Seattle gets expansion soccer team
Major League Soccer has granted an expansion franchise to Seattle that will begin play at Qwest Field in 2009 and will be owned in part by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
“I can confirm that commissioner Don Garber is going to travel to Seattle for an announcement Tuesday of the expansion of Major League Soccer for the future into the Seattle market,” Dan Courtemanche, MLS senior vice president for marketing and communications, said Friday by phone from New York.
Gary Wright, a spokesman for First and Goal, Inc., the subsidiary that operates Qwest Field for Allen’s Vulcan, Inc., said Allen will be one of the team’s owners. Allen already owns the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL, who play at Qwest Field, and the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers.
•Los Angeles Galaxy forward Landon Donovan was among 17 players chosen by U.S. soccer coach Bob Bradley to face South Africa in the Nelson Mandela Challenge Cup, the Americans’ final game of the year.
Golf
Stadler leads field
Kevin Stadler led two-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson by one shot at the HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai, China, carding a 3-under-par 69 for an 11-under 133 total.
Drawing the largest galleries in the absence of Tiger Woods, No. 2-ranked Mickelson shot a 66 with four birdies on the last five holes to go with Thursday’s 68.
•After birdieing the final seven holes Thursday for a share of the lead in the Tournament of Champions, Paula Creamer shot a bogey-free, 7-under 65 to open a five-stroke advantage at 12-under 132 in Mobile, Ala.
Wendy Ward of Edwall, Wash., shot 69 and is tied for seventh at 142.
Miscellany
Torre eyes Rodriguez
Joe Torre thinks there’s a chance Alex Rodriguez could join him in Los Angeles, and the new Dodgers manager sure sounded hopeful.
“It’s possible,” Torre said, repeating that phrase twice as a small grin crept across his face. “You’ve got four or five clubs maybe that figure to be in the sweepstakes.”
•Shortstop Omar Vizquel agreed to a $5.3 million, one-year contract with the San Francisco Giants.
•Nikolay Davydenko’s wife and brother have been questioned by ATP investigators looking into irregular betting patterns surrounding one of the Russian player’s tennis matches.
•Middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik needed 108 stitches after cutting his hands and arms on a window in Youngstown, Ohio.
•Devanei Hampton will miss up to the first six weeks of the season for the No. 13 California women’s basketball team after having knee surgery. She is the reigning Pac-10 Player of the Year.
•Evan Lysacek edged Johnny Weir in a duel between the current and former American champions in the men’s ice skating short program in the Cup of China at Harbin, China.
•Speedskater Jeremy Wotherspoon of Canada set the world record for 500 meters with a time of 34.03 seconds, and Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands tied the record for the 1,500 with a time of 1 minute, 42.32 seconds in the World Cup at the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns, Utah.