Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 23

Slport; GOLF Section Sports world, Page 2 College football, Page 2 Scoreboard, Page 6 Sports: 222-6660 0 Davis Love EI makes nine birdies to win the. International. Page 2D. Monday, Aug. 20, 1990 Detroit 4frce Vtc Ln3 CHARUE V.i Vincent 1 am nines i Fast facts WINNER: Mark Martin, 31, of Greensboro, N.C., the Winston Cup points leader with 2,854, in a Ford.

AVERAGE SPEED: 138.821 m.p.h. PAYOFF: $71,200. CAUTIONS: Six for 26 laps. LEAD CHANGES: 23 among 11 drivers. POLESITTER: Alan Kulwicki finished 11th.

Other top finishers 2. Greg Sacks, Chevy 3. Rusty Wallace, Pontiac 4. Bill Elliott, Ford 5.. Ricky Rudd, Chevy' Columbia hits Little League's big time Elusive checkered flag finally flies for Martin tames it fielc ROOKLYN, Mich.

Mark Martin looks as if Ql he belongs on the back of a racehorse, not in tne seat oi a motorized racing machine. He is small and lean, with quick reflexes. Outside a race car he is a water bug, Radio eases worry down the stretch atMIS400 v. o' I 'i)iTn' BY JENNIFER FREY Free Press Sports Writer They had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to catch the plane to Williamsport, but it didn't matter.

The 15 kids on the Columbia Township Little League team had been too excited to sleep anyway. Saturday, Columbia Township Michigan's representative in the Little playoffs beat the team from Wisconsin, 54, to advance to the Little League World Series. Sunday morning, the players walked onto the field of their dreams. "They were absolutely in awe, looking at the field," said David Slusher, one of the team's coaches. "It's an inspiring experience just being here.

Everyone's jubilant" Tuesday at 5 p.m., Columbia opens the series with a game against the all-star team from Cypress, Calif. The other U.S. teams to qualify are the Cottage Hill Little League of Mobile, and an all-star team from Ship-pensburg, Pa. In the international division, the four teams are: Canada; Matamoros, Mexico; San-Hua of Taipei, Taiwan; and Ramstein Air Force Base of West Germany. Slusher couldn't seem to stop using See LITTLE LEAGUE, Page 4D by Steve Crowe Free Press Sports Writer BROOKLYN, Mich.

Were his hands not gloved and gripping the steering wheel, Mark Martin might have chewed his fingernails in the misty final moments of Sunday's Champion Spark Plug 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Instead, the Winston Cup points leader reached out and touched Steve Hmiel, his team manager, via his Ford Thunderbird's in-car radio over the final 22 of 200 laps. "It was almost more than I could bear to just sit there and worry," said Martin, whose 1.7-second victory over the second-place Chevrolet Lumina of Greg Sacks was his second of the year and extended his series lead from 10 to 48 points over Dale Earnhardt. "So to break that, Steve talked to me every lap with lap times, how many laps to go. It was overkill, but it was something to keep my mind off things.

It was a little personal thing to keep me from worrying, straining and stressing myself out." As dominating as the Roush Racing-prepared car proved in restarts on Laps 170 and 178, Martin needed only to worry about worry itself. Each time, he pulled away to leads of about six car-lengths over Sacks, a substitute for injured Darrell Waltrip, exiting Turn 2. Martin, 31, averaged 138.821 m.p.h., won $71,200 and led a race-high 72 laps. Earnhardt, whose Lumina finished eighth, was next with 50 laps led. Rusty Wallace led 32 laps in his Pontiac Grand Prix, finishing third in a race that was threatened but uninterrupted by foreboding skies from the outset.

It featured six cautions for 26 laps and 23 lead changes among 11 drivers. See MIS, Page 3D Tigers, Tribe postponed or canceled i fv. '0 it t.ih IF'J; 'f i skittering here and there, seemingly without purpose, heading first in this direction, then in that, then, no, back the other way again. In an automobile, he is just the opposite. He is cool and purposeful, and his direction is a straight line toward the checkered flag that on the NASCAR circuit can be so elusive.

He found it Sunday, just as the clouds that had threatened all day to unleash a torrent, were lowering themselves onto the two miles of asphalt at Michigan International Speedway. Mark Martin looked into his rearview mirror and saw nothing. Better than that, he checked all four tires and found them still attached to his car and still filled with air. He checked his gas tank and found fuel to spare. "This," said the 5-foot-6, 135-pound winner of the Champion Spark Plug 400 as he dashed around the MIS garages in search of his ride to the airport, "was the kind of day we've been looking for.

"We've run better than we finished the last five races straight." Always, though, something seemed to go wrong. That has been the hallmark of Mark Martin's racing career. Always, though, he has persevered and made it to a better day. His father taught him to drive when he was no more than seven years old, on the dusty backroads outside Batesville, Ark. His father sat the boy on his lap and together they steered the car until they got to a one-lane bridge.

That is where the father would always take his hands off the wheel. Preparations started early It was a test, of courage, maybe; of manhood, perhaps; or maybe a preparation for the challenges that a b4y would someday have to face on his own, without a father's steadying hand. Always the father would nudge the boy and say: "You take it," as he removed his hands from the wheel. Always the boy, eyes wide, would say: "No! I can't make it. I can't make it." "But I made it every time," Martin, 31, said Sunday.

"I never did hit that bridge." By the time he was 15, he was racing. But none of that counted for much when he decided he was ready to race big time. They hadn't heard of Mark Martin at Daytona or Talladega or MIS. As recently as 1986, he had to use a friend's pass to get into the Daytona 500 because he didn't have a ride and didn't know anyone in the business well enough to get a pass of his own. "Anyway you slice it," he said Sunday, "Jack Roush went out on a limb with me in 1988.

1 had a heart and I had a track record in other of racing, but I didn't have a track record in Winston Cup. But they took a chance on me." Roush, the Livonia businessman who owns the team Martin drives for, said: "Mark brought us a kind of commitment and determination that, I thought, would hold us in good stead." That's how Mark Martin got back into Winston Cup racing. He had driven for a while in 1981 and '82, but he didn't win and pretty soon he found himself running smaller tracks for less money with a career that seemed to be going in the wrong direction. He is grateful that Roush gave him a second chance at stock car racing's big time. And maybe that is why he is so affected when potential so often is left unfulfilled on the racetrack.

Scarred by an unlucky past In a race at Sonoma, last summer, his car flipped when a tire fell off because one of his crewmen failed to properly tighten the lug nuts. Martin crawled from the car and ran back to the pit to angrily confront his crew. At the Pepsi 400 in Daytona Beach, a year ago he ran out of fuel. This summer a gas miscalculation caused him to drop from third to ninth in the final five laps of one race, and at Watkins Glen last weekend he had three flat tires in the final 19 laps, but still he leads the Winston Cup point standings. "We've had some good racing spoiled by some bad luck," is the way Martin describes his season.

"And there were times today when visions of Daytona 1989 went through my mind." He did not want to be alone with those thoughts. He had come too far, endured too much, been helped by too many people to allow nightmares of past misfortunes to ruin this Sunday. "On every lap from the last 22 on, I had Steve Hmiel (team manager) talk to me, just tell me how we were doing, where we were, just talk to" me, because it was long and grueling for me to sit there and think about it. It was a little personal thing, just to keep me from worrying, straining and stressing myself out." This Sunday there was no need for stress. This Sunday, as his lead over Greg Sacks grew beyond a second and finally to almost two, as he looked out of his rearview mirror and saw only the grayness of an empty track and a threatening sky behind him, there was no longer a reason to apologize for what might have been.

This Sunday he saw through the gathering gloom what he had the checkered flag. by gene guidi Free Press Sports Writer Heavy rain held off long enough Sunday to squeeze in the old-timers game at Tiger Stadium. But by the time the regularly scheduled game between the Tigers and Indians was supposed to start at 3 p.m., a heavy rain was falling and the tarp covered the field. After waiting a little more than an hour, umpire erew chief Dave Phillips called the game. Even though the rain let up shortly afterward, the forecast called for intermittent rain the rest of the day.

Tigers manager Sparky Anderson said he didn't think the two teams could have played the game even had it started at the normal 1:35 p.m. time. "The way these two teams play sometimes, I doubt we could have got five innings in before the rain came," Anderson said. "And when the rain did start falling, it really came down hard. "There was even a mist falling when the old-timers played.

We could have started in that. But we couldn't have played through the heavy rain that came later." American League president Dr. See TIGERS, Page 5D GRID: Complete Spark Plug 400 results, Page 3D. LUCKY SEVEN: Engine built by Jack Roush In Livonia runs like a charm for Mark Martin. Steve Crowe's auto racing column, Page 3D.

ROUNDUP: Geoff Brabham closes in on IMSA championship. Page 3D. CRAIG PORTERDetroit Free Press Mark Martin shows his trophy after winning Sunday's Champion Spark Plug 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Martin, whose Thunderbird averaged 138.821 m.p.h., took the lead for good on Lap 162 and beat Greg Sacks by 1.7 seconds. Diesel Power Lions 'Dalkfior always ready to roll BY CURT SYLVESTER Free Press Sports Writer On a lot of guys the nickname "Diesel" just wouldn't fit.

Barry Sanders, with his smooth, elusive style of running the football, obviously is not a Diesel. Chris Spielman, who plays linebacker with equal parts skill, intensity and emotion, clearly wouldn't qualify as a Diesel. Even the Lions' huge offensive tackles Lomas Brown and Harvey Salem don't convey the Diesel image as they detour pass rushers. But Ken Dallafior now there's a Diesel. As tough, as dependable and as rugged as the 18-wheelers making the Detroit-to-Chicago run on 94.

When the Lions needed somebody to step in at right guard after rookie Mike Utley suffered a knee injury last year, they called on Dallafior. When they needed an experienced hand to fill tion opener two weeks ago, Dallafior was the guy. Although he has never played in a Pro Bowl and probably never will, Dallafior, beginning his sixth NFL season, can be counted on to give it his best shot anywhere he's needed on the Lions' offensive line. Like last fall, when he suffered a knee injury in the humiliating 42-7 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Nov. 19.

"It bent my knee brace and stretched the ligaments in my knee," Dallafior said. "They told me I wouldn't be able to play on Thursday in the Thanksgiving Day game. "It was the kind of injury that the only thing to heal it is rest. To play every week, you aggravate it. Then you try to rest it between games, but then game time comes again.

It's one of those injuries that's nagging the rest of the season." So Dallafior did what he thought was best. He took an aspirin and a piece of tape, taped the See LIONS, Page 5D PATRICIA BECKDetroit Free Press Lions center Ken Dallafior "The team was 5-0 with an aspirin taped to the knee. Whatever it takes. You've got to get the job done. That's why you're here." 4 1 -I in for holdout center Kevin Glover in the exhibi-.