Sports

Yankees G.M. Practices His Swooping Descents
By BEN SHPIGEL

STAMFORD, Conn. — Brian Cashman’s workday began at 5:30 a.m. on Friday, when he arrived at the Landmark Building here wearing a skull-and-crossbones bandanna and a wig of spiky blond hair.

“It’s just my alter ego,” Cashman said. “It helps me get into the mode. There’s a side of me that likes to have fun.” That side of him persuaded Cashman, the general manager of the New York Yankees, to indulge his inner adrenaline junkie in a daredevil descent.

Rehearsing for his role in the annual Heights and Lights holiday event on Sunday afternoon, when he will don an elf costume and accompany Santa Claus, Cashman suppressed his rampant fear of heights and rappelled 21 stories — about 350 feet — down the exterior of the second-tallest building in town. His maiden voyage took about 15 minutes, and when he landed on terra firma at around 7:10, he looked like a man who was joyful to no longer be parallel to the ground.

“I’m not sure what it was going to be like, to be honest,” said Cashman, who wore a full safety harness but was unaware of the absence of protective netting. “But I’m glad I at least made it. I’m excited, I’m happy. They say we’re going to do a whole bunch of runs. I’m not sure if I want to do a whole bunch of runs, but I’m excited just to be able to feel like I’ve done something that most of the people in the world have never done, so that’s kind of cool.”

Cashman admitted to being scared and nervous, and said he did not get much of a night’s sleep. He was up late Thursday night negotiating a new contract for the Yankees’ indomitable closer, Mariano Rivera. The skeleton of the deal — two years, $30 million — is complete, but Cashman would not confirm it publicly.

“There’s a lot of steps in the process, from agreeing to something in principle to getting the physical done, and so from the club’s perspective, until all those things are covered, I’m not in a position to say,” Cashman said; he also declined to comment on the continuing negotiations with Derek Jeter.

For more than 15 years, people — mostly firefighters and skilled climbers — have rappelled for Heights and Lights, but Cashman is the first celebrity participant. He explained that last year he happened to be eating at a restaurant across the street during the event, saw what was going on and told his children, “That looks awesome — I’d do that.”

When asked to take part, Cashman said he would — but only if he received some training. So last weekend, he went to a 37-foot rock climbing wall at the Reebok Sports Club at 67th Street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan.

“It’s hard to go from 37 feet in the city on a rock wall to go to — what’s this, 300 feet?” Cashman said. “You’d think there would be a little bit of another step in the ladder before this ladder, but c’est la vie.”

It was pitch-black and 25 degrees outside when Cashman arrived Friday morning. As he was whisked inside around 5:45 a.m. to begin preparing, he laughed and told a reporter, “Light a candle for me, dude.”

About a half-hour later, three ropes were lowered to the plaza level of the building from the roof, about 300 feet above. At 6:55 a.m., Cashman and Brian van Orsdel, an experienced climber who has rappelled the Landmark Building several times before and is portraying Santa Claus this year, climbed over the ledge. For the first few minutes, Cashman gripped the side of the building, promising himself not to look over. About halfway down, he said he started feeling a little more comfortable with the cable — but not enough to remove his hands.

“They’re saying, ‘Go ahead and let go, you’re harnessed,’ ” Cashman said afterward. “But mentally, you don’t want to trust that. Reality doesn’t want to fit what your mind’s telling you.”

At around 8:20, Cashman embarked on a second descent, this time wearing reindeer antlers; he called it just as nerve-racking as the first. He also changed another piece of his wardrobe, putting on a black hooded sweatshirt with “Stamford Downtown Rappel Team” stitched on the back. Is he considering a career change? “If I can’t do my job properly,” Cashman said, “then I’ll be looking for new work.”
Rivera and Yanks Near Two-Year Deal
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

The Yankees and Mariano Rivera are close to agreeing to a two-year contract for about $30 million that will keep him with the only major league team for which he has played.

A person in baseball with knowledge of the talks between Rivera and the Yankees said that General Manager Brian Cashman and Rivera’s agent, Fern Cuza, had negotiated for several hours on Thursday night and had agreed to the framework of a deal, although Cuza is still attempting to add more money. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the deal was not likely to be completed for several more days.

The Daily News first reported that a deal was close.

Although the 41-year-old Rivera is a free agent, like his longtime teammate Derek Jeter, little attention has been paid to the status of his contract talks because it has been widely assumed that he and the Yankees would eventually agree on a one- or two-year deal without having to first endure any sort of standoff, as has been the case in recent weeks with Jeter.

Nevertheless, the person said the tentative deal with Rivera was reached even as several other teams, including the rival Boston Red Sox, had made offers to Rivera in a long-shot attempt to lure him out of the Bronx. The person said the Red Sox offered Rivera a two-year deal and that least one other team offered three years.

It is possible that the Red Sox knew they had no real chance of signing Rivera but offered him two years simply as a tactic to force Cashman to do the same and thus spend more money on Rivera than the Yankees really wanted to. Cashman might have been hoping to sign Rivera to one year plus an option, or even just a flat one-year deal, but the Boston offer of two years probably made that harder to do.

In many ways, offering a 41-year-old reliever anything more than a one-year deal seems reckless. But Rivera, widely considered the best reliever in the history of baseball, has broken all the rules, remaining impossibly hard to hit season after season even as the years and the innings pitched continued to mount.

In 2010, his workload did decrease slightly but he still had a sterling 1.80 earned run average along with 33 saves. For his career, he has 559 saves and a 2.23 earned run average. But most remarkable are the numbers he has compiled in his long run of postseason games. In that category, Rivera has pitched 139 2/3 innings with a 0.71 E.R.A., allowing just 11 earned runs and 2 home runs. He has an 8-1 record in October (and November) as well as 42 saves.

The tentative $30 million deal means he should be on the mound, throwing his devastating cutter, for at least two more seasons.

Even as the Yankees were negotiating with Rivera and improving their offer to Jeter and getting ready to make a multiyear bid to the free-agent pitcher Cliff Lee, they were also talking trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers. According to a second person in baseball, the two teams came close to agreeing to a trade that would have sent catcher Russell Martin to the Yankees for the catcher Francisco Cervelli. The teams even exchanged the medical records of the two players, but ultimately a deal was not completed. The Dodgers then decided not to tender the arbitration-eligible Martin a contract and he has become a free agent.

The second person said Martin represented an attractive option for the Yankees because he would have given them a veteran backup of more stature than Cervelli as the Yankees continue to phase out Jorge Posada as the team’s catcher and begin to phase in 21-year-old Jesus Montero. The 27-year-old Martin is a two-time All-Star although his offensive numbers declined the last two seasons.
After the Decision, the Drubbing
By HOWARD BECK

CLEVELAND — Six months after the jerseys burned and the fury raged, after “The Decision” and the betrayal, LeBron James returned home and indulged the hatred.

James jogged, and Cavaliers fans booed. James skipped, and they jeered. Profane chants echoed across the arena. James grinned and strutted and threw his talcum cloud in defiance of it all.

The villain’s role suited him, even in northern Ohio, his birthplace.

The enmity was palpable Thursday at Quicken Loans Arena, but not nearly as powerful as James’s pure athleticism and skill. The louder the taunts, the stronger he looked, carving up his old team for a season-high 38 points and leading the Miami Heat to a shockingly easy 118-90 rout.

It was a vintage performance, more reminiscent of James’s first six seasons here than his curiously weak farewell last spring, when he sputtered in the Cavaliers’ second-round playoff defeat to the Celtics.

While fans derided him with chants of “Scottie Pippen” (in reference to his sidekick status next to Dwyane Wade), “Akron hates you” and many unprintable slogans, James calmly made 15 of 25 field goals and had 8 assists, all in three quarters, with no turnovers.

James rested comfortably on the bench for the fourth, while minor skirmishes broke out in some parts of the arena.

“It’s nothing personal,” he said afterward. “It’s a basketball game. And I had to maintain my focus no matter what’s said or what’s done throughout that game.”

As if humiliating the Cavaliers was not enough, James punctuated the performance by pointing out how much better basketball life is with the Heat. For the postgame news conference, he sat between his fellow All-Stars, Wade and Chris Bosh, the sort of talent that the Cavaliers never had.

“To have two guys like this out on the court also, it makes it a lot easier for myself to just go out and play basketball and not worry about anything else,” James said.

The fans exerted more passion than the Cavaliers (7-11), who repeatedly let James and Wade (22 points) get to the basket and allowed the Heat (12-8) to shoot 59.4 percent through three quarters. James Jones (18 points) helped bury Cleveland with five 3-pointers. Wade nearly had a triple double, with 9 rebounds and 9 assists.

Daniel Gibson led the Cavaliers with 21 points off the bench, but Mo Williams (11 points) was the only starter in double figures. James outscored Cleveland’s starting lineup by 10 points.

James left in infamy on July 8, with a nationally televised show to announce he would sign with Miami. From that moment, every fan in wine and gold anticipated this night — an event that, in the words of The Plain Dealer reporter Mary Schmitt Boyer, had “the potential to be New Year’s Eve, the Super Bowl and the apocalypse all rolled into one.”

Security was at an all-time high, drinks were sold only in cups and everyone it seemed was preaching restraint. The evening was generally calm until the game got out of hand.

There was a fight in one end of the arena, which was quickly broken up by security guards. In a dangerous scene, a Heat fan in the upper deck brazenly waved a James No. 6 jersey over a glass barrier while Cavaliers fans pelted him with drinks before a security guard finally pulled him away from the ledge.

The Cavaliers did their best to frame the evening as Game 18 of a young season, but it was a flimsy facade. There was no equivalent the occasion. Other star players have left their teams and been vilified upon returning, but none who combined James’s supreme skill, celebrity and personal ties to the city. His Akron roots made this homecoming unique.

“This has never happened before,” the veteran Cavaliers guard Mo Williams said earlier in the day. “It’s going down in history.”

James was almost universally criticized for the way he handled his departure, but he remains unrepentant. “I don’t want to apologize,” he told TNT after the game. “I think my intentions weren’t to hurt anyone. My intentions were solely on kids during the whole process.”

Fans had been waiting for months to unleash their anger, to call James a traitor and a backstabber and a fraud at close range.

Offensive signs and T-shirts were supposed to be banned, but many made it through the entrance. Others were tasteful but direct: a sign that called James a sellout; another that read “Quitness” — mocking his “Witness” campaign; and many gold-colored T-shirts that read “The Lyin’ King,” featuring James’ face on a lion’s head.

James was booed every time he touched the ball. Undaunted, he promptly scored 10 points in the first quarter and staked the Heat to an early 11-point lead. James made his first shot (a 17-footer), missed his next (a 3-pointer) and was jeered loudly after J. J. Hickson dunked on him.

Anthony Parker said it was “a great atmosphere, and that’s what hurts so much; the fans showed up for us like that, and we let them down.”

Many of the chants were personal and profane. One of the most creative, and least offensive, was a first-quarter chorus of “Akron hates you!” James literally laughed it off, grinning widely as he calmly made two free throws. He followed with a driving reverse and a 20-foot jumper as part of a 16-0 run.

“I was just trying to keep a clear head about it,” said James, who repeatedly professed appreciation for Cavaliers fans.

“I understand their frustration,” he said. “I understand things could have been a little bit different this summer for both sides. But I’m moving on.”

To prepare for the occasion, The Plain Dealer interviewed the team chaplain, who urged forgiveness; and a local therapist, who invoked Benedict Arnold but preached “positive psychology” and urged a classy response. Few fans got the message.

Normalcy would return by late evening, after the city had exhausted its supply of vengeance. Then it was time for everyone to pack up the angst and their anxiety and save it for another night.

The Heat will be back on March 29, for the biggest 73rd game in N.B.A. history.
French Captain Still Wowed by Cup
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY

PARIS — It has been a season of Davis Cup flashbacks for Guy Forget, none brighter than the semifinals in September when he returned to Lyon, where he and his French team celebrated victory to the tune of Yannick Noah’s hit single “Saga Africa” with nearly the same enthusiasm that he and Noah had displayed in the same arena way back in 1991.

Nearly 20 years have passed since Forget — with plenty of emotional support from Captain Noah — defeated the American rookie Pete Sampras in the decisive singles match to end France’s 59-year dry spell in La Coupe Davis.

No tennis historian will ever put Forget on a par with Sampras. A slender Frenchman with a whipping left-handed serve and a tendency to think too deeply under pressure, Forget never got past the quarterfinals in singles in a Grand Slam event. Sampras won 14 of them. But on that final day in Lyon in 1991, with cigarette smoke creating clouds in the rafters and his nation on edge, Forget was the more inspired and effective player.

France will never forget it, which helps explain why Forget, 45, is in his 11th year as France’s Davis Cup captain, helping to define the competition that still defines him and still generates plenty of ink and page views in France.

“I think of the Davis Cup as a fire that burns here, and I just blow on the coals so that the fire continues to burn all the time,” Forget said in an interview in Paris. “I think at one moment or another, if we are not vigilant about keeping it burning, it can be extinguished.”

There is little risk of declining ardor when Forget’s team takes to the court against Serbia for the 2010 final in Belgrade starting Friday. The Serbs have never won the Cup, not when they were part of Yugoslavia and not as an independent nation since the 1990s.

“It’s going to be loud, very loud,” Forget said.

Forget has been part of two other championship teams since 1991. He played doubles when France beat Sweden indoors in 1996 in Malmo, Sweden, and he was captain of the team that sprang a memorable upset on grass against Lleyton Hewitt and the Australians in Melbourne in 2001. He was also the losing captain in the 1999 and 2002 finals.

The chances of another title might have been greater this week if Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the team’s new leader, had not sustained his latest knee injury and been forced to cut short his season. But Forget, thanks to the depth of talent in France, still has fine options in singles with Gaël Monfils, Gilles Simon and the resurgent, net-rushing veteran Michael Llodra, and Forget has often been open to taking chances with his lineups as he has grown into his captain’s role.

It might be a ceremonial post to some of his peers, but not to Forget. In the lead-up to this final, with the speed of the court in Belgrade still uncertain, the only sure pick seemed to be Monfils, who reached the final at the Masters 1000 event indoors in Paris last month.

Forget had a taste for Davis Cup from the start, when he was first picked for the team in 1983.

“I had the impression to at last be part of a closed circle of players who were different, and when I first heard ‘La Marseillaise,’ in my French warm-up jacket standing next to Yannick, I got incredible chills,” he said. “And I realized right away that the Davis Cup was an adventure unlike the others. And when we won it with Yannick in 1991, it was very symbolic, because Yannick was a bit our locomotive. I felt it was not really a coincidence. It was the logical outcome of all he had done for French tennis, and today I continue to try to maintain what Yannick put in place and to transmit that to all these young players.”

To an outsider, Noah and Forget looked an unlikely pair of friends, Noah’s spontaneity and palpable magnetism seemingly too big a contrast with the more buttoned-down Forget. But they are both sensitive and articulate and remain in regular contact even as Noah, the 1983 French Open champion and the last Frenchman to win a major singles title, continues with his successful second career as a recording artist, a career that began in earnest with “Saga Africa” in 1991.

“Yannick is passionate about lots of things but gets passionate for something, then loses a bit of energy and interest and then gets passionate about something else,” Forget said.

Forget, whose father was a teaching professional and whose oldest son plays for the University of California at Santa Barbara, has decided to stick with the world he knows best.

“I am not in the least bit weary of it,” he said. “And I relish Davis Cup because I think the team concept is what we’re missing in our sport. Everyone’s so caught up in their own ATP points, their own money, their own coach, their own schedule. It’s good to say that we together want to do this and that we together will do this, and that we are going to give back to tennis and to the French federation all that they might have given us.”
Curtis Martin Used Football to Find Some Real Work
By GREG BISHOP

Inside Trinity Boxing Club in Lower Manhattan, Curtis Martin looked more like an active running back than a retired one. He pounded the heavy bag with the biceps of a bodybuilder, his body absent fat, still thick, solid, imposing, perhaps more sculptured than when he left professional football after the 2005 season.

His trainer, the boxer Ehinomen Ehikhamenor, summoned Martin, the fourth-leading rusher in N.F.L. history, into the ring. There, Martin implored a reporter with the same conviction that guided him through 11 seasons and more than 14,000 rushing yards that last week made him a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“Hit me,” Martin said. “Hit me in the face.”

That was vintage Martin, a back who welcomed contact, who played hurt and with an abandon that masked his secret: Martin never loved football, never found passion in pigskin. Instead, he saw the game as the fastest, most influential route toward the platform he now enjoys in his dizzying array of business and philanthropic efforts.

Even when he played, Martin did not want to be a scout or a coach or a broadcaster afterward. He wanted to own part of a team. He befriended Woody Johnson, the Jets’ owner and Martin’s mentor. Three years ago, at Johnson’s 60th birthday party, only three people gave speeches. One was Martin.

The party theme was “Wig out for Woody,” and most of the guests wore wigs, including Donald Trump. “People remembered two things,” Johnson said. “The wigs. And the speech from Curtis.”

That was Martin, too, as comfortable in swanky ballrooms as on muddy football fields. He was different from every other player Johnson met. As the Jets prepared for Monday night’s Martin Bowl — the Jets against the Patriots, Martin’s former teams — Johnson carried into a conference room at his Manhattan offices a list of Martin’s accomplishments and a framed letter with immaculate handwriting.

Martin gave Johnson the letter after he retired. The tone is appreciative and charming. Martin mentioned that Johnson once “offered to carry my equipment,” and he signed off, “I respect and appreciate you, #28.” Johnson calls the letter poetry, and it is the only item in his office given to him by a player.

To Johnson, the handwriting summed up Martin perfectly: “He took the time to write this. It’s distinctive, recognizable. He probably signed less often, but with higher impact. And that was Curtis.”

Martin played with an understated excellence that led him from the streets of Pittsburgh to the University of Pittsburgh to the third round of the 1995 N.F.L. draft. On that day, Bill Parcells called Martin and asked if he wanted to become a Patriot. Sure, Martin responded. But his heart said something else.

He hung up, turned to a friend and said: “I really don’t want to do this. I really don’t have the desire to play football. I don’t want to play football.”

But Martin also understood the platform an exceptional football career provided. If he wanted to feed the homeless and send doctors to poor countries and give life lessons to celebrities, football would provide the launching pad.

Parcells found Martin serious, intelligent, aware even early in his career of exactly what he wanted. Instead of venturing immediately into all his outside interests, Martin dedicated himself to football. With the first $70,000 in his bank account, he hired an assistant and a housekeeper. Each night, he came home to a clean house and a home-cooked meal. Martin was already investing — in himself.

“A player like Curtis Martin inspires you to coach,” Parcells said. “Everything he said he was going to do, he did.”

On the field, Martin was consistent. He remains one of two backs in N.F.L. history to rush for 1,000 yards in each of his first 10 seasons (Barry Sanders was the other). Martin was shifty, powerful and evasive. He moved, Johnson said, “in a way that defied description.” And Martin was vocal. His former teammate Brandon Moore remembered how Martin went one speed in practice: full.

Mostly, Martin impressed with his durability — as important as a player’s ability, according to Parcells. Martin said he played with second- and third-degree ligament tears, with broken fingers and busted shoulders. In the 2000 season opener, at Green Bay, Martin so injured his ligaments it felt as if the top half of his right leg had separated from the bottom. He wore a brace and rushed for 110 yards and scored two touchdowns in the Jets’ win.

That performance was special to Martin because of the way he earned it. “I believed my value to a team was in things like that,” he said.

Martin retired when doctors told him that if he returned from another knee injury, he might require a cane to walk by age 38. In describing how the announcement felt, Martin wiped his hands clean.

All along, Martin had a plan. Like a bride dreaming of her wedding day, Martin said, he dreamt about retiring from football. He donated at least 12 percent of every check to charity. He started the Curtis Martin Job Foundation. He met with Johnson, asked questions, even attended the N.F.L. scouting combine with Jets executives.

Everything Martin is doing now stems from that preparation. He works with single mothers and Surgicorps, an organization that sends doctors to third-world countries to perform operations. He helps fight homelessness in New York City, even once sitting for three hours with a homeless man who went by the name Cowboy. In the winter, in freezing temperatures, Martin said he convinced Cowboy to take temporary residence.

Of his business ventures, Martin remains more private. Shortly after retirement, he served as a life coach to celebrities and others in New York and Los Angeles. He is designing a home fitness center in a partnership with the Jets. Martin said he preferred stable businesses, and as such, he was also buying an insurance company.

Mostly, Martin wants to own an N.F.L. team. He declined to name specific teams, but predicted he would be an owner within the next five years.

“Football has been a great platform to reach people,” Martin said. “Ownership is just an extension, a bigger, better way of doing that.”

Last month was a good month, a perfect month, for Martin. He married his fiancée, Carolina, before roughly 180 guests. He honeymooned in Cabo San Lucas, zip-lining and whale watching and rappelling down mountains. After returning, he received word from the Hall of Fame, and he said even his status as a semifinalist prompted more emotion than he expected.

Martin has good company on the coming ballot. His first year of eligibility coincides with those for Jerome Bettis, Marshall Faulk, Willie Roaf and Deion Sanders. Parcells acknowledged his lack of objectivity, but said Martin should be elected on the first ballot.

Martin said: “When I think of the Hall, what’s most satisfying is this really wasn’t something that I wanted. But I’m proud of that fact. I made the most of that situation. I maximized my opportunity.”

Imagine that. The reluctant running back giving his Hall of Fame speech, on the verge of ownership. Only in the world according to Curtis Martin.
Rangers Hold On Against Islanders
By JEFF Z. KLEIN

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — The rivalry may not be quite what it was a generation ago, and the arena on Long Island may now have its share of empty seats, even for games against the team from Manhattan.

But it was still a Rangers-Islanders game at Nassau Coliseum, and even under reduced circumstances it is an event that produces excitement, passion, some wild hockey — and on Thursday night an unlikely new playmaker in Sean Avery.

Marian Gaborik scored the last three Rangers goals — his last coming with 5 minutes 25 seconds left — and Avery added three assists to give their team an entertaining 6-5 victory over the last-place Islanders.

Gaborik’s final score came only 25 seconds after the Islanders tied the game on a goal by Blake Comeau, who scored 1:41 after his teammate Michael Grabner.

“It was exciting — the perfect game for this kind of rivalry,” said the Rangers’ Erik Christensen, who scored the game’s first goal on a precision snap shot to the top shelf.

Christensen centered a line newly created for this game, when Coach John Tortorella promoted Avery, known as a third-line pest, to a spot alongside the high-scoring Gaborik.

Avery responded by assisting Gaborik twice and Christensen once — all resulting from his fast skating, dogged battling for the puck and quick passing.

“Aves provides so much energy,” Christensen said. “He doesn’t get credit for the skill he has. He controls the puck well down low, uses his body well. And Gabby just has a knack for the net. It was fun.”

Avery said Wednesday that finally being given the responsibility of playing with Gaborik, the team’s best sniper, was a “double-edged sword.” But everything clicked Thursday, and both Avery and Gaborik were plus-3.

“Yeah, it was good,” Avery said.

“I know where he’s going to be or likes to be — I’ve watched him enough and can feel where he is more than anything,” Avery added about playing with Gaborik. “He just gets to the right spot. When he gets open, it’s easy to get him the puck.”

Gaborik, always succinct, said that Avery was good on the forecheck and “made a lot of nice plays in the corner.”

How wild a game was it? Just five seconds after Gaborik’s third goal made it 6-5, Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist had to stop Grabner’s half-breakaway.

The two teams meet again at Madison Square Garden on Friday. The Rangers are an N.H.L.-leading 6-0 this season in the second game of back-to-back sets.

For the Islanders, it was the 15th loss in their last 16 games. They stopped a 14-game losing streak last Saturday with a 2-0 home win over the Devils.

Against the Rangers, Rick DiPietro, the Islanders goalie under contract until the 2021-22 season, stopped just 20 of 26 shots.

Fans of both teams in the crowd of 13,742 had lots to cheer and concoct vulgar chants about. And they did their share of both, as the Rangers built a 2-0 lead, gave up three straight goals then rallied to get two back — all before the end of the second period.

Rangers goalie Martin Biron came into the evening having won 20 of 25 games against the Islanders. His last five games at the Coliseum were as an Islander, and he won all of those. But Matt Moulson and Rob Schremp beat Biron on stoppable shots in the second period, and Biron, who allowed several rebounds, was pulled after stopping 18 of 21 shots in 32:30.

Lundqvist took his place, and the Rangers tied the score 51 seconds later when a DiPietro rebound bounced into the net off Islanders defenseman Andrew MacDonald. Brandon Prust was credited with the goal.

During warm-ups, the Islanders’ 6-foot-3-inch Trevor Gillies conferred with the Rangers’ 6-7 Derek Boogaard in the referees’ crease as they stretched. It seemed as if they were making an appointment.

At 4:24, 15 seconds into Gillies’s first shift and 4 into Boogaard’s, they dropped the gloves for an extended fight.

CANADIENS 5, DEVILS 1 Brian Gionta and Lars Eller scored in the first 1:38 , Carey Price made 27 saves, and visiting Montreal beat the Devils.

Tom Pyatt, Scott Gomez and Benoit Pouliot also scored to help Montreal rebound a night after it blew a two-goal, third-period lead in a 4-3 home ice loss to Edmonton.

Jason Arnott scored for the Devils, winners of three of four going in. The Devils lost for the first time in five games at home. (AP)

OILERS 5, MAPLE LEAFS 0 Nikolai Khabibulin made 33 saves, and Taylor Hall scored twice to help Edmonton beat Toronto, giving the Oilers their third road victory in four nights.

Jordan Eberle, Sam Gagner and Ryan Jones also scored for Edmonton.

(AP)

PENGUINS 3, THRASHERS 2 Sidney Crosby scored all three Pittsburgh goals for the first natural hat trick of his six-season career. He became the first Penguins player in nearly 10 years to score three goals in successive home games. Pittsburgh ran its winning streak to eight games. (AP)

BRUINS 8, LIGHTNING 1 David Krejci had two goals and an assist, and Marc Savard returned to the Boston lineup, helping the Bruins to a win at home over Tampa Bay.

Savard made his season debut after missing 23 games because of postconcussion syndrome, while Bruins goalie Tim Thomas made 37 saves.

(AP)

SHARKS 4, SENATORS 0 Logan Couture scored twice, and Dany Heatley had an assist in his return to Ottawa, leading San Jose over the Senators. Antti Niemi made 28 saves for San Jose. (AP)
Rodriguez Pleads Guilty and Must Undergo Therapy
By MICK MEENAN

Francisco Rodriguez, the Mets’ embattled closer, pleaded guilty Friday in Queens Criminal Court to three counts stemming from an altercation in August with his girlfriend’s father.

In a deal worked out between Scott Kessler, an assistant district attorney, and Christopher Booth, Rodriguez’s lawyer, Rodriguez was ordered to undergo 52 sessions of anger management over the next year for misdemeanor criminal assault of Carlos Pena. Some of those sessions will be conducted in Rodriguez’s native Venezuela and monitored by Kessler.

Rodriguez, who did not make a statement after his court appearance on Friday, also pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal contempt for violating a protection order. He had been ordered to have no contact with Daian Pena, the mother of Rodriguez’s children, or her father, but sent 17 text messages.

On the assault count, Rodriguez was ordered to pay $14,444.65 in restitution for Pena’s medical bills stemming from the confrontation at Citi Field. There is a two-year order of protection for Carlos Pena and Daian Pena. If Rodriguez violates that order, or fails to comply with the deal, he could face 120 days in jail.
Ron Santo, Stalwart for Cubs, Dies at 70
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Ron Santo, a star third baseman of the Chicago Cubs and their longtime broadcaster who became a revered figure for his exploits on the field and his battle against juvenile diabetes, died Thursday in a hospital in Arizona. He was 70.

The cause was complications of bladder cancer, said WGN Radio, where Santo was a Cubs color commentator.

Playing for the Chicago Cubs from 1960 to 1973, then for a final season with the Chicago White Sox, Santo hit 342 career home runs, won five Gold Glove awards for fielding and was named an All-Star nine times.

He was a key figure on the 1969 Cubs team that was leading the Mets by 13 games in August before collapsing. That team gained a particularly agonizing niche in the star-crossed history of the Cubs, who have not won a pennant since 1945. But Santo endeared himself to the Bleacher Bums in their hard hats at Wrigley Field that summer by clicking his heels with joy after victories.

That Santo was on a major league field, let alone starring alongside the future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins, seemed remarkable.

When he took a routine physical in 1959, on the brink of making his Cubs debut, Santo was found to have juvenile diabetes. He began taking insulin within two years, but kept his diabetes a secret from the Cubs until being named to his first All-Star team in 1963, fearing that management’s knowledge of his illness might have damaged his career. He did not allow the public to know of his diabetes until his final years with the Cubs.

After his playing days ended, Santo raised millions of dollars for diabetes research, and for more than two decades he sponsored an annual walk-a-thon to help seek a cure. The disease took a heavy toll on him. He had heart attacks, went through quadruple-bypass surgery, then underwent amputation of his legs, in 2001 and 2002, but continued as a Cubs color commentator with WGN, using prostheses. He also underwent surgery for the bladder cancer.

“I was diagnosed with diabetes at age 18,” Santo told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1990. “I didn’t know what it was, so I went to the library and looked it up. I can still remember the feeling I had when I read the description: Life expectancy of a juvenile insulin-dependent diabetic: 25 years. It also stated that it would cause blindness, kidney failure and hardening of the arteries. At that point, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to fight this thing and beat it.’ That’s how badly I wanted to live and be a big league ballplayer.”

Santo, a native of Seattle, was signed by the Cubs’ organization after high school, and when he first appeared at Wrigley Field, he was transfixed. “I used to watch the ‘Game of the Week’ from Seattle, and every time I saw Wrigley Field, I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Denver Post in 2004. “Then when I walked into Wrigley Field with Ernie Banks … We came out of the clubhouse in left field, and I’m walking down on the grass and I’m looking out to the outfield, and the ivy hadn’t quite blossomed yet, but it was close. It was like walking on air. There was a feeling of electricity that I’ve never had.”

Santo became a regular in 1961, emerging as a smooth fielder and an outstanding right-handed batter with power. He was durable as well, playing in 390 consecutive games before he was hit in the cheekbone by a pitch from the Mets’ Jack Fisher in June 1966.

He had four seasons in which he hit .300 and hit at least 30 home runs every year from 1964 to 1967. He was a mainstay of a superb Cubs infield of the 1960s, with Banks having switched to first base from shortstop, Glenn Beckert at second base and Don Kessinger at short.

Still, it was not enough to hold off the Mets in 1969, and Santo had never made it to a World Series when he retired after 15 seasons with a career batting average of .277, 2,254 hits and 1,331 runs batted in. He gained serious consideration for the Hall of Fame in balloting by the Veterans Committee but fell short in the baseball writers’ recent annual votings.

For Santo, there was much adversity even beyond his medical travails. His father was an alcoholic who left the family when Santo and his sister were youngsters. His mother re-married, and then in 1973, when his mother and stepfather were driving from California to see him at spring training in Arizona, both were killed in an auto accident.

After various business ventures, Santo began working as a Cubs color commentator on WGN in the early 1990s, broadcasting alongside the legendary Harry Caray. As he battled the complications of diabetes as well as cancer, and continued his charitable work, his popularity grew. The Cubs retired his No. 10 at Wrigley Field in September 2003, and he stood and waved from the radio booth to the cheer of the crowd. The following year, his son Jeff made a film on his life, “This Old Cub,” which had its premiere at the Chicago Historical Society.

Information on his survivors was not immediately available.

When the Cubs announced they would retire Santo’s No. 10 and fly it from the left-field foul pole, Santo told The Associated Press: “There’s nothing more important to me in my life than this happening to me. I’m a Cubbie. I’ll always be a Cubbie.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 3, 2010

A photo caption in an earlier version of this article mistakenly said that Ron Santo played for nine seaons with the Chicago White Sox.
Playing Like His Old Self, Woods Grabs the Lead
By KAREN CROUSE

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Not to suggest expectations were lowered for Tiger Woods on Thursday at the Chevron World Challenge, but when he made his third birdie on the front nine, the standard-bearer for Woods’s group reached for a red 3 and found none.

There was no dearth of red numbers on Woods’s scorecard. He birdied five of his first 10 holes at Sherwood Country Club on his way to a seven-under-par 65. That was good for a one-stroke lead over Rory McIlory and Graeme McDowell in an 18-man event in which all the players are in the world’s top 50.

The only golfers among the top 12 who were not here were No. 1-ranked Lee Westwood, third-ranked Martin Kaymer, who withdrew after winning the European money title in Dubai, and No. 4 Phil Mickelson.

“Not too often do I say I shot 65, and I only made one putt,” Woods said. “It was a good ball-striking day.”

Woods was on his way to his best competitive round since he shot a 62 in September 2009 until he made a bogey on the last hole after a terrible drive. It was one of the few loose shots hit by Woods on a day in which he hit every green in regulation on the front side and struck the ball with a clarity of purpose that was missing most of 2010.

“I was pretty impressed with what he was doing out there,” said Woods’s playing partner, Steve Stricker, who added, “He striped it all day long.”

Woods, 35, is the four-time champion of the event, which benefits his charity, the Tiger Woods Foundation. Although winless on the PGA Tour for the first time since he turned professional in 1996, Woods’s first-round score did not come out of nowhere.

In his previous competitive round, on the final day of last month’s Australian Masters, Woods played the final six holes in six under, for a round of 65.

Woods recently lost his No. 1 ranking, which he had held for 281 consecutive weeks, to Westwood. He can reclaim the top spot with a victory here and a third-place finish or worse by Westwood at a 12-man event this week in South Africa.

The world rankings operate on a two-year points cycle, so Westwood, should he fall from the top spot, would regain it next month. There is much talk that the 2011 season could have a handful of players jockeying for the top spot, as has been the case this year in women’s golf, with four players holding the No. 1 ranking.

“Tiger has dominated for so long,” said sixth-ranked Jim Furyk, who has three victories this year. “There are guys like Mickelson and, you go down the list, the top 10, there’s a bunch of guys that would like to say that.”

The run for No. 1 could end up being the same old conversation if Woods continues to strike the ball as well as he did Thursday, and can make a few more short putts. Two of his four birdies on the front nine came on missed eagle putts.

After the Players Championship in May, Woods’s swing coach, Hank Haney, resigned. Three months later, Woods began working with Sean Foley, whose clients include Sean O’Hair, Hunter Mahan and Justin Rose.

Mahan, who played many practice rounds with Woods — before and after Woods began working with Foley — was not surprised at how well Woods has taken to Foley’s instruction.

“The guy’s No. 1 in the world and he works as hard as anybody, and he couldn’t overcome a wrong theory,” Mahan said, alluding to Woods’s association with Haney.

Under Foley’s tutelage, Woods has changed his swing so that he has less weight shift and more rotation.

“As I played throughout the summer, I kept trying to do the things that I was working on with Hank over the years, and it just wasn’t working anymore,” Woods said. “And it got to the point where I just couldn’t do it.

“It’s kind of hard to try and play tournament-level golf, major championship golf, especially, when at the time I was struggling with which way the ball was going to go. Was it going to go right, or was it going to go left? That’s not fun.”

Woods missed the fairway to the right with his shots off the tee on the first, 10th and 18th holes but otherwise entertained his gallery with his pure ball-striking.

“His shots,” Stricker said, “have that sound back.”
Russia and Qatar Win World Cup Bids
By JERÉ LONGMAN

The world’s biggest sporting event continued its spread to new corners of the globe Thursday as Russia and Qatar were named as hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup soccer tournaments.

The fallout from the announcements in Zurich included a setback in soccer development for the United States, which lost its attempt to host the 2022 World Cup despite having an apparently superior technical bid. That tournament was awarded instead to Qatar, the tiny oil-rich nation in the Persian Gulf, meaning the World Cup will make its inaugural appearance in the Middle East.

“We go to new lands,” Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, told Reuters. “Never has the World Cup been in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and Arabic world has been waiting for a long time. So I’m a happy president when we talk about the development of football.”

FIFA is an insular body, frequently criticized for its lack of transparency. Thursday’s votes by FIFA’s executive committee were conducted in secret. It was impossible to discern fully the motives of Blatter and his colleagues.

Some soccer officials believe Blatter is angling for a Nobel Peace Prize, having now orchestrated the awarding of the World Cup to South Africa in 2010, and soon to Russia and the Middle East, even if his chances of winning such an award might seem remote.

Surely, Thursday’s votes reflected in part some murky internal FIFA politics. No doubt, too, Blatter has some sincere interest in taking his sport’s grandest spectacle to all parts of the world.

The votes came amid recent news media accusations of corruption involving 6 of the 24 members of FIFA’s executive committee. Two were barred from voting. Some observers called for a delay in the votes, saying their legitimacy had been compromised by accusations of vote selling.

American soccer officials had hoped to prevail with a bid that promoted the country’s diversity, the potential for record attendance and record profits for FIFA, and the fact that all stadiums and necessary infrastructure were already built.

But perhaps FIFA officials felt they had sufficiently assisted the United States by giving it the 1994 World Cup.

And some observers felt that American bid officials lacked passion in explaining how a second World Cup would expand the game in the United States, which has not fully embraced the sport. FIFA had also expressed some concerns about a lack of federal government guarantees, one apparently having to do with its tax liability in the United States.

Eric Wynalda, a former star American forward and now a television commentator, suggested on Fox Soccer Channel that Qatar had in effect bought the World Cup in a triumph of money over merit. Perhaps he was referring to remarks in October by Michel Zen-Ruffinen, a former secretary general of FIFA, that Qatar was seeking to trade votes with the combined Spain/Portugal bid for 2018 to enhance both candidacies.

Sunil Gulati, president of the United States Soccer Federation, said in a conference call from Zurich: “Obviously, we’re very disappointed with the outcome. We submitted what we think technically is a very good bid.”

He then congratulated Qatar, which has never played in the World Cup, and declined to make accusations of corruption in the bidding process.

Thursday’s votes amounted to an election, Gulati said, adding: “This isn’t only about technical reports. A lot goes into that. In this case, it was a new part of the world.”

Qatar, with 1.7 million people, only 300,000 of whom are citizens, is the smallest nation to host a World Cup. But with one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, it won with a bid that urged FIFA officials to make history as well as money. The success of the 2010 tournament, which was held in Africa for the first time, apparently further emboldened FIFA officials to continue to take its grandest spectacle to yet another part of the world, something that places soccer’s vision far ahead of the Olympics.

“Thank you for believing in change,” Qatar’s emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, told FIFA officials.

Others bidding for 2022 were Australia, Japan and South Korea.

The head of Qatar’s winning bid, Sheik Mohammed bin Hamad al-Thani, suggested Wednesday that the World Cup would help improve the Arab image internationally, while assuaging anti-Islamic feeling that has grown since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The 2022 World Cup will “present a new image of the Middle East — far away from clichés and closer to reality,” bin Hamad al-Thani said.

Qatar’s bid overcame concerns about heat that can reach 120 degrees there in the summer. Officials say they will build air-conditioned stadiums, spending $4 billion to upgrade three arenas and build nine new ones in a compact area connected by a subway system. Qatari officials have also said they will spend $50 billion on transportation and other infrastructure. After the 2022 World Cup, Qatar plans to dismantle its stadiums and give them to poorer countries.

Meanwhile, the defeated United States has now lost successive bids to host a major international sporting event. Chicago lost its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, which were awarded to Rio de Janeiro. The World Cup bid failed even though it had support from President Obama and from former President Bill Clinton, who was honorary chairman of the bid committee.

When asked about Qatar’s being awarded the 2022 tournament, Obama said, “I think it was the wrong decision,” but he added that he was confident the United States team would acquit itself well wherever it played.

Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s prime minister, did not travel to Zurich before Thursday’s votes, obliquely accusing England, a rival bidder for 2018, of trying to undermine the voting process. This was an apparent reference to news media reports emanating from London that accused some FIFA officials of being willing to sell their votes.

After Russia won the 2018 World Cup, though, Putin said he would travel to Zurich to thank FIFA.

“This decision shows that Russia is trusted,” Putin told reporters as he left Moscow.

President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who typically enjoys gadgets more than sports, said in a Twitter message: “Hurray! Victory!”

Russia, which will also host the 2014 Winter Olympics, prevailed Thursday over England and joint bids by Spain/Portugal and the Netherlands/Belgium. Russia views the World Cup as a chance to help the country continue to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Concerns about a lack of infrastructure and travel in the far-flung country were apparently ameliorated in the bidding process.

Russia proposed to host the tournament in 13 cities grouped in four clusters. And Putin has said that visitors will not need travel visas. Match tickets will apparently serve as visas, as they did when the 2008 Champions League final was held in Moscow.

“Yes, we don’t have the right infrastructure yet,” said Igor Shuvalov, the Russian first deputy prime minister, who led the delegation. “But we can overcome all difficulties. Let’s create history together.”

Coupled with Russian elation, however, was disappointment from the other candidate countries, particularly in England, which had gained renewed confidence over the last 24 hours that its bid might be successful after Prince William, Prime Minister David Cameron and David Beckham flew to Zurich for some last-minute lobbying.

“What a killer,” said Duncan Townsend, manager of No. 1 Sports Bar in London’s financial district, where crowds had gathered to watch the vote. “I was so looking forward to it. We have the passion and the infrastructure. It’s a real shame.”

In 1994, the United States hosted what is widely considered the most successful World Cup. Some 3.6 million fans attended the matches, still a record number. The 2022 World Cup bid projected that as many as five million tickets would be sold. Gulati also projected that $1 billion in corporate sponsorships might be available in the United States by then, along with $1 billion in television rights fees paid by English- and Spanish-language networks.

Gulati has also said that the cumulative American television audience for the 2022 World Cup could be 200 million, double the viewers who watched the 2010 World Cup from South Africa.

Officials of Major League Soccer, the North American professional league that just completed its 15th season, had hoped to gain enhanced visibility over the next 12 years as the 2022 World Cup approached. Officials in the soccer federation had also hoped to use the tournament to foster youth development in the inner cities.

It is too early to say whether the United States will bid on the 2026 World Cup, Gulati said. Soccer growth in the country will continue, he said, but lost Thursday was an opportunity for “putting a foot on the accelerator and taking a big jump.”

Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from Moscow and Julia Werdigier from London.

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