Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 58

i Ins Sn (ion Hunt x) si: Ci 10; '() (') ('('! IUOII I (icevc 'mom I Unsifted Ads Vogvs 9-9 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY V.hb rm igre 'Manager' Hiller, Lockecl-0 ram on ti-tt 7 ft Ir ut Tigers Own pleaded with Joker Murchaiil. who runs the city of lakeland's Parks and Recreation Department, to unlock Henley Field for a couple of hours every morning. "I hated to have lo do il dial way," admitted the Tigers' interim manager, who looks like a cross between Genghis Khan and Kojak wilh his head completely shaved. "But what the heck, we've got lo look out (or ourselves, don't we?" Since the players are also forbidden from using any of the hallclub's equipment, Hiller snuck into the clubhouse the other day and "borrowed" a doen bats and a big bag of baseballs. Then, Saturday morning, the Tigers' lefthanded relief ace became Ralph Houk and Joe Schultz and Dick Tracewski all rolled up into one.

WHEN THE WORKOUT was over, he even took it upon himself to pick up all the bats and balls which, at $80,000 a year surely must have made him the highest paid batboy in history. Of course, the players had no uniforms. Those were hanging in the Marchant Stadium clubhouse. BY JIM HAWKINS Frea Press Sporls Writer LAKELAND Cheer up, Tiger fans. Those ominous reports that spring training would be late in starting this year were not.

entirely true. As a matter of fact, while Marvin Miller and Bowie Kuhn were no doubt off arguing somewhere, the Tigers began their spring training Saturday morning two full days ahead of schedule! At least some of them did. Sort of. Barred, by order of general manager Jim Campbell, from so much as setting foot in Marchant Stadium until the current debate between the owners and the players' union is resolved, a dozen Tigers assembled unofficially at nearby Henley Field, where the club trained from 1933 until 19(6, for their first workout of the spring. IT WAS ALL John Hiller's idea, actually.

When Campbell kicked the few players who were already in town out of the Tigers' minor league complex last week, Hiller Instead, (hey dressed in their hotel rooms and apartment and arrived at Henley Field in their gym shorts and cut-oifs, and T-shirls and sweat shirts. Rookie infiekler Chuck Scrivener wore one of the Tiger caps that are issued each spring to all the minor leaguers, but asiclr from that, they looked like any oLlier motley group of tin distinuished sandlot stars. Ron LeFlore showed in a stocking cap once he had tracked down his spikes which were in the trunk of Ben Ogli-vie's car. And Bill Slayback didn't have any shirt on at all when he first arrived. IT HARDLY SEEMED like spring training without the hundreds of fans in the stands, oohing and aahing and begging for autographs.

Saturday morning, one solitary elderly couple sat in silence in the grandstand watching Joe Coleman, John Wockenfuss, Danny Meyer, Fernando Arroyo, Steve Grilli, Bob Molinaro, George Cappuzzello and minor leaguer Brian Lambe in addition to Scrivener, LeFlore, Slayback and, of course, Hiller. Doug Uarvev Si ill A Spellbinder on Ice This was Friday morning and the car radio was playing. 1 vvriifww Vince Doyle was talking to Bill Gadsby about the Oldtimers' game in Olympia Stadium and Gadsby was telling him who was going to be there from the Red Wings. "We've got a lot of the old guys coming back," he was saying. "Jimmy Orlando and Black Jack Stewart and Joe Carv-elh and Jim Peters and, of course, Ted Lindsay and Marty Pavelich.

And get this: Doug Harvey is going to play for us! Don't ask me what that's all about, but 1 understand Doug is going to play for our side." I gripped (he steering wheel and my mind hegan spinning. A mid shudder went through my body. Doug Harvey in a Red Wing uniform? When you sit down to name the greatest players in the history of hockey, you begin with Gordie Howe and Doug Harvey. That was it. No arguing.

Howe and Harvey, the greatest forward and the greatest defenseman ever to play this janie. Now Gadsby was saying Harvey was going to wear the blood-red colors of the Red Wings instead of the white, red and blue of Les Canadiens. In this moment I wasn't sure if I even wanted to go to the game. I'd heard how Harvey had fallen on hard times and how he was in a struggle with life. I remembered how he kept trying to hang on at the end, playing for St.

Louis, playing for Guelph, playing for Flin Flon, playing for anybody who would give him a uniform. But to wear the blood-red colors of the Red Wings I thought of the summer's night 1 was having a drink with Ted Lindsay in a Birmingham restaurant. The little scar-faced man sat there, his eyes narrowing as he looked down at his glass, and he was saying: "We hated them. We truly hated them. We couldn't even stand the sight of them.

"We'd play 'em in the F'orum on a Saturday night this was before the airplanes and then we'd both get on the same train for Detroit, where we'd play them again on Sunday night. "Nobody on our team really slept. We'd all get up early, seven o'clock or so, and we'd go into the dinning car so we could have our breakfast and be out of there before they showed up. We couldn't stand to be in the same place as them." And now one of them, Doug Harvey, one of the most hated of all. would be playing for the Red Wings.

I turned off the radio and drove to the office in silence. 11c Slill Sporls Thai Crew Cid Now it was Friday night and as I was going through the side door at Olympia Stadium, 1 saw Marty Pavelich standing there talking to some friends. I motioned him off to one side. "What's with Harvey?" Marty's face turned dark. A frown creased his forehead.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know what's going Pavelich nodded his head across the lobby. "That's him over there." I turned and looked around and my heart sank. There, signing autographs, was Doug Harvey. He was wearing a pair of Hiller, appropriately clad in blue jeans and a windbreaker, was everywhere playing pepper wilh the pitchers, hitting grounders to the infirld-ers, pitching batting practice, and, most of all, admonishing everyone to stay off the grass as much as possible.

Along Ihe sidelines, the groundskeeper whose memories of the Tigers are mainly of Mickey Cochrane and Hank Greenberg and Schoolboy Rowe grimaced every time one of these upstarts dug his spikes into the soft ground. "Stay on the gravel when you're warming up," admonished Hiller, with a nervoni glance over his shoulder at the man leaning on the rake. "I feel bad just being here. I feci like we're in his living room. "Except for the fundamentals, we're doing basically the same things we'd be doing if we were in camp," he explained.

"If I had more pitchers I could work on fundamentals, too. If this thing drags on, we're going to try to do just what we'd be doing in our own camp." SATURDAY'S initial session was supKsed to last for two hours. But after 65 minutes Hiller ran out of ideas. "Damn, 1 don't know what else to do," confessed thp 33-year-old pitcher. "I just don't have enough people." Besides, Willie Morton, wearing his Army fatigues and sweat pants, had taken a I 5 1 1 I i 5 II' I J1 I it' 5 JC i if: I i- i i I ft- AP Photo Pilclif rs Joe Coleman (Irfl) ami John Slay lack, without thr hem Til of Ticr uniforms hold ihrir ow orkoul riease turn io Page 21), Col.

Connors Wins Easy 250 G's blue overalls, like a farmer just in from milking the cows, and he was massive. He must have been 75 pounds overweight. His stomach bulged through the overalls. He was wearing black boots and had a crew cut and was carrying a pair of skates. Harvey began wandering off, walk- in slowly down the corridor.

My God," I thought, "he's looking for the Red Wings dressing room." Harvey paused in front of an open -v 1 i i door. He looked at it and blinked, as if he were trying to remember something. It was the visitors' dressing room. He approached the door slowly and started inside, hesitantlv. -Jit Doug Harvey On imnnlse I followed him throuch the door.

The Montreal LAS VFGAS (AP) "The way 1 played today is the way I would like to play forever," said Jimmy Connors, describing one of his best days on the tennis court, when everything he hit lookel like a winner. And it was Manuel Orantes' unhappy luck-to catch the powerful Connors on such a day. "The way I played today was the way Manuel played at Forest Hills," said Connors following his 6-2, 6-1, fi-0 mastering of the Spanish star Saturday in a challenge match played before about 3,000 restless spectators and a national television audience. "Everything I touched was in, except for two or Ihree balls I missed." Connors said. "Today.

I hit Ihe hall very firm and very deep each lime. I tried lo hi! a deep approach shot, Ihcn move in and lake Ihe nel away." For Orantes, 2fi, it was a day of frustration against the man he had upset at Forest Hills in last year's U.S. Open. "I'm embarrassed that the match wasn't too gfKid," Orantes said. "But that happens Sometimes.

Yesterday and the day before, I started feeling tired, and today I wasn't moving well at all. "I was always late on the ball. I don't think I put any pressure on him at all. At the end, I didn't have a chance. It was just one of those days everything I was trying to hit was going out.

My best shot was my passing shot, but 1 didn't make too many today." CONNORS REMAINED UNDEFEATED in the big-money challenges and pushed his total winnings for four such events to $650,000. "I needed my ears and my tail back," Connors said with a smile. "He (Orantes) took them from me at Forest Hills, and I felt a little bare." Asked jf hp would like to meet Arthur Ashe in a challenge match, Connors who does not get along at all well with Ashe said: "I'd like that very much. No more needs to be said." The match was televised in 64 nations, but not in Orantes' native Spain because of political turmoil. Orantes' countrymen, however, would not have seen their hero at his best.

Connors, 23, was in command from the start as he broke Orantes' service in the first, game of the first set. He again broke Orantes' serve in the fifth game and sailed on to win the first set in 33 minutes. The 26-year-old Orantes was never able to mount a challenge as he barely got his racquet on many of Connors' flashy Iwo-handPd backhand drives. In Ihe second sr, Orantes dropped service Ihree times. In Ihe fifth game, the Spaniard pulled back from deuce with a service aee to take 8 brief advanlajjc, but then blew easy overhead shod to lose the game.

CONNORS, COMING OFF a bout with thp flu, went right to work to finish the match as quickly as possible. But midway through the second set, when it appeared the challenger would be no match, Connors began easing off on his first serves and laying back. He put Orantes away time and again with hard, flat drives from backcourt. Orantes, after his faltering start, never managed to get back on top of his game and Connors breezed through the third set at love. The match lasted just 1 hour, 33 minutes.

It was the fourth consecutive challenge match that Connors has won on the Caesars Palace indoor court. He picked up $150,000 last February bv bcatinn Rod l.aver. Two months later, he won $250,000 for defeating John Ncwcombc, and last December he won $50,000 for teaming with Chris Evert to win a mixed doubles contest, against Marty Ricsscn and Billie Jean King. Dionne And Kings Top Wings BY CHARLIE VINCENT. Frtt Prest Sporti Wrlttr A hated enemy is now the only thing that brings fans to Olympia Stadium, where 15,000 a night used to battle for the right to cheer for the Detroit Red Wings.

The most hated of those enemies, former Red Wings captain Marcel Dionne, paid his third visit as a Los Angeles King to Ihe old red barn on Grand River Saturday night and the crowd announced at 11.178 showed up to boo his ever' step. But Dionne acted as if he couldn't care less what they thought of him, earning a few more Detroit enemies by whipping home the Kings' first goal and assisting on another as Los Angeles dumped the punchless Wings, 3-1. Detroit showed no hesitancy to mix it up with the Kings. But the Wings were seldom able to mount any offensive threat and by the time the night was over most of the fans were booing them rather than Dionne. The Wings had repeated power play opportunities but never took advantage of a one.

In fact, Dionne's goal, wilh 16:28 gone in the first period, came when Detroit had the extra man on the ice. IT WAS DIONNE'S first short-handed goal of the season he had an NHL record 10 of them last season with the Wings and it was a cinch. He took the puck from Mike Murphy, skated past the only Detroit defenseman between himself and the Wings' net and fired the puck past goalie Jim Rutherford. There were a couple of antl-Dlonne banners strung along the Olympia balcony and when he whistled the puck into the net a torrent of jeers rained down on his helmeted head. But that's something he has become accustomed to in his Please turn to Page 2D, Col.

3 4 oldtimers were getting dressed. Nobody noticed the large man in the blue overalls standing there. I walked up lo Harvey and said: "Doug, this is your dressing room. Your dressing room! This is where you belong. Don't you dare go down the hall.

This is where the Montreal Canadiens get dressed!" He looked at. me absently. "I don't rare where I dress. I just want to play," he said. "Well, then, you get dressed in here." Toe Blake, who would coach these oldtimers, was in a little room off the dressing room.

"Go in to see him," I told Harvey. He walked into the small room and said to Blake: "Where am I playing?" Blake's eyes blazed. He said: "You're playing right here! Now go inside and get dressed. We even got No. 2 for you." Harvey stared at him.

"I don't care what number I wear. I just want to play." Spinning Hoarding Pinning Soon they all came out on the ice, to the delight of the small crowd in Olympia Stadium. I only had eyes for No. 2 in the white, blue and red uniform. He played well enough through the first period, especially for someone so massive, so enormous.

In the second period, Harvey purposely flipped a backward pass off the boards to give one of the Detroit players a clean breakaway on the goal. Then, moments later, he fired a shot at bis own goallender from the middle of the ice. Please, i thought, please don't do it. Now it was the third period. The game was dose.

The Wings were winning, 7-5, and the play picked up through the final 10 minutes instead of slowing down. Now there was Harvey blocking a shot with his body. Now he was spinning around in the corner on one leg and firing a pass out to one of his forwards. Now he was boarding Lindsay. Now he was pinning Pavelich.

With the pressure on in front of the Montreal net, Harvey picked up the puck behind the cage and in one quick move hoisted it over the net, over the goaltender's head, and out to center ice. The pressure was off, With a minute to go, they gave Harvey a penalty shot. He knelt at center ice and blessed himself. Then he started skating toward the net. He fell once, got up, fell again, got up and then, with a masterful fake, he pulled the goaltejider and fired the puck into the top of the net.

Now the Red Wing oldtimers were streaming Into their dressing room. They had won, 7-6, and everybody was making noise and congratulating each other. Beers were being passed all around. Pavelich came across the room. "Did you see him! Did you those moves!" he exclaimed.

"What a man! He's still got those moves. Nobody will ever take that away from him. Nobody!" Pavelich was smiling like it was Christmas morning. AP Plwto Jimmy Connors: ll nmlnl my cars hark1 Northeastern Rips CC for City Title N'Mlttrn (71) MltcN Kay AtWl PrlncK Of 7 3 4 17 4 VI 10 5 II 7 15 10 13 W) 1J 31 17 10 Wilimt GKnn Chriln Dckrtn Mcrmlk Liwrnc 1 0-0 The PSL rules the series. The count now stands 13-5 in favor of the City League.

IT WAS Northeastern's sec-ond appearance in the series. The Falcons fell before Austin Catholic and Dave DeBussch-ere. 63-40, in 1958 but Catholic Central had no performer with the talents of a DeBusscherc on this occasion. Catholic Central started likp it was going to make a game of it. Ihe Shamrocks hit on three of their first four shots put the game out of reach made it a big day for the Falcons and coach Robert Smith.

A disappointing turnout of fans, including mayor Coleman Young, was the only thing that ruined an otherwise nice afternoon. This marked the first time since that the Public School League champion was pitted against the Catholic League champion in a scries dating back to 1947. with frequent interruptions. BY HAL SCI IR AM Frt Press Sports Writer I business-like fashion, Northeastern High did a basketball job Saturday at University of Detroit Memorial Building, defeating Catholic Central, 72-59, to win its first city championship in history. The job was so thorough it seemed almost routine.

Superior quickness, better shooting, more finesse and even a classy stall in the fourth period after they had lo speed away to a quick 6-0 lead. But it was only a matter of lime before CC started making its usual number of mistake and Northeastern started coming up with bushel of steals. The with six points each from Ron Dickerson and Chuck Christian, look Ihe lead, 20-15, alter one quarter. Wilh 4:51 left in the first Please turn In Page 2D, Col. 4 Fitigd McHnry Prran Gonill I CO 1 0-0 Young Carton Total 30 17 14 71 Total 710 5 Noiihtaitarn JO 70 11 77 Cathalic Ctntral li 10 70 14 Fouls Norttatrn lO.Caiholit Crnlrai touted out FitigeraM..