St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 29

SECTION Oct. 11,1 983 ClassifiedPages 6-1 4 General NewsPage 14 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 4 1 Kevin Horrigan A lLOInlOInl PdlnllnlW a Sports Comment Ghost Incarnate Haunts Series if' i BALTIMORE Down in the tunnel that leads to the visitors' dugout at -i memorial Maaium, Paul Owens, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, was talking with the incarnate ehost who haunts his opposite number, Baltimore unoies Manager Joe Altobelli. The ghost is about 5 feet 7 inches tan and wears his gray hair in a frizzy perm. He had on a vellow blazer with an ABC patch on the breast pocket just another working stiff assigned to cover me worm series.

Hardly. For most of the 1983 baseball season, the man in the yellow By Rick Hummel Of the Post-Oispatch Staff BALTIMORE While Philadelphia Phillies pitcher John Denny goes about preparing for his first World Series game tonight, he also is involved in bringing his far-flung family closer together, reaching inner peace with himself and establishing harmony with the news media he occasionally has turned off. That seems a full day's work for almost any man. But one thing at a time. Denny and the Phillies will meet Scott McGregor and the Baltimore Orioles in Game 1 of the World Series (7:30, KTVI, Channel 2, KMOX-AM).

Denny, who has played in both leagues, had a 3-1 lifetime record against the Orioles when he pitched for Cleveland. The Series is the occasion for a family reunion for the Dennys. Although he will not be here in time for tonight's game, Denny's father, Dick, will arrive from Australia in time for weekend games in Philadelphia. Denny talked to his father for the first time in five years the other day, and Denny regards the reunion as a time "to bridge the gap on a lot of things. Our family has not been that close, and a lot of it was laziness en my part as far as staying in touch." Their conversation was the result of a phone call Denny's father had with one of John's brothers.

"He told me (through the brother) to get off my high horse and give him a call," Denny said. The elder Denny, a 70-year-old gentleman rancher, will stop in Arizona to see other family members before heading East. Some of Denny's family, including his brother, Jim, arrived here Monday night. "This is a tremendous moment for me and my family," said Denny, a former Cardinals pitcher who still lives in St. Louis.

"My family is probably more excited than I am." But Denny's mother will be unable to attend because she is ill in Arizona. She and her husband were divorced when John was young. Another family member who would have enjoyed being here, said Denny, was Richard. Fifteen years older than John, Richard Denny was shot to death by his wife. "He was very excited about me when I came blazer was the man who wasn't there at Memorial Stadium.

Everv move Cleveland or a few others, he abruptly dismissed the sportswriter and wouldn't continue the interview until the questioner was gone. "I left the ballpark with more distaste in my mouth about that than I did from losing uie ballgame," said Denny. As he got on an airplane, he said teammate Larry Andersen had handed him a book entitled, "What Would Jesus Do Now?" Among the messages imparted in the book were verses imploring the reader to "humble yourself and not be so selfish. Share in the interests and concerns of others." The message hit home. "Most of the time I was worried about my own attitude," said Denny, "rather than sharing in the writers' concerns.

"I'm not able to do it all the time, but at least I'm trying. I feel like a whole weight has been lifted off my shoulders. "This is my ninth year in the major leagues. I'm still learning and growing. I've learned to control myself, to choose love over hate and patience over impatience." Denny said he would allow himself no negative thoughts before tonight's game.

"I want to make sure I don't let anything distract me from the confidence I have." His opponent, McGregor, espoused similar thoughts. Asked his reaction to the Orioles not being able to use their designated hitter, Ken Singleton, he said, "If we lose Ken Singleton out of our lineup, it hurts. But that's a negative and I won't think about it. After it's all over and if we lose, you can blame it on the DH and that's fine. For me, I've just got to hit." But there was one negative thought creeping in.

"I'm not going to be very good at it (hitting)," said McGregor. "I don't want to embarrass myself, striking out on pitches over my head. "The single most positive thing I will take into the game is that hitters are a total failure. Any time you have to do it only three times out of 10 and get paid a million dollars for it, it looks like a pretty good job." Orioles Manager Joe Altobelli said that after some agonizing, he had decided to leave See DENNY, Page Altobelli made was made in the DanDierdorf Dierdorf Will Retire After Season By John Sonderegger Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Dan Dierdorf, six times an All-Pro in his 13 seasons as an offensive lineman with the football Cardinals, announced today that he would retire at the end of the season. "Ninety-five percent of me is sad that I'm retiring, but my knees are very, very happy," he said in a noon press conference at the Stadium Club.

Dierdorf, 34, who was a veteran at right tackle before shifting to center last season, said he wanted to make it clear that the Big Red's 1-5 record in the National Football League this season had nothing to do with his decision. "I really made this decision before we went to training camp," he said. "If we See DIERDORF, Page 6 John Denny Happy days are here again RELATED STORIES on pages SC and 5C. to the big leagues," said Denny. "Another brother told me he was jumping up and down and running around the house the day I got called up to the Cardinals," Denny said.

"I can imagine how excited he would be right now. But I'm praying he knows a lot better life than we do. Denny credits his 19-6 season in part to his discovering Christianity but also to the grueling workouts he endures under the tutelage of Gus Hoefling, the Phillies' strength and flexibility coach. His faith in the former prompted Denny to shake himself last week after he had put on an embarrassing display in media sessions following his loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers In the National League playoff series. Denny demanded to know every questioner's home base.

If it was New York, Los Angeles, Roarke Is Named To Replace kittle 1 Iff 4 S' ghostly shadow of Earl Weaver. BUT NOW, Weaver and Owens are bounding up the dugout steps in a misting rain to embrace Altobelli. All that was missing from this touching tableau was Pat Corrales, and the World Series managerial picture would have been complete. Say this about baseball you never know where a guy is going to turn up next. Here's Altobelli, who used to work as a coach for Weaver.

And here's Dave Bristol, now coaching for Owens and rumored to be in the long line of candidates to replace him who replaced Altobelli as manager in San Francisco, and who managed at Cincinnati when Corrales, who was hired and fired by Owens at Philadelphia and who now manages in Cleveland, was a big-league catcher. Got that? Much is made of who is hiring and firing and managing whom. Managers move around like so many gypsies, because in most cases, they are interchangeable parts. For most of them, the only certainty is that one day they will be fired. That's why Weaver's ghost presented Altobelli with so much trouble.

Weaver wasn't an interchangeable part. He was as much a part of Baltimore as crabcakes and bump-and-grind joints in that sleazy end of downtown called "The Block." All of this was an unnecessarily difficult burden for Joseph Salvatore Altobelli to bear this season. Here was a man who had managed three years in the big leagues and who once had been named manager of the year. He had managed 12 years in the minors and had coached third base for Yankees. In all ways, he had proven himself eminently qualified to fill out lineup cards, change pitchers and spit tobacco juice on the duRout floor.

BUT THIS WASN'T good enough -not in Baltimore. Connie Mack wouldn't have been good enough, or Marse Joe McCarthy, or Casey Stengel or any of the other legends of the dugout corner. Weaver's legend had grown like Dr. Frankenstein's science project. He ranted and raved at umpires.

He carried on wildly public feuds with his star players. He talked at length with worshipful newspapermen, who spent hours sanitizing his quotes and building his legend. But most of all, Weaver's teams won a lot of games in UlA years, and that made this irascible former St. Louisan a beloved figure. A guy asked Altobelli whether winning the American League pennant might be enough to get Weaver's ghost out of his thinning hair.

"Well, it's awfully nice to get off on the right foot," he said in his customary husky whisper. "But-Earl did it over and over again. He set some trends that are still around here." Indeed. Suspicion lurks in some corners that Altobelli walked into the best job in baseball. Taking over the Orioles wasn't exactly like taking over the Seattle Mariners.

"This was a finely tuned, well-run organization before Joe Altobelli came over here," said Orioles catcher Rick Dempsey. "He was smart enough not to change things for the sake of change." Altobelli, 51, learned a lot of his smarts in the Orioles' organization, which, of course, is why he got the job; these Birds are a clannish lot. Mter a 41-game major league career (lifetime average, Altobelli managed in the Orioles! farm system for 14 seasons. The Giants hired him in 1977, and he was National League Manager of the Year in 1978. But he was fired in 1979, then went to work for the Yankees as a third-base coach.

7 i I 1 I' By Rick Hummel Of the Post-Oispatch Staff BALTIMORE Mike Roarke will be coming back to help Bruce Sutter next season and some other pitchers as well. The Cardinals today named the 52-year-old Roarke as their pitching coach. He will succeed Hub Kittle, who is being reassigned in the organization. Roarke, formerly a coach with the Detroit Tigers, California Angels and Chicago Cubs, has made periodic visits to Sutter in the last few seasons to try to straighten out mechanical problems with Sutter's split-fingered fastball. Cardinals Manager Whitey Herzog said he liked Roarke because his pitchers in Chicago had done a good job of holding runners on.

"If he can help Bruce, I thought he might be able to help other pitchers, too," said Herzog. Herzog made it clear that he was not indicting Kittle for the Cardinals' pitching collapse this year. But he added, "There are a lot of things I'm not satisfied with. Maybe they (the pitchers) will listen a little bit more." The announcement of Roarke as pitching coach was accompanied by the announcement that Nick Leyva would be first-base coach for next season and that Chuck Hiller would manage the Cardinals' rookie league team at Johnson City, Term. Leyva was manager at Class AA Little Rock, this year.

Hiller had coached third for the Cards for the last three seasons. Hiller, who lives in St. Petersburg, had wanted to spend more time at home with his family and will be able to do so as manager of the rookie league team. The Cardinals' farmhands, as well as their varsity, train in St. Petersburg, and the rookie league season won't open until June.

Hiller had been Herzog's rookie league manager when Herzog was farm director of the New York Mets. Speaking from his home in Independence, Herzog called Hiller "the best rookie league manager I've ever seen." Hal Lanier, who had been the Cards' first-base coach, will coach third next season. Also retained for next year are bullpen coach Dave Ricketts and Red Schoendienst. Roarke, a light-hitting catcher with the Tigers (.232 career average), coached with Detroit in 1965 and 1966 1 j-, Mike Roarke 'Offer came at the right time and again in 1970. He was a coach with the Angels from 1967-69 and was with the Cubs from 1978-80.

He resigned from the Cubs after the 1980 season, Sutter's last one there, to spend more time with his family. But now, all but one of his five children either have graduated from college or are in college. "The offer came at the right time," said Roarke, who added that he had received other major league offers recently. "A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have taken it. "When I left the Cubs, initially I didn't want to be involved in baseball," said Roarke, speaking from his home in Pawtucket, R.I.

"But the Red Sox called and offered me a part-time job with no traveling involved." Roarke said he had no real knowledge of the Cardinals' problems because he had spent only a couple of days a year around them and because he had concentrated only on Sutter. He said his basic philosophy was "adjusting to the staff you have. You'd like to see people who can throw strikes and change speeds. But if they can't do that, you do something else." Roarke, who is an insurance man, had been summoned by Sutter in each of Sutter's three seasons with the Cardinals because he felt that Roarke was the only other person who understood the vagaries and processes involved in his split-fingered pitch. "He put on some miles doing that," said Herzog.

"He probably traveled more miles being off the team than he will being on it." Robert C. Holt IllPost-Dispatch Neil Lomax's fumble was one of just many that plagued the Big Red in their loss Sunday. Turnovers Befuddle Hani fan Oemeirs Defends By Steve Kelley Of the Post-Oispatch Staff Webster's Dictionary defines fumble this way: "to handle (a thing) clumsily or unskillfully; bungle." At the rate things are going, the next edition of the book may include an action shot of the football Cardinals as an illustration. The dictionary does not classify fumble as a problem, and therefore offers no solution. But Noah Webster's livelihood never depended on finding a way to keep a person and an oval leather object united under duress.

Jim Hanifan, on the other hand, spends an inordinate amount of his working day in search of a cure to the dreaded turnover plague that has struck his football team. Six games, 12 lost fumbles and 13 interceptions into the season, Hanifan's Big Red are 1-5 and reeling. In their most recent outing, a 38-14 loss to the Washington Redskins on Sunday, the Cardinals gave away the ball four times, leading directly to three cheap touchdowns. Not surprisingly, Hanifan spent much of Monday answering questions about his team's giveaway program and how he planned to end it. The queries, first from the media and then-the Quarterback Club, were frustrating because there are no obvious answers.

The National Football League outlawed stick-em and no doubt would frown on the use of Super Glue. "In 36 years of playing and coaching, I've never been around a ballclub that has committed grievous sins such as that," Hanifan told a gathering of 80 at the meeting of the Quarterback Club. "I know at various other levels you say, 'OK, we're going to play the freshmen or sophomores. You go sit on the "You could also handle it in another fashion. You can get out there and just beat the living hell out of the guys and say, 'Hey, don't fumble the You have to learn how to protect the ball.

That's kind of basic to the game." There's always pressure in the NFL, and Hanifan probably is feeling more than his share. Sunday, he must take his 1-5 team to Tampa Bay. The Bucaneers are 0-6 but played a strong game Sunday in losing in overtime to Dallas. A winless team that has begun playing well is another potential embarrassment for a club that too often treats the ball like a watermelon seed. It's enough to drive a coach to extreme measures.

"I've got a shillelagh at home, and I looked at that damn thing today when I first got up this morning," said Hanifan. "I'm serious, I really and truly did. I thought, you know, there's another way of handling this, to bring the shillelagh in here and use it like the old Irish warriors did I will find a solution." Those old Irish warriors used the shillelagh on their foes' heads, beating them into submission. Three starters possibly will miss the Tampa Bay game. Guard Joe Bostic injured his knee and officially is listed as probable, though his status might be downgraded later in the week.

Offensive tackle Tootie Robbins is doubtful because of the hamstring injury that kept him out of the Redskins game, and defensive tackle Elois Grooms is questionable with an injured ankle. Quarterback Jim Hart and kick return specialisttailback Stump Mitchell are nursing rib injuries but likely will be available. To Hanifan's credit, he does not appear to be looking outside the team for scapegoats. He said he thought that the fans' reception to the team Sunday was very good, considering the performance it turned in. And Hanifan appears capable of handling the increasingly critical media coverage.

"I talked to the guys before the Philadelphia game, when they were getting bad press and the fans were on them," said the coach. "I told them, 'What do you want them to do? Write flowery prose about your legendary feats on the gridiron and my coaching prowess? You're zero and three. Take it. We've dug ourselves into a cotton-pickin' hole, now fight your way out of it." One win and two losses later, the Big Red remain in the hole, hoping that nobody in a white collar says a few words and that shovelfuls of dirt don't start flying down. moSiotis Obi Ice HE WAS IN LINE to become the Yankees' manager of the year.

But Weaver retired and Altobelli came home, home to answer Earl Weaver questions all year. And now that the World Series is about to begin, he's answering Earl Weaver questions again from guys who hadn't had a chance to ask them before including Earl Weaver. Altobelli seems bemused by the circus that surrounds the Series, especially the ceaseless concern exhibited by the Fourth Estate over the absence in this series of the designated-hitter rule. "Hey," he said to another worried scribe. "I just answered that.

What do want me to say? Of course I don't like the DH I'm a baseball man." And a good one, too. Altobelli could have done worse than take over the Orioles. But the Orioles -could have done a lot worse, too. was ejected from the game, Demers punched an unsuspecting coliseum employee in the mouth. It seems Demers thought the guy was a threatening Bulls fan, when in fact he had approached Demers to escort him to the dressing room.

Demers was a youngster of 33 then, and now he is a mature 39. He says his stick-throwing days are behind him. But that's not to say you won't see some emotion from the Blues' coach. Spectators at tonight's National Hockey League game between the Blues and the Vancouver Canucks i See BLUES, Paget' By Ron Cobb Of the Post-Oispatch Staff A sportswriter who watched from the safety of the press box says Jacques Demers put on quite a show one night six years ago in a World Hockey Association game in Birmingham, Ala. Demers, coaching the Cincinnati Stingers against the Birmingham Bulls, got his dander up in the aftermath of a brawl that broke out 'Shortly after the opening faceoff.

One thing led to another, and before order 'was restored Demers had flung all the Stingers' sticks onto the ice. According 'to the sportywriter's account, after he.