Baseball

A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball trading card was sold Saturday for a record $2.1 million in a public online sale, according to Goldin Auctions, which did not identify who purchased the rarest of collectibles. The New Jersey-based company closed bidding on the T206 card of the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop early Saturday. The sales price eclipsed the $1.62 million the same card fetched in 2008. The record price for a trading card is $2.8 million in a private sale in 2007. The card is graded as an Excellent 5 by Professional Sports Authenticator and is exceptionally rare because it's part of a jumbo series that is larger than the normal trading card.

"Four years from now, if I'm able to sit up and take nourishment, I would. " - Joe Torre, 72, jokingly, on whether he would be interested in an encore as Team USA manager when the World Baseball Classic returns in 2017. "What do you think you could get for me? Pujols? Maybe three years from now, or when he's retired?" - Toronto Blue Jays Manager John Gibbons, on his predecessor, John Farrell, who was traded to the Boston Red Sox for utility infielder Mike Aviles. "Maybe every win isn't important.

THE CONTENDERS 1. WASHINGTON (4-1) Three names: Gio Gonzalez, Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper 2. SAN FRANCISCO (3-2) Best starting rotation in the major leagues 3. DETROIT (3-2) After reaching Series in '12, Cabrera, Verlander hungry to win one this year 4. CINCINNATI (3-1) Stable lineup, stable manager will soften loss of OF Ryan Ludwick 5. DODGERS (2-2) Guggenheim Partners' pockets deeper than the Marianas Trench 6. BALTIMORE (3-1) Had first winning season in 15 years in 2012 7. TAMPA BAY (2-2)

ARLINGTON, Texas -- The Texas Rangers should have been selling red herrings at the souvenir stand. Josh Hamilton says this is not a baseball town, and tens of thousands of actual adults lay in wait for him, hiding behind those words to unleash wave upon wave of fury and indignation. Baseball town, football town, whatever. Hamilton took the money and ran off with the Angels. Boo him if you like - and the sellout crowd at the Rangers' home opener booed him hostilely on Friday during a 3-2 Texas win - but at least be honest about it. Of course this is a football town.

NEW YORK - Above all else, Rachel Robinson remembers the kissing. When the taunts at the ballpark grew too fierce and the naysayers too loud, her husband, Jackie, would come home to their Brooklyn apartment and the couple would try to block out the world. "So many people are curious about how we were at home, thinking that we brought all the anger and chaos in there with us," Rachel Robinson, 90, said last week as she perched behind a desk at the gleaming offices of the education foundation she runs in lower Manhattan.

What could be the most impressive feature of the $100-million-plus renovations at Dodger Stadium can't be seen by the public: the home clubhouse. "It's probably the best clubhouse in baseball," Adrian Gonzalez said. "Something comes up, we feel bad to even bring it up now. " Although modernized, the players' dressing quarters aren't much larger than they used to be. But the room is only one in a subterranean maze that was created by Janet Marie Smith , who oversaw the renovation project.

Mike Piazza, the former major league baseball player, is taking on an unconventional post-retirement job. The athlete is teaming up with Miami City Ballet and will perform a role in the company's production of George Balanchine's "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. " But don't expect the baseball star to wear leotards or a codpiece. And don't expect him to dance, leap or lift female dancers, the company said. Piazza will appear in one performance of the ballet -- on May 3 at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.

As the chaperon of Michigan's Muskegon Lassies in the 1940s, Helen Hannah Campbell made sure the professional baseball players wore lipstick and properly modest uniform skirts in the "girls league" founded to keep ballparks filled while men were away at war. The daughter of a major league catcher who played on the New York Yankees with Babe Ruth, Campbell was familiar with the demands and rules of the game. But she credited her experience in the Marine Corps Reserve with preparing her to oversee the conduct, care - and personal lives - of her young charges.

SAN DIEGO - In New York, the San Diego Padres play the Mets on Monday in their first game of the 2013 season. But in San Diego County, 185,000 homes -- 22% of the pay-television market -- will not be able to watch the Padres on TV because of a stalemate between Fox Sports San Diego and Time Warner Cable that has entered a second season. Fox Sports holds the broadcast rights to Padres games. Four TV-service providers in the San Diego County market have signed with Fox but not Time Warner Cable, which has 22% of the market, mostly in the northern stretch of the city and its suburbs.