Emotion Grips Indians After Team’s Workout

The healing process has begun for the Cleveland Indians, albeit ever so slowly.

They returned to the baseball diamond here Wednesday. They worked out three hours Wednesday morning at Chain O’ Lakes Stadium, their spring-training home. By the end of the practice, there was enough playful banter going on that Manager Mike Hargrove later could call the workout a spirited session.

But the pain most certainly is there. The words often came with much difficulty and the tears were frequent when Hargrove, pitching coach Rick Adair and four Indians relievers met with reporters Wednesday afternoon in two news conferences.

They’ll do their best to move on, they said. But it’s clear that dealing with Monday’s boating accident has become a wrenching task for many. The tragedy, in nearby Clermont, Fla., killed pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews and left pitcher Bob Ojeda hospitalized.

“I’m not dealing with it at all,” reliever Kevin Wickander, Olin’s sidekick since the minor leagues, said during a news conference in which he broke down several times. “He was my best friend (and) the best man at my wedding. I am where I am because of him. He taught me as much about life off the field as he did about things on the field.”

The grief of the Indians has produced a national outpouring of sympathy, both inside and outside of baseball. Indians General Manager John Hart said Wednesday that he’s heard from representatives of every major-league team.

Hart indicated that he spoke Wednesday morning to Bud Selig, the chairman of baseball’s Executive Council, and was told that “whatever baseball can do, it will do.”

The Indians established a memorial fund to benefit the families of Olin and Crews, each of whom is survived by a wife and three young children. The Indians have discussed wearing a patch on their uniforms in honor of Olin and Crews, the first active major-league players to die since New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson was killed in an airplane crash in 1979.

Tributes such as commemorative plaques at the club’s new ballpark in Cleveland (scheduled to be opened in 1994) have been talked about, Hart said. A memorial service was to take place here Wednesday evening, with Andre Thornton -- a former Indians player -- invited to lead the ceremony.

The Indians’ team psychiatrist, Gregory Collins, is in town to help the players. “I feel that the team is going to come through this as well as could be expected,” he said. “It’s a very strong group of people.”

The Indians canceled their Grapefruit League games Tuesday and Wednesday. The exhibition season will resume for them with this afternoon’s game here against the Baltimore Orioles. And, insisted Hargrove, the Indians will do what they have to do to be ready for their April 5 regular-season opener versus the Yankees at Cleveland Stadium.

“We will be ready for the season,” he said, “because of what kind of people we have and who we are and what we’re all about. We don’t need an alibi and we don’t need an excuse. We just need to make those two guys proud of what we do.”

Indians relievers Wickander, Ted Power, Derek Lilliquist and Eric Plunk sat together in front of a room full of notepads and minicams Wednesday afternoon. This, they said, was their main support group. The Indians’ bullpen became a remarkably tight-knit unit last season, they said. That closeness apparently extends to the team as a whole.

“Nothing could possibly compare to the closeness of this team,” said Power, a 10-year big-league veteran who came to the Indians as a released player before last season. “With no other team that I’ve played for have I experienced this. ... I have never, ever gone home for an offseason and heard from my teammates as much as I did last winter. Last year will be a year that goes down in my memory for all-time.”

Ojeda, who had surgery to repair head lacerations, is expected to be released from the hospital within days.