Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 63

In This Section Sports on Television Page 2 The Inside of Sports Page 6 Outdoors with Opre Page 8 JJclroit 4frcc Press Sports SUNDAY, MAY 16, 1976 SECTION to-1 Shot Elocutionis urorie in Preakness hi felv: How They Finished WIN PLACE SHOW 22.00 EALTIMORE (AP) Speedburners Bold Forbes and Honest Pleasure put on their expected act Saturday, but when the curtain fell on the 101st Preakness, the star was steady-running Elocutionist. "I was hoping we could beat them," Jockey John Lively said filter finding himself in fifth place after the first three-quarters bj a mile, which Bold Forbes, the Kentucky Derby winner, ran a sizzling 1:09 with Honest Pleasure two lengths behind him. Elocutionist, a 10-to-l shot as third choice in the betting, turned the hope, into reality with a drive down the center of the Pimlido stretch that carried him to a 3'2-tength victory over Play The Red and made ex-Chicago cop Eugene Cashman, Elocutionist's owner, a winner in his first try out at this classic. 8.20 3.40 20.20 6.00 2.80 1 Elocutionist 2 Play The Red 3 Bold Forbes 4 Cojack 5 Honest Pleasure 6 Life's Hope A. IB am 1 FOR BOLD FORBES, jockey Angel Cordero's "Puerto Ri-can Rolls Royce," it was a gallant effort that ended in injury.

"I don't know where it happened, but he has a real bad cut on his left hind foot," said trainer Laz Barrera of Bold Forbes, Yes, I think that could have stopped him." But Cordero said Bold Forbes had no excuses and added, "He stood up like a champion under pressure." It was also a bitter disappointment for LeRoy Jolley, trainer of Bert Firestone's Derby runnerup Honest Pleasure. "Absolutely no excuse," said Jolley. "That pace was too much for both of us and the result for my horse was he just got tired and dirty." PAUL AD WELL, trainer of Elocutionist, agreed that the sizzling pace which led to a final time of 1:55 for the 1 3-16 miles, was a big factor in his colt's victory. "A carpenter with good tools can do a lot of good things," he said. "The pace was different today and it went in my horse's favor.

I think they went three-quarters in nine and that's just what my horse likes. I guess we'll be going to New York now." The third race of the Triple Crown is the Belmont Stakes June 5 at Belmont Park. ELOCUTIONIST'S VICTORY made a coin flip that turned in the favor of Cashman look much better to the former policeman, who now is one of the world's leading commodity dealers in soy beans. Cashman disclosed after the race that at a Fasig-Tipton summer yearling sale in Kentucky two years ago, he wanted to 1 3 i i i f. I Cashman won the flip, but two weeks ago at Churchill Downs it looked like he might have been a long-range loser.

Elocutionist earned $123,700 from the purse of $182,200 and paid $22.20, $8.20 and $3.60 to his backers in a stunned crowd of 62,256. Max Gluck's Play The Red, whom trainer Johnny Campo was reluctant to send to the Preakness after an eighth-place Derby finish, returned $20.20 and $6. "We've always known this horse has ability," said Campo. "Today he finally showed It. He likes to be on the outside better than where he was.

But the rider couldn't get him out." Play The Red, ridden by Jean Cruguet, appeared to have stuck his head in front of the wavering Bold Forbes with an eighth of a mile to go and just before Elocutionist charged by on the outside. BOLD FORBES, OWNED by Esteban Rodriguez Tizol and Please turn to Page 7E, Column 4 11 7 i Jl nmirMwvrrinwmrM If I Pontine Stadium's A Smashing Success AP Photo Jockey John Lively raises up on Elocutionist moments after winning the Preakness Saturday. buy Elocutionist while Adwell wanted another yearling which turned out to be Bold Forbes. FIDGETY FIDRYCH LOSES NO-HITTER IN 7th Til The Bir 2-Hits land. 2-1 Ltl eve BY JIM HAWKINS Fit Sport Writer Mark Fidrych couldn't believe it, But then Mark Fidrych is a bit unbelievable himself.

For six incredible innings, the Tigers' gangling, curly-haired rookie righthander held the Cleveland Indians hitless and help- i Nobody ever considered Peg John very smart at all, except when it came to finance. In matters of money, he was a near-genius, intelligent, creative and all that, even as a kid. One of his tenets was that everybody was a liar as regards how much money they had. "Even poor people got some money," he would say. "Like my old man.

It's just a matter of getting it out of him." Do not hold it against Peg. A lot of fancy guys share the flame philosophy, if you have watched. Just so vou will know, Peg had lost a leg horseback riding. He came to consider it the great break of his life, for it kept ftim from ordinary work and awakened his mind. Last I heard, he was doing well in the used hubcap business, where he, creates a need, then fills it.

Did you know a set of geville caps retails at $450? i Anywav, Peg came to mind out of nowhere you know how those things go as I was talking a few hours ago with the i eople who run Pontiac Stadium. 1 i We all were rather incredulous over what has happened out Jhere since the stadium opened nearly nine months ago. All the government figures show Detroit and Michigan to be the hardest hit area in the country as regards unemployment and such. You were aware of that, right? Yet, the figures from Pontiac Stadium, which is a huge house for sports, entertainment and such, are astounding. I- Last week, the stadium counted its customer, and feiore, when 77,000 people turned out to have Arrowsmith shoot Bound waves through their ears.

In ticket sales alone, 'the stadium has passed the $9,334,000 rnark. Rock Groups Do Their Bit I i They are not yet ready with the numbers, they say, from Concession revenue, Lions rental and all the other dollar sources, but the stadium people figure they already are a Smashing success. There's plenty more money sitting out there, too, one might well believe people are going to spend it in unbelievable Volume at Pontiac Stadium. Tell me you don't believe it. "In July, the stadium will host a pair of rock groups who are less in his first major league start Saturday afternoon before finally settling for ahighly satisfying 2-1, two-hit triumph.

But it was the way he did it that was so unbelievable. Fidrych talked to the ball He talked to himself He even refused to let the grounds crew fix the mound in the sixth inning, helping himself to a of sand and personally patting it in place instead. No double about it Mark Fidrych is unreal. He is also undefeated. "I'll never get over this," explained the fidgety, 21-year-old Fidrych, who was still hopping around after the game.

"Besides joining the club, this is the biggest thrill of my life. I can't believe it. "But, hey, I only struck out five batters. The other guys did all the rest of the work. I did one-third of the work and they did two-thirds." Fidrych, who sticks his tongue out of the right corner of his mouth on almost every pitch, at first denied that he actually talked to the ball on the mound.

Then he admitted, "I really don't know what I do out there." Neither does anybody else. He gestures toward the plate, pointing out the path he wants the ball to take. He struts in a circle around the mound after every out, applauding his teammates and asking for the ball back. And he's forever chewing gum and tugging at the bill of his cap. His teammates call him the Bird because they claim he looks like that character in the kids' TV series, "Sesame Street." He also looks a little like Harpo Marx and a lot like Max Patkin, minor league baseball's famous touring clown.

-He really is something to behold. Fidrych, who just signed with the Tigers In the summer-of '74 and wasn't even on the major league roster this spring, s(id he thought about flying his father in from Massachusetts to watch Saturday's game, but decided against it because "Jie thought the game would get rained out. after Fidrych finished with them, the Indians wisfied that it had been. THE TIGERS IMMEDIATELY SHOWED Fidrych they were on his side with a run in the bottom half of the first. Back-to-back base hits by Ron LeFlore and Alex Johnson, plus Willie Horton's sacrifice fly put the young pitcher ahead, 1-0.

Three innings later, they provided Fidrych with a little more breathing room when fellow rookie Jason Thompson doubled and subsequently scored on Tom Veryzer's sacrifice fly. Meanwhile, 14 Cleveland batters in a row stepped up to the plate, took their turns, and humbly sat back down, without even giving Fidrych what you could call a good scare. -J Then, with two gone in the fifth, he walked Alan Ashby to give the Indians their first base runner. When le 1 a got up to bat In the seventh inmng, Buddy Bell slapped a single to left, under Aurelio Rodriguez' Please turn to Page 4E, Column 4 I sure to set some sort of attendance-revenue record for the country," says Chuck McSwigan. He is the new boss of the cloth-domed complex whose primary tenant is the Detroit Lions football team.

"We will have the groups in on successive weekends," he says, "and we expect to do a million dollars worth of business each time." He will not name the groups yet because he is not prepared to handle the crunch of many thousands who will jam the stadium switchboard and fill the parking lots seeking tickets, when the concert stars become known. I I SJJN4?" -y' h'-tf k'-''X' 1 I i sr S'-- ---'M If 1 38. (. a 1 Free Press Photos by CRAIG PORTER pitcher's mound with his fidgety behavior, which mound barehanded (right). Unorthodox as he might included taking a bead on home plate (left) before be, he was equally effective in pitching a 2-1 two; winding up and repairing a rough spot on the hit victory.

It was a big day in the life of Tiger rookie Mark Fidrych, who got his first major league starting assignment Saturday and almost wore out the It would be a phenomenal response in good times; it is incredible in a period when the area seems just emerging from Jts long economic slump. McSwigan, naturally, credits the stadium, which is unique in Its construction and accommodation, and unchallenged as the only domed facility in the Midwest. Is This the Answer for Detroit? McSwigan is the, former boss of Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Jtadium, and he has some surprising advice, considering his position at -Pontiac, for the people who are renewing efforts to build a stadium on Detroit's riverfront. "They ought to get right at it and do it," says McSwigan. "I have seen what a stadium can do to revive a downtown area.

It's remarkable, and I would say it's really necessary." He would not consider a Detroit stadium as a competitor, and so a detriment, to his own. "There are many things, like downtown conventions and Jrade shows," he says, "that they could handle well there, and it would tring life to the city, as it did in Pittsburgh. I "But it would not greatly affect Pontiac Stadium. The prime tenant in a Detroit stadium would be the Tigers, and of course ihe big show dates, which we handle, aire in the summer. De-Jroit couldn't handle that." i If you are unaware, there is not a civic-owned stadium in the Jcountry making money.

Pontiac will come close, showing prob-mbly a $250,000 deficit, when it closes a short fiscal year June 30. "We had nearly $1 million in start-up costs in our first says Bob Rummel, the outgoing executive director of Pontiac Stadium. "Next year, we figure to. see some kind of profit." Those who storm over the $800,000 the state rolls Into the stadium project each year will be dismayed, no doubt, to learn Jbat even in a profitable year, the Legislature's obligation remains. "It goes back to the way the bond issue for the stadium was arranged," says Rummel.

"The $800,000 is to assure that the people of Pontiac will not be taxed to pay off the stadium. "If there is an excess Of profit at the stadium, we are I required to reduce the rental for promoters of the various Rutherford Fastest Qualifier at Indy and he felt the car had begun to lose pressure even before the end of that lap. "I think we could have done 190, he said. THE VOLATILE FOYT didn't take his problem (poor handling) nearly as well. "It's a disgrace to me, the car and the whole team," he steamed after navigating his 10-mile qualifier in just 185.2G1, a speed that will put him in the second, or maybe even the third, row.

"The damn thing wasn't handling," he snapped, then turned to chide several members of his crew. "If it's not handling better race day, I'll park it." Foyt, who will be racing in his 19th Indy 500, soon cooled off, though. "Hell, it's just loose and we haven't been able to balancelt," he said. "We'll sort it out but we just got short of ONLY NINE DRIVERS qualified In Saturday's belated run-Please turn to Page 4E, Column 5 As a matter of fact, he proved it twice. In 1972 he started on the pole only to finish ninth.

A year later, he started 25th and won the race. RUTHERFORD ISN'T ASSURED of the pole position yet. Several drivers who were waiting in line Saturday are still guaranteed a shot at the pole when qualifying resumes Sunday. Among them are Johnny Parsons, Gary Bettenhausen and Mike Mosely. Unser also has a backup car in line and he could decide to try again in that machine.

Saturday, which dawned grey and wet, turned into a beautiful sun-filled day by early afternoon. But that didn't brighten the day a bit for Bobby Unser or Foyt, two of the perennials here. Unser blew an engine halfway through his qualifying run and although his crew replaced it in time for Bobby to attempt another run Sunday, his chance of sitting on the pole was wiped out, since only the first qualifying run counts toward the pole. Unser was upset, because his only official lap was a 187.032 BY CHARLIE VINCENT Free Press Iports Writer INDIANAPOLIS It looks like Johnny Rutherford will be the po'e sitter for the 60th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 30. But no one knows better than he that really doesn't mean a lot.

Atfer driving his orange Hy-Gain McLaren four times around the 2'-mile oval at an average speed of 188.957 miles an hour, Rutherford and his crew sweated out late afternoon runs by A. J. Foyt and Al Unser before accepting congratulations. "We had hoped it would be a little bit different and we could run a little faster," the 38-year-old Texan admitted. "But it seemed to get slicker and slicker and I bad to ease up to stay out of trouble.

I felt like that was the best we could do. If I'd have tried any harder, I'd have probably crashed and I sure didn't want to do that. "Anyway, it's not where you start but where you finish that counts. I proved that pretty good a couple of years ago." shows." Doggone. That sure sounds like somethin ol' Peg might have contrived..