Fanfare 10/29

Briefs

Basketball

Rick Fox was suspended for six games and Doug Christie got a two-game ban for their roles in a bench-clearing fight during a Lakers-Kings exhibition game.

In Monday's surprise ruling, the NBA did not suspend any members of the Kings for leaving the bench during the brawl.

Fox and Christie will miss their teams' season openers today.

The fight broke out two minutes into Friday's game. Christie, a Sacramento guard, threw the ball at Fox, who hit him with an open hand. Christie then punched the Lakers forward in the jaw. After the players were separated and left the court, Fox rushed down a hallway under the stands and confronted Christie again.

Several Sacramento players left the bench area and raced down a tunnel leading to the locker rooms.

The NBA enforced a much tighter interpretation of the leaving-the-bench rule several years ago when fights broke out during playoff games between the Miami Heat and New York Knicks. In 1998, Chris Mills of the Knicks was suspended for a playoff game after walking just a few steps onto the court during a fight.

Football

Former Los Angeles Rams lineman Roy Hord Jr., who later served as general manager of Riverside International Raceway, has died. He was 67.

Hord, who was drafted by the Rams out of Duke in 1960, died Oct. 24 of cancer.

The 6-foot-5, 260-pound Hord was remembered as a gentle man.

Hord played both offense and defense at Duke and was selected to some All-America teams in 1957.

Hord spent three years in Los Angeles before playing one season each with the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Jets.

After his NFL career ended in 1965, he became general manager of Riverside International Raceway.

High school

A bus carrying the Kansas School for the Deaf high school football team crashed in far western Kansas on Sunday, killing an assistant coach and injuring several students and adults.

The Kansas State Highway Patrol identified the victim as Lory R. Kuschmider, 52, of Olathe, the Kansas City suburb where the school is located. The team had played on Saturday at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind in Colorado Springs.

The crash happened at 11:30 a.m. on U.S. 40, about 11 miles east of Sharon Springs, when the eastbound bus missed a curve, went into a ditch and rolled, the patrol said.

Twenty-one of the 34 players, coaches and cheerleaders on the bus were taken to Logan County Hospital in Oakley, where 13 were treated for sprains, cuts and other minor injuries and released.

Horse racing

The New York State Racing and Wagering Board has begun investigating six winning Breeders' Cup wagers worth a total of $2.5 million, all made Saturday by one person at an upstate Off-Track Betting parlor.

"We started looking into this yesterday, so we froze those tickets pending a review of the situation," Stacy Clifford, spokeswoman for the racing board, said Monday. "There could be something here or there could be nothing here. Obviously it's a very important investigation and we want to make sure it's a thorough one."

The six winning bets -- each worth $428,392 -- were apparently made through a telephone account with Catskill OTB, Clifford said. The Ultra Pick Six tickets were for Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships at Arlington Park in Illinois.

Olympics

The U.S. Olympic Committee is getting help from some of its biggest sponsors in its bid to keep baseball, softball and modern pentathlon in the Summer Games.

A handful of key sponsors have sent letters to International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, supporting the continued existence of the sports, the head of the USOC said Monday.

"I am cautiously optimistic," USOC president Marty Mankamyer said. "We figured that if we were going to lose, we were going to lose going down every way we could."

The IOC is expected to vote whether to keep baseball, softball and modern pentathlon at a meeting next month in Mexico City. The IOC program commission has recommended adding golf and rugby in their place.

Verbatim

Earl Woods, telling the Kansas City Star about Tiger Woods' paternal grandfather: "My father could swear for an hour and never repeat himself. He was that good."

Nick Canepa of the San Diego Union-Tribune, on the Chargers' 6-1 start: "The Rams, Ravens and Patriots, the past three Super Bowl winners, were nobodies before they won. It's the way of the NFL these days. The Chargers have been nobodies for six years, so they have impeccable credentials."

-- From wire reports