SPORTS Wednesday, July 31, 1985 4 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. 4 4 4 4 4 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-