Ducks

The Long Island Ducks captured the Atlantic League championship last night with a 4-3 victory over the Camden Riversharks at Campbell's Field. The win completed a three-game sweep of the best-of-five series. Minor-league champions this season included Buffalo (International League), New Hampshire (Eastern League) and Hickory (South Atlantic League).

The Cincinnati Mighty Ducks scored four times in the second period and coasted to a 5-0 AHL win over the Phantoms last night, ending Philadelphia's four-game winning streak. Phantoms goalie Antero Niittymaki, coming off back-to-back shutouts, had his scoreless streak end at 153 minutes, 45 seconds. His streak dated back to Feb. 12.

Two months after Mayor Nutter announced that he was handing over a section of Schuylkill Banks park to the amphibious tour operator Ride the Ducks, his administration now says it plans to seek competing proposals from other companies and will consider moving a controversial access ramp. Administration officials said they reversed course after they belatedly realized that state law requires any concession on city-owned land to be competitively bid. According to Deputy Managing Director Brian Abernathy, a request for proposals will be posted on the city website by Tuesday.

Only one company wants to operate amphibious vehicles on the Schuylkill River and that's Ride the Ducks. Still, city officials stressed yesterday that a contract for the company with boats full of kazoo-playing tourists is not a done deal. "The city is not definitely going to award a contract," said Brian Abernathy, chief of staff to Managing Director Rich Negrin. Back in October, the city announced that Ride the Ducks would be moving to the Schuylkill in March. The boats, which previously toured the Delaware River, have not been in operation since a July 7 accident in which two tourists were killed.

The Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League yesterday announced the signing of former American League MVP Juan Gonzalez. The slugger will join the Ducks on Tuesday. Gonzalez, 36, hit 434 homers and drove in 1,404 runs in a 16-year career with the Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals. Long Island will play in Camden on June 9-11 and in Atlantic City on Aug. 25-28. Roger Clemens of the Houston Astros went through his first workout at a minor-league stadium in Lexington, Ky. His son, Koby Clemens, hit a ball off a scoreboard on the left-field wall.

No Schuylkill? No problem. Ride the Ducks, a tour-boat company, said yesterday that it has approval from the Coast Guard to reboot its operations on the Delaware River, after the city denied its bid to operate on the scenic Schuylkill. "I'll expect that we'll aim for returning to the Delaware, and we're going to work closely with our stakeholders, being the Coast Guard and the city, on that decision in the coming weeks," Chris Herschend, president of the company, said yesterday.

Although they managed a season-high 42 shots Thursday night, the Flyers continued to stumble at the Wells Fargo Center. They were frustrated by their anemic power play - and by Anaheim's backup goalie Curtis McElhinney. Oh, and by Ryan Getzlaf. Taking a crossing pass from Matt Beleskey, Getzlaf poked in a goal during a goalmouth scramble with 1 minute, 46 seconds left, snapping a 2-2 tie and sparking the Ducks to a 3-2 win. The Flyers have lost three straight - all at home, and all to teams that were playing the second game on back-to-back nights.

QUICK STORY: When we were 10 or so, we visited a neighbor kid. Many children were romping in the back yard, all young and carefree. We had been to that yard often, blissfully ignorant of the true cruelties of life. And then we met . . . the ducks. We knew nothing more of ducks than what we'd seen on TV. Donald, Huey, Dewey. You know them. Wouldn't hurt a fly. And then . . . the real ducks attacked. Quack. Quack. Bite. Quack. Quack. Bite. And they attacked only us. The other kids, hooligans one and all, stood and laughed as we tried to climb a clothesline pole.

TIRED AT THE end of a lengthy shift, Anaheim's Matt Beleskey saw a familiar No. 8 out of the corner of his eye, flipped the puck in that general direction and hoped for the best. When it comes to Teemu Selanne, the best tends to happen. Selanne took Beleskey's feed and beat Pittsburgh's Marc-Andre Fleury with a nifty backhand midway through the third period to lift the surging Ducks over the host Penguins, 2-1, last night. "There's a reason he's got a jillion goals in this league," Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau said.

By Peter Binzen The tourist boat that capsized in the Delaware River this month, drowning two, was a direct descendant of the amphibious vessels that carried troops and supplies from ships to shore during World War II. The DUKWs - a designation based on the naming conventions of their manufacturer, General Motors - were used for landings in the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and on the beaches of Normandy. They also saw service on an Italian lake in the final days of the war. An Allied assault, led by troops of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, had driven German forces out of the Apennine Mountains and across the Po Valley to the foothills of the Alps.

Ten feet. Had Matthew R. Devlin walked that far, he could have alerted his tugboat captain that he was experiencing a family emergency, in all likelihood saving the lives of two Hungarian tourists who died in the July 2010 duck-boat accident. One minute. Had Devlin, the first mate, kept watch as the tug pushed a 250-foot barge down the Delaware River, that is all the time he would have needed to turn his boat to avoid the collision that killed Dora Schwendtner, 16, and Szabolcs Prem, 20. Two lives were lost because of failures both small and epic that day, leading to a $17 million settlement Wednesday for the families and 18 surviving passengers when the federal lawsuit suddenly ended after less than two days of testimony.

After nearly two years of litigation, the families of the two Hungarian tourists killed in the July 2010 accident between a barge and a duck boat on the Delaware River will receive $15 million from the companies that owned the vessels. "For the families, no amount can replace their priceless only children," their lawyer, Robert Mongeluzzi, said moments after announcing the settlement in the federal case. Szabolcs Prem, 20, and Dora Schwendtner, 16, who were visiting Philadelphia from Hungary, died in the accident.

The two companies operating the watercraft involved in the July 2010 duck-boat accident that killed two Hungarian tourists will pay their families a combined $15 million as part of a legal settlement reached this afternoon. An additional $2 million will be split by 18 passengers on the duck boat who survived. The parents of Szabolcs Prem, 20, and Dora Schwendtner, 16, who drowned when a barge pushed the duck boat they were riding on under water, were traveling to Hungary Wednesday and not available for comment.

The duck-boat trial came to a halt Tuesday, on the second day of testimony, after the judge in the federal case urged the two sides to try to settle. The trial may resume as early as Wednesday if lawyers for the passengers on the duck and for the two companies that operated the vessels involved in the accident cannot reach an agreement. At stake in the negotiations is whether the companies are at fault in the accident and, if so, how much they will have to pay the passengers and the families of two victims who filed suit.

In dramatic opening testimony Monday in the federal Ride the Ducks trial, a lawyer for the families of two Hungarian tourists killed in the July 2010 accident said one of the victims lost her life because she took time to throw a life vest to someone already in the water. "Sixteen-year-old Dora Schwendtner throws her life preserver to Kyle Burkhardt to save his life, and because of the defendants' failures, she lost hers," said Robert Mongeluzzi, a lawyer representing the families of Schwendtner and Szabolcs Prem, 20, the second victim.

As a barge descended on a tiny duck boat in July 2010, 16-year-old Dora Schwendtner threw her life jacket overboard to help the duck's first mate, her family's lawyer said Monday. "Watching the tape of my daughter dying was horrifying," Schwendtner's father, Peter, said through an interpreter shortly after opening arguments in the federal trial over the accident, which killed Schwendtner and Szabolcs Prem, who were visiting from Hungary. In his opening statement, Robert Mongeluzzi showed dramatic video of the accident.

In the nearly two years since their children drowned in the Delaware, the families of Dora Schwendtner and Szabolcs Prem have grown close. They had never met before the summer of 2010, when Dora, 16, and Szabolcs, 20, came to Philadelphia as part of a church-sponsored cross-cultural trip. But on July 7 of that year, after a barge overran the Ride the Ducks tour boat that had been anchored with engine trouble in the middle of a shipping lane, the families were thrown together by tragedy.

A Ride the Ducks boat stalled on the Delaware River on Sunday afternoon, just a day before the start of a federal trial stemming from the 2010 accident in which a barge hit a stranded duck vessel, killing two passengers. On Sunday, the 26 passengers and two crew members were towed safely to shore within four minutes, the boat company said. After the 2010 accident, Ride the Ducks and the Coast Guard created a new safety plan that required a standby rescue boat to be available at all times during duck tours.

Mother's Day was celebrated Sunday in Hungary, but for two of its natives, the day was filled with tremendous pain and loss. For Maria Prem and Aniko Takacs, whose respective son and daughter drowned in the 2010 duck-boat accident on the Delaware River, it's their second Mother's Day without their children. "We don't really have any more holidays; we don't have any Christmas; we don't have anything anymore," Prem said Sunday. "There's just nothing. " She spoke in Hungarian with reporters with the families' attorney, Peter Ronai, acting as translator.