Saunders Has More Surgery on Left Arm

With a snap that sounded like a rubber band, Tony Saunders’ comeback might have ended with his never having a chance to pitch again.

Saunders, the first player taken in the expansion draft to stock the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, broke his pitching arm for the second time in 15 months Thursday while pitching in a minor league game for Class-A St. Petersburg of the Florida State League.

He crumpled to the ground in agony on the 33rd pitch of an outing scheduled to last four innings or no more than 60 pitches.

“You could kind of hear it before you knew what was happening,” the batter, Clearwater’s Skip Kiil, told the St. Petersburg Times. “It sounded like a rubber band snapping. I kind of flinched at first and then I realized what had happened. Your heart has to go out to the guy.”

Saunders underwent surgery to reset the bone at Bayfront Medical Center, and was released Friday afternoon. Koco Eaton, the Devil Rays’ orthopedic physician, said the prognosis of his pitching again was poor.

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New York Yankee second baseman Chuck Knoblauch left his first minor league rehab game Friday night after being hit by a pitched ball near the left knee while playing for Class-A Tampa in a Florida State League game at Kissimmee.

Knoblauch is nursing a right elbow injury. The severity of the knee injury was not immediately known.

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New York Met left-hander Mike Hampton threw for 12 minutes in the bullpen Friday and said his broken rib felt good enough for him to return to the New York rotation Sunday against Arizona.

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The foul lines at Chicago’s Comiskey Park will shorten from 347 feet to 330 and the power alleys will move in during a renovation approved Friday.