Dodgers : Club Hopes to Get Guerrero Here on Time

When Dodger publicist Steve Brener heard on the radio Wednesday morning that a tentative agreement had been reached in the players’ strike, he called a representative of Delta Airlines in Atlanta. Tom Lasorda was en route to Los Angeles on a Delta flight, and Brener wanted to know if the Dodger manager could be contacted with the news.

Done. Ground personnel radioed the message to the L.A.-bound flight, and it was relayed to Lasorda, who was sleeping in the seat next to Al Campanis, Dodger vice president.

“The co-pilot woke me up and told me,” Lasorda said. “I showed it to Al, then I gave it to the stewardess and had her read it over the intercom.

“To give you an idea about how people felt about it, there was a tremendous round of applause on the plane.”

Lasorda then sent a message of his own back to earth: Stop Pedro Guerrero before he gets to the Dominican Republic.

By then, however, Guerrero already was bound for Santo Domingo, where Dodger scout Ralph Avila awaited his arrival. The Dodgers had hoped that Guerrero would be able to fly back to Los Angeles Wednesday night, but it didn’t work out that way.

According to Fred Claire, the Dodgers’ executive vice president, Guerrero won’t arrive in Los Angeles until 5 p.m. tonight, just 2 1/2 hours before the Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds are scheduled to resume the 1985 season in Dodger Stadium after a two-day strike.

Apparently all other players are accounted for and will be present tonight, Dodger officials said.

“Pete is visiting his mother (Altagracia), which is why he went there in the first place,” Claire said. “Even if he’d literally turned around and was able to make a flight this (Wednesday) afternoon, he would have had to fly through New York. It was a near impossible situation.”

The Dodgers are chartering a flight this morning that will take Guerrero from Santo Domingo to San Juan, Puerto Rico. There, he will board an American Airlines flight at 7 a.m. PST that will take him through Dallas before the 10-hour trip concludes in Los Angeles International Airport.

Guerrero will arrive too late for batting practice. And, given rush-hour traffic, Guerrero will be hard-pressed to have his uniform on before they play the anthem.

Even so, Lasorda said Guerrero will be in the starting lineup tonight. Will he be in any shape to play?

“How about that guy who drove from Denver to Cincinnati and pitched,” Lasorda said, referring to Red pitcher Jay Tibbs, who beat the Dodgers last weekend.

“At least Pete will be sitting on an airplane, eating.”

And, more important, at least the Dodgers will be playing after two games in Atlanta were canceled. When Dave Anderson, Greg Brock and Orel Hershiser landed at LAX late Wednesday morning, their wives were there to greet them with the news that a tentative settlement had been reached.

“I think it was a very fair compromise,” said Anderson, who still has to wait until he comes off the disabled list Aug. 14 before he can resume playing.

“Both sides gave up a little but got what they wanted. And what’s important, we’re playing again.”

Play resumes with the Dodgers five games ahead of the second-place Reds in the National League West, with Orel Hershiser, who had been scheduled to start Tuesday against the Braves, pitching against Mario Soto, beaten, 2-0, by Bob Welch and the Dodgers last weekend.

Red player-manager Pete Rose will be able to resume his pursuit of the 24 hits he needs to break Ty Cobb’s all-time hit record.

And while most players were awaiting details of the settlement from the press conference in New York that was delayed for several hours while contractual language was worked out, Dodger pitcher Rick Honeycutt suspected that baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth had played an important role in the settlement.

“Even if he does it a little flamboyantly,” said Honeycutt, a representative of the players’ union on pension issues, “Ueberroth does get the job done. He does it at a height when most people are watching.

” . . . It had to be Ueberroth in the background, at least by talking to the majority of owners to find out what they’d be satisfied with, what they could live with.

“We (the players) had wished there was someone strong on their (the owners) side, who would stand up and take the bull by the horns and take action. I hope he goes into baseball to make other changes, too, like in management control.

“Some clubs are run very poorly and could be run better. He seems to be very interested in making the game better.”

Honeycutt said he could appreciate the public disapproval of the strike. “The fans are correct--things have gone very well for the players, our salaries are the highest (in sports),” Honeycutt said.

“But we didn’t want to let the system diminish back to the time where we had no freedoms.”

Honeycutt said the concession to delay the right of arbitration from two to three years “was a step to correct the salaries, at least to slow them down in the early part of the system.

” . . . We want to make baseball profitable for everybody,” Honeycutt said. “The owners who put up the money to make the business go are entitled to make a profit. And when they make a profit, they’re apt to do more to make the players happy. That’s the way the Dodgers do it.

“I think we made the best decision we could for both sides.”

Dodger player representative Mike Scioscia said he would have to await further details of the agreement before polling the Dodger players. He spent much of Wednesday afternoon calling teammates to tell them to report to the ballpark today.

“I feel very good right now,” Scioscia said. “It’s a situation where both sides won. It’ll be a pleasure to talk about baseball again.”