• With the local baseball teams off, tennis took center stage in New York on Thursday, at least among those not watching the NFL season kick off. Novak Djokovic, 20, beat Carlos Moya, 31, in the last men's quarterfinal at the U.S. Open. When Super Saturday rolls around, Roger Federer will face Nikolay Davydenko and Djokovic will take on David Ferrer. On Friday, the women play for a spot in the final when Svetlana Kuznetsova battles fellow Russian Anna Chakvetadze and Justine Henin takes on Venus Williams.

  Tennis fans will be happy Djokovic advanced. First, they got to see him do impressions of Maria Sharapova and Rafael Nadal on court after his win. More importantly, the trio of Moya, Ferrer and Davydenko would have stood about 1 in 150 odds of knocking off the three-time champ. Djokovic already has a win against Federer this year, but the world No. 1 has looked in fine form these two weeks. On the women's side, three former champions and Chakvetadze make for a compelling storyline. Henin has looked unstoppable, but the other three haven't looked much worse. That field is much more unpredictable.
  

• Cyclones 3, Spinners 2: With the victory over Lowell, the Cyclones clinched the McNamara Division of the New York-Penn League. Micah Schilling scored the big run on a balk in the bottom of the 11th inning. That's not going to score many style points, but Brooklyn likely doesn't care about that.


• S.I. Yankees 4, Valleycats 3: Staten Island is also in the NY-Penn League playoffs, but as the wild card. Braedyn Pruitt singled home the winning run. Don't look now, but the Baby Bombers are playing better than the Cyclones.

Photo of Novak Djokovic by AP/Ed Betz