Sports briefs 11/5/05

Baseball

* The Chicago White Sox bought out Frank Thomas for $3.5 million on Friday, making the best slugger in team history eligible for free agency.

The 37-year-old Thomas exercised a $10 million mutual option for next season on Monday, giving the team five days to decide whether to exercise its half. The White Sox could try to re-sign the two-time AL MVP for less money.

Thomas, who has missed most of the past two years with foot and ankle problems, hit .219 with 12 homers in just 105 at-bats last season. He missed the first two months while recovering from surgery on his left ankle, then broke the ankle in July, ending his season.

A career .307 hitter with 448 homers and 1,465 RBIs, Thomas is the team's leader in most offensive categories. He has spent his entire career with the White Sox and has said he wants to return.

* Hall of Famer Robin Yount is returning to the Milwaukee Brewers as bench coach.

Yount spent his entire 20-year playing career with Milwaukee. The Brewers have tried to get him to return since he retired as a player in 1994, but Yount had preferred to stay around his home in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Yount, the first Brewer elected to baseball's Hall of Fame, returned to baseball as bench coach with Arizona in 2002. He resigned when the Diamondbacks fired manager Bob Brenly in July 2004.

Basketball

* Heat center Shaquille O'Neal will miss two to four weeks with a sprained right ankle, adding to the team's early-season injury woes.

O'Neal flew with his team to Milwaukee on Friday, shortly after learning results of an MRI exam performed earlier in the day. The team said earlier he was listed as day-to-day; a formal announcement of the updated diagnosis was expected after the team's arrival in Milwaukee.

The news, first reported by The Miami Herald on its Web site, probably wasn't surprising to teammates, who seemed resigned to playing without the 12-time All-Star after seeing him hobble and grimace after Thursday's 105-102 loss to Indiana.

Colleges

* Time Inc. has asked a judge to bar reporters from seeing its defamation settlement with Mike Price, arguing copycat suits could follow if public figures find out how much it agreed to pay the fired Alabama football coach over an unflattering Sports Illustrated story.

In court documents, Time said it settled Price's claim, which asked for $20 million, partly to protect the identity of confidential sources used to compile the Sports Illustrated account of Price's night of drunken partying in Pensacola, Fla., in 2003.

Even if U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith agrees to unseal some of the settlement, Time said the dollar amount of the deal should remain private.