Union Rejects Replacements

Replacement baseball players who made it back to the major leagues after the strike ended were told Friday that the players’ association intends to deny them membership.

The 17 players began receiving letters Friday, advising them of that decision.

If they don’t become members of the union, they will lose out on yearly licensing money, which has been as much as $88,000 a player.

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The Toronto Blue Jays are making a strong push to obtain pitcher Jim Abbott, offering the Angel free agent a three-year deal worth more than $9 million, and it’s unclear whether the Angels will be able to counter that offer to keep him in Anaheim.

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Deion Sanders was designated for assignment by the San Francisco Giants, which means that if he wants to continue in baseball as well as football, it won’t be with the Giants. Sanders, who joined the Giants in July as part of an eight-player deal with Cincinnati, batted .285 with five home runs and 18 RBIs in 52 games. . . . Relief pitcher Jeff Montgomery and the Kansas City Royals agreed to a two-year, $4.75-million contract. . . . Catcher Charlie O’Brien agreed to two-year contract with the Blue Jays worth $1,125,000. . . . Willie McGee, who played on three pennant-winning teams for the Cardinals in the 1980s, returned to St. Louis when he agreed to a $500,000, one-year contract.

Skiing

Picabo Street was unable to overcome a bad start and finished sixth in a World Cup downhill race at St. Anton, Austria.

Katja Seizinger snapped Street’s six-race downhill winning streak. The 18th career victory for the German, and the second- and third-place finishes of Switzerland’s Heidi Zurbriggen and Austria’s Alexandra Meissnitzer in the two-run event further stamped the event as a major disappointment for the Americans.

Hilary Lindh finished fourth, making it the first time she or Street hadn’t finished in the top three since the end of the 1993-1994 season.

College Basketball

New Mexico State Coach Neil McCarthy, who was hospitalized and missed his team’s last three games because of a broken artery above his right eye, returns tonight for the Aggies’ game against New Mexico. . . . Senior guard Myron Simms has been suspended indefinitely from the Utah State team after being charged with misdemeanor simple assault against another student.

Golf

The teams of Hale Irwin-Julius Erving and George Archer-Glenn Frey each shot a 10-under-par 62 in a best-ball format and shared the first-round lead of the Lexus Challenge at La Quinta’s Citrus Course. . . . Fred Couples birdied four of the last five holes on the way to a four-under-par 67 and a share of the second-round lead with Fiji’s Vijay Singh and Australia’s Wayne Riley in the Johnnie Walker World Championship at Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Soccer

Soccer’s restrictions on player transfers and foreign players were declared illegal by the European Union’s highest court in a ruling that probably will start an era of free agency.

Germany and South Africa played a scoreless tie in an exhibition at Johannesburg, marking the first soccer visit by a European national team since the end of apartheid.

Miscellany

The Los Angeles Sports Council submitted a bid Friday to bring the 1999 World Gymnastics Championships to The Pond of Anaheim.

Bakersfield Superior Court Judge Arthur Wallace denied an appeal by Rosamond High boosters, meaning the Division X Southern Section title game between Orange Lutheran and Cerritos Valley Christian will go on tonight as scheduled.

Rosamond was to have played Orange Lutheran last weekend but was ejected from the playoffs after its coaches were found to have altered the game videotapes it sent to Orange Lutheran before defeating that school in the semifinals. Orange Lutheran then replaced Rosamond in the title game.

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Names in the News

British swimmer Mark Foster broke his world short-course, 50-meter butterfly record, clocking a 23.45. . . . George J. Johnsen, longtime California Athletic Commission inspector, died recently at 65. . . . An arrest warrant was issued for former UCLA and Arizona Cardinal offensive lineman Luis Sharpe after he failed to show up for a court hearing on drug charges in Phoenix.