Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 35

1-D DETROIT FREE PRESS Tuesday, May IS, '73 To iger It Hit 'Like a Bomb' 0 TIT wi JLMJ' 111 Colema 1Mb I1TIIWII Indy Death Gives Joe Clammy Feeling UPI Photo Lightning kills semi-pro pitcher team's stunned shortstop struggles to his feet Ya See, Girls, It's Strictly LAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz. -(UPI)- A bolt of lightning, described as a column of fire two feet wide, hit a baseball pitcher "like a bomb" Sunday afternoon as he was winding up for a pitch in his team's season opener. The bolt killed pitcher John Wade, 19, instantly then forked out, knocking every player in the infield and outfield off his feet. At least seven persons were injured. Two of them, second baseman Herbert 21, and shortstop Bob Hormann, 33, were reported improving at Lake Havasu Community Hospital.

LIGHTNING struck in the top half of the sixth inning as Wade, of the newly formed Lake Havasu City semipro team, was about to deliver a pitch to a batter from the 1 (Calif.) team. "It was like in one of those science fiction films where someone from outer space would shoot a ray of light at someone and he would disintegrate," said Glen Baker, a volunteer fireman who was watching the game. "A cylinder of light came down and engulfed the pitcher," he said. "It looked like his whole body was just one big flash." "It just vaporized the kid's clothing and what was left was in shreds," said an ambulance operator. Then, according to witnesses, the lightning leapfrogged from the mound like a star shell, first into the infield and then into the outfield, knocking everyone off their feet, and sending clouds of dust 100 feet into the air.

Wade's sister witnessed the tragedy from the bleachers and raced to the mound where her brother lay, screaming, "My God, my God, my brother," She attempted to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he was already dead. Wade's father was the base umpire and was standing near first base when the lightning struck. He was knocked to the ground but was not 'No Contest' Sports in BY JIM HAWKINS Free Press Sports Writer NEW YORK-Certainly, it seemed like panic-button time. After watching and writhingwhile the Tigers dropped two in a row to tumble all the way to fifth place, manager Billy Martin was desperate. He gambled on a batting order that included two guys hitting an even .000 and he abandoned his seat on the bench to flash signs from the third-base coach's box in an attempt to bust the Tigers out of their rut.

And, presto! They erupted with 12 hits Monday night as Joe Coleman calmly, efficiently, shut out the New York Yankees, 8-0, to claim his seventh victory. SUDDENLY, things didn't seem so terrible anymore. With Monday's win, the Tigers climbed up a couple notches, to a close third in the American League East. What is more, they looked like the division champs they're supposed to be and that hasn't happened too often this year. It was, In fact, the Tigers widest winning margin of the year and one of Coleman's most impressive performances in quite a while.

The Tiger righthander restricted the Yankees to six hits while striking out eight his high for the year to move right in behind Wilbur Wood of Chicago in the AL individual victory derby. Ike Brown, a surprise selection as the starting leftfielder, collected his first two hits of the year and accounted for his first RBI with a second-inning single. BUT THAT was nothing compared to the night Dick Sharon enjoyed. The 23-year-old outfielder, just 72 hours removed from Toledo, made his first major league start, connected for his first major league hit and Please turn to Page 2D, Col. 4 riyj Right off, I want to apologize to those few ladies who picked up their phones along about the supper hour Sunday evening and heard this awful cackling laughter coming from the earpiece.

Haw-haw. I mean, there was nothing gracious about It at all. My good daddy, who always cautioned his boys to take very little nonsense from women, nonetheless would not have approved such chortling. But then, what's done is done. The ladies asked for it, and, boy, did they get it.

Forevermore, or at least until July, they will have to live with the brand Mr. Bobby Riggs implanted on them Sunday. What that brand shows is that in any match between a man and woman, the woman will finish third. Or maybe a bad second. Li'l ol' Bobby Riggs absolutely destroyed Mrs.

Margaret Court. IT WILL BE MOST difficult indeed to watch her in the future as she knocks over all the little girls of the women's tennis circuit and consider it anything more than pretty exercise. Bobby did that. In an hour's time, he made all the world's female athletes inferior and meaningless. If a 55-year-old man can beat the world's very best woman player, well, then, what does that say for younger men and lesser women.

I hesitate to say. It's not over, this thing that Bobby Riggs has created. Mrs. Billie Jean King, the gal he wanted in the first place, flew home from Japan Monday morning. She took one look at the morning newspapers, and said: "My gosh, it's awful.

I'm ready to challenge him now." Mrs. King is the pro circuit's No. 2 gal player behind Mrs. Court. She says she wants to play Bobby in July on her home courts at Hilton Head, S.C.

"I think I can beat him," insisted Billie Jean. "I know one thing, I won't do worse than Margaret did. She played just terrible. I think it's awful." "I will play her anywhere, anytime, on cement, clay, grass, marble or ice," said Bobby cooly. As for Mrs.

Court, she was still puzzled by her 6-2, 6-1 rout. "I never got my game going," she said. "I just can't understand what happened." Well, of course, that's the' magic of Bobby Riggs. He plays his patty-cake tennis until his, rivals collapse, seldom knowing what really did them in. STORIES ABOUT Bobby Riggs, the hustler, are becoming almost legend these days.

Almost all of them have Bobby cleaning some poor sucker. But there have been times when Bobby has been the victim. Last week, before the match with Mrs. Court, he was telling friends of the toughest match he ever played. Please turn to Page 2D, Col.

3 So it has happened again. Death at Indy. I heard about it on my car radio Saturday night. Don Howe of WJR began saying: "At Indianapolis, veteran race car driver in thalt instant that chilling instant I quickly thought to myself: "Oh, God, who is it this time?" Art Pollard was killed in a grinding crash as (he first day of qualifying 'i that cold feeling again. That cold, clammy It's always that way when I hear that one of them is killed in a crash.

S'" J' didn't know Art Pollard. In fact, I'd never spoken to him. I couldn't place his face in my mind. So that made it a little easier. But not much.

Pollard is a familiar name at Indy one of the men who run down there every year. He is one of the names you come to know if you cover this race. These names are not like any other names In sport. Lloyd Ruby. Mel Kenyon, Wally Dallenbach, Roger McCluskey, Gordon Johneock.

Art Pollard. They are race car drivers. You see these names and you think of only one thing. Indy. They are not the stars.

They're usually the ones who fill out the middle rows. But each year, each trip to Indianapolis, they seem like old friends. It always makes me feel good to see them again each May. Now there is one less. I always walk among them, in the pits, as they are at work.I watch them through the open doors of the garages.

Sometimes I walk behind them as they are headed out to the track, getting as close to them as I can and hope they don't notice me. These men fascinate me. In a sense, they are my heroes. I look at them and a feeling of great admiration comes over me. I happen to think they are very brave men.

Maybe you think they're foolish. Maybe you think they're glory hounds or money mad or just plain out of their minds. I won't argue. Race Drivers: A Breed Apart They're different. They're different than any other men I come in with all year long.

I see Kaline before a game and I know I'll" see him after the game. The same with Greg Landry and Mickey Redmond and Dave Bing. 1 But when I look at an Art Pollard, even though I may not speakJo him.T feel this great surge of excitement run through my body. They are doing something I could never do. They are putting their lives on the line and no matter what their reasons may be, they excite me and I have a feeling of admiration for them.

Also a feeling of envy, if that makes any sense. I would love to run one of those cars to bring it around slowly at first, getting the feel of the track, warming up the engine, taking the edge off the tires and then cutting it loose with all of that blinding power: roaring through the main straightaway, dipping down into that first turn, all but ricocheting around the short chute, turning up into the backstretch and opening it up again and getting ready for the dip into turn three. 1 always wonder about myself when I think of Indy. Am I drawn there by the blood or the possibility of seeing tragedy before my eyes? It would be easy to say: "Not me," But am I being honest with myself? Whenever, there is an accident, I am up on my feet peering around the track to see what happened'. When there are pictures in the paper, as we had in our Sunday editions, I find myself gripped by them.

But it has to go deeper than that. I would be a ghoul if this Is what drew me to the auto races. More than anything else, I would love to cover the Grand Prix of Monaco. To see somebody ram into a wall or dive into the Mediterranean? No, sir. I would love to see them run through those narrow streets, around those hairpin turns, down the hills, through that tunnel, around the chicanes.

Speed excites me. Even when I get my own car up to 80 or 90, I become turned on! Once I hit a hundred. It was just a fraction of a second but I wanted to see what it felt like. It was both scary and exhilirating at the same time. 51 Tigers Swap Catchers with NL Braves OUR "LONDON CHARACTER" WHITE WET-LOOK SLIP-ON looks more than wet: it looks twice as expensive.

Glistening white with black piping and goldblack ornament, in a rounded-toe slip-on with long-wear sole. One of the nicer things'you can step into this summer, and $28 puts you there. If BY JIM HAWKINS Free Press Sports Writer NEW YORK They may not have had an immediate impact on the win column, but the Tigers took a couple steps to kick their losing habit Monday. Shortly after the club arrived in New York, general manager Jim Campbell back in Detroit swapped third-string catchers 1 1 the Atlanta QB Berry Is Back WithVikes We Know the Risks9 p- c1 Braves. The Tigers sent Gene La-mont, who hasn't been to bat yet this year, to the Braves along with an undisclosed amount of money for Bob Di-dier, who was immediately assigned to Toledo.

That left room on the major league squad for infielder John Gamble, Who was summoned from Toledo in an effort to add some speed to the Tigers' slow-poke attack. "RIGHT NOW we need all the help we can get," admitted manager Billy Martin. "And we definitely need some good baserunning. That's one thing Gamble can do he can steal a base." Gamble, whose speed was apparent on several occasions this spring, was hitting .259 at Toledo when he got the call. But, so far, he had only stolen one base.v Didier, who was Atlanta's No.

1 catcher a few years ago, will give the Tigers the insurance they have been looking for all season in case anything happens to Bill Freehan or Duke Sims without taking up valuable space on the 25-man unit. At the same time, Martin replaced Joe Schultz in the Please turn to Page 2D, Col. 4 After Pollard's death, Johnny Rutherford was interviewed on the radio. I thought he did a beautiful job of expressing his feelings. He was down.

You could tell it by his voice. A colleague had been killed and that's always difficult for the other drivers. But Rutherford spoke very clearly, very easily, very sincerely. He said: "I just can't feel that badly about it. We all know what we're getting into.

We know the risks. But it is something we have to do. "Art was doing exactly what he wanted to do In life. How many men ever achieve that in their own lives? I feel badly that he's gone but at least he had the opportunity to do what he wanted to do." Now let me take it one step further and quote from a book which just came across my desk. It was called "The Glory Road," by Dick Watson, and the first article is entitled: "Why Men "The need to compete is bred into each and everyone of us as surely and as deeply as the need to eat, to sleep and to love.

This need has created many different forms of competition from football to checkers, from tennis to arm wrestling. "But the purest and most basic form of competition Is racing. The rules are simple first over the finish line is the winner. The challenge is elemental man has always wanted to know who can run faster, swim faster, even hop faster. Man has always pitted his possessions against the possessions of the other men be they horses, chariots, boats or bull frogs.

So it was only natural, with the development of the automobile, that men would race them against each other. "But what manner of man would choose to participate in so dangerous a sport as automobile racing? The same type of man who elects to participate in the other so-called "blood such as bullfighting and mountain climbing. The thrill of putting your life on the line the exhileration of knowing that it is your skill, and yours alone, that has kept you from sudden injury or even makes victory in an automobile race so much the sweeter. It is this highly personal challenge, this compelling desire to push oneself to the absolute limit of physical and emotional endurance, that 'makes automobile racing to the men who compete in its arenas." And, finally, what it's really all about 'No man has ever been forced to drive a car He drives because be wants to drive. It's as simple as that." I'll be there on May 28.

BLOOM1NGTON, Minn. (AP) The Minnesota Vikings reacquired quarterback Bob Berry from Atlanta Monday as partial compensation when reserve quarterback Bob Lee and middle linebacker Lonnie Warwick signed with the Falcons. The Vikings will also get Atlanta's first-round choice in the National Football League's 1974 college draft as part of losing the two free agents. Both had played out their options and were free to sign with another club as of May 1. Vikings general manager Jim Finks said Berry expressed some surprise when he was informed of the transaction.

LEE, A 6-foot-2 punter and quarterback, described the trade as "a great opportunity-a chance to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. That's what every quarterback wants." Lee said he played out his option after Fran Tarkenton returned to Minnesota from the New York Giants last year. Lee was used sparingly in 1972. Warwick, a Vikings' regular since 19fi5 until he suffered a knee injury last year and sat out half the season, said he played out his option because Please turn to Page 2D, Col. 1 STORES OPEN TUESDAY EVENING EXCEPT WOODWARD NEAR STATE TIL 6 P.M., GRAND RIVER GREENFIELD AND BIRMINGHAM TIL 5:30 Gamble Lamont.