Rodgers May Lose Flexibility in Elbow Injured in Bus Crash

Angel Manager Buck Rodgers will be unable to put weight on his surgically repaired left knee for two months, and doctors who also operated on his badly broken right elbow Sunday said Rodgers might lose some flexibility in it because of the injury he suffered in Thursday’s bus accident.

Rodgers, 53, was the most seriously injured of 12 players, coaches and staff members hurt when one of two team buses traveling from New York to Baltimore ran off the New Jersey Turnpike about 15 miles from Philadelphia.

Lewis Yocum, the Angels’ team orthopedist, teamed with Bob Chandler and Bill Montgomery to perform the six-hour surgery Sunday at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood.

Rodgers is expected to remain in the hospital for at least three or four days.

An Angel spokesman also said first baseman Alvin Davis, who sustained a bruised kidney, no longer had blood in his urine, which made doctors optimistic about his being able to play this week. Three others--head trainer Ned Bergert, traveling secretary Frank Sims and bullpen catcher Rick Turner--flew back to California Saturday and will recuperate at home.

The damage to Rodgers’ left knee was repaired in an hour-long operation. Doctors then turned their attention to his elbow, which was shattered when the bus tipped and came to rest against a tree.

Yocum said he found “much more fragmentation” in Rodgers’ elbow than X-rays and CAT scans had led him to expect, and he also found enough soft tissue damage to cast doubt on whether Rodgers will recover full mobility in the elbow.