TIGERS FIRE COACH: Detroit's woeful pitching cost pitching coach Rick Adair his job Friday.
Detroit hired Dan Warthen, its pitching coach at Triple-A Toledo, to take over a staff with a 5.20 ERA and 35-50 record heading into its weekend series with Milwaukee.The Tigers, 20 1/2 games behind Cleveland in the AL Central, are 10th among AL teams in ERA and 12th in saves. They lead the league in hitting batters.
"I don't blame Rick for where we are," general manager Randy Smith said. "But when you have a chance to make a change you do it, and then you deal with how the public reacts to it."
O'S EXTEND CAL: Cal Ripken's $6.3 million option for the 2000 season was exercised by the Baltimore Orioles on Friday, giving baseball's iron man at least one more year in his brilliant career.
Ripken, who turns 39 next month, entered Friday night's game against Philadelphia with a .311 average, 12 homers and 36 RBIs. He will make his 17th consecutive All-Star appearance and 16th straight start for the American League on Tuesday at Fenway Park.
Ripken, who played in a record 2,632 consecutive games before asking out of the lineup last Sept. 20, is 53 hits shy of 3,000 and four homers away from 400.
FISK HR BALL SOLD: Carlton Fisk's home run ball that won Game 6 of the 1975 World Series sold for $113,273 on the first day of Leland's two-day auction of sports memorabilia.
The 12th-inning homer, one of the most dramatic in Series history, is remembered for Fisk's waving his arms frantically at the ball, as if trying to keep it in fair territory as it sailed toward the wall in Fenway Park.
The home run gave Boston a 7-6 victory and tied the Series at three games apiece. Cincinnati won Game 7 the next night.
Fisk's home run ball hit the foul pole, bounced back onto the field and was retrieved by Cincinnati left fielder George Foster, who has had it since that game. The identity of the purchaser was not released by Leland's.
The ball was the final item sold at the auction on Thursday. Also sold were a ball Mickey Mantle hit off the facade at Yankee Stadium on May 30, 1956, and a 1977 World Series ring presented to John DeLorean, who then was a partner in the ownership of the New York Yankees.
The Mantle ball, the closest any ball has come to being hit out of Yankee Stadium, went for $58,033, and the DeLorean ring sold for $20,373.
BERE IN REHAB: Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jason Bere will start Sunday for Triple-A Indianapolis at Columbus as part of his rehabilitation program to overcome elbow pain and control problems.