Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 73

SLC I ION tp' 'V y'- i- In 1 liis Section 5or7i oh Television Page 2 The Inside of Sports Page 6 Outdoors withOpre Page 8 Dc roil ifrec Vvc Sports SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 1977 Who Superstitious? Chain-Adorned Tito May Make You Believe y- 'j'1 BY JIM HAWKINS Free Press Sports Writer Everything Tito Fuentes does, he does with a flair. When he walks to the plate, he retraces his steps from his previous turn at bat provided, of course, he got a base hit. He taps the handle of his bat on the heart of home plate, then gives it a flip, catching the stick in midair. When he swings and misses, as does happen on occasion, more often than not he spins completely around, flipping his bat like a baton. He prefers honey on his salads and honey in his coffee, disdaining conventional society's affection for sugar.

And he's the only player in the American League to wear a sweatband around his head, a la pro basketball's Slick Watts. training and they all said something different," Tito recalled. "They put me in the hospital, in traction, for 25 days, and the pain went away. But the minute I went back on the field, it hurt again. The pain was so bad I couldn't see.

So the Giants said I had to go to the knife. "I said, 'Hey, no knife for My housekeeper at the time told me about a guy in San Salvador who had cured her son, who was born deformed. I couldn't believe it, when she told me what he had done. But I wrote him a letter anyway and told him what was wrong with me. "HE SENT ME some leaves to use to make tea, and some stuff, like cocoa butter, to put in a single line down my spine.

He said to use it every day for 15 days, but he didn't guarantee anything until the 21st day. He said, 'Don't start celebrating until "Again I didn't believe it. But I had nothing to lose. I figured why not take a chance and see if it works. If it didn't, I could still have the operation "After 21 days I went to the Giants and said, 'I'm Please turn to Page 4E, Column 4 On each finger he wears a ring.

And all eight rings have been personally designed by Tito. Around his neck he wears two chains. From the smaller one dangle a large tooth, a picture of his kids and assorted other medallions and memorabilia. From the heavier one hangs a large religious medal of St. Barbara.

"That is the one who protects me," Fuentes explained Saturday, after the Tigers and Baltimore Orioles had been overruled by rain for the second day in a row. And when there is something seriously wrong with Fuentes, the Tigers' new second baseman goes to see his favorite witch doctor in the Dominican Republic. "I hate to talk about it because I know it's hard to believe," said Fuentes. "But believe me, it works. "I don't believe in many things.

You have to prove things to me. I don't believe in gypsies or people reading cards or telling fortunes or things like that. But 1 believe in this because I know it worked for me." IN 1966, while he was playing for the San Francisco Giants, Fuentes injured his left shoulder. "It kept popping out every 10 days it would pop out," he recalled. "The Giants told me I had to get an operation.

But the doctor said there was no guarantee the operation would fix it: "Matty Alou suggested I go see this guy in the Dominican Republic who had cured him. I didn't believe it was going to work, but I went to see him anyway. I figured, what did I have to lose?" Fuentes went to see his "man" three times. "He put a few leaves on my shoulder, he touched me and prayed," he explained. "And my shoulder never popped out again." In 1974, Fuentes developed a problem with his back.

"I went to see all the different doctors in San Francisco and spring Free Press sketch by Dick Mayer Tilo Fuentes: His superstitions work Rainout Gives Tigers 3 Twin Bills in a Row illy Gets Around JT CHI The Sports World In September the Tigers may rue all these rainouts. Unless general manager Jim Campbell gets special permission from American League president Lee MacPhail, the Tigers will have to play three doubleheaders on three consecutive days when the Baltimore Orioles come back to town for the second and final time in September. That is, of course, assuming the two teams are able to get together for their regularly scheduled doubleheader Sunday. The Tigers are already committed to playing the Orioles in a doubleheader Sept. 5, and another Sept.

7, with a single game in between. According to league rules, they must now make up Saturday afternoon's rainout as part of a doubleheader Sept. 6. However, Campbell said Saturday he intends to call MacPhail and seek permission to play Sept. 8, when the Tigers and Orioles are both scheduled to be off, instead.

Or Pro Brooks Feeling the Pain (From Bench) GRAND RAPIDS Whenever you come to Grand Rapids, you do two things: You stop in to see Sully at his furniture store, then you go out and have a few drinks with him at his bar. Sometimes you play air hockey with him at his bar, but you try to avoid this because if you sweep the best-of-seven series from him, he makes it a best-of-nine, a best-of-eleven, a best-of-thirteen, until he can put on a rally and overtake you. Once he gets ahead, he says: "I've had enough." This is called the home-bar advantage. Sully is Bob Sullivan, and I think he's an interesting guy. He's the only guy I know besides Dick Purtan who has his picture on billboards, and it is a little intimidating to be racing along 1-96, minding your own business, and suddenly see his kisser staring down at you from a big billboard just outside of Grand Rapids.

01 lie Fretter I can take looking down at me. Even Mr. Belvedere. Once I even got through six months of Pete Waldmeir staring at me from all over town. But I've known Sully for years, and it's strange to see a friend looking down at you from a billboard, especially when his face comes at you out of nowhere.

Sully sells his tables and chairs during the day and plays his games at night. He's got the hottest bar in town, packed to the ceiling on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. It's so special he charges you just to get in the door. (Press cards are not accepted, just like at nine o'clock mass.) Of course, you can't hear anything once you get inside Sully's bar, but who cares? The sights are wonderful. His Teams Are No Patsies Sully loves his sports.

He loves them so much he sponsors baseball teams, basketball teams and bowling teams. These are not your neighborhood teams either, but tough semi-pro outfits where you have to produce the goods to play. His baseball team is called "The Sullivans." which kind of fits in with the billboards. I'm not sure if he still has his basketball team, the Grand Rapids Tackers. I saw them play one night and if it tit I they could have given the Pistons all they could handle.

His top basketball player was Steve Mix, whom Sully sent on to the Philadelphia 76ers, to show you the kind of ball they were playing. Sully loves a lot of things about life, but the thing he loves most is his job as a scout for the Tigers He takes this more seriously than he does anything else, and if Jim Campbell had a few more like him we might have a contender on our hands in a very short while. Sully is the man who gave us Mickey Stanley and Phil Regan and Dave Roz-ema. As I drove up here the other day, I when Robinson first appeared in a Baltimore uniform, stepped in at third base and marked the beginning of the end of an era. "It was a big adjustment," Robinson admits without bitterness, "to know I was going to the ball park every day knowing I wasn't going to play.

I didn't know what the heck to do most of the time. But after a while I settled down, calmed down kinda, and I just knew they were going to play somebody else there." His average improved as a part-timer, eventually climbing to .211, and Robinson went to spring training hoping one of the expansion clubs would give him an opportunity to add another two or three years to his career. "It wasn't worth my while to uproot my family after all those years in Baltimore for just a one-year contract," he said. "I wanted two or three years and the same money Baltimore had been paying me. But it never worked out." So the man who is certain to occupy a niche in baseball's Hall of Fame in the near future swallowed his pride and returned for one last season with the Orioles.

"THERE'S ABOUT seven or eight of us who don't play," he says, and you can tell just saying that hurts his pride a bit. "We go out before anybody else is there, take our hitting and throw to each other. "So now I just try to stay ready for when the opportunity comes if the kids don't play well, that's the only way I'll get a chance play And if the opportunity doesn't come, then it'll be all over for Brooks Robinson." He has no desire to coach or manage. "The only reason for the player-coach designation," he says, "is so they could cut me more than the 20 percent they are allowed, which they did. "They told me the only way I could come back was if I took more than a 20 percent cut, so we had to get clearance from the Players' Association to do that and I came back as a player-coach.

It was a fairly difficult thing to do after all that time with the organization, but we worked it out and I'm very happy. "I'm gonna have a good time one way or the other. But this'll be it if I don't play much." BY CHARLIE VINCENT Free Press Sports Writer All around the Baltimore Orioles locker room, little groups of semidressed players were organizing card games, laughing and joking as the steady beat of raindrops on the tarpaulin outside signaled certain postponement of the game between the Birds and the Detroit Tigers. At the locker nearest the door, alone with his thoughts and his memories, sat one of the greatest third basemen in the history of the sport. Though he carries the title player-coach, Brooks Robinson is really neither.

He batted just three times in the Orioles' first 10 games, so he's no longer the player that appeared in 97 percent of Baltimore's games between 1959 and 1976. And he admits the title of coach is a sham, just a ploy to enable the ball club to cut his salary more than the usually allowable 20 percent. "YOU CAN ONLY feel a part of something if you contribute," he said, looking around the room. "That's why I was so glad to get that three-run homer the other night It was my first hit of the year and it won a ball game and I felt like I contributed something. "Sometimes you get to spinning your wheels, almost.

You go on the road and you sit around and don't know what you're going to accomplish." That never used to be a problem for Brooks. His achievements fill three pages in the Baltimore press guide: Second in the history of the American League in games played, behind only Ty Cobb; most career hits by a third baseman; highest lifetime fielding percentage by a third baseman; most career putouts, most assists, most chances accepted and most double plays by a third baseman; 16 straight Golden Gloves; 18 consecutive All-Star Games; Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1964. But in 1975, age began to catch up with Robinson, who will be 40 on May 18. He hit just .201. And it got no better last season.

After 28 games, he was batting just .165 and Oriole manager Earl Weaver decided it was time to make a change. Doug DeCinces, who was four years old Free Press Photo by AL KAMUDA Brooks Robinson is a player-coach in name only these days 'Slew9 Wins Wood Ifs On to the Derby was listening to the ball game from Fenway Park and was rooting for Rozema to get his shutout. Not because I know him, which I don't yet, but because I know Sully and 1 know how hard he has worked for the Tigers and how much this whole thing means to him. Sully signed Rozema back in 1975, and it was a tearful ceremony. The signing took place in the furniture store, and there was Rozema crying, his mom crying and those watching this touching scene crying.

"That's just the kind of kid he is, as sensitive as they come," said Sully. Sully promised Rozema's parents he would fly them to spring training if their son made it up to the Tigers. That didn't work out, so he did the next best thing: He promised them he would make sure they saw him pitch his first game in the major leagues. And so there he was, two weeks ago, driving his van to Toronto with the Rozema clan in the back enjoying the sights. Onward and Downward I appreciate the straight way Sully talks, like when he told me he nearly brought Rozema's career to an end before it started.

This was back in February of '75, shortly after he had signed him for the Tigers. Sully wanted to see that the kid got to spring training, so he offered to fly him there personally in his own plane. That was a nice gesture, except Sully's basketball team had a game in Indianapolis on a Sunday night. For religious reasons his coach couldn't work on Sundays, so Sully had to coach the team himself. He took Rozema with him for a quick stop-off before going to Florida, and even gave him a uniform and sneakers.

If the Tackers got far enough ahead, Sully planned to give the kid a chance to play. That never came about, and neither did the plane ride to Florida. They took off from Indianapolis and hit a blinding snowstorm and well, let's let Sully take up the chilling narrative: "I mean we can't see a thing. Maybe a hundred yards, that's all. The snow is blowing right at us and we can't get up more than a thousand feet.

"Now the engine quits on us. It's a one-engine plane and right away I figure we've had it. I've been through a lot of scrapes but nothing like this, ever. I figure we're going down. "Dave is sitting in the back of the plane.

It's his first plane trip and he's not sure what's going on, but I'm scared stiff. We start losing altitude, and we don't have much to lose. "We're now somewhere between Indianapolis and Louisville and the pilot makes radar contact with the Indianapolis tower. They aim us at a deserted Army field and we're able to activate the lights with our radio. "Now we're trying to set it down but we overshoot the runway and, bam, we wind up in a snowbank." Sully got out of the plane, brushed himself off and called a cab and took it Louisville.

When the airport there was closed, he got back in the cab and took it to Cincinnati. "It was," says Sully, "a hundred and seventy six bucks on the meter." Cruguet) not to worry," said Turner after the $110,300 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. "Let the horse run easy and move him when it is time, near the three-eighths or the quarter." Time came at the three-eighths pole, when Seattle Slew shot from a l'j-length NEW YORK (AP) -Trainer Billy Turner was happy Saturday, but even more important, Seattle Slew was happy and now the pair will try to spread some more joy for owners Karen and Mickey Taylor at the Kentucky Derby May 7. "I told Jean (jockey Jean O's Weaver: We'UBeFine BY CHARLIE VINCENT Free Press Sports Writer Earl Weaver didn't curse the rain Saturday that kept his Baltimore Orioles from playing the second straight day and thoroughly muddled his pitching rotation. Instead, he squatted on a stool in the visiting manager's locker room at Tiger Stadium, caressing a cold can of Stroh's, and began counting his blessings.

Weaver really seems to believe his team can win it all. "We'll be fine," he said smiling, discounting the fact the Orioles were generally considered to be no better than fourth in the American League East. The Orioles have eight players on their roster with less than a year's experience in the majors and Weaver says there are more in the minors who can help as the season goes along. "When we let everybody walk awav (Reggie Jackson, Bobby Grich and Wayne Garland played ou their options and signed with other clubs), it was a gamble, but we felt this group could play major league baseball and it was time to give them a shot." SO FAR, THAT FAITH has been justified. Second baseman Billy Smith is leading the league in hitting outfielder Larry Harlow is hitting designated hitter Please turn to Page 4E, Column 3 lead to a six-length lead in the stretch.

At the end of the Vs miles, the margin was a comfortable 3 '4 lengths, and the unbeaten colt had his sixth straight victory. His previous victory was in the Flamingto March 26. "I WAS HAPPY to see our colt not get ranked when that other horse (Fratello Ed) was right with him," Turner said. Seattle Slew appeared relaxed throughout, perhaps as a result of his growing number of fans. "Yu said Cruguet, "he comes out and the people clap for him.

He's happy." Mickey Taylor Sattle Slew runs in the name of his wife Karen said the colt will Please turn to Page 7E, Col. 3 Rain Slops Softballers Because of two days of steady rain, the opening rounds of the Free Press-Softball City Open slowpitch tournament have been postponed until next weekend. The men's Class and competition, originally scheduled to begin Friday night and continue through Saturday and Sunday, has now been tentatively rescheduled to begin next Saturday. Because of this weekend's rainouts, the tournament will probably continue through the weekend of May 6-7-8. The schedule of first-round games will be available Wednesday.

For information, call Softball City, 368-1850 or 368-0730. EARL WE AVER: felt this group could play major league baseball and it was time to give them a shot.".