Sports briefs 8/9/04

Baseball

Toronto Blue Jays manager Carlos Tosca was fired Sunday and replaced by first-base coach John Gibbons. Struggling through a disappointing season, the Blue Jays fired Tosca less than an hour after they were beaten 8-2 by the New York Yankees for their fifth straight loss. Gibbons will be the interim manager for the rest of the season.

Tosca is the third major league manager to be fired this season, following Houston's Jimy Williams and Arizona's Bob Brenly.The Blue Jays are 47-64, a season-high 17 games under .500 and 24 1/2 games behind first-place New York.

Dodgers pitcher Brad Penny jumped off the mound in pain Sunday and left his start against the Philadelphia Phillies in the first inning with a strained right biceps. Penny will have an MRI today in Los Angeles instead of traveling with the team to Cincinnati.

Pitching for only the second time since getting traded to the Dodgers, Penny got hurt on his 14th pitch. Assistant trainer Matt Wilson came out of the dugout with manager Jim Tracy to check on Penny, who threw one warmup pitch and bounced off the mound writhing in pain before Wilson led him to the clubhouse. Penny allowed just two infield hits in eight scoreless innings last Tuesday to beat Pittsburgh in his Dodgers debut.

College

North Texas quarterback Andrew Smith Jr. was killed early Saturday after his truck crossed into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with an 18-wheeler. The 21-year-old Smith was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after the accident on Texas Highway 6, about five miles north of Calvert. Smith started 16 games in two seasons for the Mean Green after leading Bay City High School to the Class 4A Division I state championship as a senior

Football

There was no escape this time for the resourceful John Elway and the slippery Barry Sanders. And they were thrilled about being caught flatfooted.

Elway and Sanders, along with Carl Eller and Bob Brown, were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Sunday. Both Elway and Sanders made a mockery of defenses throughout their record-setting careers, while Brown was one of the premier blockers of his era. Eller was a star defensive end with the Purple People Eaters in Minnesota.

Horse racing

Purge kicked off the second season for 3-year-olds with a near-record victory in the Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga on Sunday. The bay colt may be 0-for-3 against recently retired Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Smarty Jones, but Purge served noticed he just might be a top contender for the Travers Stakes in three weeks. Purge rolled past pacesetter Medallist on the far turn and pulled away for a 4 1/2-length victory over favorite The Cliff's Edge.

Tennis

A resurgent Andre Agassi defeated tenth-seeded Lleyton Hewitt 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 to win the Cincinnati Masters tournament. Agassi, the 11th seed, beat 21-year-old Andy Roddick in the semifinals, then wore down the 23-year-old Australian Sunday. He broke Hewitt's serve three times, after Hewitt had been broken only once in five matches.

Agassi, 34, is the oldest ATP Tour winner since Jimmy Connors won consecutive titles at Toulouse and Tel Aviv when he was 37 in 1989. The win was Agassi's first in 17 months.

Amelie Mauresmo won the Rogers Cup for the second time Sunday, routing Elena Likhovtseva 6-1, 6-0 to end the unseeded Russian's string of upsets. Mauresmo, seeded second, combined power and precision in the 51-minute match. She is projected to move up to a career-high No. 2 in the WTA Tour rankings.

Track and field

Marion Jones won twice Sunday in her first competition in more than three weeks, capturing the long jump and running the second leg for a U.S. 400-meter relay team that had the best time in the world this year. Jones helped lead the United States to victory in a meet against Germany and France. The meet was used by U.S. coaches mostly as a chance to practice relays before the Athens Games, which begin Friday. Jones leaped 22 feet, 4 1/2 inches on her last attempt to win the long jump. That was much shorter than the 23-4 she jumped to win at the U.S. Olympic trials in July.

Jerome Young reportedly tested positive for the banned drug EPO at a meet last month, which would be the second flunked test for a sprinter who might cost the U.S. relay team its gold medal from the Sydney Olympics. Young would face a lifetime ban if he is found guilty. The French sports daily L'Equipe reported Sunday that Young's sample from a July 23 meet in Saint Denis contained traces of the endurance-boosting drug. L'Equipe, which based its report on anonymous sources, said a laboratory is analyzing a second sample.