Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 30

The Detroit News flUMJl Pacji; 2D Sunday, January 5, 1997 iller a specialist in fine art of survival r-r-r a i 7 -j in ft- urn A beneath three feet of snow. Hiller says now, eight years later, that he and Lynette moved from the farm in Hermansville to Iron Mountain. "When my leg got bad, it was too hard to take care of that property," Hiller said. "I moved to Iron Mountain. In Iron Mountain, we're three blocks from the golf course.

Behind the ski hill. Tm not too active. I golf a lot. I use a cart. In the winter-time, I dont do much.

There are three feet of snow on the ground. We had 31 inches in December. "I go to the VA every February. We do a pantomime of Casey At The Bat With some local citizens. Then we do it at a nursing home.

"Lynette's now into interior decorating. I don't have a job. I get disability. And I do the fantasy camp once a year." Every winter, Hiller crosses the U.P., the Mackinac Bridge, and drives down to Florida to join old teammates tutoring wannabes and dreamers in the various crafts of baseball. He survives.

"I don't get bored easily," said John Hiller. "I can kick back with the best of them." And he still has his leg. Daniel Mean I The Detroit Newt John Hiller and his wife, Lynette, "can kick back with the best of them" at their Upper Peninsula home. proprietor of the feed store was glad to see him. He continued on to Iron Mountain to visit the patients at the Veterans Administration Hospital, hobbling around.

He showed the visitor the city's most prominent landmark, the ski-jumping run. Later he drove to the small town of Felch. An eagle flew overhead in the blue sky. Hiller pointed out the ball field where the Felch town team played baseball. The field was By Jerry Green The Detroit Newt John Hiller felt the strange pain in his right leg during spring training, when he was teaching the young Tigers the fine art of relief pitching.

1 the art himself as 1 I the first of the Tigers' premier mi relievers at a time when baseball's stats freaks were Whatever happened to. starting to collect numbers for such specialists. Now at spring training as a coach, Hiller went off to the hospital in Lakeland, to have the leg examined. The doctor checked it and rendered his opinion. There was a very grave problem; the leg had to be be amputated.

That in Lakeland, wanted to do it down there, right away" said Hiller, using an unprintable word to describe the Florida surgeon. Hiller went for an opinion from a second doctor. The doctor said the prognosis is right," Hiller said. "Let's try to hang on as long as we can." That was nine years ago. John Hiller is still hanging on.

The kgs not too bad," he said over the telephone as 1997 started. "It's better than I thought it would be." But then John Hiller has always displayed an extreme standard of courage a survivor in life, beyond walking with nonchalance into the most perilous situations on a baseball field. Whatever happened to John Hiller, member of the fabled 1968 World Series-winning Tigers, then the game-saver through the low seasons of the 1970s, who made an All-Star team and set records for relief pitching? He continues to survive. He con-tinues to enjoy life in his calm way, far north in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Tonight, Fm on my way to shoot pool," Hiller, 53, said.

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I play cards. "I play with some retired businessmen. We play a game called Smear. I bet you never heard of it It's similar to Euchre." Hiller joined the Tigers in 1965, a chubby-cheeked lad from suburban Toronto. He was on the staff with Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich and, eventually, Earl Wilson.

In '68, as the Tigers won the pennant and then beat the Cardinals in a dramatic World Series, Hiller was a spot starter. He won nine games. Three years later, he survived his first physical crisis. He suffered a heart attack at the age of 28. He missed the season.

He returned for a while in 1972. Tv Jauron has pedigree for Lions coach Search patrol: One of our NFL contacts says not to forget the guy who used to play defensive back for the Lions as the team hunts for a new head couch. Dick LeBeau? Nope. Dick Jauron. LeBeau, who played cornerback for the Lions from 1959 to 1972 and holds the team record for career interceptions (62), has gotten some media play as a possible replacement for Wayne Fontes.

He is defensive coordinator for the Pitta-burgh Steelers, who went to the Super Bowl last season and made the playoffs this season despite having their defense ravaged by injuries and free-agent defections. Jauron, though, has quietly drawn notice for his work as defensive coordinator of the Jacksonville Jaguars, a second-year expansion team that made the playoffs with a 9-7 record and upset Buffalo last week. In two years with the Jaguars, Jauron has helped improve a defense that had 17 sacks in 1995 and 37 this season, and reduced its points allowed from 404 to 335. Jauron made the Lions in 1973 as a fourth-round draft choice out of Yale alma mater of team owner William Clay Ford. Jauron played safety for the Lions through the 1977 season.

He was cut in training camp in 1978 and finished out his career with three seasons in Cincinnati. Jauron got into coaching in 1985 with Buffalo, spent the next nine seasons with Green Bay, then went to Jacksonville in 1995. It's probably a long shot that Jauron will get anything more than slight mention with the Lions. He has smarts, and league insiders say he brought the Jaguars' defense together in a hurry. The Lions, of course, have watched their defense shatter into factions in the last three years.

Food for thought No, we didn't find the new Lions coach at Compuware Sports Arena when we were in Plymouth for a youth hockey game the other day, but we did make some discoveries. The new arena is awesome and its owner, Peter Karmanos along with partners well known on the local restaurant scene hopes to open a new restaurant in the facility in March. Karmanos will be partners with brothers Johnny and Peter Ginopolis, and Tom Peristeris (of Parthenon and Big Daddy's). Johnny's son, Peter, a Central Michigan graduate with a degree in hotel and food management, will run the new operation. "We're doing the concessions for the arena now," Johnny Ginopolis said.

"Well have Greek dishes, specialize in rihs and kind of combine menus." Use your head First comes a feature in Sports Illustrated on head injuries in the NHL Then follows a report out of Ottawa by the Canada Safety Council that promotes the use of shields to protect the faces and eyes of hockey players. Sorry, but legislation won't solve the crisis. We're with hockey's old guard on this one. The responsibility is not with federal agencies. It's with the players and it requires nothing more than respect for the game and the opponent The flip side is that the modem player, shielded head-to-toe like a medieval knight, has grown up carrying his stick like a lance and targeting an opponent's head because his own is protected.

On the larger issue of injuries caused by normal and accepted hockey activities, and collisions that continue to knock players out of NHL lineups at an alarming (and expensive) rate, there's some- BEKIND THE SCENES Vartan kupelian Mike O'Hara thing that can be done but won't be. This is another suggestion that comes from the men who played the game two decades ago and warned of the danger back then. The NHL desperately needs to adopt international-sized ice surfaces. Its rinks are too small, and seem to be shrinking as players continue to get bigger, faster and stronger. A larger surface would spread the action and promote speed and movement over contact and confrontation.

Based on all we've heard, that's what the NHL wants anyway. But to enlarge existing ice surfaces would mean eliminating a couple of rows of scats at ice level and, thereby, substantial revenue for owners. We know what you're thinking: The11 never do They should. Eliminating two rows of top-priced seats is still cheaper than paying eight extra guys to replace those on the injuried list, especially if one of them is someone making $4 million, like Buffalo's Pat LaFontaine. Makes too much sense.

Wafning She loves us, she loves us not. She loves us, she loves us not. She well, she has us wondering where we stand. We're talking about Jeanne Boo ci, whose 27th annual New Year's Eve run went off in splendid fashion again on Belle Isle, featuring a series of walking and running event. The highlight, as always, was the four-mile run, which has become a tradition for a couple thousand Metro Detroit runners who wouldn't think of hitting the town for a night of revelry without first running themselves dry.

If only the event can last another 27 years at least But what has our heads spinning is that before the Free Press Marathon last October, Bocci helped rent a booth at the prerace expo so some supporters of striking newspaper workers could pass out literature. Race organizers quickly had them removed. Fair enough. Except Bocci, through a race volunteer, eagerly pitched our paper to do a story promoting her race which it did. All we ask is that next New Year's Eve's postrace fare of bananas and bagels also include waffles.

Cut, trash burn Four straight down years for Michigan's football team must have maize-and-blue supporters wondering when Ohio State and Penn State became the Big Two and how far Michigan has to go to get on a par with Northwestern. If Michigan State football Coach Nick Saban jumps to the NFL, Spartans boosters have no complaints. Remember that his predecessor, George Perlea, was hired away from the USFL before his first game as head coach and the school had to pay off his contract Good coaches are hired from other jobs. They don't come from the unemployment line. Even those who hate the subjectivity of selecting a national football champion and clamor for a postseason tournament must have reconsidered after the bowl games, which established, once again, the simple pleasures of a fierce debate.

What's better five teams with one loss all believing (with varying degrees of justification) they might be the best team in the country, or one team claiming the title? There will be a playoff one day, and when that day arrives cloaked in all its flaws we'll savor the bowl system as we once knew it And in 1973, his career changed. Billy Martin, the Tigers' manager, converted Hiller to a relief pitcher. That year, Hiller led in a new stats category. He saved 38 games, then a baseball record and still the Detroit club record. In 1974, he had 17 victories all in relief.

He was an All-Star, the most dominant relief pitcher in the American League. Night after night at Tiger Stadium, Hiller would emerge from the bullpen dungeon in left field, summoned by then-manager Ralph Houk to rescue the ballclub. He would do his-job efficiently, calmly. After all, he had been in genuine danger once, a few years earlier. Hiller had a special routine.

He spent the first five innings or so in the clubhouse. He might take a nap. Or he might have an ice cream. Once in the bullpen dungeon, Hiller and his mates would amuse themselves by telling bawdy jokes until the signal came. He always liked to sit and talk.

In the dead of winter in 1989, a visitor from Detroit sat with Hiller on the porch of the house where he and his wife, Lynette, lived in Hermansville in the middle of the U.P. The house was on a farm, with a huge barn. The acres were snow-covered, the air crisp and cold. Hiller talked about how he would eventually be required to have his leg amputated. He was resigned to that He was strong.

"A blockage developed behind the knee," he said. The arteries below the knee disintegrated." Everybody in town it seemed everybody in the U.P. knew John Hiller. The Postmaster greeted him at the Hermansville Post Office. The admit that my input is in the players we get rid of.

I try to find out about the ones we're getting not only from Randy's reports, but from the people I know in baseball." Bell also knows that most of the faces will be new to him when the team reports to spring training next month. They gave him something like 55 players last spring and he never learned all the names. It was tough on him. He would recognize a face and try to say something, hoping it didnt sound insincere. The players kept coming and going all through the regular season.

Now, some the newcomers are John Rnecngren, Richard Almnnzar, Willie Blair, Glenn Dishman, Willis Roberts, Dcivi Cruz, Decomba Conner, Juan Encarnackm, Scott Gentile, Seth Greisingcr, Dennis Harrigcr, Ray Holbert and Brandon Wilson. How the fans will take this, nobody knows. Only a handful of players on the current roster have any identification in Detroit Travis Fryman, Bobby Higginson, Tony Clark, Felipe Lira, Justin Thompson, Melvin Nieves, Kimera Bartee and Curtis Pride, and some of these are not exactly household names. What did Bell learn in his first senson as manager? He said: 'I tried to make things happen, move things along. That was wrong.

It was my biggest mistake. I should have been more patient with some of my players and Joe Falls Commentary Rested, re-charged Bell ready to ring in For a few yean in the 1970s, John Hiller was the most dominant relief pitcher in the American League. The Detroit Newt a new season ing lineup and he said: "Well, it's not fair to do anything like that, but at this time I'd put Tony Clark at first, Dave Hajek or Damion Easley at second, Orlando Miller at short, Travis Fryman at third, Melvin Nieves in right, Brian Hunter in center, Bobby Higginson in left, Brian Johnson or Matt Walback behind the plate and Curtis Pride and Phil Nevin the designated hitters. "But we all know what the big problem on our team is." P-I-T-C-H-I-N-G. With one exception, Bell said he was pleased with the effort of his players.

The only time I got upset, and I really got upset, was our last game in Cleveland," he said. "We'd worked hard for a couple months but our guys just stood around on this day and watched the Indians do their stuff. I let them know about it But other than that, I could not fault their effort" Ruben Sierra looked out of place in his brief time in Detroit after coming over from the Yankees in the Cecil Fielder deal. The Tigers had to take on his salary to make the trade. But they dropped him shortly after the season ended.

"I had no trouble in our clubhouse," Bell said. "My coaches did a terrific job of stopping any problems before they started. They wouldn't even tell me about it sometimes. But mostly, I was lucky to take over from Sparky Anderson because he set the tone in there and made it very easy for me when he left." given them a little more time to develop." Bell is the sort who takes the game home with him from the ballpark. He did it as a player and now he is doing it as a manager.

And when you lose 109 games and lose some by some outrageous scores, it can make for a lot of unhap- py hours at home not to mention in the dugout "Luckily, my wife understands me," Bell said. "She knows I am totally consumed by my job, so she lets me alone to work things out my own way. Lucky for me, I get over things pretty quickly 111 be upset for an hour or so and then F11 let it go." Bell not only is looking forward to spring training, but he'd leave today if it were possible. Tm really anxious to get back," he said. "I feel we're going to be better.

It may not be fair to say this, but I think our pitching will be better because it cant get any worse. I look at a starting staff of Felipe Lira, Justin Thompson, Omar Olivares and either Willie Blair or Doug Bro-cail. I see our bullpen being better with the addition of Dan Miceli and Todd JoneB. Brian Hunter should give us some consistent speed and base-stealing as our leadoffman and he should do the job in center field. And Orlando Miller should give us some consistency at shortstop.

How many shortstops did we try last year five? That tells you all you need to know about that position." Bell was asked to name his start So what's Buddy Bell been up to in the off-season? At first, he did a lot of sitting around the house. A whole lot "I dont ever remember being that exhausted," he said from his home in Cincinnati Td just Bit there, hour after hour, not doing anything. I consider myself a pretty strong person, mentally and physically, but last season took a lot out of me." No wonder. The Tigers finished last in hitting, last in fielding and last in pitching, and were last in the American League with a 53-109 record 39 games out of first place. The Tigers became the joke of a nation, with late-night TV talk-show hosts making fun of them the way they once did with the New York Mots.

That hurt," Bell said. "I have some thick skin, but nobody likes to be laughed at Today, the manager of Tigers no longer sits around the house. He has been to winter camps in Arizona and Florida and his mind is running all the time as he sifts through all the names on his roster. He admits he doesn't know some of them, and probably doesnt know half of them. "I talk to (General Manager) Randy Smith all the time," Bell said.

"In fact, it seems like that's all I do. I know he't not sitting down. His mind goes a hundred miles a minute trying to improve our team. "I trust him because I know he knows what he is doing. He is very knowledgeable and knows what's going on everywhere.

I have to Question of the week What do you think of the Big Ten basketball race? O'Hara: "Steve Fisher deserves more credit for the way he remains competitive year after year, no matter who turns pro early or leaves school. Thai shows he has Influence on his players. But the Big Ton race is meaningless. Six or seven teams will got to the NCAA tournament." Kupellan: "Hoard a good one the other day. What do you call University of Michigan basketball players? Wolverines.

What donl you call University Qf Michigan basketball players? Graduates. Wake me when March Madness starts." 1.