SPORTS
Wednesday, July 31, 1985
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Page 12
The Michigan Daily
Owners' offer rejected
NEW YORK (UPI) - Six days representatives, the owners' tribution.
before the players' strike deadline, negotiating team offered to increase "They must be crazy," said Donald
major league baseball owners finally the owners' contribution to the pen- Fehr, acting executive director of the
put a pension offer on the table, but sion and benefits fund from $15.5 Major League Baseball Players
the players did not like what they saw million to $25 million a year, but they Association.
- $25 million with an escape clause insisted on one catch. The players were asked for $60
that could drop the contribution to IF PLAYER salaries increase more million - one-third of the owners'
zero, than $13 million a year, the increase national televison revenues. While the
In a half-hour meeting with player will be offset against the pension con- owners' $25 million offer represents
about a 60 percent increase over their
previous contributions, the offer is
less than 14 percent of the annual
television package which averages
$180 million a year.
LEE MACPHAIL, president of the
.' Player Relations Committee which is
negotiating for the owners, said the
the offer coupled the $25 million pen-
sion with the $13 million salary limit
to enable the clubs to break even by
1988.
Under the proposal if player
salaries increased by $14 million - $1
million over the limit - the pension
contribution would be reduced to $24
wwwi~w million.
The owners own projections,
however, show salaries increasing by
$34 million a year. That would be $21
million over the salary limit and
would reduce the owners' pension
contribution to $4million.
"WE DON'T foresee salaries in-
creasing that much," said MacPhail,
hut he admitted the pension con-
tribution could "theoretically"cgo
down to zero.
"They (the players) don't get it both
ways. They either get it in salaries or
contribution. The clubs can't afford to
hpay twice," MacPhail said.
Pr The pension and salary plan also in-
Associated Press cludes the owners' previous proposal,
to expand eligibility for salary ar-
You don't Cey bitration from the current two-year
Y requirement to three, he said.
The owners project that salaries
Chicago Cub Ron Cey tries to break up a double play yesterday, but St. will increase $34 million a year,
Louis Cardinal Tommy Herr will have no part of it, as he successfully without the'slowdowns they propose,
completes the twin-killing. The Cardinals won the game, 11-3, to move 91i/ causing the teams' losses to mount to
games ahead of the fourth-place Cubs. an estimated $86 million by 1988.
Tigers break out ofhitting
sm eatthe Royals, 11-
THE SPORTING VIEWS
Slow? it down ..
o , racing speeds too high
By JOE DEVYAK
G OT A MINUTE? Let's try an experiment
Get into your car, rev it up to about 230 miles per hour and then flip it
over four times in the middle of US-23. That's the easy part. Now try
walking away from it without any broken bones.
Impossible, right? Well that's what happened to Danny Ongais Sunday
during the fifth annual Michigan 500.
Ongais, who is no stranger to terrible accidents - he almost burned to
death at Indianapolis ten years ago - was getting out of his car before
rescue crews could get to him.
Simply amazing. How can these men concentrate on racing when this
sort of thing can happen to them at any moment?
The surface of a superspeedway, like the one at Cambridge Junction,
can turn into something similar to the ice at Yost Arena. A car can slide
out of control into a wall and disintegrate ina matter of seconds, often for
no apparent reason.
A race track is a lot like a snake - you never know when it's going to
spring up and bite you.
Michigan International Speedway bit and bit often Sunday. Nearly half
of the 500 miles were run under 13 yellow caution flags, much to the
chagrin of the 70,000 fans in attendance.
The high-banked two mile oval made short work of ten cars as they en-
countered cement walls. All the drivers escaped serious injury with the
exception of Mario Andretti.
After his candy-apple red Beatrice Lola hit the wall with only eight laps
remaining, it took six laps for him to be extracted from the wreckage of
his car.
Andretti, a perennial crowd pleaser, suffered only a broken right
collarbone.
Just another Sunday drive in the Irish Hills of Michigan, right? Wrong.
These men love what they do for a living, but deep inside they're scared.
And so are the fans, officials and sponsors. No one wants to see one of
these dashing young men die in a bad accident brought about by
outrageously high speeds.
That's why Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), the governing
body of Indy-type races, is imposing new rules for the 1986 season.
Cars will have to be longer, wider, and higher off of the ground. This
will slow the cars down by about three miles per hour.
Big deal, right? Well consider that these cars go about three miles per
hour faster every year and then the actual reduction becomes about six
miles per hour.
The naked eye can't tell the difference between 200 and 215 miles per
hour - competitive racing is all that matters. So if drivers can be affor-
ded a little extra time to react, and fans can still enjoy door-handle-to-
door-handle racing, everyone seems to come out ahead.
Bobby Rahal set a world record while qualifying for this year's race.
His Budweiser March was clocked at 215.2 miles per hour. A car
travelling that fast covers the length of a football field in less than a
second. That makes one wonder if maybe CART isn't stepping in just in
time.
These drivers are human - they need time to react. Eventually their
cars will be too fast for their reflexes. Indy cars will become nothing
more than coffins on wheels - and that's no way to spend a Sunday after-
noon.
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DETROIT (UPI) - Kirk Gibson
went 4-for-4, scored twice, drove in a
pair of runs and stole two bases last
night to spark the Detroit Tigers to an
11-7 victory over Kansas City that
snapped the Royals' winningastreak at
seven games.
Jack Morris, 12-6, survived an off
night in which he gave up four runs on
nine hits in six innings, two of them
solo home runs by Frank White, his
16th, in the fourth and Steve Balboni,
his 20th, in the sixth, to get the vic-
tory.
MORRIS struck out five and walked
three in posting his third straight vic-
tory.
Willie Hernandez finished up for his 140 games on Willie Wilson's RBI
21st save but gave up double to Lonnie single.
Cmih nrl 'lardaRrtt' 10h hnm
1
Smith and George Bretts 1 btnome
run. Brett went 3-for-4 to raise his Detroit scored two runs in the fourth
average to .354. on a single by Alan Trammell and
Gibson singled in the first off loser nix Concepion's error witwoon. Bird hurt in bar brawl?
Charlie Leibrandt, 10-6, then stole On Cokins Lor withktw on.
secnd nd cord o asingle by Lan- Tom Brookens, Lou Whitaker and
second and scored ens Trammell singled in runs in the fifth
ce Parrish. and Gibson completed the four-run BOSTON (UPI) - An attorney for torneys for a Boston bartender and an
THE TIGERS scored three runs in frame with a sacrifice fly. Larry Bird said yesterday he has unidentified woman who allege Bird
the third on a sacrifice fly by Barbaro received telephone calls refuting assaulted them at a downtown bar the
Garbey, an RBI double by Gibson and Lemon doubled home a run in the Bird's participation in a barroom nighe bartender Mike Harlow35
an RBI sigeb ar eno. egt n arlMt obe ih htalgdyocre u T h arender, Muie row, 35,w
White's home run cut the lead to 4-1 home a run for Kansas City an the before the playoff shooting slump of claimed in a Bird i aefighrt he was
in the fourth and the Royals picked up ninth the Boston Celtics star in Chelsea's on State Street and ended
two more runs in the inning when Chet The last three innings were played Bob Wolf, Bird's lawyer, confir- on a nearby street corner.
Lemon committed his first error in ina steady rain. med he has been in contact with at-