THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Notes : Civic Leaders Denounce Demonstrators for Disrupting Games

A group of Indianapolis civic leaders criticized anti-Castro demonstrators, Cubans for Independence and Democracy (CID) in particular, for their attempts to disrupt the Pan American Games.

“This ungracious and unsportsmanlike conduct creates tensions that open the door to violence, and is offensive to the warm Hoosier welcome our citizens have given to all athletes, including the Cuban teams,” attorney Eric L. Mayer said, reading from a prepared statement at a news conference Thursday on the steps of the Pan Am Plaza.

Bill Crawford, a state representative from Indianapolis, said that the anti-Castro groups’ attempts to provoke Cuban athletes, resulting in two confrontations, has damaged the city’s reputation as the United States’ amateur sports capital.

He also criticized the American Legion for its role in causing Sunday night’s closing ceremony to be moved from the American Legion Mall to the Hoosier Dome. American Legion leaders complained that they didn’t want the Cuban flag raised on a “sacred site.”

Meanwhile, the CID filed two civil lawsuits against the Cuban delegation, the first seeking damages for negligence in Cuban security last Friday night during a brawl at the boxing tournament. The second is a $50-million defamation suit against Cuban delegation official Alberto Juantorena, who told a Miami Herald reporter that CID members stamped on a Cuban flag to provoke the boxing brawl.

One Cuban official was quoted as saying this week: “In Cuba, we feel that if you insult us, we have the right to hit you on the head.”

In still another development, Prosecutor Stephen Goldsmith of Marion County (Indianapolis) said that he will not file criminal battery charges against members of the Cuban boxing delegation who participated in the brawl. Instead, Goldsmith said that he will turn over jurisdiction of the case to the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) and the International Amateur Boxing Assn. (AIBA). The two organizations, he said, will be given results of the investigations into the incident. Goldsmith said that he and police investigators reviewed taped CBS coverage of the brawl and he referred to “a clear overreaction by several Cuban team members.”

Goldsmith also said: “Both PASO and AIBA have the benefit of being both international and sports oriented and have a strong stake in preserving the apolitical nature of these events. Both organizations have agreed to seriously review this incident and consider whether sanctions should be taken against the Cuban boxers.”

Another group of Cuban nationals, the Miami-based Committee for Equal Rights, criticized the CID in leaflets passed out to pedestrians Thursday in Indianapolis.

“The organization responsible for these deplorable incidents are the same organizations that attempt to suppress free expression and debate within our own (Cuban) community, using the tools of intimidation and violence,” the leaflet said. “We condemn this kind of activity here at the Pan American Games, as well as in our own community.”

The U.S. baseball team will play in the semifinals tonight at Bush Stadium against Canada.

Asked his impressions of Canada, U.S. Coach Ron Fraser said, “Beautiful country.”

Canada beat the United States three times in five games before the Pan American Games, but the United States won the game between them here in the round-robin competition, 10-6.

“I’m sure Canada’s happy,” Fraser said after the United States (7-0) beat Puerto Rico, 4-0, in 11 innings Wednesday night, preventing Canada (4-3) from having to play a semifinal game against Cuba.

“But we’re happy to be playing them, too.”

Cuba (6-1) will play Puerto Rico (5-2) this afternoon in the other semifinal game.

If Cuba and the United States both win their baseball games today, they will play for the gold medal Saturday. Even though the United States beat the Cubans, 6-4, on a ninth-inning home run in the round-robin competition, U.S. players still believe they are underdogs.

“We’re not as good as Cuba,” relief pitcher Cris Carpenter said. “We can beat Cuba, but we’re not as good. They’re pros in that country.”

The St. Louis Cardinals would like Carpenter to be a pro in this country. They drafted the right-hander from the University of Georgia in the first round but have been unable to sign him.

That was fortunate for the U.S. team. In 14 innings here, he has allowed only six hits and no runs. He was the winning pitcher against all three of the other semifinalists--Cuba, Canada and Puerto Rico.

After pitching six innings Wednesday night, Carpenter won’t be available tonight.

This is the first time in 41 games, including exhibitions, the U.S. team has not had Carpenter ready to pitch.

“We’re a little short, pitching-wise,” Fraser said.

Mexican and Peruvian athletes who have chatted with Indiana residents have been told more than once that there is a Mexico, Ind., and that it is a suburb of Peru, Ind.

Detective Ken Roland of the Indiana State Police hails from Mexico, Ind. Thursday morning Roland took a collection of Lions Club banners and license plates that say “Mexico, Indiana” to give to the chief of the Mexican delegation. Also in the gift basket was a state map, showing exactly where Mexico, Ind., is located.

Reported Roland: “They were thrilled to death. . . . They really appreciated the gesture.”

The Pan American Games protocol office is still working, even though many of the athletes have left for home. Wednesday night, a call came into the office from a pay phone at the Miami airport. It was the boxing coach from Trinidad and Tobago, explaining that his boxing team’s flight to Miami flight had landed in Atlanta instead, because of engine trouble.

By the time they reached Miami, they had missed their connecting flight to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.

Protocol manager Natalie Boehm got the number of his pay phone and told the coach to stay put. With the help of Eastern Airlines, she said, she arranged for discounted room rates at a nearby hotel and got the team re-ticketed on a flight to Port-of-Spain Thursday morning.

In 1978, Rob Stull, who won a gold medal here in the modern pentathlon and a silver medal in fencing’s team epee competition, was a kicker for his high school football team in Damascus, Md.

When he was sandwiched between two defensive ends on a field goal attempt, he suffered a split liver and ruptured pancreas and almost died.

“I didn’t realize how close I came to cashing it in until my parents told me the next year,” he said.

That was after he had kicked 15 35-yard field goals in a bet with his fraternity brothers as a freshman at the University of Maryland.

When the late Bo Rein, a Maryland football coach at the time, heard that, he invited Stull to try out for the team.

But Stull’s parents said no.

“Bo told me I could just kick and run off the field, but that was still too much of a risk as far as my parents were concerned,” Stull said.

Whatever happened to Boris Onischenko, the Soviet modern pentathlon champion who was caught cheating in fencing during the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal?

Stull saw him last year in Leningrad, where he was competing. Onischenko was driving a taxi.

Cynthia Cooper, poet laureate of the women’s basketball team, wrote a rap song for the group that went to the Goodwill Games last year because, she said, that team was on a mission to Moscow. She hasn’t written anything for this team but says she’s already working on something for the ’88 Olympic team.

“That will be my ultimate rap,” she said.

Cooper, a former USC player, spent last winter playing for a team in Spain and plans to spend next winter playing in Parma, Italy, as she prepares for Seoul.

One night two years ago, Herb Perez of West New York, N.J., was going to high school during the day and working the cash register at night at a fast-food restaurant.

One night, a gunman leaped over the counter, held a gun to his head, and said: “All the cash in the register or your life.” Perez turned over the money and the gunman fled.

Perez’s father was shot and killed during an armed robbery, however, and Perez said that during the fast-food robbery, “something snapped” in his head.

Not wanting ever to be intimidated again, he enrolled in a taekwondo course. A year later he won a national championship and after that became the first American to win a world cup championship in the sport.

At the Pan American Games this week, Perez was the middleweight gold medalist.

Times staff writers Earl Gustkey and Tracy Dodds contributed to this story.