PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Baseball : U.S. Defeats Canada in Baseball, 10-6, as Jenkins Only Coaches

The Canadian national team’s pitching coach, Ferguson Jenkins, who won 284 games for four major league teams, could hardly stand to watch as the man on the mound made one mistake after another.

But Jenkins, in his first Bush Stadium appearance since he was a minor leaguer in the Phillies’ organization 24 years ago, was unable to offer advice. The rules wouldn’t have allowed it. Neither would the Canadian head coach, John Haar.

The pitcher in distress was Gregg Olson, who, as the U.S. starter, was attempting to beat the Canadians Sunday in the first game of the Pan American Games baseball tournament.

Olson, an Auburn sophomore, had little success. In 2 innings, he allowed three runs on five hits and three walks as the best amateur team Canada has ever had took a 3-0 lead.

The Canadians would extend their lead to 5-1 through 4 1/2 innings before eventually losing, 10-6.

It was an important victory for the United States, which lost three of five games to Canada on a 34-game tour before the Pan American Games. The only other team to win a series against the United States was Cuba, which won three of five games in Havana.

As the defending world champion, Cuba, favored here to win its fifth straight Pan American Games championship, already has earned a berth next year in Seoul, South Korea, where baseball will be a Summer Olympics demonstration sport. The other seven teams in this tournament are playing for two automatic berths in the Olympics. Considering the Nicaraguans’ strength, either the United States or Canada may be left out.

But even though the two teams could meet again in next week’s medal round, providing they finish among the top four teams in the round-robin tournament, Jenkins went immediately to the U.S. dugout following Sunday’s game to counsel Olson.

“He has pretty good stuff and has a chance to go somewhere,” Jenkins said of Olson. “But he has a tendency not to look at where he’s throwing his pitches. Two-thirds of the time, he doesn’t even see the catcher after his delivery because he has so many different release points. Basically, he’s always going to be behind in the count as long as he does that.

“I’d like to have a chance to sit down with him somewhere and have a talk.”

One of the other U.S. pitchers, Cris Carpenter, said Olson was having difficulty adjusting to his role as a starter. Most of the starting pitchers U.S. Coach Ron Fraser of the University of Miami wanted for his team signed professional contracts, leaving him with a staff dominated by relievers.

“It’s not easy to be a relief pitcher, and then, bam, be a starter,” said Carpenter, a University of Georgia junior. “It’s like being a third baseman and then moving to right field.”

Carpenter, a St. Louis Cardinals first-round draft choice who expects to sign a contract when the Pan American Games are behind him, probably will not have to find that out for himself. For the United States, he has been the relievers’ reliever.

When he entered the game in the seventh inning Sunday as the fourth U.S. pitcher, Canada was leading, 6-4. In the final 2 innings, he shut out the Canadians while allowing two hits and striking out six.

Asked what the speed gun said on Carpenter’s fastball, Fraser said, “Wow.”

Meantime, Canada’s four pitchers needed all the advice Jenkins could give them. They allowed 10 runs, all earned, on 11 hits and threw 4 wild pitches. But the wildest pitch of all came on an attempted pick-off play at first base that enabled right fielder Rick Hirtensteiner, who had walked, to advance to third base with no outs in the bottom of the seventh inning.

Before the inning ended, the United States had four runs on three hits for an 8-6 lead.

“Our pitchers have to think a little more,” Jenkins said. “After you walk a guy, don’t turn it into a triple if you can’t pick the guy off.”

The United States scored the go-ahead run that inning when Tino Martinez, a Tampa University sophomore who was 4 for 5 with 4 runs batted in, singled, stole second, advanced to third on a wild pitch and went home on a single by catcher Scott Servais of Creighton University.

“You get a little frustrated seeing mistakes made after you’ve tried to relate certain things to the fellows,” Jenkins said. “But in the heat of the battle, sometimes they forget.

“I question some of the pitch selection we had. We had a few wild pitches, some balls thrown behind people. You don’t see these things so much at the higher level because those pitchers tend to think more.

“But we’ve got some pretty good players, who, if we can keep them interested, have a chance to sign professional contracts some day. I tell them it’s a great livelihood. I did it for 23 years.”

Jenkins, 43, last pitched when he went to spring training in 1984 with the Cubs, but he retired when they told him they wanted to go with their younger arms. He moved back to his farm in Chatham, Ontario, lost a race for Parliament and thought about baseball only when his former Cub catcher, Randy Hundley, would invite him to participate in the fantasy camps.

Then Haar asked him earlier this year to be his pitching coach.

“I thought it would be a nice thing to do if I could help these young ballplayers get to the medal round here this year and then go to the Olympics next year,” he said.

With his intelligence and personality, Jenkins probably would make an outstanding executive for some major league team. That would be true even if there weren’t an emphasis now on hiring blacks for front offices. But baseball people might be worried about the image, recalling all too vividly the time he was arrested in Canada when marijuana was found in his suitcase while he was playing for the Texas Rangers.

“I haven’t even thought about that,” Jenkins said. “I’m out of baseball because I want to be. I have a young family and a farm. I want to stay in Canada. As of now, I haven’t even looked into it.”

Besides, if the Canadians can earn a berth in Seoul, he’ll have a real world series to win, one where teams from more than two countries are invited.