Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 38

iTonmrrfT'i rr vynr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'TTTT rr i' rr t'r'T'r'rrrr rrrrt i i i i i nTHrryrfr Monday, Aug. 29, 1983 the baseball page Standings and stats, Page 4D. Sports Phone, 1-976-1313 Piice wins golf's World Series Nick Price avenged his final-round collapse in the 1982 British Open with a four-stroke victory in the World Series of Golf in Akron, Ohio. Jack Nicklaus finished second. See story on Page 3D.

HORSE RACING CLASSIFIED COMICS Detroit Fnrr-pnrss Call with tporti news: 222-6660 has a Mas 9 if Lemon '6 8 style Late-inning losses ivear on Blue Jays By BILL McGRAW Free Press Sports Writer t- if-." of! I May dear old Perm State shuck the Huskers hut good i Nebraska must fall. There will be no easy sleep, no meals digested, no peace of mind, unless Nebraska gets its corn husked Monday night in the NCAA football season opener. It is only August and a college football game should not mean beans. A college game should not be impor A The Tigers high-fived their way off the field. Their delirious fans streamed merrily tant until the two state universities are meeting one another in October, or the two arch-rivals are meeting one another in November, or the two bowl opponents i.

-4 ,,.7 ti into the sweet Sunday afternoon. But the Toronto Blue Jays sat in front of their lockers, looking stunned, staring are about to christen 1984. But this is different. Nebraska the No. 1-ranked team in the nation in blankly across the nearly soundless room.

The only noise came from manager Bob bv Cox. the AP and UPI pre-season polls will kick off the season Monday night against Penn State at The Mead- Cox, who had been ejected in the fifth inning by first owlands Giants Stadium, and it is essential that those Cornhuskers be sent back to Lincoln with their stalks dragging behind them. My alma mater must win. 17 By BRIAN BRAGG Free Press Sports Writer With the most dramatic swing of his career, Chet Lemon sent the sounds of 1968 echoing through Tiger Stadium afternoon. Two on and two out in the ninth Tigers trail by a run Lemon leans into a fastball and drives it to left field deep going gone! The Tigers win! More than 30,000 fans go wild and the Tigers' dugout erupts into a mob scene along the third base line.

That's the way it was 15 years ago when llth-hour heroics paved the way to a world championship. "I REALLY DON'T THINK I've ever hit a bigger home run than that," Lemon exclaimed after his three-run blast off Joey McLaughlin plummeted Toronto to another heartrending loss, 4-2. "People asked me after my catch in California (July 24) if I'd ever made a bigger one, and I said 1 had made better ones, but not a bigger one. "Now, this home run well, I don't think you can get a bigger one than with two out in the ninth to win a game." Jack Morris was one of the first Tigers to slap Lemon a high-five as the Tiger outfielder followed Lance Parrish and Rick Leach home to victory. "That was a big, big win," said Morris, who faced a 2-1 loss until Lemon's lightning bolt.

"That could be a very big victory as far as this race is concerned." Morris (17-8) got his ninth consecutive win, and the Tigers took the series, two games to one, remaining two games behind first-place Baltimore in the American League East. "This is real baseball," declared manager Sparky Anderson. "These guys are learning how hard, how very hard, it is to win. And for the first time in 10 years in Detroit the fans are getting to see real baseball." Anderson tried to maintain his calm, but he was excited by the sudden victory so excited he let slip a clubhouse-type noun during a radio interview. "Gosh, I'm sorry, I never do that," he said, smiling sheepishly.

THE BLUE JAYS, shocked nearly by their fourth sudden loss in five games, fell five back of the Orioles. McLaughlin, who gave up a game-tying home run in the 10th inning at Baltimore Wednesday, stood like a statue as Lemon's blast disappeared into a forest of arms in the left field stands. He had turned to stone, it seemed, along with several thousand Jays boosters from across the river who raised a cheery ruckus most of the afternoon. Ernie Whitt, the catcher who has seen too many late-inning pitches socked out of his reach in the last few days, had only one comment, and it was unprintable. McLaughlin's 2-and-0 fastball, he suggested, was not a good pitch.

See TIGERS, Page 5D 1 base umpire Rick Reed, was seething. He leaned against a table in the cramped coaches' room, ripped unwaxed dental floss through his teeth, and angrily screamed out the same one-syllable obscenity about every 60 seconds. Why was re 1 kw- I Rat This is the first time, you see, that I have ever been able to cheer for my own school. My own beloved Penn State. My own college alma mater.

OK, so it's only honorary. Prairie Stale a football dynasty It started about a year ago when I was sitting in Columbus, Ohio, feeling sorry for myself. Michigan was about to play Ohio State and several hundred thousand people considered it more important than nuclear warfare. It was such a big deal. And Texas was playing Oklahoma, and Harvard was playing Yale, and Stanford was playing Cal, and Wabash was playing DePauw, and I really felt awful, i-Everybody seemed to have a team but me.

What did I have? Prairie State College in Chicago Heights, Eleven credit hours, no football team and a Ponderosa steak house down the street? Rah, rah, rah. When I was 19, 1 pointed my orange Firebird east on Interstate 80 and drove. No game plan, no destination. Bobby Cox liever Randy Mnffitt ronlarpH uith Inpv Mrl.ailphlin? I "He gave up a home run," Cox snarled. IJust east.

The first night I bedded down at a Holiday Inn "What's the difference?" WITH THAT, Cox barged out of the office and stalked through the clubhouse, alternately cussing and banging his body into hard objects. His players remained silent. McLaughlin, who gave up Chet Lemon's last-minute home run, appeared shattered. He sat motionless on his stool under a hand-lettered sign that read, "Pal Joey." He held his head in his hands. His face was red and his eyes, were glassy.

A couple teammates walked over and patted him warmly on the back. He had nothing to discuss. "What is there to say?" McLaughlin asked. "You saw the results." The atmosphere was morbid because a team was dying. All season long, many people watching this superb, ever-changing pennant race have been saying English Canada's Team would be the first to fold.

Now it appears to be happening. WITH THE sudden, sickening, 4-2 loss to the Tigers, the fifth-place Blue Jays fell five games behind first-place Baltimore in the American League East. "And we're nine games back in the loss column," noted left fielder Dave Collins, who hurled his glove a dozen yards after Lemon's drive sailed over his head. See BLUE JAYS, Page 5D in Findlay, Ohio. The next day I got caught in a thunderstorm and came across the Bellefonte exit in Pennsylvania.

Before long, I found myself checking into a Dutch Pantry in State College, Pa. I walked around the Penn State campus and appreciated how nice it was. There was a movie house on what appeared to be a cobblestone street, if my memory's not hazy, and there were coeds in micro-minis who were hitch-hiking along the avenues. I almost looked up the dean of admissions on the spot. That was my last contact with Penn State for a long time.

I never covered a football game there, although about five years ago I did do Penn State at Nebraska. A week's worth of work Five teams in the AL East are bunched within five games with five weeks remaining. Here are the contenders' results and remaining schedules this week, and last week's records. (Home games in bold.) Orioles Brewers Tigers Yanks Jays Free Press Photo bv MARY SCHROEDER 74-52 74-55 73-55 72-56 71-59 Monday off 1-0 0-1 0-1 0-1 Tuesday 0-1 1-1 1-1 0-2 1-1 Wed. 1-1 2-1 2-1 1-2 1-2 Thurs.

2-1 3-1 3-1 2-2 1-3 Friday 3-1 3-2 4-1 3-2 1-4 Sat. 4-1 3-3 4-2 4-2 2-4 Sunday 5-1 4-3 5-2 5-2 2-5 Last wk. 5-2 6-1 3-3 3-4 5-2 Encore performance The conquering hero Chet Lemon re-emerges from the clubhouse to receive the insistent ovation. For many years I have admired the football coach, Joe Paterno, and last December another guy and I bumped into him at a restaurant in New Orleans. About two weeks later, Paterno's boys, took care of Georgia in the Sugar Bowl to become the official No.

1 team in the land. At the time, I did not know it was my alma mater that had won. It seems that when I con Joe Paterno the West Gary Blonston Lions in '83 still sin enigma Those pro football zealots wondering what to expect of the 1983 Lions are no closer to knowing today than they were two weeks or two months ago. The Lions' four-game exhibition season, which concluded Saturday night with a 34-7 rout of the respected Cincinnati Bengals, proved little about the Lions, except that fessed to having no alma mater, a Michigan-based graduate of Penn State put in a good word for me with the college's alumni association. Much as I hate to admit it, no one from the University of Michigan or Michigan State did anything similar.

Anyway, I was accepted. I now am an honorary alumnus of The Pennsylvania State University. Even as I type this, I sit here looking at the smiling visage of university President Bryce Jordan on the cover of my official subscription copy of The Penn Stater magazine. This is the same magazine that offers me coupons for Nittany Lion needlework, the "original" Nittany Lion necktie, Nittany Lion brass-finish lamps, Nittany Lion rocking chairs, Nittany Lion "national champion" plaques and a three-day Greek Islands cruise to the season ahead will be confounding for a while, at least. Usually it is possible as the training season ends to measure a team's talent, compare it with others, and make a reasonable judgment of how it should fare in the regular season.

But that's not possible with these Lions, who might be a lot better than their early critics suspect or could turn out to be a patsy. A bundle of "experts" already have picked them to finish last in their division, and some who don't aren't really sure who the jfjl'i'Miii Free Press Photo by MARY SCHROff DER "ft yr Puscas Lion Bobby Watkins (27) knocks the ball loose from Charles Alexander (40) Saturday night. better, and Lord help us, Chicago might be, too. There are only five teams in the NFL Central Division, so you understand the Lions' predicament. In a lot of ways, Monte Clark has fashioned a strange See PUSCAS, Page 6D Lions can beat out in the long race for the playoffs.

They conquer the mountain with bicycles IDAHO SPRINGS, Colo. The 28 miles up from the little town of Idaho Springs to the Rocky Mountain peak called Mt. Evans make a tiring trip, even in a car. The narrow asphalt road becomes progressively steeper as it climbs past glinting lakes, alpine meadows and grazing mountain goats. Above the timberline, the last few miles of hairpin switchbacks are so torn by the high-mountain winter that they form a seemingly irreparable stretch of yard-wide potholes, cracks, heaves and patches where the pavement has been stripped away altogether.

People race bicycles up this road. They did it again Saturday, last weekend, 299 of them, participants in the 21st Mt. Evans Hill Climb. They rode what is said to be the highest paved road in the world, over the bumps, into the thin air, a caravan of $1,000 bikes and some of the best-conditioned bodies and minds in sports. Their hearts hammer in the rarified air, and they approach and sometimes exceed the physical threshold where there is not enough oxygen to support the high-energy fire in their bodies.

Their legs churn thousands and thousands of times with hardly a respite. No wonder Doug Smith, 19, a freckle-faced college student, came across the finish line weeping. There were plenty in the crowd at the top who had watched him race and felt like crying with him. After 25 miles up the mountain, he had surged to a 1 4-sec-ond lead over three other contending cyclists, well ahead of the rest of the competition. All alone, he pumped his red Pinarello 10-speed up and sharply to the right, into a climbing hairpin turn.

A pothole blocked the center of the road. He veered to the outside, too fast, slid on loose stones, went down. See BIKE RACE, Page 6D MY OWN VIEW is that they will not make the playoffs, simply because Green Bay, Minnesota and Tampa Bay are Myconos, Rhodes, Crete and Santorini sponsored by my Penn State Alumni Association. I have not been to Santorini for years and am seriously thinking about it. So what does my boss know? In the meantime, Paterno's Penn State Nittany Lions are taking part in the 1983 college football season opener and they er, we have to go out there and fight, fight, fight and knock Nebraska on its brask.

The oddsmakers tell me Nebraska is favored in this game, but Penn State is ranked No. 4 in the pre-season polls, so it should be a darn fine game. I can't go to the game because my boss says it's not important enough. My boss attended Northern Illinois, which shows you how much he knows about college football. I did get Paterno's home phone number and thought about calling him, but he probably gets sick of hearing from crazed alumni.

So, I'll probably just sit home in my Nittany Lion rocker, hoping for the best. Unless, of course, I hear sometime soon from the alumni association of the University of Nebraska, which would put a different light on the situation altogether. Irish-bred longshot wins Bud Million CHICAGO (AP) Tolomeo, a 35-1 shot, came down the stretch Sunday to catch Nijinsky's Secret and John Henry in winning the third running of the Budweiser Million by a head. Ridden by Pat Eddery, the Irish-bred Tolomeo fought off John Henry's final bid to win first prize of $600,000. Nijinsky's Secret finished third in the 1 '4 -mile race timed in 2:04.25.

$3.9 million. Nijnsky's Secret, who led most of the way with John Henry second, took down third money of $110,000. TOLOMEO paid a whopping $78.40, $33.20 and $17. John Henry, who went off as the. 7-5 favorite, paid $4.80 and $3.40.

Nijinsky's Secret paid $6 to show. Thunder Puddles finished fourth and earned $60,000. Tolomeo, owned by Carlo D'Alessio, a 78-year-old Italian lawyer, had one previous victory, which was as a two-year-old at Newmarket. He recently finished third in the Group I Coral-Eclipse Stakes. John Henry, breaking from the No.

13 post position, started quickly under jockey Chris McCarron, and was pressing for the lead as the field hit the finish line for the first time. A See MILUOr Page 5D Tolomeo, a three-year-old bay colt, had been in danger of being scratched from throughbred racing's richest event by trainer Luce M. Cumani, who was afraid of a soft track following midweek rains. But Sunday's sunshine improved the soft track from yielding to good by race time. Penn State and Nebraska stand to profit front the John Henry, winner of the inaugural Million in 1 98 1 took second money of $200,00 to boost his all-time earnings to Classlc.See story on Page 6D.

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