Baseball : Tigers on Gibson: It’s Good Riddance

Tom Monaghan, owner of the Detroit Tigers and Domino’s Pizza, threw everything but the anchovies at Kirk Gibson in a weekly newsletter sent to corporation employees.

Monaghan blasted Gibson’s appearance and fielding in saying that the Tigers won’t miss the man who now plays left field for the Dodgers.

Gibson’s reaction?

“A cheap shot,” he said. “I wouldn’t have expected it from a guy of his stature.

“He didn’t seem to mind what I looked like and played like in ’84 (when Gibson helped lead the Tigers to an American League pennant and World Series victory over the San Diego Padres).”

Here’s what Monaghan said:

“I didn’t like Gibson’s grooming. I thought he was a disgrace to the Tiger uniform with his half beard, half stubble. I didn’t like his long hair.

“His best talents, hitting home runs against right-handed pitchers and stealing bases, are not worth a million-and-a-half dollars a year.

“Which means the best he could do for the Tigers would be to serve as a designated hitter against a right-hander. He has one of the weakest arms in baseball for an outfielder and cannot field well.

“He was a liability in the outfield. We do not need to replace Kirk Gibson.”

The sale of New York Yankee season tickets is up almost 10,000 from last year. Credit the addition of Jack Clark rather than an advertising slogan that plays off the appointment of Lou Piniella as general manager and the return of Billy Martin as manager. The slogan: “Lou, Billy and You.” Nice of George to stay out of it.

The addition of Clark and pitchers Richard Dotson and John Candelaria has obviously impressed Yankee customers, but not Pat Gillick, general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.

“The Yankees are still short on pitching,” Gillick said. “I don’t see them doing it (winning the American League East), especially with the age of their pitching staff. I’m talking about Ron Guidry, Tommy John and John Candelaria. I just don’t see them doing it.”

The widely respected Gillick has been on a verbal roll recently.

Talking about the Dodgers’ acquisition of free agents Gibson and Mike Davis, he said: “I think the Dodgers are going about it the wrong way. Guys like Davis, Gibson . . . they’re just looking for a quick fix. They say they’re doing it to give their prospects time to develop, but they’re just trying for the ultimate quick fix. You can’t do that.”

And on the free agent availability of catcher Carlton Fisk at a time when the Blue Jays are looking for a catcher-designated hitter type, he said of Fisk, “He’s selfish. All he wants to do is catch. He wants to play more than we want him to. I don’t like the tempo that he catches. He’s too slow. Even their manager (Jim Fregosi of the Chicago White Sox) doesn’t like him.”

The left-center-field fence at Yankee Stadium is being moved from 411 feet to 399. The fence in straightaway center is being moved in two feet. The Yankees insist that they’re not accommodating Clark’s power but merely widening the access path to the renowned monuments in center field.

The acquisition of relief pitcher Lee Smith and the 1987 arrival of Ellis Burks, Mike Greenwell, Todd Benzinger and Sam Horn has the Boston media speculating that the Red Sox will have to get off to a good start or Manager John McNamara could be in trouble.

The speculation has been so persistent that Tom Seaver, who pitched for McNamara in both Cincinnati and Boston, came out of retirement to say, “If you lose John McNamara, you are losing one of the best managers and one of the best people in baseball.”

Said McNamara: “This is my 16th year (as a coach or manager). I don’t think I have to prove anything to anybody. We will be successful this year. I believe in the people who are going to play.”

Will Jim Rice play? That’s a key question confronting McNamara and his band. The outfield development of Greenwell and Benzinger, the switch of Dwight Evans to first base and the arrival of Horn as designated hitter has left Rice something of a displaced person, a 35-year-old liability who makes more than $2 million a year, recently had surgery on both knees and hit only 13 homers in 1987.

“I’m not dead, I haven’t retired,” said Rice, who has been responding in his customarily hostile manner.

“What can Benzinger or Greenwell do that I can’t do?” he said. “What can they do that I haven’t done?”

Lee Stange, the Red Sox roving pitching instructor, obviously did some pitching of his own on a trip to Boston’s Pawtucket, R.I., farm club last season. He met and recently married Barbara Reed, the mother of then Pawtucket shortstop Jody Reed, who is given a good chance to crack the varsity lineup this year.

New Dodger relief pitcher Jesse Orosco, continuing a practice he established with the New York Mets, has invested $5,000 in general admission tickets and will play host to 50 handicapped children at each of 25 Dodger Stadium games this season, agent Alan Meersand said. Orosco will sign autographs and have pictures taken with the kids at each game, Meersand added.

The Angels’ decision to put the salary screws to Wally Joyner doesn’t make sense for a variety of reasons, one of the most important being that the club has never had a more charismatic personality to send into the community, a service that has always found the Angels running a distant second to the Dodgers.

It was only last week, for example, that Joyner and his wife, Lesley, made a dynamite speaking appearance at Esperanza High School in Anaheim on behalf of the “Just Say No” drug campaign. Joyner led off with a rap vocal and then drew the student body’s rapt attention with his emotional talk.

If he can get to Mike Port in the same way, he should ultimately come close to the contract he wants--and deserves.

How formidable is the Angels’ task this spring? Their projected rotation of Mike Witt, Kirk McCaskill, Dan Petry, Willie Fraser and Chuck Finley had a combined 41-44 record last year with a 4.30 earned-run average.

The Philadelphia Phillies traded Gary Redus to the Chicago White Sox for pitcher Joe Cowley last year, then sent Cowley to the minors for the season after he gave up 17 walks and 21 hits in just 12 innings.

Now Cowley, who pitched a no-hitter against the Angels in 1986, is back in the Phillies’ camp, having shed 25 pounds. Said Manager Lee Elia: “That shows you dedication, but it doesn’t show you he can get people out.”

Ron LeFlore, the former Tiger base-running star who has been working as an Eastern Airlines baggage handler in Sarasota, Fla., invested $1,675 on the five-week course at Joe Brinkman’s umpiring school, but Saturday was graduation day and LeFlore wasn’t among the 19 students in a class of 132 who received rookie league contracts.

“He did everything we asked him to do,” said American League umpire Nick Bremigan, who works with Brinkman, “but he just had too far to go from being a player to being an umpire.”

A series of shoulder and elbow injuries has left Don Aase’s career in limbo. The Baltimore Orioles do not expect the ex-Angel to be ready for the start of the season. He may have delivered his last pitch. Aase has spent parts of 10 seasons in the majors, spanning 1,790 games. He has been on the disabled list for 596 of those.

The Milwaukee Brewers’ Paul Molitor, who lit up the American League season with his 39-game hitting streak, was on a roll over the winter.

He received the Joe Cronin Award from the American League, the Fred Hutchinson Award from the Pittsburgh baseball writers and the Wisconsin Sportsman of the Year Award from the Milwaukee Pen and Mike Club. He also signed a two-year contract with the Brewers that can bring him $1.85 million a year.

“It has been an eventful winter,” Molitor said, “but it’s time to turn the page now. The thing I’ve always enjoyed is playing the game, not looking back at it.”

No rookie is more apt to make his weight felt this spring than the Brewers’ Joey Meyer, whose weight fluctuates between 250 and 300 pounds. Meyer will be given a chance to become the Brewers’ DH. He hit 29 homers and drove in 92 runs in just 90 games at Denver last year.

What does spring training mean? The Tigers, who had the best record in baseball last year, had the worst in spring training, losing 20 of 29 games.