Wilmington Evening Journal - March 5, 1980

Phils hope to be picture of health

By Hal Bodley, Sports Editor

CLEARWATER, FLA. – Even crusty sportswriters get carried away with the breath of fresh air that spring 'training brings each year.

But as the Phillies officially opened their workouts yesterday, there was a look of determination in most of the players' eyes.

This time last year the Phils were just about everybody's favorite to win another National League Eastern Division title. And with the addition of Pete Rose, their first World Series appearance since 1950 was in sight.

But the Phillies fell. Crippled by injuries and hampered by sub-par performances by several key players, they tumbled to fourth place, 14 games behind division-champion Pittsburgh.

After winning consecutive Eastern titles, Manager Danny Ozark found himself unable to turn the pattern around. On Aug. 31, he was fired. He was succeeded by Dallas Green, the organization's minor-league director who has been persuaded by Player Personnel Director Paul Owens to stay on through 1980.

So, as a bright sun came out yesterday, a new era got under way for the Phillies.

Really, though, little has changed. After the disaster of 1979, one might expect the Phils to make wholesale changes. But as the 34th training period in this town got under way, the team was basically the same. Except for the addition of free-agent reliever Lerrin LaGrow and several minor leaguers, the Phils are virtually the same team that ended the season last October in Montreal by knocking the Expos out of a chance to tie the Pirates for first.

"There's one major difference," corrected Green. "The team we have here is healthy now, for the most part."

"Green's right," said Rose, who kept interest in Philadelphia alive late in the season when he put together a 23-game hitting streak and raised his batting average to .331, second best in the N.L. "I've never seen a team have so many injuries. I'm not just talking about pulled muscles and things like that. Heck, we had six broken bones."

Rose, like Green, is optimistic about 1980. He is convinced there is ample talent for the Phils to return to the top.

"I think we have a good, basic ball club," said Green. "I think if you break our guys down with any ball club, we can play with any of them. I just can't picture a team having as many injuries and off-years as this one had last year. It's my belief once all of these things were thrown into the pot, we began to feel sorry for ourselves and forgot to play the way we're capable of playing. I'm certain that will change."

Green intends to run a tough spring training, with the emphasis on a return to fundamentals. He said all pitchers would be required to do daily running, but gave in to Steve Carlton yesterday, allowing the left-hander to skip sprints. Carlton did, however, run with the team around the field prior to the workout and shagged flies in the outfield.

PITCHING PROBLEMS, more than anything else, kept the Phils out of the chase last year. The trend was started in February when Larry Christenson fractured a collarbone during a bicycle caravan in California. In spring training, middle reliever Warren Brusstar developed a sore shoulder and spent most of the year on the disabled list.

Ace right-hander Dick Ruthven, who led the Phils to the division title in 1978 after returning from Atlanta via trade, developed bone chips in his elbow and although he started strong, was hurt most of the year, on the disabled list twice, and eventually had surgery in the fall.

Christenson returned, but on July 4, the Phils lost three of their five starting pitchers. Ruthven and Christenson went on the DL and Randy Lerch suffered a broken wrist as a result of being mugged the night before outside a Philadelphia restaurant.

In addition, the bullpen was inconsistent. Tug McGraw and Ron Reed, the team's stoppers, were over-worked and unable on occasion to hold leads. The pitching staff's earned run average was 4.16, with only Atlanta's 4.18 being worse.

"We're still talking with other clubs in hopes of getting a pitcher," said Owens, who pointed out there are two weeks to go in the second inter-league trading period. "We're also interested in getting an infielder who can hit and a right-handed hitter to come off the bench."

Green is prepared to build his pitching staff around starters Carlton, Ruthven, Christenson, Lerch and Espinosa. The bullpen is expected to be made up of McGraw, Reed, LaGrow, Rawly Eastwick and 1979 rookies Kevin Saucier and Dickie Notes. Brusstar, who has been throwing since he arrived here three weeks ago, could be a plus because Green is not even counting on him at this stage.

"Paul Owens and I have watched this team grow – I mean the Bowas and the Schmidts and the Luzinskis, the Maddoxes and the Boones," said Green. "It would tear our hearts open to break it up at this time. We think we have the talent to give it another chance. We think they deserve that and we'll go from there. But we're very sincere in our desire to win and if it eventually takes breaking up this ball club, we'll have to do it."

Bowa burning – shortstop feels short-changed

By Hal Bodley, Sports Editor

CLEARWATER, FLA. – Larry Bowa has never been short on pride. Since the day the scrappy shortstop joined the Phillies, the compulsion to excel has driven him to the top of his class.

But he is not at the top of his class when the paychecks are cashed. And Bowa, never one to avoid candor, is letting the Phillies' brass know about it.

The Phils officially opened spring training yesterday at Carpenter Field. Bowa didn't wait for Manager Dallas Green to conduct the first team meeting. He spilled his guts – and his rancor – beforehand.

Bowa's unhappiness was not the only discordant note Green faced. Steve Carlton was not required to run wind sprints like the rest of the staff. Contrary to earlier policy statements, it appears the Phils left-hander will be allowed a special exemption.

Bowa, 34, completed his 10th season with the Phils last fall. He is currently earning $300,000 a year through 1982. Apparently, when St. Louis signed shortstop Garry Tern-pleton to a long-term pact at an estimated $700,000 per, Bowa thought it was time he investigated the salaries of other shortstops. Marvin Miller, executive director of the Major League Players Association sent him the confidential list.

“I couldn't believe it," said Bowa. He then rattled off the names of Houston's Craig Reynolds, Cincinnati's Dave Concepcion, Los Angeles' Bill Russell, New York's Frank Taveras and Pittsburgh's Tim Foli as those who earn more than him.

"I'm not saying I should be the top, but I'm saving that I should be paid comparably," added Bowa. "I don't think I am worth $600,000 or $700,000, but I am the lowest-paid starting player on our team. No, I am not in a class with Pete Rose ($810,000), but if Nolan Ryan gets a million a year from Houston, Pete should get 2 million.

"I have been here 10 years and I have been consistent. Garry Templeton may hit .320 for the next 50 years – he better hit .320!"

Bowa and Concepcion are generally considered the best shortstops in the league and until the new editions of press guides were released, Bowa thought his Cincinnati counterpart was far ahead in offensive statistics.

"The stats don't lie," said Bowa. "I thought Davey had a lifetime average of about .285, but it's only .270 and mine is .263. We both have 10 years in. And I have more hits (1,552 to 1,268) than he has. The only place he really has an advantage is in home runs (70-11) and runs batted in (529-351)."

Bowa, of course, has been the best defensive shortstop for years. He has made just 128 errors during the past decade for a percentage of .982, a major league record.

"I was told all along if I hit .200 the way I play defense, forget about raising the average," he said. "I didn't want it that way. I worked hard; I became a respectable hitter. If somebody had told Ruly Carpenter or Paul Owens 10 years ago that I would have a .263 lifetime average, they would have said no way."

Bowa's feelings will be soothed if Carpenter, the team president, or Owens, player personnel director, picks up the phone and gives him a call.

"At least call me up and tell me they aren't going to do anything," said Bowa. "Call me up and tell me the other guys are overpaid and the Phillies can't go higher. I signed a contract and I will honor it. I am not going to renegotiate, but I think something should be done – whether they extend me or give me some extra money. I am not going to walk out. If I wanted to, I could say, 'Screw it' and not play, not come to spring training. I am not going to do that.

"It bugs me more than anything else because my way of living is not so extreme that I need the extra money. But I have worked so hard and have accomplished a lot, yet when you look at the whole list of shortstops, I am way "down there. I'll tell you what. If I went to arbitration, I wouldn't have one single worry."

Bowa says his one regret is that everyone close to the front office knows how much he wants to play baseball for the Phillies.

"I'll run through a brick wall for those guys," he said. "But my father has told me that all along I shouldn t let them know how much I want to play, that that was a mistake. If I had it to do over again, I would have a different attitude. I wouldn't be nonchalant, but more firm.

"I am the first to admit when I first came up if somebody had said I would be making $300,000 a year, I would have laughed at him. That IS a lot of money – a hundred thousand is a lot of money, but the fact remains if they are going to give it out, let's be fair about it. If they don't have the money, then don't give it out. If they say they are bankrupt, then OK. Take my money and I'll play for whatever they want to pay. I have been fair, but I was told I was one of the top three or four paid players on the team. I believed them, but that was a bleeping lie. There are some pitchers on this team who have done nothing who are making just as much as I am."

Bowa became pensive for a moment, obviously not finished.

"They want me to hit eighth this year. OK, I have accepted that. They say Manny Trillo should bat second because he is more comfortable there. What does that mean? Because I am hitting eighth I don't want to play? They know I am going to yell and scream, but when the gun sounds I am going out there and bust my butt, I am going to dive for balls and do everything I can to win.

"I have worked hard this winter, but I feel like I have to prove something to these people. I have played 10 years and done almost everything out there, but I still feel in my mind I have to prove I can play.

"I am ready to hit eighth. I won't say a word to him (Green) about that. Don't let him bug me about little things and I will be all right."

•       •       •

Green said all along that Carlton would run sprints with all the other pitchers, but when yesterday's workout ended, the lefthander did not join them. He did, however run laps with the whole squad prior to the workout.

"I said all winter long that Steve Carlton is in better physical shape than most pitchers I have ever seen," commented Green "Others are unable to go thrtugh the physical conditioning routine he goes through I tried it and was unable to do it. He ran around the field and shagged fly balls in the outfield. Believe me, I am not a drill sergeant."

First stone thrown in baseball dispute

By Jerome Holtzman, Field News Service

TAMPA, Fla. – The 28-man Executive Board of the Major League Baseball Players' Association has authorized "strike action," but cushioned this threat by refusing to say specifically when or where a strike would begin.

Claiming to be at a near-impasse with the club owners yesterday, the players' union threw the first stone in its quadrennial struggle for renewal of the Basic Agreement, the collective contract that binds them together, partners in a lucrative but often acrimonious brotherhood.

A total of 44 players – most clubs had two representatives – met for five hours and approved the following:

•  Strike action if a new agreement is not included, "with such action to commence on or after April 1,"

•  Advise Marvin Miller, their long-time union chief and negotiator, to take a club-by-club strike vote starting today when he opens his annual spring tour of the 26 training camps.

•  Meet again on April 1 in Dallas to "consider the state of negotiations and take such action as then may be warranted."

"I don't know how many players were here, whether it was 45 or 50," Miller said. "But whatever it was, the vote for strike action was unanimous. It was 45 or 50 to 0."

Miller conceded that yesterday's strike talk isn't likely to frighten the owners, who hold their own meeting here today.

"I don't think they (the owners) would consider the board's vote a decisive test," Miller said.

Asked if they would be more impressed if all, or most, of the association's 650 members would vote to strike, Miller replied:

"Yea, they would be more impressed."

It was only the second time in Miller's 14-year reign as commissioner of the players that the players agreed to a "strike-action" resolution. The previous occasion was in 1972 when the players struck the first 13 days of the regular season, causing cancellation of 86 games.

The principal issue then was pension benefits, a mild dispute compared to the current struggle that pivots around the owners' attempt to restructure the free-agency procedure that cost them millions of dollars in soaring player salaries.

Miller emphasized that the players will not compromise and yield to the owners' demand that clubs losing free agents be compensated, in kind, by the players' new club.

"There is a strong feeling that compensation is not merited in any shape or form," Miller said.

He also Insisted the players are equally firm against the owners' other major proposal: a maximum salary scale for players in each of their first six years of major league service, beginning with $40,000 for a rookie and escalating to top of $153,600.

"I don't believe the players take the salary structure seriously," Miller said.

The owners already have announced they would be agreeable to open the regular season despite the absence of a new collective agreement, a position that Miller opposes.

Yet Miller admitted Tuesday that the players' Executive Board, despite its supposed firm stance, did not take a position on this possibility.

"We have not said we wouldn't start the season without a con tract," Miller said. "The board will make that decision on April 1."

Miller conceded that the players discussed the possibility of opening the season on time but then staging a strike in June, when attendance begins to increase.