Baseball

FATAL DISTRACTION

The $6 million palimony suit filed last month against Boston Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs by a California woman named Margo Adams, who claims that she was his companion on the road for four years, is beginning to gnaw away at a team already beset by internal problems. "It can't help but affect us," says second baseman Marty Barrett. The Boston Herald has been playing up the story every day as if it were the Watergate scandal—with exclusive interviews with the two principals—and Adams has appeared on national TV telling her version of the facts. To make matters worse, Adams's attorney is in the process of subpoenaing 11 Red Sox players and several wives to give depositions in the case.

Tension has been so high on the club that a shouting match broke out between Boggs and first baseman Dwight Evans June 19 on a bus ride from the Cleveland airport and continued with other players getting involved when the team reached its hotel. Boggs apologized to his teammates in a private session Friday night for the embarrassment the suit had caused them. Earlier in the week he also admitted that he had had a two-year affair with Adams but had tried to break it off when it had gotten out of hand. "I'm just sorry that everyone has to go through it with me," he said. "That's the problem. This is my problem. Let's deal with it one-on-one."

The Boggs crisis comes at a time when the franchise's leadership is too divided to deal with it effectively. Manager John McNamara's failure to seek out and reprimand a player who threw a stink bomb on a commercial flight the evening of the Boggs-Evans clash and his inability to quell the melee that followed the flight indicates that the manager has lost control of the team. Still, majority owner Jean Yawkey (along with John Harrington, who is president of Yawkey's corporation and the power behind the throne) wants to delay firing McNamara until the end of the season in hopes that she will then get a crack at hiring someone like Tom Lasorda or Jim Leyland as a replacement. In the past McNamara has been protected by his old friend Haywood Sullivan, the Red Sox minority owner. But Sullivan, whose main title is chief executive officer, no longer has any real power in the Red Sox organization, and Yawkey will ask him to give up his position as CEO at the end of the season because of his recent backstage campaigning against Yawkey and Harrington. In addition, she plans to make Sullivan an offer for his shares in the club. She offered him $7 million last year, but this time she may not be as generous.

Don't expect the Boggs case to blow over soon, either. If it goes all the way to court, Boggs's lawyer, Jennifer J. King, says she will subpoena some big-name players from other teams to testify about their alleged relationships with Adams.

NAME YOUR PRICE
The Detroit Tigers' Bill Lajoie is widely considered one of the game's best general managers. But his $115,000 salary is probably the lowest in the majors, and the Tigers are considering adopting a policy—already in effect at owner Tom Monaghan's other company, Domino's Pizza—against giving contracts to nonuniformed personnel. So come October, Lajoie could be the most valuable free agent in baseball.

ROSE BASHING
The other day Oakland A's outfielder Dave Parker was evaluating his former manager Pete Rose: "He's just another guy. He's won two batting titles and so have I. He's won an MVP and so have I. To me, Pete's irrelevant." Actually Rose has won three batting crowns. But the main thing Parker neglected to mention was that Rose had 4,256 hits in 24 years, an average of 177 a year, while Parker has 2,241 in 15½ years, for an average of 145 hits a season. Relevant facts, don't you think?

WHERE'S THE BANG?
Oakland slugger Mark McGwire has hit only two home runs since May 17, and his teammates and coaches cite three principal reasons: 1) Since he was beaned in April, McGwire seems gun-shy, and some opposing pitchers believe he is afraid at the plate; 2) he is being thrown far more fastballs this year, and he is basically a breaking-ball hitter; and 3) he got a lot of his 49 homers last year on first "get a strike" pitches, says A's hitting coach Jim Lefevbre. "They're pitching him tougher now."

MOVE OVER, MATTINGLY
The best player in baseball—and you heard it here first—is Detroit shortstop Alan Trammell. Not only is he one of the five best shortstops in either league, but also, at age 30, he has developed into a powerful cleanup hitter. Since May 8, 1987, he has hit .349, slugged .557 and hit 37 homers. During that same period he had only 135 RBIs, but Detroit's first three batters don't get on base as often as their counterparts on the New York Yankees and the A's do. On June 21, Trammell showed just how valuable he can be when he hit a grand slam with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to push the Tigers past the Yankees 7-6.

TALKING BIRD
When the Baltimore Orioles were in Toronto last week, former Oriole Mike Flanagan gave them something to laugh about. Asked what he thought about Baltimore's nosedive since he was traded to the Blue Jays last August. Flanagan replied with a straight face, "It shows me the value of one player to a team." Describing the travails he has gone through pitching in Canada, he said, "They clocked my fastball at 88 last year. But with the exchange rate, it's 83."