Rockies Sign Leyland Through 2001 Season

The Colorado Rockies signed former Florida Marlin manager Jim Leyland to a three-year contract Monday night.

He will be introduced at a news conference Wednesday in Denver.

Rockies owner Jerry McMorris and General Manager Bob Gebhard met with Leyland on Monday at Pittsburgh, where the deal was made.

Terms of the contract were not announced.

Leyland, 53, replaces Don Baylor, the only manager Colorado had in its six-year history. Baylor, a former Angel, was fired a week ago after the Rockies had their first losing season since 1994.

Leyland led the Marlins to the World Series championship in 1997. However, the team stumbled to a 54-108 record this season as the roster was decimated by moves aimed at keeping the payroll low. Leyland exercised an escape clause and resigned from the Marlins last week. He told the Dodgers this week that he wasn’t interested in their manager’s post.

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Cal Ripken Sr., who spent 36 years in the Baltimore Orioles’ chain as manager, coach, scout and player, is battling lung cancer, his family disclosed.

Ripken, 62, was diagnosed last week at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he is receiving cancer treatment as an outpatient, his wife, Vi, told the Baltimore Sun.

Ripken, father of Oriole third baseman Cal Ripken Jr., began receiving chemotherapy several days ago, his wife said. Doctors are hopeful the medication can help shrink the tumor, she said.

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The fan who ended up with Mark McGwire’s record 70th home run ball has loaned it to the St. Louis Cardinals’ Hall of Fame while he decides what to do with it.

The ball will be on display indefinitely starting Monday at the museum that shares space with the Bowling Hall of Fame across the street from Busch Stadium.

Gerald Baltz, the museum’s executive director, said at a news conference that he expects to have the ball for about a month.

By that time, Baltz expects that Phil Ozersky, a 26-year-old DNA lab researcher from suburban Olivette, will have decided what to do with the prize. Ozersky said he’d like the ball to end up at Cooperstown, but he’s not as willing as some of the other lucky ball recipients to just give it away.

“It’s been pretty intense with the media, and I’m starting to figure out what Mr. McGwire felt like at the end of the season,” Ozersky said. “If he needs four months to figure out how he felt about his 70 home runs, I need a little time to bask in the glow.”

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Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig made a pitch for a new ballpark for the Montreal Expos to Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, saying the team is doomed without a downtown stadium. There was no immediate comment from Bouchard, but Expo President Claude Brochu said the premier did not budge from his insistence that no public funds would go into the $250-million project. . . . The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who drew more than 2.5 million fans this year, announced that season ticket prices will be reduced in some categories and maintained in others for 1999.