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Cole Hamels pitched eight impressive innings and Tadahito Iguchi hit his first Phillies homer as visiting Philadelphia beat Ted Lilly for its fourth straight win. Aaron Rowand also hit a three-run drive for the Phillies, who have won nine of 10 and trail the Mets by three games. Philadelphia was 8 1/2 games behind the Mets on June 2.

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The Phillies’ Shane Victorino strained his right calf trying to beat out a double play and will have a precautionary MRI exam today. Victorino’s replacement, Michael Bourn, stumbled over the bullpen mound chasing a foul ball and later was taken out because of a left ankle sprain. he will be X-rayed today.

Hamels (12-5) allowed one run and three hits, struck out eight and walked two. The 23-year-old lefthander retired nine of the first 10 Cubs batters and also set down his last nine. Brett Myers pitched a perfect ninth to complete the three-hitter and earn his seventh save.

Lilly dropped to 11-5 and Ryan Theriot homered in the sixth inning for the Cubs, who are a game behind the Brewers in the NL Central.

DEVIL RAYS 5, BLUE JAYS 4: Carl Crawford, who scored the tying run as a pinch runner in the ninth inning, led off the bottom of the 11th with a home run to lift Tampa Bay. Crawford hit a 3-and-2 pitch from Brian Wolfe (2-1) over the fence in centerfield for Tampa Bay, which had lost eight of nine.

TWINS 3, ROYALS 1: Scott Baker sparkled over eight crisp innings and Joe Mauer drove in three runs to lead host Minnesota. Baker (5-4) faced one batter over the minimum, struck out seven and allowed two hits, both in the fourth inning. Joe Nathan pitched a perfect ninth for his 23rd save in 25 opportunities.

MARINERS 2, ANGELS 0: Miguel Batista (11-7), Brandon Morrow and J.J. Putz combined on a four-hitter for host Seattle. Kelvim Escobar (11-5) went eight innings and took the loss. Ichiro Suzuki had a triple and two singles for the Mariners, who have won four straight and have moved within three games of the first-place Angels in the AL West.

TIGERS 5, ATHLETICS 2: Curtis Granderson and Placido Polanco each had three hits and an RBI for visiting Detroit, which snapped a four-game losing streak. Jordan Tata, brought up to take the injured Kenny Rogers’ spot in Detroit’s rotation, allowed two runs and six hits in seven innings in his first major-league start.

Hancock family drops suit

The family of late Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock dropped a wrongful-death lawsuit against Mike Shannon’s restaurant stemming from the player’s death in April. The family’s lawyer, Mark Bronson, said he filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit before a procedural hearing in St. Louis Circuit Court. The lawsuit had alleged that others shared responsibility for Hancock’s death.

Barry Bonds tries again to tie Hank Aaron’s 755.

A-Rod chases his 500th home run.

Tom Glavine goes for career victory No. 300.

Tonight could be one of baseball’s biggest milestone nights.

It would be quite a memorable night if Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Glavine all make history within a matter of hours. From Chavez Ravine to the Bronx and Brew City, it’s going to be a fun night.

Yet there is no guarantee Bonds will be in the starting lineup for the series opener at the rival Los Angeles Dodgers.

“We’ll see,” was all Giants manager Bruce Bochy would say Sunday.

Bonds hit his 754th home run Friday night against Florida, then went 1 for 7 with five walks the rest of the weekend. That left him trying to match Aaron’s mark on the road, and it won’t be friendly.

The hostile Dodger crowd likely will try to make Bonds uncomfortable in left field and at the plate this week. The Giants then head farther south to San Diego for the weekend.

Since hitting No. 499 on Wednesday in Kansas City, Rodriguez is 0for12 with five strikeouts. New York opens a homestand against visiting Chicago White Sox tonight at Yankee Stadium.

A-Rod, who turned 32 on Friday, is bidding to break Jimmie Foxx’s record (32, 338 days) as the youngest to reach 500.

Glavine and the New York Mets will be at Milwaukee. He looks to become baseball’s 23rd 300-game winner, at age 41.

You could judge this book by its cover. You could trust that what you saw was what you would get.

The silver head of hair, which was rarely out of place. The immaculate sweaters. The folded arms, with the right hand tucked under the left elbow and left index finger resting against the left cheek.

Even before Bill Walsh uttered a single word, you knew something intelligent would flow from his mouth.

And flow is the appropriate way to put it. Walsh didn’t bark. He didn’t bellow. He didn’t do a lot of the things one commonly expects from someone who makes his living in the hard-bitten world of football coaching, yet he had uncommon results. Walsh’s San Francisco 49ers became an NFL dynasty in 1980s, setting a championship standard that most other teams could only dream of achieving. Walsh moved the 49ers past the Steelers dynasty of the 1970s by building a consistent winner that would last for many more years past his tenure.

Through it all, he handled himself with the utmost grace, class and dignity. There was something regal about the way he moved and the way he spoke — especially when the subject was football.

Walsh had a way of making the game sound like an art form, if not the curriculum from an advanced science course.

“I always said that he was an artist and all the rest of us were blacksmiths pounding the anvil while he was painting the picture,” said Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren, who was Walsh’s offensive coordinator with the 49ers. “There is always more than one way to win games but that was how he chose to do it.”

Whatever you thought you knew about football quickly vanished once Professor Walsh began his lecture. His unique perspective and vision reshaped and redefined the game.

We thought coaches had to be barrel-chested and craggy faced, loud and intimidating. Then we met Walsh, who got his point across with every bit as much authority but with a whole lot less bluster than so many of his predecessors and contemporaries.

We thought passes had to be thrown to wide receivers on long-developing deep routes. Then we met Walsh and his version of the “West Coast Offense,” which emphasized horizontal passing and plenty of short throws to the running backs.

We thought practice had to be relentless and filled with punishing hits, a constant test of survival so that players would be well prepared to handle the violence on Game Day. Then we met Walsh, who kept players out of pads for long stretches of training camp and between games in order to enhance their ability to stay fresh and healthy through the latter stages of the season — and into the postseason.

Many of those principles could be found in numerous branches on the Walsh coaching tree — Holmgren, Sam Wyche, Jon Gruden and Andy Reid, just to name a few.

My most lasting image of Walsh comes from a story that former NFL quarterback Phil Simms shared with me from one of Simms’ pre-draft workouts at Morehead State before the 1979 draft. Walsh, beginning his first year as the 49ers’ coach, was in search of a quarterback he hoped would lead the franchise from the mire of a 2-14 finish in 1978. He thought Simms would be a good prospect.

Before Walsh’s visit to Morehead, Simms had auditioned for about nine teams. Simms’ forte was an exceptionally powerful arm, and each of the nine previous NFL visitors wanted to see how hard he could throw.

Not Walsh.

“I started working out, throwing hard as usual, and Bill said, ‘Oh, that’s waaay too hard. Throw a little softer. Throw with a little more rhythm,’ ” Simms recalled. “So I took a little off of my passes, but Bill again said, ‘Oh, it’s way too hard. Softer.’ Now I was thinking, ‘Okayyy.’ ”

Walsh instructed Simms to “drop back really gracefully,” to be “really light” on his feet, to make his passes “really pretty,” to deliver “nice spirals,” to throw with “beautiful rhythm.” Simms had never received such coaching. He didn’t even knew such a passing style existed.

“After about 10 minutes I finally got it,” Simms said. “I finally got to a speed that he liked. For the next 30 minutes, I threw just the way he wanted me to. My passes were at a nice pace, the perfect pace. They were easy for the receivers to catch. They were on time. I was throwing nothing but perfect spirals. As I was getting into it I was thinking, ‘Hey, this is really cool. Man, this is great. This guy has been here 15 minutes and I am like a machine.’

Bill Walsh couldn’t get highly touted Phil Simms, but struck gold with Joe Montana.
Bill Walsh couldn’t get highly touted Phil Simms, but struck gold with Joe Montana.
“I had always been taught to throw it hard; just drop back and rip it. But when you throw the ball hard it gets away from you every now and then or at times the receivers drop the ball. In about 15 minutes to a half-hour, I learned about the rhythm of throwing and being a little better technically. The results were awesome. That was one of the more enjoyable days I’ve ever had in my life.”

During a second visit to Morehead, Walsh promised Simms that if the 49ers drafted him, he would lead the NFL in passing every year. When Simms responded with an incredulous look, Walsh proceeded to mention the names of quarterbacks he had helped win passing titles — Greg Cook and Ken Anderson while Walsh was an assistant in Cincinnati (where he also helped Virgil Carter lead the NFL in completion percentage); Guy Benjamin and Steve Dills at Stanford, before they went onto NFL careers as well.

“We’re not taking about history’s greatest throwers,” Simms said. “But nothing was getting in the way of his quarterback having success.”

The Niners didn’t have a first-round pick in ‘79. The New York Giants did, and used it on Simms. The 49ers used a third-round choice on a quarterback named Joe Montana.

Simms had an impressive career with the Giants. Montana, whose lack of arm strength was viewed as a handicap, established himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.

He had Walsh to thank.

So do many other quarterbacks and coaches. Walsh made a lot of people in and around football better and smarter.

His legacy ranks among the greatest in the history of the game.

Arraigned last week on charges stemming from an alleged dogfighting ring, Falcons QB Michael Vick’s 2007 season is very much in limbo at present.  While the NFL reviews the situation, and circles its legal wagons, Vick remains on the sidelines indefinitely, and that has some wagering windows closed for the moment.

Michael Vick is a walking controversy and has no one to blame but himself. From the idiotic ‘Ron Mexico’ herpes fiasco, to the one-finger salute he gave booing Falcons’ fans, and the curious airport water-bottle incident, Vick seems better able to dodge would-be tacklers than so-called ‘character’ issues.
Vick ramifications rock wagering world

But none of those controversial issues even compares to Vick’s latest off-field problems surrounding his alleged connections to dog fighting. Once again Vick is giving Atlanta another major headache that could end up torpedoing the upcoming season for the Falcons.

After finishing 7-9 last year, a whole lot wasn’t really expected from Atlanta this season but the potential loss of Vick has knocked them into a tailspin. This has also meant a great deal to oddsmakers, and bettors have to try and figure where the Falcons fit on the futures market both with and without their star quarterback.

Even though Vick’s status for the upcoming season remains in limbo, most sportsbooks aren’t taking any chances and have started raising the odds on anything and everything that has the Falcons listed on it. Some books have even started copying Vick’s endorsement companies and merchandise manufacturers by dropping Vick and the Falcons off their odds altogether. As soon as news that Vick’s season could be severely shortened hit the airwaves, Vegas oddsmakers changed the Falcons from a 75/1 Super Bowl underdog to a 100/1 long shot.

Some sportsbooks went as far as removing NFC South props altogether, since the Falcons’ chances of winning with Michael Vick — however slim they are — are still much better than with an offense led by castoff Joey Harrington. Is it too late for Atlanta to call a do-over on the Matt Schaub trade?

One popular online sportsbook is offering an interesting prop where you can wager on which team you think will lead the NFL in total rushing yards. The Falcons were the No. 1 rushing team in the league by almost 400 yards over their closest rival, the Chargers, last year. Oddsmakers have pegged San Diego as the favorite to be the NFL’s rushing kings this year, and if Vick sits it will likely be very difficult for Atlanta to lead the league again. Harrington at QB would likely lead to more carries by Warrick Dunn and Jerious Norwood, but would the duo be able to make up the extra 1,039 yards that Vick rushed for last season? Not likely.

The Vick fallout for the sportsbooks hasn’t just been limited to props and futures odds. Almost every sportsbook out there posts odds for the first week of the NFL season right after the new schedule is released. That was long before the latest Vick drama became the talk of sports radio. When the Week 1 matchup between Atlanta and Minnesota first hit the sportsbooks, most had it set as a pick’em. Good luck finding any up-to-date odds on that game because most books have turfed it for now while waiting for the league’s final verdict on Vick.

If Harrington does end up replacing a suspended Vick, expect the weekly odds on Falcon games to be much more favorable to Atlanta’s opponents than they would have been with Vick. This change could make the Falcons one of the most difficult teams to handicap because even if the spread against them is higher, all it might take is the defense to make a few stands to at least win ATS.

The NFL did get off lucky in one aspect in the Vick situation. Thankfully there are no teams in the league named after any kind of dog. If there had been, the press would have had a field day if Vick ever played that team and beat them. If Vick is ever found to have been inhumane to cats, Atlanta games against Carolina, Jacksonville, Cincinnati and Detroit will not be pretty.

Luckily for Vick, the Falcons aren’t scheduled to play in Cleveland this year, as the Dawg Pound would certainly be barking.

Looks like suspended NFL player Adam “Pac Man” Jones is making a move to the wrestling world soon.  An announcement is anticipated on Tuesday from Nashville-based TNA also known as Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling.

Jones was suspended for the entire 2007 season on April 10th by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell due to numerous run-ins with the law in just two NFL seasons.

Most recently, Jones was alleged to be involved in a shooting at a Las Vegas strip club during the NBA’s All-Star weekend in February.  That incident left an employee of the club, ironically a former pro wrestler, paralyzed from the waist down.

In addition, the trouble Tennessee Titans cornerback is also accused of punching a stripper at the club while she was trying to grab some money off the stage, reports our friends at TMZ.

Since joining the NFL, Jones has been questioned by police on ten different occasions and has been arrested five times.

Reportedly, TNA is signing Jones to get publicity for their organization in an industry that is fighting back from the bad publicity created by the Chris Benoit tragedy.

Some how though, it seems that a troubled soul like “Pac Man” may not get them the ‘good publicity’ they seek.

Had the NFL Network wanted to make a more dramatic critique of Deion Sanders and his journalism, it could have dispatched a minion to pour a bucket of ice water over Sanders’s head.

Instead, executives at the cable network cited contract language to demand that Sanders, their employee, stop publishing his thoughts about football in The Fort Myers News-Press. Sanders has written a weekly column for the Florida newspaper since January.

“We have no problem with him expressing his opinions,” said Seth Palansky, a spokesman for the NFL Network. “But that’s what we pay him to do for us on an exclusive basis.”

Sanders, an analyst for the NFL Network, wrote a July 22 column about Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcons quarterback who has been charged with participation in a dogfighting ring. Ed Reed, the sports editor of The News-Press, said the NFL Network told him not to publish another column Sanders wrote for Sunday’s paper in which Sanders attempted to clarify and expand his previous comments. Sanders is a native of Fort Myers.

Reed said the NFL Network demanded that Sanders let the network read the column before publication.

“They wanted to see what he was saying,” Reed said. “They asked him not to run it. Deion said, ‘Why can’t I?’ Then he looked at the contract and he was like, ‘Uh, O.K.’ ”

Sanders is a former professional baseball and football player. In 1992, after his Atlanta Braves won the National League pennant, Sanders poured water on the head of the announcer Tim McCarver, a former baseball player then working for CBS. McCarver had criticized Sanders for playing two sports at the same time and had said Sanders broke a promise to devote himself exclusively to baseball during the playoffs.

The Sanders affair is one of several recently that involve sports and the news media regarding contract rights, coverage and sponsorships. The N.F.L. has requested that news media outlets sign forms limiting the amount of video that can be transmitted on the Internet.

The league also wants photographers to wear vests that promote league sponsors. The National Collegiate Athletic Association recently evicted a Louisville newspaper reporter from a press box for blogging about a game during the College World Series.

Reed said Sanders has been paid a “couple hundred” dollars per week for his column, far less than what Sanders earns from the NFL Network under a multiyear contract he signed this month after working for the network last season.

Palansky said the NFL Network was not aware that Sanders was writing a newspaper column until one appeared July 22 under the headline, “Don’t be too quick to judge.” In that column, Sanders urged perspective regarding Vick.

“You’re probably not going to believe this, but I bet Vick loves the dogs that were the biggest and the baddest,” Sanders wrote. “Maybe he identified with them in some way.”

Sanders also expressed doubt that Vick was the ringleader.

“I believe Vick had a passion for dogfighting,” Sanders wrote. “I know many athletes who share his passion. The allure is the intensity and the challenge of a dog fighting to the death. It’s like ultimate fighting, but the dog doesn’t tap out when he knows he can’t win.”

Sanders has addressed nonfootball subjects in recent columns, which, according to Reed, are transmitted to the newspaper via e-mail by an aide to Sanders who types them after Sanders dictates his thoughts.

On June 17, Sanders expressed skepticism about the dogfighting allegations against Vick and “anonymous people” accusing him.

“Make sure you check their bank statements to ensure they aren’t mad because they’ve been taken off of Vick’s posse payroll,” Sanders wrote.

Sanders also wrote that Vick “reached out to me” at the N.F.L. draft “and essentially said he needed to change some things in his life because poor choices were causing his life to spiral out of control.”

Palansky refused to provide wording from Sanders’s contract that forbid him from writing his opinion on football in newspapers, but he said Sanders could continue to write about other subjects as long as his columns are approved in advance by the NFL Network.

Requests for comment from Sanders, made through both the NFL Network and the News-Press, were not successful.

“We won’t make him available,” Palansky said.

NAPA - “Money,” Raiders Coach Lane Kiffin said. Money, plain and simple. And without more of it promised from the Raiders’ coffer, the team probably won’t be seeing rookie quarterback JaMarcus Russell in uniform any time soon.

That seemed to be the tenor of Kiffin’s comments Sunday about contract negotiations between the Raiders and agent Eric Metz.

“(It’s) actually going kind of slow right now,” Kiffin said in delivering a pessimistic outlook for the first time since the Raiders reported to training camp Thursday. “The last 24, 36 hours, not much progress has been made.”

It remains unclear how far apart the Raiders and Russell, the NFL’s top draft pick, are financially. Neither side is tipping its hand on how much money has been offered.

However, it’s a certainty that Russell expects at least as much as the guaranteed $26.5 million that Houston Texans defensive end Mario Williams - the No. 1 pick in 2006 - received as part of the six-year, $54 million contract he signed last year.

One potential sticking point is the relative inexperience of Raiders chief negotiator Marc Badain. Senior assistant Bruce Allen and senior personnel executive Mike Lombardi handled the bulk of contract negotiations since 1995. Allen bolted for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004; Lombardi was fired this off-season.

Couple that with Metz being in a prime position to bolster his reputation as an agent who does well by his clients. Prospective clients
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no doubt would be more inclined to sign with Metz if he lands Russell a handsome contract.

There’s also the possibility that Metz is waiting to see how much No. 2 pick Calvin Johnson gets from the Detroit Lions so that he can use that as a measuring stick. Johnson reportedly wants as much as $30 million guaranteed.

Kiffin said he and Russell traded phone messages Sunday. Russell is frustrated by the situation, according to Kiffin. Russell has been staying at his mother’s house in Mobile, Ala., as this plays out.

The longer it takes, Kiffin said, the harder it’s going to be on Russell to catch up. “We’re now getting to the point where we’ve had enough practices (that) it is going to be a disadvantage to him once he does get here because he is going to be behind.”

Russell has missed four practices, as well as positional and team meetings.

Raiders owner Al Davis attended practice for the first time this training camp. He watched practice only once last year.

Tight end Randal Williams missed his second consecutive practice because of what Kiffin termed “personal issues.”

Offensive tackle Chad Slaughter sustained an ankle injury and left practice

SAN FRANCISCO - Bill Walsh took great chances on the football field and with the people who worked for him.

Take Jerry Rice, the superstar receiver he plucked from tiny Mississippi Valley State in the first round back in 1985.

“He gave me the opportunity to come to a winner, San Francisco out of Mississippi Valley State University,” Rice said. “I was the 16th player taken in the first round. It was all because of Bill Walsh and what he stood for. I think that was very unique for him, because he could see talent.”

Walsh died at his Woodside home Monday morning following a long battle with leukemia. He was 75.

Walsh changed the NFL with his innovative offense and a legion of coaching disciples, breaking new ground and winning three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers along the way.

“This is just a tremendous loss for all of us, especially to the Bay Area because of what he meant to the 49ers,” said Joe Montana, San Francisco’s Hall of Fame quarterback. “Outside of my dad he was probably the most influential person in my life.”

Walsh didn’t become an NFL head coach until 47, and he spent just 10 seasons on the San Francisco sideline. But he left an indelible mark, building the once-woebegone 49ers into the most successful team of the 1980s.

The soft-spoken Californian also produced an army of proteges. Many of his former assistants went on to lead their own teams, handing down Walsh’s methods to dozens more coaches in a tree with innumerable branches.

Walsh went 102-63-1 with the 49ers, winning 10 of his 14 postseason games along with six division titles. He was the NFL’s coach of the year in 1981 and 1984.

Few men did more to shape the look of football into the 21st century. His cerebral nature and often-brilliant stratagems earned him his nickname, “the Genius,” long before his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.

Walsh created the Minority Coaching Fellowship program in 1987, helping minority coaches get a foothold in a previously white-dominated profession. Tyrone Willingham and Marvin Lewis were among those who went through the program.

Walsh twice served as the 49ers’ general manager, and coach George Seifert led San Francisco to two more Super Bowl titles after Walsh left the sideline.

Even a short list of Walsh’s adherents is stunning. Seifert, Mike Holmgren, Dennis Green, Sam Wyche, Ray Rhodes and Bruce Coslet all became NFL head coaches after serving on Walsh’s San Francisco staffs, and Tony Dungy played for him. Most of his former assistants passed on Walsh’s structures and strategies to a new generation of coaches, including Mike Shanahan, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick, Andy Reid, Pete Carroll, Gary Kubiak, Steve Mariucci and Jeff Fisher.

In 2004, Walsh was diagnosed with leukemia - the disease that also killed his son, former ABC News reporter Steve Walsh, in 2002 at age 46. He underwent months of treatment and blood transfusions, and publicly disclosed his illness in November 2006.

Walsh was coaching a high school team in Fremont, Calif., when Marv Levy, then the coach at the University of California, hired him as an assistant.

Walsh did a stint at Stanford before beginning his pro coaching career as an assistant with the AFL’s Oakland Raiders in 1966, forging a friendship with Al Davis that endured through decades of rivalry.

He moved on to the Bengals in 1968, where he stayed through 1975 and built a reputation as an elite quarterbacks coach under the legendary Paul Brown. Although Walsh and Brown were cordial, they were neither close nor shared the same football philosophies. So when Brown retired in 1975, he appointed another assistant, Bill “Tiger” Johnson, rather than Walsh to be his replacement.

“The way it was done was not as civilized as it should have been,” Walsh said. “(Brown) didn’t tell me. The TV people came to my house and told me. So that wasn’t very good.

“We really loved Cincinnati. We enjoyed it thoroughly, and our kids were in school, and we had good friends. But the minute that happened, my wife and I knew that we’d have to leave and go someplace to start over. And we did.”

The Walshes left for Southern California, where Bill took a job as offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers. He spent less than a year there before accepting the position of head coach at Stanford, where in two seasons he turned around an average program with victories in the 1977 Sun Bowl and 1978 Bluebonnet Bowl.

Walsh built a playbook that included short dropbacks and novel receiving routes, as well as constant repetition of every play in practice. Though it originated in Cincinnati, it became known many years later as the West Coast offense - a name Walsh never liked or repeated, but which eventually grew to encompass his offensive philosophy and the many tweaks added by Holmgren, Shanahan and others.

By the 1990s, much of the NFL was running some version of the West Coast offense, with its fundamental belief that the passing game can set up an effective running attack, rather than the opposite conventional wisdom.

The 49ers chose him to rebuild the franchise in 1979.

The long-suffering team had gone 2-14 before Walsh’s arrival. They repeated the record in his first season. Walsh doubted his abilities to turn around such a miserable situation - but earlier in 1979, the 49ers drafted Montana from Notre Dame.

Walsh turned over the starting job to Montana in 1980, when the 49ers improved to 6-10 - and improbably, San Francisco won its first championship in 1981, just two years after winning two games.

Championships followed in the postseasons of 1984 and 1988 as Walsh built a consistent winner. He also showed considerable acumen in personnel, adding Lott, Charles Haley, Roger Craig and Rice to his rosters after he was named the 49ers’ general manager in 1982 and then president in 1985

CAMP DAVID, Md. (AP) After meeting with the successor of his longtime ally, President Bush says British Prime Minister Gordon Brown “understands the stakes of the struggle” in Iraq. The two conferred at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. It was their first meeting since Brown replaced Tony Blair.

BAGHDAD (AP) It’s been quite a day in Iraq. The Parliament ignored international criticism and began a monthlong summer adjournment. And one day after celebrating the country’s multiethnic Soccer team’s win in the Asian Cup, at least six people were killed when a mini-bus exploded in a Baghdad marketplace.

CAPITOL HILL (AP) The House has passed a nonbinding resolution urging Japan to apologize for coercing thousands of women, most of them foreign, to work as sex slaves for its military during World War II. A number of Japanese officials have already apologized.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) Fire officials in Montana have ordered another 80 homes evacuated after two more wildfires flared up over the weekend. Authorities say the largest of the wildfires still burning in Idaho will be fully contained by tomorrow. It has scorched more than a thousand square miles.

CHICAGO (AP) Chicago police are looking into whether the robberies of N-B-A stars Eddy Curry of the Knicks and Antoine Walker of the Miami Heat are linked. Both were bound with duct tape and robbed of cash and jewelry at their Chicago-area homes this month Curry on Saturday and Walker on July tenth.

CHICAGO–Two hulking NBA stars were bound with duct tape and robbed of cash and jewellery by masked gunmen in separate holdups that have Chicago-area detectives wondering whether someone is targeting professional athletes.

Eddy Curry, a 6-foot-11, 285-pound forward with the New York Knicks, was tied up along with his wife and an employee at his mansion in suburban Burr Ridge on Saturday.

Miami Heat forward Antoine Walker, who is 6-9 and weighs 245 pounds, was similarly robbed along with a relative at his $4 million (all figures U.S.) townhouse in Chicago’s exclusive River North section on July 10.

No one was injured in either case.

“Our guys are talking to Chicago to determine if it’s just a copycat or a coincidence or if there is a relationship there,” Burr Ridge police Cpl. Tim Vaclav said.

Police said the gunmen – three in the Curry holdup, two in Walker’s case – probably knew exactly who their victims were.

Curry’s agent, Lamont Carter, said Curry had no immediate plans to return to his “dream house.”

“He feels violated,” Carter said. “He’s relieved and happy that his family’s okay.

“He’s just relieved to be living.”

Said Walker, “I don’t feel safe.”