FanFare 5/19/03

Briefly

Baseball

The San Diego Padres fired pitching coach Greg Booker before Saturday night's 12-2 loss to Atlanta and replaced him with Darren Balsley, the pitching coach of Mobile in the Double-A Southern League.

"We just felt it was time for a change," general manager Kevin Towers said in a statement.

Booker, 42, was beginning his second full season as the Padres' pitching coach. The Padres rank at or near the bottom in the NL in many pitching categories. San Diego have a 5.63 ERA, ahead of only Cincinnati (5.74) and had a major league-high 204 walks.

Colleges

Big East Conference athletic directors gave the impression Sunday that they had slowed Miami's momentum to leave the league.

It was a small victory for the Big East leaders, who are gathered for five days of meetings in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and will take any kind of victory in efforts to save their beleaguered conference.

When the Atlantic Coast Conference offered to talk expansion with Big East programs Miami, Syracuse and Boston College on Friday, many people thought the Hurricanes would have a decision as soon as today, and the other schools would quickly follow.

To hear the Big East folks tell it, however, that timeline doesn't look like it will hold.

"Nothing's going to be decided this week, nothing's going to be decided next week," said Pittsburgh executive vice chancellor Jerry Cochran, attending in place of new AD Jeff Long.

Motorsports

Michael Schumacher overcame a fiery pit stop to win Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, closing within two points of Formula One leader Kimi Raikkonen.

Schumacher won his third straight race and the 67th of his career. The five-time Formula One champion, who failed to finish in the top three in the first three races of the season, has 38 points, compared to Raikkonen's 40 after six races.

Schumacher finished 3.3 seconds ahead of Raikkonen's McLaren-Mercedes in the 69-lap race on the 2.69-mile A1-Ring. Schumacher's Ferrari teammate, Rubens Barrichello, was third, 3.9 seconds behind.

The race, originally scheduled for 71 laps, was shortened after Christiano da Matta's Toyota stalled twice just before the original start, forcing the cars to take two additional warmup laps.

Schumacher's crew had to battle flames during a pit stop after the 23rd lap when excess fuel coming out of the hose briefly caught fire. The crew quickly sprayed foam on the side of the car to extinguish the flames.

Schumacher's stop took more than 20 seconds, well over the usual 10 seconds.

Doug Kalitta won his second Top Fuel event of the season Sunday at the NHRA K&N Filters SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, N.J.

Whit Bazemore, Greg Anderson and Shawn Gann also won their divisions at the $2.1 million race.

Kalitta, who earned the top qualifying spot for the sixth time in eight events, earned his 13th career Top Fuel victory when he covered the track in 4.494 seconds at 328.54 mph to beat points leader Larry Dixon.

Tennis

Guillermo Coria beat fellow Argentine Agustin Calleri 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 Sunday to win the Hamburg Masters for his second career ATP Tour title.

Coria, who was seeded 12th, dominated the final, relentlessly chasing down shots and making few errors.

Calleri was 24-7 on clay this year heading into the match, but he had 48 unforced errors to Coria's 12.

Coria lost only one set all week at this $2.4 million tournament, a major tuneup for the French Open, which starts May 26.

Coria, 21, picked up his first title since winning at Vina del Mar in 2001 -- the same year his career was put on hold by a seventh-month suspension after testing positive for a banned substance. He won the Roland Garros junior title in 1999.

Two points from losing, Kim Clijsters came back to beat Amelie Mauresmo 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-0 Sunday at the Italian Open for her third title of the year.

Trailing 6-5 in the second set, Clijsters broke Mauresmo's serve to get to a tiebreaker, then never trailed again.