Sports briefs 2/23/04

Baseball

The Kansas City Royals on Sunday signed left-hander Greg Swindell to a minor-league contract and invited him to spring training. Swindell, who will be a non-roster invite at the Royals' spring training, has a 113-122 career record with a 3.86 ERA. He did not pitch in the majors last season, but in 2002, he was 0-2 with a 6.27 ERA in 34 relief appearances with the Arizona Diamondbacks. If Swindell were to make the team, he would earn the minimum $300,000 salary.

Hockey

Ladislav Nagy, the Phoenix Coyotes' leading goal scorer with a career-high 24 in 55 games, will miss the rest of the season because of a wrist injury. Nagy, injured Monday night against St. Louis, had surgery Friday in Baltimore to repair a dislocation of his left wrist in the area of the radius bone.

Martin Havlat scored three goals, two late in the game during a four-point day, and the Ottawa Senators ran Pittsburgh's winless streak to a club record-tying 18 straight by winning 6-3 Sunday. Milan Kraft and Ryan Malone scored in the second period as Pittsburgh tied it after trailing 2-0 and 3-1, but the Penguins still lost their 18th in a row (0-17-0-1) -- the most ever by an NHL team. The streak won't make the NHL record book because it includes an overtime loss Feb. 14 in St. Louis; the record 17-game streaks by the Capitals (1975) and Sharks (1993) included only regulation losses. The Penguins did extend their league-record home losing streak to 14, three more than any other team in NHL history. Their 18-game winless streak is 12 off the league record of 30 by Winnipeg in 1980-81, but ties the team record set when they went 0-17-1 from Jan. 2-Feb. 10, 1983.

Tennis

Sixth-seeded Lleyton Hewitt beat second-seeded Juan Carlos Ferrero 6-7 (1), 7-5, 6-4 in the ABN Amro tournament to win his 21st career title. Hewitt overcame early problems with his serve to improve his record against the French Open champion to 5-3. The Australian dropped his first set of the tournament but rallied to win his second title this year. Ferrero, the world No. 2 from Spain, might have been strained from his long route to the final, which included three-set matches Friday and Saturday.

Top-seeded Guillermo Coria defeated defending champion Carlos Moya 6-4, 6-1 to win the ATP Buenos Aires tournament. It was a rematch of the 2003 final but Coria won the clay-court event this time. The Argentine the match in 1 hour and 12 minutes.

Kim Clijsters beat Italian veteran Silvia Farina Elia 6-3, 6-0 Sunday to win the Diamond Games tournament. The straight-set win clinched Clijsters' first tournament victory in her native Belgium and her 21st overall. She won the Gaz de France tournament in Paris last week.-- From wire reports