Jury Finds Mesa Not Guilty, but His Troubles Aren’t Over

Jose Mesa shed tears of joy and relief Wednesday as he listened to a jury’s verdict acquitting him of all charges in his rape trial in Cleveland, but his legal problems aren’t over.

The Indians’ relief pitcher was cleared on one count of rape, two counts of gross sexual imposition and one count of theft, but still faces a charge of carrying a concealed weapon.

A hearing on that charge is scheduled today, with jury selection to begin Monday.

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Chris Washburn, a former basketball player with the Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks, has sued CBS and Warner Bros. for $20 million, charging a television movie inaccurately depicted him as a drug user in college.

Washburn, 30, says he didn’t use drugs until he got to the NBA.

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Peggy Rainey Wroten, an instructor at Northeast Mississippi Community College for 22 years, has sued Joe Childers, president of the school, and two administrators, saying they threatened to fire her when she refused to change a grade for basketball player Dontae’ Jones.

Jones, now with the New York Knicks, attended the junior college before enrolling at Mississippi State.

Basketball

Ernie Kent, the coach at St. Mary’s for five seasons and a member of Dick Harter’s “Kamikaze Kids” Oregon team of the 1970s, will be named coach of the Ducks today, sources close to the situation told the Associated Press on Wednesday night.

Kent, will be the first black coach in any sport at Oregon.

Kent, 42, has a 90-80 record in five seasons at St. Mary’s. He replaces Jerry Green, who resigned to become coach at Tennessee.

Cal State Northridge Coach Bobby Braswell has agreed to a four-year contract extension at a salary of $104,000 annually, plus money from basketball camps. . . . Former Minnesota assistant Larry Davis was named coach at Furman.

Football

The NFL will give the financially strapped Canadian Football League $3 million this year to help the CFL market its product over a five-year period. The NFL will have the right to use the CFL to develop players.

The Kansas City Chiefs signed former Notre Dame tight end Oscar McBride, who last played with the Arizona Cardinals during the 1995 season.

Tennis

Top-seeded Jana Novotna of the Czech Republic was a 4-6, 6-4, 6-0 winner over Barbara Schett of Austria in the second round of the Bausch & Lomb Championships on clay at Amelia Island, Fla.

A wrist injury forced defending champion Irina Spirlea of Romania to withdraw before her opening match. Just a few hours later, Jennifer Capriati defaulted her second-round match because of a pulled hamstring.

Michael Chang, playing an opponent weary with jet lag and not even listed in the computer rankings, routed Melvin Tong, 6-0, 6-1, in a rain-delayed match at the Salem Open in Hong Kong.

Complaining of nausea in the heat, defending champion Thomas Enqvist, who was seeded second, conceded his opening match to Germany’s Rainer Schuttler with the score 6-6 in the first set of the Gold Flake Open in Madras, India.

Top-seeded Yevgeny Kafelnikov, playing his first match since breaking his finger in January, was routed, 6-2, 6-0, by Austria’s Gilbert Schaller in the first round of the Estoril Open on clay in Oeiras, Portugal.

Miscellany

Emmett Linton battered former undisputed welterweight champion Donald Curry into retirement, stopping him by technical knockout in the seventh round at Las Vegas.

Linton, 26, was too quick for Curry, 35, who was fighting for only the second time in almost six years.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that Nike Inc. apologize for using a logo on shoes that resembles the word “Allah” in the Arabic script.

Nike said the logo, which has been changed, was meant to look like flames for a new line of shoes.

The yacht Group 4 won the fourth leg of the BT Global Challenge race, arriving in Cape Town, South Africa, 25 minutes ahead of Concert. Fourteen identical 67-foot steel yachts are in the race, which began Sept. 29 at Southampton, England.

Defending champion Juventus of Turin took a big step toward making another Champions Cup soccer final, beating Ajax Amsterdam, 2-1, on goals by Nicola Amoruso and Christian Vieri at Amsterdam.

In the other semifinal, Borusia Dortmund beat visiting Manchester United, 1-0, on Rene Tretschok’s goal.

Five nine-goal polo players and one eight-goal player will compete in the Legend’s Cup at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank on Saturday night at 8:15. Details: (800) 564-3448.