League Notes

The S.F. CHRONICLE reported a “near-capacity crowd” turned out at SBC Park on Friday night to watch a “tuneup match” between the Japanese and U.S. men’s soccer teams. The crowd included Japanese fans who had come to the U.S. in tour groups. One U.S. soccer official said that it was the “largest will-call ticket line in SBC Park history,” but that could not be verified (S.F. CHRONICLE, 2/11).

NO-SHOW: NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said that criticism of his decision not to attend the Nextel Cup awards banquet in N.Y. in December “was unfair.” Earnhardt: “I talked to the powers that be, they said that we didn’t have to go to [N.Y.], so I didn’t have to make that trip. Then we got thrown under the bus by [NASCAR VP/Corporate Communications Jim] Hunter. He pulled the ‘Dale Earnhardt’ card on us and said we should have been there. But they were the same people who told us we didn’t have to go” (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 2/12).

DOMINOED: In L.A., Lisa Richardson reported the Pro Domino Association (PDA) tournament Saturday in L.A. was the first in a 12-city tour set up by the PDA, each with a $30,000 purse. Former music exec Jay King, who serves as PDA Commissioner, is “calculating that his events will do for dominoes what televised tournaments have done for poker.” ESPN Deportes, which will air the tournaments, is “confident that it can create international interest in the game.” ESPN Deportes GM Lino Garcia said, “We want to give it a national platform and beyond. We think it could be a real groundswell — start on the Spanish-language side and then catch fire. We did it for poker, and we think we can do it for dominoes too” (L.A. TIMES, 2/12).