U.S. officials nearly alerted off-duty American soldiers at clubs in West Berlin before a bomb blast took place at a discotheque there last Saturday, Reagan Administration officials said. The officials said the United States was “within five minutes” of alerting various clubs of a bombing threat against Americans. Administration officials also claimed they now had “incontrovertible evidence” that Libya was linked to the West Berlin bombing, which killed an American serviceman and a Turkish woman and wounded 230 people, including more than 50 Americans. President Reagan said Wednesday night that the United States was prepared to strike militarily if evidence pointed directly to Libyan involvement in the disco attack. With the Reagan Administration seriously weighing a retaliatory strike against Libya, two aircraft carrier groups were at sea in the Mediterranean today awaiting possible orders from President Reagan to launch an attack. Defense officials said that a total of 30 ships, including 21 combatants, such as cruisers, destroyers, frigates as well as the two carriers, would be within striking range of Libyan targets by Saturday.
The White House and State Department declined to discuss the Libyan situation today, amid signals that the United States was now seriously considering a far more serious military strike against the Government of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi than was undertaken two weeks ago. Then, American aircraft struck Libyan patrol boats and a missile radar site in retaliation for what the United States said were Libyan missile attacks on American planes flying over disputed waters off the Libyan coast. An Administration official said that Libyan military sites were the prime options under consideration for retaliation, and that among the key possibilities were Libyan air bases near the coast. Officials said attacks on the bases would lessen danger to American aircraft and ease the potential threat posed by Libya to its neighbors, such as Egypt. “Egypt would not be displeased if these bases disappear,” one Administration official said. “It would also create enormous vulnerability for Libya.” The official said coastal electronic listening posts, including early-warning radar sites as well as units that pick up airplane and ship traffic, were also key targets. Knocking out those posts, officials said, could severely damage Libya’s ability to harass Western and pro-Western forces. Although oil fields and oil depots are also under consideration, one United States official said destruction of such sites could create problems for the United States because friendly nations, particularly Italy and West Germany, buy oil from Libya. Moreover, a number of Americans are believed to be working in or near those sites, despite Mr. Reagan’s recent order for Americans to leave Libya.
West German officials and intelligence analysts disagree over the implications of the information supplied by the United States to demonstrate Libyan involvement in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, Government sources said today. According to German officials and Western diplomats, the intelligence analysts are more inclined to believe the American evidence than senior figures in Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Government, who have tended to label it “circumstantial.” This judgment has so far prevailed in setting the public posture of the Kohl Government, which has become the main object of Washington’s effort to gain Western European support for a policy of isolating the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. On Wednesday, the Chancellor’s spokesman, Friedhelm Ost, fixed the carefully balanced Government position by saying that Bonn had “indications but no concrete proof” that Libya had organized the discotheque bombing on Saturday, which killed an American soldier and a Turkish woman and left 230 people wounded.
The second U.S. nuclear test of the year was carried out at the Nevada Test Site, an action expected to spur the Soviet Union to resume its own nuclear testing. The Soviet Union has not conducted a nuclear test since it adopted a self-imposed moratorium on testing last August 6. The United States has detonated nine nuclear explosions since that date. The test, which had been postponed twice, was planned for Tuesday, the same day President Reagan met with the departing Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly F. Dobrynin, to discuss a proposed summit meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Officials said the postponement was the result of technical problems and winds that could have carried any accidental radiation leaks toward populated areas.
The official Soviet press agency denounced the nuclear test today, calling it a “dangerous destabilizing step” that cast doubt on American reliability as a negotiating partner. Western diplomats said they expected Moscow to resume testing in the near future, ending a moratorium on underground explosions that began last August. A Tass commentary said: “The latest United States blast made it clear that this Administration, contradicting the joint Soviet-United States statement issued after last November’s summit meeting, is still chasing the will-o’-the-wisp of military superiority.” Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, has said several times in recent weeks that the Soviet Union would end its moratorium if Washington conducted another test. Although Moscow’s reaction was limited to Tass dispatches and commentaries, criticism of the latest American test is expected to intensify over the next few days. Diplomats said the American explosion was expected, however, and was unlikely to have a major impact on planning for a visit to Washington later this year by Mr. Gorbachev.
A senior C.I.A. official said today that the agency had made major changes in its procedures for handling defectors like Vitaly S. Yurchenko, the high-level Soviet official who fled to the West last year and then returned to Moscow. The official, Robert M. Gates, disclosed the new approaches at his confirmation hearing for deputy director, the No. 2 post in the Central Intelligence Agency. At the hearing, senior members of the committee from both parties criticized the Reagan Administration’s policy of providing covert aid to guerrilla movements around the world.
Vienna has become divided by a bitter debate over the presidential candidacy of Kurt Waldheim, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, who has been accused of concealing his war record. Campaign signs for Mr. Waldheim visible in the Austrian capital a month ago read: “A Man the World Trusts.” This week, new signs announce: “We Austrians Will Vote For Whom We Want. Now More Than Ever.”
The Loyalist Ulster Coordinating Committee called for an end to violence waged against police officers in Northern Ireland after more than 160 attacks on police were recorded in a month. The committee, a Protestant group, has been coordinating efforts to overturn the Anglo-Irish agreement that gives the Dublin government a consultative role in the British province. The committee said a period of calm would give police time to impress on their superiors their concern over the agreement. The committee’s statement came just one day after the usually militant Protestant leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley, denounced the attacks on the police.
Only 53 Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate to the West last month, the lowest figure since August last year, the International Committee for Migration reported in Geneva. Eight of the emigres traveled on to Israel after their arrival in Vienna and the remainder went to Italy for processing to other countries, the intergovernmental body said in a statement. So far this year, 216 Jews have left the Soviet Union, compared to 247 during the same period last year. Emigration of Soviet Jews has declined sharply over the last six years after reaching a peak of 51,330 in 1979.
Pope John Paul II, in a particularly severe rebuke of theologians who dissent from Roman Catholicism’s traditional view of sexuality, said today that unorthodox teachings were “spreading confusion in the conscience of the faithful.” The Pope, speaking to a meeting of conservative moral theologians, defended the Vatican’s firm stand against dissenters and said Catholic theologians had an obligation to teach official doctrines. The speech was the Pope’s first major comment on sexual issues since the Rev. Charles E. Curran, a theologian at the Catholic University of America, revealed last month that the Vatican had demanded that he retract his views on birth control and other sexual questions or be barred from teaching as a Cathoic theologian.
The Likud bloc leader, Yitzhak Shamir, backed down today from his threat to leave the Cabinet and suggested a compromise to Prime Minister Shimon Peres that could enable the coalition Government to continue, Likud sources said. Mr. Peres and the Labor Party accepted the terms of the compromise, but late tonight objections to the terms were being raised from within the Likud leadership. This morning, in a surprise move, Mr. Shamir contacted the Prime Minister and offered to defuse the current Cabinet crisis by shuffling several key Cabinet posts along lines demanded by Mr. Peres. According to the Israeli radio, the solution offered by Mr. Shamir was for Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai, whom Mr. Peres has been intent on dismissing from his current post, to become Foreign Minister and for Mr. Shamir, who is now Foreign Minister, to become Finance Minister. Mr. Peres has sought Mr. Modai’s dismissal on grounds that he insulted the Prime Minister.
A car bomb exploded in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon today, killing 3 people and wounding 34 others, the police said. There was no immediate assertion of responsibility. The police said a Mercedes sedan packed with 200 pounds of TNT was detonated in Sidon’s main square at the morning rush hour. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said today that the situation faced by United Nations peacekeeping forces in Lebanon had deteriorated to the point where he had considered withdrawing them. But instead he recommended in his semiannual report on the forces that they remain in the country for at least six more months because their withdrawal might cause a “further major crisis” in Lebanon’s south.
Hundreds of thousands of people thronged the streets of Lahore, Pakistan today demanding the ouster of President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq in the biggest anti-Government rally in Pakistan since General Zia seized power in a military coup in 1977. The immense crowd turned out peacefully to cheer their loyalty instead to Benazir Bhutto, 33-year-old daughter of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was overthrown and later executed by General Zia. Miss Bhutto arrived here this morning from a long self-imposed exile to proclaim herself heir to her father’s once powerful political movement. “Zia out! Zia must go!” the crowd shouted and chanted as Miss Bhutto declared, “The time has come to be united and push out the dictator who has ruled us for these nine years.” Others in the throng shouted, “Zia is a dog!,” and along the route of a nine-hour procession through the broad streets of this historic city many Pakistanis burned American flags and shouted “Down with America!” and other anti-American slogans. Their anger was a reflection of the widespread view in the opposition that General Zia has been propped up for many years by encouragement and economic and military assistance from Washington. The size of the crowd went far beyond the expectation of many politicians, diplomats and other analysts who had doubted that Miss Bhutto could galvanize the kind of support for which her father was famous. Before she arrived, however, Miss Bhutto’s supporters were asserting that she could oust General Zia the way President Corazon C. Aquino had ousted Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines.
Sikh extremists and Indian police traded gunfire in four separate clashes in Punjab state, leaving 10 people dead, including seven of the Sikh militants. In one incident, two railroad guards were killed when four extremists took over a passenger train as it was about to leave a village station about 20 miles from the Sikh holy city of Amritsar. Police said two gunmen delayed the train’s departure while the other two sprayed about 50 bullets around the compartment used by police guards, who travel on all Punjab trains.
Vietnam today turned over to the United States the bodies of 21 people believed to be missing American servicemen. It was the first repatriation of war dead this year and the third largest since 1975. At Hanoi’s international airport, an honor guard drawn from the four American military services escorted each coffin into a C-141 transport plane. Hanoi used the occasion to warn the United States that the future of joint Vietnamese-United States efforts to resolve the issue of missing Americans could be in jeopardy. Nguyen Can, the acting head of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry’s North American Department, said the two-year deadline set last year by Hanoi for resolving the missing and prisoner of war issue cannot be met if there are what he called “statements that vilify or discredit Vietnam in Washington.”
President Corazon Aquino said she plans to ask Filipino voters to decide whether U.S. bases should remain in the Philippines after 1991, when the present lease agreement expires. The Philippine News Agency said she told Japanese journalists in an interview that she will call a referendum on the issue after negotiating the renewal of a treaty with the United States. In Washington, Reagan Administration officials reiterated that the United States expects to have continued access to Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base, the largest U.S. military bases outside the United States, after 1991.
Despite pledges to provide emergency funds to Haiti after the fall of the Duvalier Government, the Reagan Administration has been unable to find a way to fund a $25 million grant needed to allow Haiti to import oil and meet other critical needs, Administration officials said today. By comparison, officials said, plans are going ahead, with an announcement expected shortly, on providing an additional $150 million in economic and military aid for the Philippines in this fiscal year. One State Department official, who has been pressing for the aid to Haiti, complained that the Philippines is receiving aid because it is more important to the United States on national security grounds, and the Haitians are being given a lower priority.
For the first time in this century, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted today to reject a Presidential nominee for an ambassadorial assignment abroad. By a 9-to-7 vote, the committee refused to approve James L. Malone as Ambassador to Belize, the Central American country. A check by the Foreign Relations Committee showed that it was the first time in this century that a nominee for ambassador has been rejected. Mr. Malone, who had served as assistant secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, was strongly backed for the new post by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, who had held up the approval of some 20 other State Department nominations last summer until he was assured by Secretary of State George P. Shultz that Mr. Malone would be given an ambassadorial post.
A Federal investigation is under way into assertions that Nicaraguan rebels and some of their non-governmental American backers have engaged in gun-running and drug trafficking, according to United States officials and sources close to the inquiry. The investigation, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation working with other federal agencies, has been conducted in at least seven states and Central America, according to the sources. Twelve American, Nicaraguan and Cuban-American backers of the rebels who were interviewed by The Associated Press said they had been questioned by the F.B.I. in recent months. The questioning, sometimes over several days, was conducted in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Colorado and California, the backers of the contras said.
The United States Embassy said today that it had assisted the National Police in breaking up a kidnap-for-profit ring said to involve several high-ranking military officers. “The Government of El Salvador came to us for technical, forensic assistance on matters such as fingerprints,” said Donald Hamilton, an embassy spokesman. “As we have done in the past, we have made that assistance available,” Mr. Hamilton said. The police have said the kidnapping victims were kept, sometimes for months, in tiny, stifling underground cells in a working-class neighborhood of San Salvador.
Twenty-one of the 33 Latin American members of the United Nations have failed to pay their dues this year, including Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar’s native Peru, a tabulation showed. Under U.N. rules, a nation owing the equivalent of two years’ assessed contributions to the regular budget may not vote in the General Assembly, which is due to meet April 28 to consider the world body’s financial crisis. Perez de Cuellar said the organization faces a shortfall of $100 million in a budget of about $880 million and warned that some programs may have to be cut.
More than 7,000 Peruvian state doctors and 15,000 miners went on strike, adding to a wave of stoppages gripping the nation, labor leaders said. The Health Ministry doctors are pressing for a 105% pay increase, which would boost their monthly salaries to $335. The miners began a 72-hour sympathy strike to support a 46-day strike at Centromin, Peru’s largest state-owned mining company. The government, plagued by nearly 200 strikes this year alone, estimates that the average worker’s paycheck has lost 25% to inflation since 1980.
The chief White House spokesman today took issue with a draft report from the United States Commission on Civil Rights that recommended a one-year suspension of Federal programs that reserve contracts for businesses owned by blacks, Hispanic people or women. The spokesman, Larry Speakes, said, “The Administration’s position is that we support the minority set-aside program.” These programs require the government to set aside specified percentages of money or work for businesses owned by women or members of minority groups. Federal agencies awarded more than $5 billion in contracts under such programs last year. The programs are carried out under laws passed by Congress and under executive orders issued by Presidents Nixon, Carter and Reagan, and Mr. Reagan has publicly endorsed the use of “minority business procurement goals” by federal agencies. To suspend the programs, as the draft report suggests, would require action by the President to revise executive orders and by Congress to amend existing laws.
President Reagan participates in a Domestic Policy Council meeting.
The Senate voted today, 72 to 24, to delay voting on a tax bill until President Reagan and Congress have agreed on a budget for the next fiscal year. The vote was meant both as a prod to the White House to start negotiating on the 1987 budget and as an expression by some Senators that there should be no tax legislation at all this year. Earlier, in a decision of primary importance to business, the Senate Finance Committee approved the main elements of a new system of depreciating the cost of capital goods such as equipment and machinery. The proposed system, which faces further debate by the full Senate and which is much more generous than depreciation rules approved by the House of Representatives last year, would affect the taxes paid by most large businesses in America.
The House of Representatives today approved a bill making it easier to buy, sell and transport firearms across state lines, but supporters of gun control succeeded in preserving the Federal ban on the interstate sale of pistols. The dual actions came after an impassioned lobbying campaign, which continued until the end and enabled each side to claim a victory. If the bill becomes law it will bring the first significant changes in Federal gun control since the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed in the wake of the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The bill would end that law’s ban on interstate sales and transportation by individuals of rifles and shotguns, would diminish Federal record-keeping requirements on all guns for dealers and would allow owners to take unloaded firearms across state lines, accomplishing many of the objectives of the National Rifle Association.
A 14-year-old victim of AIDS returned to his seventh-grade classes today less than two hours after a judge threw out an injunction barring him from school. Parents of 27 other children at the school took them home, fearful that they might contract the deadly disease. The pupils who remained waved greetings to the AIDS victim, Ryan White, a slight, sandy-haired boy, as he walked down a hallway to his classroom at Western Middle School, which has 364 pupils. “He’s kind of confused about it all,” said Ryan’s mother, Jeanne White, who wept with joy when the ruling was handed down. She said Ryan was “very, very happy.” Ron Colby, the school principal, said Ryan had told him he did not want to talk to reporters. Mr. Colby walked Ryan to his mother’s car after school. Mr. Colby said, “I really feel things went very well.” Mr. Colby said he had not asked the children who left, or their parents, why they were leaving. “Tomorrow may be something different,” he said. “I think if the media would leave us alone, the situation would remedy itself. As the principal of the school, I don’t see any reason why Ryan shouldn’t be in school. I don’t think he poses a threat to anyone.”
A congressional panel began an investigation into charges that Trans World Airlines is unsafe to fly because it is employing inexperienced workers to replace striking flight attendants. The allegations against the nation’s fifth-largest airline were made by the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants, whose 6,000 members struck TWA on March 7. A top airline executive strongly denied the charges. A Federal Aviation Administration official said that, while the matter is still under investigation, the agency has no evidence that the strike has compromised safety.
The defense rested in the espionage trial in Alexandria, Virginia, of former Army intelligence officer Richard Craig Smith after he testified that he had passed information about six U.S. counterspy operations to a Soviet KGB officer in Tokyo but did so as part of a mission for the CIA. He insisted that he had been a spy for the United States but that he had never been a spy for the Soviet Union. Smith is charged with two counts of espionage, one of conspiracy and two counts of passing secrets to the Soviet Union.
The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating the Department of Energy for a possible criminal violation of the hazardous waste disposal law, a House committee was told today. J. Winston Porter, the environmental agency’s Assistant Administrator for solid waste, testified that the inquiry was centered on whether the Energy Department had filed a false statement with the E.P.A. about a toxic disposal area at its waste storage site at Hanford, Washington.
The Justice Department agreed to let the American Civil Liberties Union see documents of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography and the ACLU agreed to drop a federal suit to block all meetings and business of the commission. The Justice Department said it was releasing the documents “because the possibility of litigation was distracting from the importance of the commission’s real work,” which is writing its report on pornography. The ACLU filed the suit after the commission denied the group access to documents routinely provided before.
Two former Secretaries of Defense suggested today that the pace of research in defenses against long-range missiles be slowed and that spending for them be cut. The former Secretaries, Robert S. McNamara, who served in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, and Harold Brown, who served in the Carter Administration, also said they believed the cost of building and operating an antimissile defense could reach astronomical proportions without providing effective protection. Mr. McNamara and Mr. Brown testified before the Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Reagan Administration’s request for $4.8 billion in the fiscal year 1987 for an antimissile shield. Administration officials say the program is aimed at making possible an “informed decision” by the early 1990’s as to whether to begin full-scale development and ultimate deployment of a missile defense.
The threat of a national railroad strike over a dispute between 123 maintenance workers and a small New England carrier grew today as picket lines expanded south to Richmond, Va., and west to Ohio. However, the 85,000-member Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees did not carry out its vow to also trigger walkouts in Buffalo and on the West Coast. The union struck the Maine Central Railroad, a subsidiary of Guilford Transportation Industries of Billerica, Mass., on March 3 after negotiations broke down on the company’s demand for a 20 percent wage cut. Since then the union has established picket lines at other Guilford subsidiaries in seven northeastern states, triggering walkouts by members of other unions. Two Federal judges today rejected petitions from railroads to enjoin the union from expanding the strike.
Four elderly black women have been slain in an Atlanta neighborhood and the police say they have no leads in the slayings, which are being investigated by a special team because of similarities. The body of the fourth victim, 65-year-old Gracie Hill, was found Wednesday. State Senator Arthur Langford said volunteers would be canvass the northwest Atlanta neighborhood where the killings had occurred. Senator Langford was involved in the searches in the city’s series of slayings or disappearances of 29 young blacks, many of them children, from 1979 to 1981. Wayne Williams was sentenced to life in prison in two deaths. Annie Rochelle Copeland, 85, was found dead March 1 in the University Homes project. Aretha Clements, 61, was found March 6 about a block away. She had apparently been strangled. Dena Mike, a 62-year-old blind woman, was found dead March 11.
Mayor Richard G. Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, urged his colleagues at the National Conference of Black Mayors in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to create a “black common market” and stop begging for handouts from Washington. The nation’s 291 black mayors can control the spending of millions of dollars in their cities and towns and ought to begin trading with one another, as the members of the European Economic Community do, Hatcher said at the 12th annual convention.
A judge’s dismissal of South Dakota Governor William J. Janklow’s $10-million libel suit against Newsweek magazine was upheld by the U.S. 8th Circuit of Appeals in St. Louis. In a 6-3 decision, the appeals court said that Newsweek was exercising its constitutional rights when it wrote a story in 1983 about Janklow and Indian activist Dennis Banks. The article said a feud between Janklow and Banks started in 1974, when Banks brought charges against Janklow in tribal court accusing him of raping a 15-year-old Indian girl in 1967.
A jury today found a leader of a survivalist cult guilty of first-degree murder and his 16-year-old son guilty of second-degree murder in the torture-slaying of a cult member whose legs were flayed before he died. The cult leader, Michael Ryan, 37, and his son Dennis were convicted in the death of James Thimm, 26, last April at the cult’s farm near Rulo in southeastern Nebraska. The authorities said Mr. Ryan led a group of about 20 adults and children on the farm in 1984 and 1985. The group hated Jews, called their god Yahweh and stored supplies and weapons to prepare for what members said would be a final battle between the forces of good and evil.
A Federal agency today advised American consumers not to drink Italian wines until tests prove that the wines are not contaminated with methanol, which has been linked to 18 deaths in Italy. The agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said it would leave it to the American importers and distributors, over which it has jurisdiction, to advise retailers of what action to take. The agency said at first that the retailers should be told to remove all the Italian wines from their shelves until samples can be tested for the toxic substance, but that statement was withdrawn later in the day. “We are not telling the wholesalers what to say to the retailers,” said Dot Koester, the spokesman for the bureau.
Appointment of a special counsel to investigate purported wrongdoing by Justice Department lawyers will be requested by the department, law enforcement officials said. The House Judiciary Committee had requested the counsel after it found that the lawyers may have lied to Congress and the White House in handling Environmental Protection Agency material in 1982 and 1983.
Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. has unnerved residents of Leesburg, Virginia, since his move there from New York three years ago. Residents say his supporters have threatened those who have spoken out against him. One lawyer is in hiding and a merchant faces a $2 million libel and slander suit.
A wintry storm dumped record-breaking snows on the Appalachians as snow showers and cold temperatures stretched from the Great Lakes into northern New England. Twelve inches of snow fell on Terra Alta in the northern mountains of West Virginia. In New York, snow flurries were reported in Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester, where slick roads were blamed for many minor traffic accidents during the morning rush hour.
“Big Deal” opens at Broadway Theater NYC for 70 performances.
Veteran NFL quarterback Steve Bartkowski, released by the Atlanta Falcons last season, has agreed to a one-year contract with the Los Angeles Rams, his agent said Thursday.
Major League Baseball:
The Montreal Expos downed the Atlanta Braves, 6–3. Jason Thompson delivered a run-scoring seventh-inning single to snap a tie, and Andres Galarraga hit a three-run homer for Montreal. Thompson’s two-out single off Gene Garber scored Galarraga, who had doubled for a 2–1 lead. Tim Raines then singled and Vance Law singled, scoring Thompson. Galarraga, who had three hits and drove in four runs, connected off Bruce Sutter in the eighth inning after a double by Hubie Brooks and an intentional walk to Mitch Webster. The Braves broke a scoreless tie in the fourth inning off Jay Tibbs. Terry Harper opened the inning with a walk and moved to third on a single by Ozzie Virgil. Ken Oberkfell followed with a run-scoring single. Glenn Hubbard walked to load the bases, but Tibbs got out of the jam by getting Zane Smith to bounce into a forceout at the plate and Claudell Washington to hit into a double play.
Fred Lynn drilled a three-run homer in the seventh inning and Rick Dempsey hit two home runs to pace the Orioles to a 5–1 victory over the visiting Indians. Ken Dixon scattered six hits and struck out five over seven innings for the victory. Lynn hit his first home run of the season on an 0–1 pitch with two out to put Baltimore in front 4–1. John Shelby began the uprising with a one-out double off Jim Kern.
The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Chicago White Sox, 8–5. Ernest Riles hit an opposite field-home run to cap a four-run, ninth-inning comeback as Milwaukee completed a three-game sweep of the White Sox. With one out in the ninth, Mike Felder singled off Bob James, Chicago’s fourth pitcher, and Robin Yount followed with his third hit of the game. James struck out Paul Molitor, but Billy Joe Robidoux tied the score at 5–5 with a single, and Riles hit his second homer of the season, into the left-field seats. Milwaukee gave Juan Nieves a run in the top of the fourth when Molitor tripled and scored on Robidoux’s grounder. But Nieves, a rookie, started the bottom of the fourth by walking Wayne Tolleson and giving up consecutive one-out singles to Carlton Fisk and Ron Kittle to load the bases. Nieves then struck out Greg Walker, but walked Tim Hulett, forcing Tolleson home. Ozzie Guillen beat out a roller to shortstop to score Fisk. When Robidoux, the first baseman, failed to handle Riles’s throw, Kittle raced home with Chicago’s third run and Guillen took second, and both scored on Joel Skinner’s single to left.
Doubles by Ed Romero and Bill Buckner and Jim Rice’s two-run single keyed a four-run fifth inning, and Al Nipper checked Detroit on four hits, as the Red Sox won in Detroit, 4–2. Nipper struck out six and walked five in eight and two-thirds innings, and Joe Sambito got the final out. With two out in the fifth, Romero doubled off Dan Petry and scored on a single by Dwight Evans to tie the game at 1–1. Petry walked Wade Boggs, then Buckner doubled Evans home and Rice singled to drive in Boggs and Buckner.
It took smooth left-hander Bob Knepper to get the Houston Astros back into their successful routine against the San Francisco Giants Thursday night. Knepper, who has won seven of his last eight decisions over his former team, blanked San Francisco 4–0 on five hits, preventing the Giants from sweeping the three-game series. The Giants have won only three of their last 16 games in the Astrodome. Knepper outpitched San Francisco starter Vida Blue, who was trying to win his 200th career game. “He had great command of his pitches, he was in and out all night long,” Giants manager Roger Craig said. “He pitched a masterpiece tonight.”
Carmelo Martinez homered for San Diego’s first extra base hit of the season, helping the Padres to a 3–2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers Thursday night. Mark Thurmond allowed seven hits in 6 ⅔ innings and singled in a run. He was relieved by Lance McCullers, who yielded to Rich Gossage in the eighth. Gossage picked up his first save. The victory gave the Padres a split in the four-game series, in which the teams combined for a total of 10 runs. San Diego took a 100 lead when Martinez lined Dodgers left-hander Rick Honeycutt’s first pitch of the second inning over the short fence in left field. It was the Padres’ 23rd hit of the season but their first extra-base hit.
Entering their half of the fifth inning yesterday, the Yankees were losing, 5–0, and they had yet to get a hit against Bret Saberhagen, the Cy Young Award winner, who was pitching in a game that counted for the first time since he shut out the St. Louis Cardinals in the game that made the Kansas City Royals the World Series champions. In other words, the Yankees seemed to have little chance of winning this particular game. So all they did was go ahead and win it, scoring the winning run in the 6–5 decision on Dale Berra’s pinch-hit, suicide-squeeze bunt with the bases loaded in the 10th inning. Berra’s successful squeeze, his first ever, came not long after Lynn Jones had missed the ball in a similar squeeze situation and ruined the Royals’ chances of scoring in their half of the 10th.
Moose Haas pitched six-hit shutout ball for seven and two-thirds innings, and Jose Canseco hit a two-run homer to lead the A’s to a 3–0 shutout win over the Twins. The A’s, winning their first game of the season, scratched out their first run with the help of Dave Kingman’s bunt single in the fourth inning. Canseco’s homer in the seventh was the team’s first of the year. Haas, acquired from Milwaukee, walked one batter and struck out five in his first game with the A’s. He left after Kent Hrbek doubled in the eighth, and Jay Howell saved his victory.
The Seattle Mariners downed the California Angels, 5–2. Gorman Thomas and Alvin Davis hit consecutive home runs in the second inning and the Seattle Mariners downed the Angels and spoiled Don Sutton’s bid for his 296th career victory. Seattle’s Matt Young, 1–0, scattered six hits, walked two and struck out four. Young, who set a club record by losing 19 games a year ago and who struggled during spring training, blanked the Angels until the eighth.
Ozzie Smith singled home two runs to break a fourth-inning tie, and Rick Ownbey earned his first major-league victory in almost three years today, leading the St. Louis Cardinals to a 4–2 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Ownbey struck out two batters and walked four before leaving the game two batters into the seventh inning. Todd Worrell saved Ownbey’s first victory in a St. Louis uniform. It was the first start since the final day of the 1984 season for Ownbey, acquired in the June 15, 1984, trade that sent Keith Hernandez to the Mets. And it was only his second victory as a starter.
The Toronto Blue Jays won over the Rangers, 11–10, at Arlington, Texas. Willie Upshaw and George Bell hit consecutive two-out home runs in the eighth inning to lift the Blue Jays. Texas reliever Greg Harris, 0–1, was the victim of the rally, which began when Garth Iorg singled with two out. Upshaw then homered to tie the game and Bell hit the game-winner over the wall at the 380-foot mark in left field. Tom Henke, 1–0, pitched the last two innings for Toronto and the official scorer credited him with the victory rather than a save.
Wintry weather in Pittsburgh wiped out the Mets’ second game of the season against the Pittsburgh Pirates tonight, and caused the first switch of the season in their pitching rotation. The game was postponed while rain and even some snow swirled around the city this afternoon, with the temperature dropping toward the 20’s. Today’s game will be made up in a doubleheader on June 6th.
Montreal Expos 6, Atlanta Braves 3
Cleveland Indians 1, Baltimore Orioles 5
Milwaukee Brewers 8, Chicago White Sox 5
Boston Red Sox 4, Detroit Tigers 2
San Francisco Giants 0, Houston Astros 4
San Diego Padres 3, Los Angeles Dodgers 2
Kansas City Royals 5, New York Yankees 6
Minnesota Twins 0, Oakland Athletics 3
California Angels 2, Seattle Mariners 5
Chicago Cubs 2, St. Louis Cardinals 4
Toronto Blue Jays 11, Texas Rangers 10
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1794.3 (+15.68)
Born:
Corey Kluber, MLB pitcher (All-Star, 2016–2018; Cleveland Indians, Texas Rangers, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays, Boston Red Sox), in Birmingham, Alabama.
Olivia Borlée, Belgian 200m sprinter (Olympics, gold medal, 4 × 100 m relay, 2008), in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Belgium.
Charde Houston, WNBA forward (WNBA Champions- Lynx, 2011; WNBA All-Star, 2009; Minnesota Lynx, Phoenix Mercury, New York Liberty), in Oceanside, California.
Val Berezhynska, Ukrainian WNBA center (San Antonio Silver Stars), in Nikolaev, Ukraine.
Ayesha Takia, Indian actress (Taarzan: The Wonder Car), in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Died:
Joseph P. Addabbo, 61, American politician and defense specialist (Rep.-D-New York), of a cancer-related kidney ailment.
Linda Creed [Linda Epstein], 37, American singer and songwriter (“The Greatest Love Of All”; “You Make Me Feel Brand New”; “Rubber Band Man”), of breast cancer.
History Diaries 