Baseball Negotiators Get Ready to Tackle the Most Crucial Issues

Negotiators for major league baseball owners and players tentatively agreed in New York Monday on several technical clauses of a new contract, clearing the way for discussion of the divisive issues that threaten to force a strike next Tuesday.

The two sides were preparing written versions of their agreements on approval of individual contracts, player waiver procedures, spring training requirements and other so-called non-major issues to “make sure we do have the agreement that everybody seems to think we have,” said Donald Fehr, chief negotiator for the Major League Baseball Players Assn.

Lee MacPhail, president of the Player Relations Committee, the owners’ negotiating team, cautioned, however, that major hurdles have to be cleared before the players’ strike deadline.

Fehr identified the major issues still to be resolved as:

--the owners’ proposal to reduce the number of players eligible for salary arbitration.

--the players’ demands for a $60 million contribution to their benefit plan.

--the players’ proposed increase of the minimum salary to $70,000 a year.

--proposed expansion of the 26-team structure.

Jacques Lemaire resigned as coach of the Montreal Canadiens, just four months after guiding Montreal to first place in the Adams Division.

He will remain with the team as director of player personnel and as an assistant to Managing Director Serge Savard.

“In my mind, I was not going to coach for a long time,” Lemaire said at a Montreal news conference. “I didn’t want to coach at the start. But the team was not doing well at the time and I thought I could help the organization.

“But I knew right away that I was not going to stay for a long time.”

Lemaire, who succeeded Bob Berry Feb. 24, 1984, will be replaced by Jean Perron, who served as an assistant coach with Montreal last year.

Perron, 38, coached the Moncton University Blue Eagles for 10 years, leading them to four championships before he resigned in 1983 to become assistant coach with the Canadian Olympic hockey team under Dave King.

Four members of Olympic hurdler Greg Foster’s family, among them his mother, have died as a result of a hit-and-run traffic accident in Chicago last month.

Foster, a former UCLA star, won the silver medal last summer in the 110-meter hurdles at the Los Angeles Games.

Foster’s aunt, Arlee Chiles, 48; her daughter, Crystal, 14; and a family friend, Polly Hurns, 43, all died in burn wards of Chicago area hospitals June 29 after their car exploded when it was rammed from behind and knocked into a retaining wall on the Dan Ryan Expressway.

Foster’s nephew, Greg, 5, died earlier this month as a result of his injuries, and his mother, Izola, 50, died last Thursday. Funeral services will be held Wednesday in Chicago.

A spokesman said that the family had just begun a trip to visit relatives in Mississippi when the accident happened. Police are still searching for the driver of the hit-and-run car.

Express Ride cracked the stakes and track record for 2-year-old trotters when he won the $1 million Peter Haughton Memorial Trot at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J., by 4 1/2 lengths.

The son of Super Bowl and Flory Messenger was sent into the lead at the outset and he never looked back. He negotiated the mile in 1:57 4/5, lowering by one-fifth of a second the old mark set by Dancers Crown in 1982.

His nearest competitor was Elgin Almahurst. Mr. Novak, coupled with Elgin Almahurst, finished another 1 1/2 lengths back in third place.

Express Ride returned $14.80 to win backers.

The victory marked the fifth in six career starts for the bay colt, which is partially owned by former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon.

Marvelous Marvin Hagler will defend his undisputed world middleweight championship against unbeaten John Mugabi Nov. 14 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

In the co-feature, James Shuler, undefeated North American Boxing Federation middleweight champion, will defend his crown against Thomas Hearns.

Hagler knocked out Hearns, the World Boxing Council super-welterweight champion, in his last defense at Caesars Palace April 15.

Olympic wrestling champion Pasquale Passarelli of West Germany has been arrested in Tuebingen, West Germany, and charged with receiving stolen money, police said.

Passarelli, 28, who won the Olympic bantamweight Greco-Roman-style title in Los Angeles last year, was arrested Friday with his brother, Tomaso, a West German wrestling champion.

Police said both were being charged in connection with the embezzlement of $230,000 and receiving part of the money.

They said the money was embezzled by Tomaso Passarelli’s father-in-law, an armored truck driver, and that most of it was thought to have been sent to Paraguay.

Names in the News

Manager Billy Martin of the New York Yankees, will be hospitalized in Arlington, Tex., for two or three days for a partially collapsed lung caused by an injection Sunday, the club announced. Batting coach Lou Pinella will be in charge of the team until Martin recovers.

Kicker Mark Moseley of the Washington Redskins has signed a series of one-year contracts that will make him one of the richest kickers in the history of the National Football League. Moseley will reportedly earn $215,000 this year with the total worth of the three-year pact set at $730,000.

Mario Andretti remained in stable condition in an Indianapolis hospital after surgery late Sunday to set his a broken right collarbone, a hospital spokesman said. Andretti, 45, was flown to Methodist Hospital by private jet after an accident in Sunday’s Michigan 500.

Drew Pearson, the Dallas Cowboys’ all-time leading receiver, has given up his comeback bid from a liver injury suffered in an automobile accident last year.