Lewis (64) Leads at New Orleans

J.L. Lewis, a working club pro last year who never finished better than 28th in a PGA tournament, shot an eight-under-par 64 Thursday in New Orleans to take the first-round lead at the rain-soaked Freeport-McMoRan Golf Classic.

Four inches of rain had hit the course in the preceding 24 hours, and a flood that had just receded left bunkers flooded and dead fish on the fairways.

Brad Bryant was at 65, ahead of a field that is diminished in star quality because many players are practicing for next week’s Masters. Kirk Triplett, Ronnie Black and Mike Heinen were at 66.

Hockey

Dan Shermerhorn won a faceoff, passed to Reg Cardinal and took a return, beating goalie Marty Turco to give Maine a 4-3 victory over Michigan 28 seconds into the third overtime of the second-longest game in NCAA Division I history.

Maine will face Boston University on Saturday at Providence, R.I., in the first all-New England NCAA championship game since 1978. The Terriers, who were routed, 9-1, by Lake Superior State in last year’s title game, defeated Minnesota, 7-3.

Football

Harry Gamble, his job as president of the Philadelphia Eagles in jeopardy since Jeffrey Lurie bought the team more than a year ago, has accepted a job with the NFL.

The Rams signed free-agent linebacker Carlos Jenkins, who had played the last four seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, to a multiyear contract.

Jurisprudence

The man who stabbed Monica Seles during a tennis match two years ago was a “politically crazed fanatic� who hated Serbs, her lawyer told a German court in Hamburg. Seles was born in Serbia. She has since become a U.S. citizen.

Guenther Parche’s defense lawyer asked for lenient treatment of a man of “limited intelligence.�

Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent has been sued for $600,000 by David Kaplan, the co-author of his canceled biography, who also seeks the right to use material gathered for the book.

A class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of 1950 National League rookie of the year Sam Jethroe, demanding he receive pension money from major league baseball.

Jethroe, 78, played for the Boston Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates for three years and 17 days in the early 1950s before being sent to the minor leagues, where he played another seven years.

He is not eligible for a pension or medical benefits because before 1980, a player had to play at least four full major league seasons to be eligible. Since 1980, all a player has to do to earn pension benefits is play one day in the big leagues.

Tennis

Arantxa Sanchez Vicario saved her No. 1 ranking by overcoming a sprained ankle and the shots of Amanda Coetzer to win, 7-6 (7-1), 3-6, 6-3, and reach the Family Circle Cup quarterfinals at Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Sanchez Vicario said the injury may keep her from her next match, against fifth-seeded Magdalena Maleeva, who beat Chanda Rubin, 6-3, 6-2.

Drugs

Middle-distance runners Lyubov Kremlyova of Russia and Violeta Beclea of Romania have been suspended for four years each for testing positive for steroids after a Feb. 15 meet at Erfurt, Germany.

FINA, swimming’s world governing body, said it was concerned over recent cases of Chinese athletes using banned substances, but had found no proof of any systematic doping program in China.

Polish runner Antoni Niemczak will fight his two-year suspension for testing positive for ephedrine after the Tokyo Marathon, saying he believes he may have unwittingly taken a natural derivative from vitamins sold to him by a vendor before a race at Redondo Beach.

Names in the News

Diego Maradona, his whereabouts unknown for three days, was found in a Buenos Aires hotel where the soccer star had locked himself in his room and refused to come out. . . . Terry Moore, center fielder for the famed “Gas House Gang� St. Louis Cardinals of the 1930s, died in Collinsville, Ill., at 82. . . . A memorial service will be held at at 2 p.m. at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana on Saturday for Brad Smith, former minor league pitcher and club baseball coach who died Tuesday.