Official Says Luck Is With Angels

Hours after he was admitted to Underwood Memorial Hospital, Frank 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,” said Sims, the Angels’ traveling secretary and one of four people hospitalized after one of the team’s buses swerved off a road in New Jersey early Thursday morning.

“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. (Eastern time) Thursday. He said he hoped to be released from the hospital by the weekend but acknowledged he was in considerable pain Thursday.

Sims was sitting in the second row on the left side of the bus, one row behind where he usually sits.

“I always sit behind the driver, and why I didn’t this time, I don’t know,” he said. “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. (Eastern time) 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 recapped tire that had fallen off the truck.

“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.”

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.