Astros Can Return to Houston

The Houston Astros will be able to finish the regular season at Minute Maid Park as scheduled, General Manager Tim Purpura said Saturday. Houston was largely spared by Hurricane Rita, and Purpura said the ballpark wasn’t damaged.

“It really came through well,” Purpura said before the Astros played the Chicago Cubs. “We never even lost power and all of our systems are working. So we really came through better than we could have expected.”

The Astros are in Chicago for the weekend and then travel to St. Louis for games Tuesday and Wednesday. They are scheduled to return home Wednesday night, then play host to the Cubs for a four-game series to end the regular season. But when it looked as if Houston might be in Rita’s path, the Astros began looking for alternatives.

“There are no issues at all that we’re aware of,” Purpura said. “Our hope is to get the roof open by tomorrow to hopefully get some sun on the field, if there’s any sun to be had.”

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Sammy Sosa’s unproductive season with the Baltimore Orioles is apparently over.

Oriole Vice President Jim Beattie said that it was doubtful Sosa would return to the team from his Miami home, where the outfielder has been rehabilitating a toe injury since Sept. 7.

“Obviously the further along it gets, the harder it is to bring him back,” Beattie said. “We’ve been calling and talking to him, and we just have to see where he is the next day or so.”

There is no compelling reason for Sosa to play the final week of a horrid season in which he hit .221 with 14 homers and 45 RBIs. The Orioles long ago were eliminated from contention, and Sosa hasn’t played since Aug. 25.

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The New York Yankees surpassed the 4 million mark in home attendance, becoming the third major league franchise to reach the milestone.

The Yankees drew a crowd of 53,911 for a 7-4 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Saturday, boosting the season total to 4,035,560 fans with one home game left. The other teams to draw 4 million were the Blue Jays in 1992 and ‘93, and the Colorado Rockies in ‘93, their first season.