according to one source, the Yankees have complied.

Boggs, 37, hit .324 with five home runs and 63 runs batted in last season with the Yankees and won his second consecutive Gold Glove. He has hit .300 of better in 13 of 14 seasons, has a career .334 average and 2,541 hits.

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Paul Molitor, agreed to a $2-million, one-year contract with the Minnesota Twins, his hometown team. The 39-year-old designated hitter also has the option to remain with the Twins in 1997 for $2 million.

A baseball star at Cretin High School in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota, Molitor spent the first 15 years of his major league career in Milwaukee before moving to Toronto in 1992. He was voted most valuable player of the 1993 World Series with the Blue Jays.

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Former major league pitchers Rick Sutcliffe and Ted Power joined the San Diego Padres as minor league pitching coaches. . . . Left-hander Jim Poole and the Cleveland Indians agreed to a $400,000, one-year contract, a raise of $50,000.

Tennis

With top-10 players falling out in rapid succession, Boris Becker squeezed into the quarterfinals of the Grand Slam Cup at Munich, the richest tennis tournament in the world.

Becker had to battle hard to beat Cedric Pioline of France, 6-1, 6-7 (7-2), 9-7.

While Becker, ranked fourth in the world, advanced to the final eight and was guaranteed at least $250,000, No. 3 Thomas Muster and No. 5 Michael Chang were eliminated.

Byron Black beat Muster 7-6 (7-3), 2-6, 6-1, and Jacco Eltingh beat Chang 7-6 (12-10), 6-3. Goran Ivanisevic, ranked 10th, made it to the quarterfinals, beating 1993 winner Petr Korda, 7-6 (7-3), 6-3.

The tournament invites the 16 players with the best records in the four Grand Slam events that year--the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon--and the winner gets $1.625 million.

The entry list for next month’s Australian Open is the strongest in tournament history, tournament director Paul McNamee said.

Every male player in the world’s top 30 has entered, including defending champion Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Becker, Muster and Chang, along with 18 of the top 20 women.

The women’s entries are led by Monica Seles, Steffi Graf, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Mary Pierce.

Miscellany

The international swimming federation went too far by adopting four-year suspensions for first-time steroid offenders, top International Olympic Committee officials said at a meeting at Karuizawa, Japan.

At a special congress in Rio de Janeiro last week, FINA doubled its penalty for swimmers testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

The move, which followed a series of doping scandals involving Chinese swimmers, conflicts with IOC guidelines calling for two-year suspensions.

FINA is the second major international federation to ignore the IOC guidelines. In August, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, track and field’s world governing body, rejected proposals to adopt a two-year suspension and upheld its four-year rule.

The decisions have thwarted the IOC’s efforts to standardize anti-doping rules and procedures among international federations.

The IOC executive board approved the addition of snowboarding to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, providing the premier showcase for one of the world’s fastest growing sports. Snowboarding joins curling and women’s ice hockey as new medal events for the Nagano Games.

Anthony Bonner, a former forward with the New York Knicks, has joined Italian league basketball champion Buckler Bologna, replacing injured Orlando Woolridge.

Bologna, the leader in the Italian League, signed the 6-foot-6 Bonner after Woolridge broke his right hand in a European Cup game last week.

An autopsy has failed to determine what caused the death of the son of Charlie Waters, former defensive back for the Dallas Cowboys and now an Oregon assistant coach.

Cody Waters, a senior at Eugene’s Marist High School, where he played soccer and football, died in his sleep Sunday night.

The boy did not die of heart disease, coronary artery problems, a ruptured aneurysm or any other obvious cause, Frank Ratti, deputy medical examiner for Lane County, said. Further tests will be conducted.

The Palos Verdes Longhorns of Pop Warner football’s Pee Wee Division will play in the national semifinals Thursday in Orlando, Fla., meeting the Southwest regional representative. The Longhorns defeated the Balboa Raiders of San Diego last month to become the Western representative.

Names in the News

Timo Liekoski, the top assistant coach of the 1994 United States World Cup team and a former U.S. Olympic team coach, has been named coach of Major League Soccer’s Columbus Crew.

Former UCLA and Arizona Cardinal football player Luis Sharpe, 35, who was wounded by gunfire last week while being robbed in an area noted for heavy drug traffic, has been committed by his family to a substance-abuse clinic in Phoenix.