Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 49

DETROIT FREE PRESS Friday, Feb. 27, 1C37 Pryci chat gad with raps: i ii ii ii ii i iv ie i i NBA NHL PREPS CO Former IBF champion Aaron Pryor was charged with rape Thursday in Miami. See Roundup, Page 2D. Sports Phone (scores): 1-976-1313 CLASSIFIED 10-13 I I Call with sport iwwt: 222-6660 2-6660 GGlf onH ril liHo Flamingo Stakes: First mile (and an eighth) on Derby road 'MM info JJUJ- WW WWIWIIB BBMW Pages 6D, 7D CCHA: Eight teams begin first round of playoffs tonight TV listings and best bets, outdoor forecasts, get up and go Charlie Uinccnt A cuit above Evans, Herndon endure pay slashes Collusion talk has owners on the run literally DALLAS All day long, they met behind closed doors. And when the doors finally swung I open, they fled into the afternoon drizzle.

The most influential men and women in base 5t ball dodged around the glare of a single television light, sidestepped half a dozen reporters who had passed the day sitting around a single table outside their meeting room door, and bolted away, leaving little more than a "no comment" in their wake Leaving major league baseball's meeting here Thursday, they looked like the accused leaving a I IB congressional hearing into graft or crime or com By JOHN LOWE Free Press Sports Writer LAKELAND, Fla. As Jack Morris walked off the field after throwing 10 minutes of batting practice Thursday, he dropped his stern diligence and jokingly said to several fans at Marchant Stadium: "Another day, another $50,000." Backstage in the clubhouse, Morris seems to be this spring's happiest Tiger. A $975,000 raise, to $1.85 million, will do that for a man. Now for the other side of the story, no further than the other side of the clubhouse. There, across the way from Morris' hangout, Darrell Evans and Larry Herndon sat at adjoining lockers.

Herndon and Evans had their first conversation of the spring Thursday morning. They were smiling, meaning they weren't talking about their new salaries. Evans, who made an average of $750,000 over the last three seasons, will make between $500,000 and $550,000 this year. Herndon made $625,000 in each of the last three seasons. This year, he'll make $225,000 a plummet of $400,000, one of the largest pay cuts in baseball history.

Compared to the general population, both are highly paid. Still, it's a law of life-style that no matter how high your salary, you get used to it. So a pay cut Sparky pads AL dean margin, 9D. of nearly two-thirds is a jolt, even if it is onto a $225,000 cushion. "Nobody who's going to read this would enjoy it if their boss came to them and told them they were going to have to take a big pay cut," Herndon said.

"But it's just part of what's going on." What's going on is that the baseball owners, in order to reduce players' salaries, have all but eliminated free agency. From the advent of free agency in 1 976 until a few years ago, most players who became free agents received large salary increases. In the last few months, free agents have been forced to accept lower salaries if they have been offered contracts at all. Evans and Herndon were forced to take pay cuts because their contracts ran out after last season, and no other teams made offers. "I think everybody knows as well as I do that things changed a lot this winter," Herndon said.

"I guess I was part of that whole thing. "I don't feel singled out. There are people (like Lance Parrish) that don't have jobs, and I'm here In spring training." See TIGERS, Page 9D munism in high places. Baseball's owners came away, at the very best, looking like a group of men and women who had something to hide. They did everything but cover their faces when the camera turned toward them.

0 Steinbrenner mum, by George MARY SCHROEDERDetrolt Free Press New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was one of the first out of the meet ing room. Darrell Evans, waiting to take his cuts in Lakeland Thursday, is taking his $200,000 pay cut well. "I can't tell you a thing," he said, glancing over his shoulder as he went. "You ve got to ask the commissioner. They won let me talk.

Tigers owner Tom Monaghan and team presi dent Jim Campbell headed for the doorway. "Jim, Jim," I yelled. Red Wings wake mp9 54 "You gotta talk to the commissioner, really, that's all I can say," said Campbell, slowing just Laterally clips lowly Canucks AV Bj long enough to give Monaghan a 10-step lead. Stan Kasten, newly appointed Atlanta Braves president, said the same thing. And so did Bill Giles, who took the controversy between baseball's owners and its unsigned free agents an extra step when he asked Lance Parrish to cross his heart and hope to die if he ever sued baseball for collusion.

That's what everybody expected this meeting in Dallas to be about. Collusion, suits, charges and counter-charges, free agency and all that. Parrish, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Bob Horner, Bob Boone, Rich Gedman, Doyle Alexander and Ron Guidry have become known as the Unsigned Eight eight players generally recognized as among the best at their profession, who have been unable to come to terms they find acceptable, with any of baseball's 26 teams this year. Some or all of them, and their agents, appear certain to be headed to court, where they will sue the sport for conspiring to artificially hold down the price of their talents. The naive like me hoped Peter Ueberroth, the baseball commissioner and the man who made the Olympics a profitable undertaking, would walk out of Thursday's meetings with a solution.

He didn't. Ueberroth says little He looked into the matter, he said. He questioned the owners and is satisfied that all that can be done is being done. "I'm told there are ongoing negotiations," he said, once all the owners had left. "I hope they are fruitful.

"I want all of the players to play (but) there's always, at this time of year, unsigned players It has to do with a lot of issues. Some of them have probably priced themselves way too high on the marketplace; some of them, there's no interest at all, at any price." Collusion is not a reason mentioned here. Here the phrase most often heard is "fiscal responsibility." "There is a fiscal move toward responsibility," Ueberroth said, softening that now-familiar phrase by adding, "Records were broken in salary arbitration this year, and I didn't find the numbers out of line. I felt the players deserved the numbers they got." He probably couldn't get that opinion seconded by Campbell or Tigers general manager Bill Lajoie, but that's what the commissioner said. He also said he had nothing to do with Giles' "no-sue" clause in the contract Parrish turned down, but said he had no trouble understanding it.

"It's difficult to be sued or threaten to be sued by an Individual and having that same individual saying, 'Please sign a multimillion contract with my client' (a reference to Tom Reich, Parrish's agent). I don't know what other teams will do or won't do (about including a no-sue clause in con By KEITH GAVE Free Press Sports Writer The Red Wings ended a streak of ineptitude that lasted four periods with a closer-than-necessary 5-4 victory Thursday nighi. over Vancouver, the NHL's worst team.e After losing, 8-2, Tuesday night in Washington, the Wings spotted the Canucks a 2-0 lead in the first period before rebounding. "I think we were a little bit nervous, a little tentative," said Brent Ashton, whose 33d goal (with 53 seconds left in the game) was the difference. "We were coming off a bad loss, and we wanted to play well at home." Red Wings coach Jacques Demers agreed.

"It wasn't pretty, but we won," Demers said. "We came out not playing very well." But rather than yell at them during the intermission, Demers said he asked his players "to relax and just play hockey and we seemed to regroup. I don't know what it is about the second period, but we always seem to go for it, and tonight we went for it." Gerard Gallant had a goal and two assists for Detroit, which has lost two of its last nine games. Tony Tanti had two power-play goals for the Canucks, who lost for the fourth time in five games. The victory extended the first-place Wings' lead to four points over idle Minnesota in the Norris Division.

More importantly, they have built an 11 -point bulge between themselves and last-place Toronto. "This was such an important game tonight," said Demers, who worried that his JOHN STANODelroil Free Press Barry Pederson's shot in the first period beats Wings goalie Greg Stefan, although Stefan appears to have it blocked. Darren Veitch (right) gets there late. phantom save. Then O'Connell lofted the puck over the goalie, but game officials ruled that the puck touched Gallant's stick before it entered the net.

Gallant got credit for his 32d goal of the year. "Yeah, I got a piece of it," Gallant said. He added with a smile, "You think I'd take it if I didn't?" The goal gave the Wings a 4-2 lead, but Tanti's second goal at 7:14 made it 4-3 and See RED WINGS, Page 4D Barr's goal broke a 2-2 tie and came at 1:30. After Gallant was knocked off the puck by defenseman Jim Benning in the Vancouver zone, Barr picked it up and wristed a shot that Canucks goalie Richard Brodeur missed with his glove. Gallant got credit for a goal that Mike O'Connell appeared to score at 5:21.

On a Detroit power play, O'Connell got the puck between the hash marks. He fanned on his first attempt, and Brodeur went down for the team would take the Canucks too lightly. "This game and Saturday (against the New York Rangers at Joe Louis Arena for a matinee game), we have to put some points in the bank while we're at home. It's important to try to eliminate a team in our division for the playoffs. Right now, it looks like Toronto." Dave Barr, Gallant and Brent Ashton scored third-period goals to cap the five-goal rally.

Purdue topples Hoosiers, 75-64 Aw-shucks coaches shy away from honors tracts). They're free to make those decisions." We have not, unfortunately, heard the end of I Irj I 1 this. As I got into my car Thursday evening, I could swear I heard voices: By JOHNETTE HOWARD Free Press Sports Writer There is an interesting little subplot surrounding the Pistons' game against the Portland Trail Blazers tonight at the Silverdome. The two head coaches are among the front-runners for the NBA's coach of the year award. But, shucks, Chuck Daly and Portland coach Mike Schuler dig a toe in the rug and say they doubt they'll win it "Nahhh," Daly said Wednesday, "Collusion!" shouted someone who sounded Free Press Wire Reports WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.

Purdue's Troy Lewis beat No. 3 Indiana from the inside and outside Thursday night, hitting two three-point field goals and 12 of 14 free throws in a 75-64 victory that pulled the sixth-ranked Boilermakers within one-half game of the Big Ten-leading Hoosiers. "We're still climbing the ladder, playing for the (conference) championship," Purdue coach Gene Keady said after his team snapped the Hoosiers' nine-game winning streak. "In the first half, we wanted to rebound with them. In the second half, we wanted to go at them and get them in foul trouble," Keady said.

"Those were our objectives, and we accomplished them." Lewis, a 6-foot-4 junior, led Purdue with 18 points and pulled down six rebounds. The two three-pointers by Lewis including one that halted a strong second-half Indiana comeback were his only baskets of the game. But Lewis made five of his 12 free See BIG TEN, Page 5D like Reich. "Fiscal responsibility!" responded a voice that Jordan scores 58, 4D. first year here (1983-84) when I finished second (with a 49-33 record)." Daly said Lakers coach Pat Riley and Schuler are the leading contenders.

"Oh, I don't really have time to think about stuff like that," Schuler said Thursday. 'There are a lot of outstanding coaches in this league; they're all doing a great job. I think Pat Riley of the Lakers has done an outstanding job, K.C. Jones in Boston has done an outstanding job. Daly has done a good job here." See PISTONS, 2D I sounded like Ueberroth's.

"Collusion!" "Fiscal responsibility!" What ever happened to "Play crossing his arms. "Nope. Haven't even thought about it. I'll never get it. I'm destined to be second banana.

Make that third banana. I came probably as MARY SCHROEDERDetroit Free Press Pistons coach Chuck Daly: "I'm destined to be second banana." Mitch Albom Is on vacation. close as I'll ever come in ry life my.