The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 52

What' in a name? Mom Jyr By Nick Cafardo GLOBE STAFF I i 1 One of the biggest sources of revenue will be the rights to the name of the stadium. Nothing will happen until the politics of the project iron themselves out. There already is considerable neighborhood opposition to the favored site at Fort Point Channel in South Boston by residents who fear crime and traffic problems. (Ironically, Gillette, located in Southie, also has voiced opposition.) There's also the problem of sinking land in the area where the park would be built. The Sox say they can stay in Fenway Park for another 15 years if necessary, but prefer to be in a new park by 2001.

With television revenues down locally and nationally, the Sox will need to produce more revenue through ticket sales. Stars in their eyes Mo Vaughn, John Valentin and Erik Hanson are expected to be named to the American League All-Star team today. Red You can expect the Red Sox' new ballpark, be it in South Boston or Roxbury, to include the name of a regional sponsor. Gillette Park? Reebok Stadium? Fidelity Field? ITT Sheraton Stadium? Those could be possibilities. Red Sox vice president John Buckley said it's much too early in the process to consider the name of the new ballpark, but he expects there will be competition.

"All I can say is we will be very fair when that time comes," said Buckley. "Everybody will get equal consideration." Gillette, long associated with baseball in this area, could be the front-runner. The Red Sox are planning to fund the new park, which would be part of a megaplex (including a convention center and a domed stadium for the Patriots), with private funds. 3-, i a ftp Sox manager Kevin Kennedy also hopes Tim Wakefield, Stan Belinda, Tim Naehring and Mike Greenwell receive consideration. If they make the team, Vaughn and Valentin would receive $50,000 bonuses and Hanson would earn $25,000.

"We're a first-place team in a tough division and that means we've had players who have had excellent years," said Kennedy. "As managers, we're asked to submit a 10-man pitching staff and I selected three from our team." Vaughn, who has been left off the team two straight seasons, is expected to get a berth behind the player who wins the fan balloting, likely Chicago's Frank Thomas. Oakland's Mark McGwire also is expected to make it, but then there's also Detroit's Cecil Fielder for Yankees manager Buck Showalter to consider. Valentin's selection appeared more likely a couple of weeks ago, but since then Gary DiSarcina of Billerica and the Angels has gained considerable ground. Vaughn expects to get the nod despite a recent dip in his average.

He was hitting .318 June 3 but is now at 584. Still, Vaughn has 19 home runs and has knocked in 47 runs. "If he isn't an All-Star, then who is?" said Kennedy. Despite a .346 average with four homers and 30 RBIs, it appears Naehring will be nosed out of the crowded field at third base. Troy O'Leary is hitting .345 but doesn't have enough at-bats to qualify for the top 10.

Eshelman in limbo Kennedy said it is doubtful Vaughn Eshelman will start Wednesday vs. Kansas City, but he said he's not giving up on the lefthander and the Rule draftee will not be sent back to the Orioles. Eshelman has a 12.56 ERA in five starts since returning from the disabled list June 13. GLOBE STAFF FILE PHOTO YUNGHI KIM Ricky Rudd was awash In smiles last year after his car won at NHIS. AtNfflS, Rudd is on right track GLOBE STAFF PHOTO BARRY CHIN Red Sox catcher Bill Haselman loses the handle on the ball, allowing the Tigers' Chris Gomez to slide home safely in the fourth inning.

Lyons shares some laughs Auto racing urn OMETIMES A RACETRACK can hold a special place in a driver's heart New Hampshire International Speedway, site of next weekend's Slick 50 300 Winston Cup race, will always be special to Ricky Rudd because it is where he recorded his first victory as a car owner. After toiling four years for Rick Hen-drick's three-car stable, Rudd launched his own enterprise, Rudd Performance Motorsports, a year ago and campaigned a Tide-sponsored Ford Thunderbird that made its only visit to Victory Lane at NHIS. "It carried a lot of weight" said Rudd, recalling his triumph in last year's Slick 50 300. "It was career win No. 15, but it was our first as a car ownerdriver.

Whatever we'd been able to accomplish to that point really didn't make a difference in a lot of people's eyes because they were sort of measuring me by what tj pe of success we could have on our own." Adding to Rudd's satisfaction was that he did it in "a hard-fought race," he said. "It wasn't one where we could sit up front there and stroll and not have to work up a sweat all day," said Rudd, a 38-year-old native of Chesapeake, Va. "I mean we had to battle off Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace there at the end, and we were in some side-by-side racing with Earnhardt, which is always interesting because you never know the outcome." Entering yesterday's Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway, the official midway point of the grueling Winston Cup season, Rudd was 15th in points (1,545) and had recorded one pole victory, four Top 5 finishes and $501,384 in winnings. It's been a difficult sophomore campaign for Rudd after he was hit in April with a then-record $50,000 fine by NASCAR officials at Talladega for taking illegal measures to help his Ford gain some badly-needed speed on the dominant Chevrolet Monte Carlos. "On the racetrack, performance-wise, the team has been better.

Already, at the halfway point, we've got three or four Top 5 finishes," said Rudd. "What's really hurt us is the three DNFs because of the accidents." The latest took place two weeks ago in the Miller Genuine Draft 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Alter 'starting second on the outside pole alongside pole sitter Jeff Gordon, Rudd demolished his intermediate track car when he got tangled up with Hut Stricklin and tagged the wall 70 laps into the race. "We've been the best Ford at several races, and at Michigan we really should have been talking about a victory, but instead we're talking about a hospital trip," Rudd said. "I feel good, it just knocked me out and that was the biggest thing.

I guess I was never out cold, but I was alert. I was in an amnesia-type situation for about 20 or 30 minutes. They sent me to the hospital in a helicopter to get a CAT-scan and on the way everything came back around. "I hit the wall pretty hard and destroyed a good race car," he added. "That car had been to Charlotte and finished fourth in The Winston and third in the 600 and sat on the outside pole at Michigan, and it looked like we had the race won because it was one of those dominant type of days for us, and all of a sudden we got tied up with somebody else and the day was over with." Although his recoDection of the race remains pretty sketchy, Rudd did recall the irony of the race's lineup, when he started alongside Gordon, whose crew 'chief, Ray Evernham, was hit with a whopping $64,000 fine at Charlotte last month.

"I guess it was nice that Ray Evernham with Jeff Gordon's team is now the biggest cheater," Rudd joked. "It takes 0ieheat off us because, for a viile, Ju SporTView PUSHING HIS BOOK, "STEVE Lyons, PSYCHOanalysis," on WEEI's Sports Huddle with Jim McCarthy and Mark Witkam recently, Lyons, now a talk-show host for Chicago's all-sports WMVP Radio as well as an analyst for ESPN amd ESPN2, told of how he pulled a hidden ball trick against Butch Hobson in 1984 when Hobson was in his final season with the Triple A Columbus Yankees and Lyons was a rookie with Pawtucket. Lyons said he felt Hobson held a grudge and the play affected their relationship when Hobson later managed Lyons with the Red Sox. Lyons was sold by Montreal to the Red Sox in late June 1992 and played 21 games for Boston before being sent to Pawtucket, where he played 37 games. Lyons started the 1993 season in Pawtucket, where he played 67 games before appearing in 28 games with Boston.

"He represented all the things I wanted to be in the game of baseball," Lyons said of Hob STEVE LYONS On the shelf son. "He played hard, played hurt and played to win. I began to reconsider, thinking, 'Maybe I should call this one off and throw the ball to the But then I thought, 'Hey, he's in the game, he's not on my team and I want to Right before Hobson took his lead off third base, he turned to Lyons and asked, "How's it going?" So Lyons again thought about taking off the trick play. Then Hobson jumped off the base, taking a 2V-step lead. "The panic in his eyes was a sight I'll never forget," Lyons said.

"His last-ditch effort to stretch back to the ball fell painfully short. Hobson pulled a groin muscle and had to be helped from the field." Lyons' book, written without a co-author, is full of similar humorous stories as Lyons looks back at a nine-year career with five teams (including four tours of duty with the Red Sox). Also included are the time he played nine positions in a game and the infamous incident when he dropped his pants on the field. MlV nior Johnson was the bad guy. He had a big fine at Daytona, then it was us and we kind of took the record and now Ray Evernham and Jeff Gordon on Rick Hen-, drick's team are the biggest cheaters in the Winston Cup garage area Now everybody tends to forget about the guys they're in front of, but that's a mark in the record book 111 gladly give up to those guys." Given the intense competitive nature of the Winston Cup series, Rudd, as one might expect, was more than eager to make a return visit to New Hampshire.

"We really are," he said. "New Hampshire's been a good track to me in the past. I ran pretty good with Hendrick's car the first time we were up there. Going back with our car, it just so happened to be the particular racetrack where the car just seemed to be dialed in from the moment we unloaded it Our speeds were quick and the car drove good and had staying power. "Anytime you take a track that caters to the way our car is set up, it kind of becomes your favorite track and you always look forward to coming Record purse at NHIS NHIS officials last week posted a record $1,288 million purse for next week's race, an increase of $209,940 over last year's record purse ($1,079 million).

When you break it down, it amounts to more than $4,295 per lap around the 1-mile oval. "The Slick 50 300 is New England's annual Super Bowl and the biggest spectator sports event" said NHIS president Gary Bahre. "We're pleased to be able to award one of the best paying races per mile on the Winston Cup circuit, This is our way of saying thanks to the racing teams and the New England region motorsports fans." With Kenny Bernstein, who at one time owned and operated a Winston Cup, NHRA and Indy car team simultaneously, retiring from racing, it had been rumored Earnhardt might be an interested buyer. But Earnhardt, who spent a week in the Bahamas recuperating from bruises suffered in a crash at Michigan, squashed them this week when he said, "I'm not trying to buy the 26 team. I never have been and I'm not looking to buy one." Earnhardt did disclose that a deal on a four-year contract extension "is in the works" with car owner Richard Childress Al Unser the defending PPG IndyCar World Series champion, suffered yet another indignity in a season that has been fraught by them when he was disqualified by IndyCar officials after apparently winning the BudweiserG.I.

Joe's 200 at Portland last week. Unser, who along with teammate Emerson Fittipaldi failed to qualify for the Indy 500 in May, was disqualified three hours after taking the checkered flag when his car was found by inspectors to be too low. According to Kirk Russell, IndyCar's vice president for competition, "It was found the car did not meet the 2-inch rule. This is the 2-inch clearance between the car's reference plane and the bottom of the sidepod." Unsers disqualification vaulted Jimmy Vasser into Victory Lane. "I want to congratulate Jimmy Vasser and his team on their first win," Unser said.

"It's just a real shame that this happened to Marlboro Team Pehske, but it just seems to be that's the way the year has been going." Car owner Roger Penske filed a protest and the car has been shipped to Bloomfield Hills, where it will undergo further inspection Almost a month after his ghastly Turn 1 wall crash on the first lap of the '79th Indy 500 comes news that Stan Fox is set to leave Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis to begin his rehabilitation from the critical head injuries he suffered. Amazingly, Fox, who has been upgraded to good condition, suffered no broken bones. "When I walk into his room, hell, look over to me and wave or put out his hand for a handshake," said Dr. Kenneth L. Renkens, Fox' neurosurgeon.

"We do expect that after a couple of months in rehabilitation, he'll be able to go -tt The book, published by Sagamore of Champaign, III, is being sold only in Boston and Chicago, where Lyons is fairly well known. A Dent in Jones' armor Former Dallas Cowboys beat writer Jim Dent, heard locally on WBPS (890) from 2-5 p.m. as part of the Prime Sports Radio Network, supposedly has a real page-turner of a book "The King of The Cowboys: The Unauthorized Biography of Jerry Jones" coming out between mid-August and early September. It's published by Adams Publishers of Holbrook. Supposedly the Cowboys are nervous about the book's release because Dent writes of the team owner's womanizing, although he's been married to wife Gene for 34 years.

According to sources, Stephen Jones, Jerry's son (who is a Cowboys vice president), recently met Dent in a parking lot and asked that the material concerning his father's womanizing be softened or taken out altogether. But Dent wouldn't give in. Parts of the book which covers Jones' youth when he set up a fruit stand in Little Rock, to the present are considered quite positive. Jones gave Dent five sitdown interviews during the project. "My research for the book actually started in 1989 when I first met Jerry Jones, and I wrote the book in nine months," said Dent, who covered the Cowboys for the Dallas Herald until 1989, then focused on the league at large before heading to radio full time.

Selling them short? Joe Rocco of Channel 10 in Providence told WEEI's Craig Mustard that the Mike Tyson-Peter McNeeley fight, scheduled for August, might be pushed back to the first week of October because pay-per-view orders (costing $44.95 to $54.95, depending on the cable outlet) aren't selling WTIC Radio in Hartford has extended its contract with the University of Connecticut to pro-' vide play-by-play of Huskies' men's basketball and footbaU through 2001. WTIC and UConn were entering the third season of a four-year contract before agreeing to the extension, worth $700,000 (including $225,000 basic rights fees). WTIC also has agreed to broadcast all of the UConn women's baskets ball home games this season as well as selected regular-season road contests. Additionally, all of the women's postseason games will be heard on the station as part of a one-year deal worth $12,000 One Washington crew did advance, making it in the Thames Cup final with a half-length victory over University of London. The US national heavyweight eight, rowing as San Diego Training Center, will defend its Grand Challenge Cup against Britr ain's eight today.

Americans Brian Jamieson and David Gleeson will meet Australia's Olympic champion Peter Antonie and Duncan Free in the double sculls final, and the Augusta Training Center will race Dynamo Moscow in the Queen Mother Cup for quad sculls. Triple Olympic champion Steven Red- ESPN and ABC-TV have signed commentator Robin Roberts to a six-year, $650,000 per year deal. Roberts, who joined ESPN in 1990, will be host of ABC's "Wide World of Sports." Rhode Island is certainly getting its share of network TV coverage. ESPN's Extreme Games were held there June 24 through yesterday, and today, CBS comes to Newport to televise the Women's Professional Volleyball Association Tour Expect CBS to sign Martina Navratilova for its US Open tennis coverage Before the season, SportsChannel-Ohio made sure not to sell all the commercial time for its 60 Cleveland Indians games and the move has paid off now that the Indians are a hot product and a higher price can be garnered Former ABC producer-director Chet Forte, who now works full time as a radio host on San Diego's all-sports XTRA, will work 8-10 games for NBC as an NFL director even though he had triple by-pass surgery earlier this month. He worked several games last year for the network CBS will have Mary Carillo, Pat O'Brien and Tim Ryan as announcers at the Monica Seles-NavratQova exhibition July 29 NBC's Dick Ebersol, president of the network's sports division, believes Los Angeles-area fans will benefit in terms of NFL games on TV this season with the departures of the Rams and Raiders.

"They'll now be able to get three games every Sunday rather than two, and since we'll need a lead-in game in LA, well probably show the Raiders in that area, depending on the ratings," he said CBSFox and NHL Productions are rushing the release of the Stanley Cup video so that it will be on the market Aug. 1 for a suggested $19.98 Thousands of Japanese baseball fans are able to watch Dodgers pitcher Hideo Nomo pitch on large-screen TV sets that have been set up in high-traffic areas in Tokyo and six other cities. Nomo is the second Japanese-born player to play in the major leagues (Masanori Murakami, who pitched for the Giants in 1964 and 1965, is the other) That Forrest Gump-like Pepsi commercial, which has Orlando's Shaquille O'Neal making his way through old clips of "I Love Lucy," "Bonanza," "The Honeymooners" and "North by Northwest," is only 60 seconds long but reportedly cost $2 million to make Having seen Chris Myers on ESPN's "UpClose," we promise never to take Roy Firestone for granted if he returns. Firestone got so much more out of athletes, making the interview show a can't-miss. Myers' sit-downs generally are run of the mill.

grave sliced 13 seconds off his old Silver Goblets Cup (pairs without coxswain) record as he and Matthew Pinsent breached the magic 7-minute mark with a time of 6:56. Redgrave, a three-time Olympic champion, aims for a record seventh Goblets title today and a total of 15 Henley gold medals in all if he, Pinsent and America's Oxford University rowers Jo Michels and Laird Reed can combine to win the Prince Philip Cup for quad sculls. In women's sculls, Sweden's Maria Bran-din knocked 10 seconds off the record she set wo years ago as sne sei up a nnai clash with 'anada's Silken Laumann. Princeton spearheads US Henley advance ASSOCIATED PRESS HENLEY, England Princeton University's eight-oared crew led five American entries into the finals of the Henley Royal Regatta with a narrow victory yesterday. However, the University of Washington was beaten in the other Ladies' Plate semifinal by the Nottingham County Rowing Association, which came from behind for a re-, cord 6-minute 4-second clocking on the 1-mile 550-yard course.

Prince torn won its semifinal in 6:09, edging London and Notts by 4 feet.