Sports in Brief | BMW Oracle crew near elimination

Luna Rossa of Italy beat BMW Oracle Racing of the United States yesterday to move within one victory of the Louis Vuitton Cup finals.

Luna Rossa won by 1 minute, 57 seconds and leads the best-of-nine semifinals off Valencia, Spain, by four wins to one. Emirates Team New Zealand also moved in front, four to one, against Desafio Espanol, crossing the finish 1:49 ahead of the Spanish boat.

BMW Oracle Racing entered the America's Cup challengers series as one of the favorites to meet defending champion Alinghi in the finals June 23 to July 4, but now is on the brink of elimination.

James Cotter

drew a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the 12th to give Villanova a 5-4 win over Rutgers in Big East baseball Friday night to qualify for the conference tournament for the first time in 10 years.

Dan Terpak was 3 for 6 with a double and two RBIs for the Wildcats.

The sixth-seeded 'Cats (28-23, 12-15) will meet third-seeded Louisville (38-18, 19-8) in the first round of the conference tournament, scheduled for Tuesday to Saturday at KeySpan Park in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Didier Drogba

scored during extra time to give Chelsea a 1-0 victory over Manchester United in the first English FA Cup final at London's rebuilt Wembley Stadium.

The teams had played to a scoreless tie in regulation and were four minutes from a penalty-kick shoot-out before Drogba exchanged passes with Frank Lampard and shot past goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar.

Chelsea now has four cup titles and joins Arsenal (1993) and Liverpool (2001) as the only clubs to win both cups in the same season.

Manchester United has won a record 11 FA Cup titles.

VfB Stuttgart won its first Bundesliga title in 15 years with a 2-1 win over Energie Cottbus in Berlin.

Roger Federer

and

Rafael Nadal

rallied to win their semifinals and set up a showdown between the top-ranked players for the Hamburg Masters championship in Germany.

Nadal defeated Lleyton Hewitt, 2-6, 6-3, 7-5, to extend his clay-court winning streak to 81 matches, and Federer beat Carlos Moya, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2.

Federer has gone four straight tournaments without a title, his worst run since he became No. 1 in February 2004. The Swiss star has won three Hamburg championships in his last four visits to the tune-up for the French Open. He takes a 16-match winning streak in Hamburg into the final, his fourth this season.

Nadal, No. 2 in the world, has a 7-3 career record against Federer, including 5-0 on clay.

Svetlana Kuznetsova and Jelena Jankovic will play for the Italian Open title today.

Kuznetsova, seeded second, beat Daniela Hantuchova, 6-4, 6-2. Jankovic, seeded third, routed Patty Schnyder, 6-1, 6-3, in the other semifinal of this clay-court warm-up for the French Open, which begins next weekend.

A

Mickey Mantle

home uniform jersey from 1960 sold for $101,410 - about $40,000 more than his salary that year - as part of a $3 million auction conducted by Lelands in Seaford, N.Y.

Other items that were auctioned included boxing gloves worn by Muhammad Ali - known as Cassius Clay when he used them in 1960 - for $47,824, Sugar Ray Robinson's fight robe from his first pro fight ($32,664), a signed Roberto Clemente baseball ($28,934), and a 1954 Stan Musial game-worn jersey ($49,083).

Jerseys were popular purchases. One Bobby Orr wore for the 1969-70 Boston Bruins fetched $83,810, a 1986 Tony Perez Cincinnati Reds jersey sold for $19,978, a game-worn Santos jersey of soccer great Pele from the mid-1960s brought $12,594, and a 1990 game-worn Joe Montana 49ers jersey returned $10,408.

Other highlights include a Mike Tyson-Robin Givens marriage license ($1,472), the 10-year contract Wayne Gretzky signed on his 18th birthday with the WHA Edmonton Oilers ($39,524), and a full 1915 Jack Johnson-Jess Willard fight ticket ($16,945).

Two Honus Wagner items went unsold: his home in Carnegie, Pa., and the five-card strip that included his T-206 card.

The New Jersey Devils changed the nickname of their ECHL affiliate in Trenton from the Titans to the Devils.