Little League Will Require Adult Screenings

Little League Baseball will require all its managers, coaches and volunteers to be checked against their state’s list of convicted sex offenders.

Little League officials said their group is the first national youth sports organization to have such a requirement.

“We want to let anyone who would prey upon kids in the Little League program know that they’re not welcome and we’re going to do what we can to keep them out,” Stephen D. Keener, president of Little League Baseball Inc., said Tuesday.

Little League has recommended that local leagues do background checks on volunteers since 1996, when USA Baseball suggested that all youth baseball organizations adopt such voluntary policies.

Auto Racing

Rusty Wallace lost ground in the Winston Cup championship race when he was penalized 25 points by NASCAR, which fined crew chief Billy Wilburn $25,000 and Roger Penske 25 car owner points because their car had an unapproved spoiler.

NASCAR discovered the infraction before Friday’s first practice at Talladega Superspeedway and confiscated the spoiler.

Wallace’s Ford was legal during Sunday’s EA Sports 500, in which he finished 13th.

He is sixth in the standings, 172 points behind leader Tony Stewart after the penalty.

Tennis

Martina Hingis defeated Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, 6-4, 6-2, in the first round of the Porsche Grand Prix at Filderstadt, Germany, where Hingis tore ankle ligaments last year and lost the No. 1 ranking.

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Top-seeded Marat Safin, without a title this year, reached the second round of the Lyon Grand Prix in France by defeating 16-year-old Richard Gasquet, 6-4, 7-6 (5).

Three-time French Open champion Gustavo Kuerten rallied to beat fifth-seeded Younes El Aynaoui, 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-4.

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Wimbledon men’s runner-up David Nalbandian lost another first-round match, losing to Nikolay Davydenko, 6-3, 6-2, in the CA Trophy at Vienna.

Nalbandian has been eliminated in his opening match in six of the seven tournaments in which he has played since losing to Lleyton Hewitt in the Wimbledon final.

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The ATP, governing body of the men’s professional tennis circuit, has approved the use of a dual Euro-U.S. dollar currency system for payments by all ATP-level tournaments beginning in 2003. The ATP now uses a U.S. dollar-only system.

Next year, the ATP will publish prize money lists in U.S. dollars and Euros. Tournaments in Europe will pay prize money in Euros and U.S. tournaments will pay in U.S. dollars.

Other tournaments will decide by the end of this month whether to pay in U.S. dollars or Euros.

For 2003, the U.S. dollar will be converted at a 1-to-1 rate into Euros.

Boxing

Oscar De La Hoya said he plans to spend the next two weeks in Puerto Rico trying to talk Felix Trinidad out of retirement.

Trinidad, a former three-time champion, retired in July. He said in September the decision is permanent.

De La Hoya, who beat Fernando Vargas in a 154-pound bout last month, said he wants a rematch with Trinidad, who defeated him in 1999.

De La Hoya said Trinidad lives “just a five-wood away” from him in San Juan.

De La Hoya lives part of the year in San Juan since marrying Puerto Rican singer Millie Corretjer.

Miscellany

The 2005 world track cycling championships and 2004 world junior track cycling championships were provisionally awarded to the Home Depot National Training Center in Carson.

The official awarding of the events rests on whether AEG, which developed and will operate the complex, decides to build a covered, Olympic-sized velodrome to replace the existing velodrome, which was used in the 1984 Olympics.

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TNT acquired the cable TV rights for the British Open and is adding weekend coverage.

The AOL Time Warner channel signed a seven-year deal with the Royal & Ancient Club worth a little more than $30 million, a TV industry source said on condition of anonymity.

The average annual cost of the deal, which begins in 2003, is more than twice what ESPN paid this year to televise the major.

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Lido Palace, who would have been one of the favorites in the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic, won’t run Oct. 26 at Arlington Park in suburban Chicago because of the $800,000 supplementary fee, co-owner John Amerman said.

Lido Palace could have been nominated to the Breeders’ Cup as a weanling for $500, but that was not done in Chile, where the horse was raised and raced until John and Jerry Amerman bought him at the end of his 3-year-old season in 2000.

Amerman said that Lido Palace would run next in the $400,000 Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs on Nov. 29.

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Racing was called off today in the America’s Cup sailing challenger series off Auckland, New Zealand, because of light wind.

Passings

Funeral services were held Saturday in Petaluma, Calif., for Rob Garibaldi, a former USC baseball player who died Oct. 2 of an apparent suicide.

Garibaldi, 24, batted .329 with eight home runs and 44 runs batted in for USC in 2000. He transferred to Sonoma State after hitting .281 with one homer and 25 RBIs in 41 games in 2001.