Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 60

0 in SECTiOri Boxing, Page 6 Golf, Page 6 Scoreboard, Pages 7, 8 Scores: 1-900-370-0990, Sports: 222-6660 (Calls to the score line are 75 per minute) Stock car race coming to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? Page 2C. Wednesday, April Deiroil iSxtt Vvcoz A GRAND OPENING 4 i 7 2 Era 43 1 3 Mil i r-TV Mitch albom V. trill JJv- 0 v. i Say it's so, Joe: Fontes covets Montana BY CURT SYLVESTER Free Press Sports Writer Joe Montana is interested. So are the Lions.

And as unlikely as it sounds, they might make a match. For now, however, it's no more than a dreamy possibility. Montana, a four-time Super Bowl champion quarterback with San Francisco, and Lions coach Wayne Fontes have talked about the possibility of Montana joining the Lions. And Fontes has considered what Montana would do for Detroit's muddled quarterback situation. "You sign a guy like that to play," Fontes said Tuesday.

"No question about it, wherever he plays, he'll come in and be a starter. He's not coming in to sit the bench." And how would that sit with Lions quarterbacks Rodney Peete, Andre Ware and Erik Kramer? "If we were to get a guy like Joe Montana, two of the three would be disappointed and one guy would say, 'Hey, I've just got to'sit back and wait, because this is the best quarterback in the Fontes said. "But right now I don't know what's going to happen. I just know he's got the whole city and the whole state excited about him, and he should. He's Mr.

Football." Montana, who will be 37 on June 11, is, in the final year of a five-year contract. The 49ers decided to stick with Steve Young as their starter and Steve Bono as his probable backup for 1993. They have allowed Montana's agent, Peter Johnson of Cleveland, to find a place for him to finish his career as a player instead of on the bench. It is believed Kansas City and Phoenix have offered Montana $3.25 million for one season. The Cardinals report-See Lions, Page 6C Blackhawks beat Stars, clinch Norris Free Press Wire Reports BLOOMINGTON, Minn.

Chicago clinched first place in the Norris Division and home-ice advantage throughout the Campbell Conference playoffs Tuesday night with a 3-2 victory over the North Stars, who might have played their final game in Minnesota. The Stars, who are moving to Dallas after the season, remained one point behind St. Louis in the race for the fourth and final playoff spot. They can make the playoffs only by beating the Red Wings in Thursday's finale at Joe Louis Arena while the Blues 2-1 losers in overtime at Toronto tie or lose to Tampa Bay at home. The Blackhawks, whose 104 points are three ahead of the Wings, will open the playoffs against the survivor.

The Wings will play the Maple Leafs in the other best-of-seven Norris series. It was fitting that 26 years of NHL hockey in Minnesota might have ended with a loss to Chicago and longtime nemesis Ed Belfour. The Blackhawks have beaten the Stars six straight times, with Belfour allowing only six goals. Belfour (40-18-11) joined Hall of Famers Terry Sawchuk, Bernie Parent, Jacques Plante and Ken Dryden as the only goalies to record consecutive 40-victory seasons. He was closing in on his eighth See BLACKHAWKS, Page 2C Tickets are on sale for the Wings' home playoff opener.

Page 2C. A brand new ballgame at famous old address nn ere was my first clue that things had changed down Jf, at Tiger Stadium: I heard a vendor recite poetry. f- "Don't be shy, don 't walk by I till you try our roast beef on rye. His name was Rasean Reeves, a 19-year-old from Detroit, he was smiling while he worked maybe that was my first clue, come to think of it and he was working in something called the Ball Park Deli, which was in something called Tiger Plaza, which is a giant food court on what used to be the players' parking lot. Now Rasean had a new poem.

"Fill your belly, Come eat in our deli! Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Or, in simpler terms, Tom Monaghan has left the building. On Home Opener Day 1993, at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, there were burritos and daiquiris and flavored coffees and frozen yogurt and plush seats and a Dixieland band and a clear scoreboard and waitress service. There were delighted crowds. There were kids with big eyes.

Put aside, for a moment, whatever happens to the team this year, the pitching, the defense, the competition. No matter what, Tiger Stadium on Tuesday had something it has been missing for years: life. "Did you see that food plaza?" Sparky Anderson was saying, sitting in the dugout before the game. "Man, that's some kind of thing. They got a bar there.

I ain't never seen a bar that big." He laughed. "There's gonna be a few boys pretty well oiled when they leave the old ballpark." Open for business. Ka-ching! Ring up money, and runs The first real cash-register day of the Mike HitchDetroit Tigers regime went off Tuesday as if scripted by Disney. Blue skies. Full house.

A win by the new pitcher. Every player who stepped to the plate either smacking a home run, or an RBI. There was even a standing ovation for a guy most people thought would never be a Tiger again: Kirk Gibson. "I felt like a rookie when I heard that," Gibson said after the game. "It was really hard just to keep myself in control.

I wanted to do everything in that one at-bat." Well. It was that kind of feeling Tuesday, wasn't it? You wanted to do everything. See it all. Do it all. Sample all $8 million of Hitch's stadium renovations, and watch the millions more he spent for baseball talent.

It was Opening Day Plus One, a little bit more special, a little bit more real. I don't want to say the ballpark was paradise compared with what it used to be. I will say I half -expected munchkins to come out singing "Ding dong, the noid is dead. Open for business. "They can say what they want about this guy," Anderson said, nodding toward Hitch, who was surrounded by reporters, "but he spends the money.

He's interested. And you know why? He played the game. He loves it. Baseball is like that. Once you've been a part of it, you never really get it out of your system." Oh.

By the way. About the game? Tigers won, 20-4. Open for business. Optimism, bats explode Offense? Ha! It was as if they took all the hope, all the goodwill, all the baseball desire that had been smothered inside Detroit winter coats and undressed it, unfurled it, threw it into the wind and let it sprinkle onto the bats of every Tiger who stepped to the plate. Bam! A three-run homer for Rob Deer, who hadn't hit a home run this season.

Bam! A three-run homer for Travis Fryman, who hadn't hit one. Bam! A three-run blast for Mickey Tettleton. Bam! Four hits for Cecil Fielder. Earlier in the day, before the game started, Gibson had been taking batting practice. He spotted me, rolled his eyes in that way he has of challenging you, and said, "We're gonna be better than you think.

Don't worry about the pitching right now, or our record in the first week. We shouldn't even be thinking about that. You know what we should think about? October. Those stands out there in rightfield, filled with people, and about 10 times louder than they'll be today. That's what you think about.

That's how you get there." And he jumped in the cage, his whiskers nearly leaping off his face. Call him overly optimistic. Call the fans overly generous. Call all the goodwill of Tuesday afternoon, the bands, the free hot dogs, the Tiger hankies, the rhyming vendors in the food court, call all that a calculated show by Hitch's marketing hounds. Be cynical.

Most people are. But you know what? I saw a guy Tuesday I hadn't seen in a while. His name is Gene Roof. He is now the Tigers' first-base coach. When I first met him, he was a minor league manager down in Fayetteville, N.C., and we spent a week together riding the buses.

One time, he told me a story. "When I was playing minor league ball, we had bus rides so long and so crowded I had to sleep in the luggage rack up top. I came down, I was so charley-horsed, I couldn't move." He shook his head. Now he was sitting here, in a major league dugout, with happy fans drinking daiquiris and eating barbecue. You know the point of that whole story? Very simple: Things change.

Open for business. i T4 4 it i I i i r. i i JULIAN H. GONZALEZDetroit Free Press Mickey Tettleton misses this fifth-inning pitch; he connected for a three-run homer an inning earlier. mm ''mi.

u. i 1 i BIGGEST BA Shortstop Travis Fryman went 3-for-5 with five RBIs, four runs, a homer and a walk. i 1 i WEAKEST ARM Oakland rookie Mike Mohler surrendered eight runs, seven hits and three walks in Wz relief innings. He threw 64 pitches. juuan H.

GONZALEZDetroit Free Press Athletics centerf ielder Eric Fox hits the grass, and the ball hits the ground as Kirk Gibson finds a hole for a fourth-inning double. Hitch, Deer, Fryman and Moore start over in Tigers 'home opener STRONGEST LEGS Cecil Fielder beat out a nubber in front of the plate, and two runs then scored when pitcher Storm Davis threw the ball into rightfield. by John Lowe Free Press Sports Writer Although the season was six frustrating games old, this really was the first day of the season for owner Mike Hitch. It also was the opener the temperature in the mid-50s, the sun out and 49,674 fans filling Tiger Stadium, the grand old lady for whom Ilitch performed a lot of plastic surgery before his first home opener as the owner. MORE COVERAGE, PAGES 1A, 4Cf 5C, 8F FOR THE RECORD Detroit's 20-4 victory Most runs by Detroit since a 20-7 victory Aug.

14, 1937, over the St. Louis Browns. (That day, the Tigers won the first game of a doubleheader, 16-1.) One run off the club record of 2 1 last done in 1936. Most runs allowed by the Athletics, equaled two other times. Most runs by the Tigers in a home opener, topping a 15-7 victory over Cleveland in 1922.

TEE THE Come back Thursday for the Free Press 1993 golf guide, featuring maps and listings of Detroit-area courses and suggested trips around the state and the nation by Free Press golf writer Jack Saylor. Deer and Fryman hit their first homers, both three-run shots. Deer, coming off a near-sleepless night, hit his off starter Storm Davis and capped a four-run first inning. Fryman, recovering from bronchitis, singled in runs his first two times up, then homered in the fourth. See TIGERS, Page 4C for Rob Deer, Travis Fryman and Mike Moore.

That trio helped the Tigers to a 20-4 rout of Oakland on Opening Day, Detroit style. The trio also was part of the frustration on the season-opening 2-4 trip to the West Coast. Deer and Fryman combined for two RBIs and 20 strikeouts; Moore didn't win either of his starts. That all changed Tuesday with 4 i.