Sports briefs 5/18/04

Baseball

Major League Baseball will provide more than $1 million in pensions to former Negro Leagues players through a new charitable program. The fund will benefit 27 players, all of whom played after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. Baseball set up a program in 1997 to provide pensions to Negro Leagues players before 1948. The new fund will benefit additional players who spent parts of at least four seasons in the Negro Leagues, starting before 1958.

Basketball

Sacramento's Anthony Peeler was suspended for two games for elbowing Minnesota's Kevin Garnett, meaning the Kings guard will miss Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals. Peeler was suspended without pay by the NBA. Peeler hit Garnett in the midsection with 31.2 seconds left in the third quarter of Sunday's Game 6. Peeler elbowed the league MVP in the head with 13.5 seconds remaining in the period and was ejected. Garnett was fined $7,500 for hitting Peeler in the chest with an elbow.

Boxing

Former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe was released from prison after serving 18 months for kidnapping his first wife and their children in 1998. Bowe, who had a 40-1 lifetime record, has said he planned to return to the ring after his release despite evidence his former attorneys presented in court that he suffered brain damage from fighting.

College

Illinois coach Bruce Weber filled the vacancy on his coaching staff, hiring Purdue assistant Tracy Webster.

Brian Calhoun, the leading rusher at Colorado last season, is seeking a transfer. CU officials have said they will not grant scholarship releases for football players until coach Gary Barnett's situation is resolved as part of the investigation into the school's recruiting scandal. Calhoun led the school in rushing last fall with 810 yards and five touchdowns.

Football

Denver tight end Shannon Sharpe, 35, is retiring, after all. The NFL's career leader in receptions and yards at his position will replace Deion Sanders on "The NFL Today" pregame show. An official announcement will be made today.

Miscellaneous

Transsexuals were cleared to compete in the Olympics for the first time. Under a proposal approved by the IOC executive board, athletes who have undergone sex-change surgery will be eligible for the Olympics if their new gender has been legally recognized and they have gone through a minimum two-year period of postoperative hormone therapy. The decision, which covers both male-to-female and female-to-male cases, goes into effect starting with the Athens Olympics in August.

Tennis

Andre Agassi lost in the first round of the Raiffeisen Grand Prix to a qualifier ranked 339th in the world. Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia-Montenegro beat Agassi 6-2, 7-6 (6) at the clay-court tuneup for the French Open, which starts next week. It was Agassi's first clay-court match of the year in preparation for next week's French Open.

-- From wire reports