Sports
Tuesday, August 3, 1982

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Page 12

The Michigan Daily

Tiger GM quiet
about criticism

DETROIT (UPI) - Detroit Tigers'
Vice President and General Manager
Jim Campbell had his usual reply
yesterday to internal flap on his
baseball team - no rely.
"I'm not going to say anything,"
Campbell responded yesterday to prin-
ted statements by Tigers' catcher Lan-
ce Parrish critical of the club and its
management.
"SOMEBODY told me, 'But you have
to say something,' " Campbell said
with a chuckle, "but I told them, 'No, I
don't.'i
Anything I might say would just add
to the situation," Campbell said.
"Besides, as I told Manager Sparky
Anderson, when you're losing these
kind of things inevitably happen."
Parrish said in yesterday's edition of
the Detroit Free Press he is afraid
Detroit will lose young and talented
players because of management's
reluctance to pay the salaries needed
to keep them.
"THE FRONT office always says
they want to develop young talent and
bring them up and have their own
home-grown players," the All-Star cat-
cher said, "and then they bring them
up and then go ahead and trade
everybody."
"It's money, there's no other way
around it," said Parrish, one of two full-

time players under long-term contract
with the Tigers. Shortstop Alan Tram-
mel is the other.
"Steve Kemp, Jason Thompson, Ron
LeFlore. And don't forget Ben Oglivie.
Although in Jason's case it wasn't
money; I think he just didn't fait the
pattern or whatever."
PARRISH refused to blame anyone
specifically for the Tigers' troubles.
"I'm not saying who it is and who does
what. I don't want to go that far out on
a limb. . . yet.
"I want to stay in this organization
and win in this organization," Parrish
said, "but I don't think this team is ever
going to win, the way they do things."
But he told the Free Press the Tigers
will never havea winning season unless
something changes.
The catcher, one of only two Tigers to
produce consistently during Detroit's
two-month slide from the top to near the
bottom of the AL East Division stan-
dings, told the Detroit News on Sunday
he was "getting used to losing, to tell
you the truth. I don't expect this club to
do a whole hell of a lot the rest of the
year. If it does, I'll be amazed.
"Same old story," Parrish said
following a 1-0 extra-innings loss at
Toronto on Saturday. "Never win a big
game. Never win a game that means
something. I'm tired of it."

AP Photo
MANAGER SPARKY ANDERSON, shown here arguing with a trio of um-
pires, is one of the Tiger brass whom All-Star catcher Lance Parrish says is
set in his ways.

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I

Off the Record - Corso, Waters, White...
By BOB WOJNOWSKI . .. Comedians of the Big Ten

4

I I --momma-mum in

T WAS A festive atmosphere in the'
grand ballroom of the plushy
Marriott hotel in Chicago last Friday.
The occasion was the 11th annual Big
Ten Football luncheon and, with the
pressures of another season still a
month away, most of the 10 coaches
gathered were willing to spend their
allotted speaking time poking fun at
themselves and their teams. The one
noticeable stick-in-the-mud was
Michigan head coach Bo Schem-
bechler, who was asked to speak out on
some of the problems facing college
athletics - most notably the tactics of
the new United States Football
League.
Well, Bo had his say and everyone
listened and then they went back to
telling jokes. The better performan-
ces shall herewith be highlighted for
your reading enjoyment. But
remember, if it doesn't sound funny
you probably had to be there.
Hilariously funny
Lee Corso (Indiana) - Lee laughs at
anything, including his own jokes,
which are usually very funny.
Corso explained his team's prospec-
ts for the upcoming year like this:
"We have 85 percent of our offense
coming back - it wasn't any good but
it's back anyhow. We've got 90 per-

cent of the worst defense in the history
of football coming back and both our.
kickers are back also. But the most
important thing is - I'm back."
Corso also took a well-aimed jab at
Illinois head coach Mike White. After
listing some of the great Big Ten
coaches of the past, Corso paused, ad-
ded to the list the name Bo Schem-
bechler and then joked: "Think I'm
gonna make that man mad at me?
Mike (White) made him mad last

year and hegot 70 points on him."
Michigan beat the Illini last year, 70-
21'
Pitifully Funny
Muddy Waters (Michigan State)-
The 59-year-old Waters likes to poke
fun at his impending senility, which
would be hilariously funny if it
weren't so pitifully true. Waters has
long been accused of falling asleep in
meetings and forgetting his players'
names, but the aging Spartan does
nothing to dispel those rumors.
"Boy, when I saw this crowd here,
being almost senile, I thought for a
minute 'holy smokes, it's game day
and I forgot to bring the team,"
snickered Muddy.
Waters also told of an interesting
experience he had with the Michigan
State alumni.
"The alumni have been especially
helpful to me. When you move like I
did, you have two houses-the one you
just bought and the one you're trying
to sell. Well, I haven'tbeen able to sell
my old house and the alumni have
been very, very helpful. They keep
putting 'For Sale' signs on the house
... but they keep putting it on my new
-house."

Cruelly Funny
Mike White (Illinois)- White, ob-
viously reeling from the Corso jab,
countered with a clever little put-
down of the Hoosier players'
scholastic capabilities.
"I was happy to see Lee expound
the virtues of an education," said
White. "You know he has five or six
engineeers on his team and Hayden
Fry was telling me that these five or
six engineers weren't really all that
ready for engineering. The
spokesman for the group came to
Coach Corso one day and said,
"Coach, we're really interested in
engineering, and we just wanted to
know where the train is."
Tokenly Funny
The rest of the coaches tried to be as
funny as possible while saying as little
as possible, and for the most part suc-
ceeded with the latter. Even Bo
made a feeble attempt at a joke-
something abouttLawrence Ricks
being from Schembechler's
hometown of Barberton, Ohio and that
that greatly enhances the Wolverine
runner's career. It was funny, but the
old curmudgeon certainly couldn't
compare to the real "Comediansof the
Big Ten."

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Corso
...ha, ha, ha, ha

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