Blues Trade High-Scoring Shanahan to Whalers

Brendan Shanahan, a star left wing with the St. Louis Blues who broke his ankle during the playoffs, was traded Thursday night to the Hartford Whalers for top young defenseman Chris Pronger.

A big scorer who finished with 20 goals last season, Shanahan injured his ankle in the fifth game of the playoffs, and the Blues were eliminated in the first round by Vancouver.

Shanahan, 26, had 52 goals and 50 assists in 1993-94 and 51 goals in 1992-93.

Golf

Ronnie Black’s 30-foot birdie putt helped him to a six-under-par 65 and broke an 11-way tie in the first round of the Ideon Classic at Sutton, Mass.

Tied at 66 were Gene Sauers, Jim Carter, Ken Green, George Burns, Jim McGovern, Mark Wurtz, P.J. Horgan III, Fred Funk, Scott McCarron and Joey Rassett.

A PGA Tour official said it was unlikely there has been an 11-way tie for the lead after any round.

John Daly, fresh off his victory in the British Open, was the star attraction--except on the leader board--in the first round of the Dutch Open at Hilversum, Netherlands.

Scott Hoch and Irishman Philip Walton took the spotlight from Daly, shooting six-under 65s to tie for the first-round lead. Daly struggled to a 72.

Brian Barnes made a 90-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a five-under 67 and a one-stroke lead in the British Seniors Open at Portrush in Northern Ireland.

American Bob Murphy and Ireland’s Michael Murphy were at 68. Arnold Palmer is at 71.

Kay Cockerill, who says doing golf commentary on television improved her game, shot a six-under 66 to lead Kris Tschetter by a stroke after one round of the LPGA Friendly’s Classic at Agawam, Mass.

Tennis

Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras, the world’s two top players, moved closer to a showdown at the $2.5-million Canadian Open by easily advancing to the quarterfinals at Montreal.

Agassi breezed by Czech qualifier Daniel Vacek, 6-3, 6-2, and Sampras downed Mauricio Hadad of Colombia, 6-2, 6-3.

Baseball

Rick Ferrell, a Hall of Famer who for 41 years held the American League record for games caught, died Thursday in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. He was 89.

Ferrell, a native of Durham, N.C., played in the major leagues from 1929 through 1947 for the St. Louis Browns, Boston Red Sox and Washington Senators. He was voted into the Hall of Fame by the veteran’s committee in 1984.

His record of 1,806 games caught was broken by Carlton Fisk in 1988.

Miscellany

Four Chinese track and field athletes have been banned from competing after testing positive for doping, two of them for steroids, the State Physical Culture and Sports Commission announced in Beijing. Zhang Taibing, a men’s 200-meter runner, and Zuo Xinxia, a women’s marathoner, were suspended for four years for testing positive for steroids. Lu Jing and Liu Jiansong were given three-month suspensions for “unintentionally” taking cold medicine during competition.

Two world-class swimmers were banned for two years after testing positive for banned substances by FINA, the international swimming federation.

FINA officials announced that French long-distance swimmer Anne Chagnaud tested positive for the stimulant Etilephrine at the Marathon Swimming World Series in Tapes, Brazil, in January.

FINA also rejected the appeal of Finland’s Petteri Lehtinen and confirmed his two-year suspension for use of Salbutamol, a stimulant sometimes found in asthma treatments.

Because of its inability to land a title sponsor, the Sun Bowl in El Paso is considering reducing payments to participating teams from $1 million to $750,000.

Names in the News

Katie Castator-Currie, a pioneer female sportswriter with the San Bernardino Sun, was eulogized Thursday as “a first-rate journalist who didn’t think of herself as a pioneer, but as a professional” in a memorial service in Redlands. Castator-Currie, 59, covered the Rams, motor racing, golf and tennis. She died July 20 of complications from an auto accident and cancer. . . . Scott Brayton left an Indianapolis hospital a day after his car spun out during practice for next week’s Brickyard 400 stock car race, leaving him with a concussion and a broken left ankle.