Angel Official’s Movie Had Too Much Action

When weary Angel players left New York Wednesday night, they had their choice of two buses and two movies. One bus was showing “Delta Force 2” ; the other, “Dances With Wolves.”

Frank Sims, the team’s traveling secretary and coordinator of hotel and travel arrangements, took a seat in the second row of the lead bus.

Sims had a close-up seat for “Delta Force 2: Operation Stranglehold” and a terrifyingly clear view of what happened next.

“I always sit behind the driver and why I didn’t this time, I don’t know,” said Sims, one of four people hospitalized after the bus swerved off a road in southern New Jersey early Thursday morning. “This time I sat in the second seat, and the whole front seat was mangled.”

He recalled looking at his watch and noting the time was 1:30 a.m. EDT and also noticing a truck in front of the team bus. Sims said bus driver Carl Venetz later told him the accident occurred when he swerved to avoid a tire that had fallen off the truck and into the path of the bus.

“It happened so fast. I remember sliding and I remember I was thrown out of my seat and then I don’t remember anything until the bus stopped,” Sims said. “Ned Bergert (the Angels’ head trainer) was behind me and told me to lay still. . . .

“The players helped me out. They threw my coat over me and I remember I was worried about the (players’ meal) money in my briefcase. I didn’t want to leave it there. I went back and looked for it but the seat was mangled, it was gone. But the briefcase was right where I had left it.”

Hours after he was admitted to Underwood Memorial Hospital, Sims was still picking slivers of glass out of his hair and the folds of his skin. “My coat pocket was filled with glass, and I have no idea how it got there.”

“There was so much glass in my hair I couldn’t run my hands through it. But the only cut I have is on my leg, and my pants weren’t even cut. The whole front of the bus was demolished, just demolished.”

Sims, 65, suffered cracked ribs and a possible punctured lung in the accident and was the first admitted to the hospital, at 2:30 a.m. Thursday. He said he hoped to be released from the hospital by the weekend but acknowledged that he was in considerable pain Thursday and was grateful for the pain-killers.

“The people in the hospital have been great,” he said. “They got everybody examined and stabilized and just did a great job.”

Sims said the experience was “three times worse” than anything he endured as a decorated pilot during World War II.

“We’re all very, very lucky we’re alive,” he said.