A member of the Soviet leadership said today that about 49,000 people had been evacuated from around the Chernobyl power plant and that 20 to 25 people were critically ill as a result of the nuclear accident at the reactor. The official, Boris N. Yeltsin, a candidate or nonvoting member of the Politburo who is the Moscow Communist Party chief, also said in an interview that perhaps 40 people may have received a serious dose of radiation, “but definitely not hundreds or thousands as reported by the Western press.” Mr. Yeltsin’s remarks confirmed for the first time that a fire took place during the accident and that the accident occurred on April 26. The only previous Soviet reference to a fire came Wednesday when a photograph was shown on television in Moscow as a commentator said, “As you can see there is no fire.”
President Reagan charged today that by withholding details of the Chernobyl nuclear accident the Soviet Union “manifests a disregard for the legitimate concerns of people everywhere.” Speaking on the eve of the annual economic summit meeting of the seven biggest industrial democracies, the President contrasted the openness of the leaders gathering here with the Russians’ “secrecy and stubborn refusal to inform the international community of the common danger” from the nuclear disaster. “A nuclear accident that results in contaminating a number of countries with radioactive material is not simply an internal matter,” Mr. Reagan said in his weekly radio talk to the American people. “The Soviets owe the world an explanation. A full accounting of what happened at Chernobyl and what is happening now is the least the world community has a right to expect.”
Federal officials said today that the latest information they had received on the Soviet reactor accident confirmed that it was the worst such accident in history but left many critical questions unanswered. After Federal task force reviewed the latest data at a two-hour meeting this morning, Lee M. Thomas, head of the group, said that “not a lot of new conclusions” could be drawn about the accident and its consequences. But Mr. Thomas added that American estimates that highly lethal radiation must have drenched an area several miles around the stricken reactor appear to have been confirmed by a Soviet official interviewed in West Germany.
Three Politburo members inspected the area of the damaged Chernobyl nuclear power plant today, marking the first public demonstration of concern over the accident by the top Soviet leadership. The Government press agency Tass said the area was visited by Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov; Yegor K. Ligachev, the second-ranking party secretary after Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky, the Ukrainian leader. In the company of other officials, the three were said to have checked on the condition of evacuees and made unspecified decisions on “additional measures to expedite the work.”
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says the Senate is unlikely to approve the State Department’s entire $4.4 billion plan for improving security at embassies. The chairman, Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, warned State Department officials at a hearing Wednesday that they had “a considerable amount of work” to do to justify the scope of the plan to skeptical senators. Speaking later to reporters, Senator Lugar said the security plan would have to be “scaled down,” although he did not indicate by how much.
An embittering presidential election campaign that ended today has polarized Austria and splintered its postwar political consensus, according to several senior figures in the Government and the opposition. Overshadowed by accusations and questions about the war record of Kurt Waldheim, the candidate of the conservative People’s Party, the campaign broke an unspoken pact that Austria’s Nazi past should not be used as a bludgeon in political debate. “There has been a lot of soul-searching,” said Peter Jankowitsch, a top strategist of the governing Social Democrats and a former delegate to the United Nations. “It has divided the country more than anything since 1945.”
The Vatican has issued a highly unusual report on the challenge posed by new religious cults to the Roman Catholic Church, warning that some cults are supported by “powerful ideological forces as well as economic and political interests.” The document is also striking as one of the most self-critical assessments of the church ever publicly issued by the Vatican. It acknowledged that cults had flourished in part because of “needs and aspirations which are seemingly not being met in the mainline churches.” The document called on the church to consider potentially far-reaching changes, including a “rethinking, at least in many local situations, of the traditional parish,” and creating “more fraternal” church structures “more adapted to people’s life situations.”
The Lebanese army closed the last two crossings between mostly Christian East Beirut and mostly Muslim West Beirut after a Muslim army officer was reported kidnaped while entering West Beirut. One crossing was later reopened for army use only. Five other passageways have been closed since last year. In West Beirut, one person was killed and four, including a child, were wounded when mortar rounds slammed into a crowded area, hospital sources said. Rival militias also exchanged fire across the Green Line dividing the two parts of the strife-torn city.
Iran and Iraq today reported heavy overnight fighting on the south-central war front where Baghdad said earlier this week that it had entered Iranian territory for the first time in four years. The Iranian press agency said Iranian forces launched a raid near the border town of Fuka under cover of heavy rain, killing 1,700 Iraqis and destroying 30 tanks before pulling back. In Baghdad, a military spokesman said Iraqi forces successfully repelled an Iranian attack in the Fuka area. He said two Iranian Army brigades were destroyed. Iraq said last Wednesday that its troops pushed into Iranian territory in the Fuka area. Baghdad has not claimed to control any Iranian territory since 1982.
The official Soviet press agency Tass has said that more than 2,000 Afghan guerrillas were killed and about 4,000 wounded last month when Communist forces overran a rebel base near the Pakistani border. The commander of the rebels had earlier put guerrilla casualties in the attack at 125 dead and 220 wounded. The Tass report, published Friday in the official labor union newspaper Trud, said the bodies of 200 Pakistani soldiers were also discovered after the base at Zhawar was overrun. Tass, which first reported the fall of Zhawar on April 22, did not say whether Soviet personnel took part in the battle. A rebel commander said on April 23 that his men killed 280 Communist soldiers and captured about 300 Afghan soldiers in the battle.
The opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was greeted by more than 50,000 cheering supporters in Karachi today as she continued her drive for the ouster of the President, General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. “General Zia must go and he must go now,” Miss Bhutto told the crowd. Hundreds of riot policemen kept the crowds back from the airport terminal, but there were no violent incidents. Miss Bhutto, 32 years old, is the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party and daughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Her father was ousted by General Zia in a 1977 coup and was hanged in 1979 after being convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent. Miss Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan April 10 from self-exile in Europe, called on the crowds to unite against the Zia Government and repeated her demands for his immediate removal and free democratic elections. The next elections are scheduled for 1990, and General Zia has refused to move up the date.
An explosion on a plane in Sri Lanka killed 20 people inside the plane and on the ground waiting to board it. The explosion, believed to have been caused by a bomb, ripped through the tail section of the Air Lanka jetliner. Sri Lankan authorities said most of the dead were French, German, Italian and Japanese vacationers who were on their way to the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean. Two Americans were uninjured. At least two dozen other people were reported wounded. All international air traffic to and from Sri Lanka was immediately suspended.
South Korean police fired tear gas to disperse about 10,000 antigovernment demonstrators in the port city of Inchon, 20 miles west of Seoul, and arrested an estimated 100 people in the ensuing riot. Officials said 30 policemen were injured. An unspecified number of protesters were also injured. The melee began after a crowd of students and workers laid siege to an auditorium where the New Korea Democratic Party, the main opposition party, was to have held a rally to promote its petition campaign for constitutional reform. The protesters shouted slogans against the United States, the Korean government and the opposition party as well. The running clashes, in which demonstrators responded by throwing firebombs and rocks, resulted in the cancellation of the rally, injuries on both sides and the arrest of about 100 demonstrators. Skirmishes continued well after nightfall, with the police firing tear gas as they pursued small bands of protesters. Yoo Kil Jong, the provincial police director, said 30 policemen were injured and several hospitalized.
President Reagan meets with Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan at the U.S. Embassy.
The leaders of the seven major industrialized democracies are ready to endorse a broad “statement of will” for resisting terrorism, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi of Italy said today after a private meeting with President Reagan. The statement will not specify a policy on the use of military force against terrorism, Mr. Craxi said, but rather will assert that the nations agree that terrorism represents a global challenge. A senior Administration official said the statement would meet Mr. Reagan’s goal of having the summit nations go on record against terrorism. The statement, which would be included in the communique that the leaders will issue Tuesday at the close of three days of talks, was designed to reflect the Administration’s concern about the current situation, the official said, adding, “We also want action, not only words.”
Early arrivals at the seven-nation economic summit meeting said today that the abrupt decline of the dollar and the sharp rise of the Japanese yen demonstrated a need for tighter control over the world economy. The phrase that officials are beginning to use for such control is “enhanced surveillance,” which means, they say, a closer coordination of the major industrial nations’ domestic economic policies, including a public commitment by particular nations to achieve specific goals on economic growth, trade and inflation. Both Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d and Secretary of State George P. Shultz said the relatively sound shape of the summit nations’ economies offered rare opportunities to take on such responsibilities. “It gives governments room politically,” Mr. Baker said, “to adopt measures that would otherwise perhaps be foreclosed to them.”
The Secret Service agents looked tense. The advance staff looked tense. But as the First Lady made her rounds today here in the lush capital of Malaysia, one man hovering in her phalanx seemed the tensest of them all. “This is the worst weather for hair,” said Julius Bengtsson, Mrs. Reagan’s hairdresser. “I’m constantly rolling and rolling.”
A Taiwanese cargo jet bound for Hong Kong landed in the southern Chinese city of Canton, and the pilot said he wanted to defect, the official New China News Agency reported. Pilot Wang Xijue landed the China Airlines Boeing 747 at Canton’s Baiyun Airport “in a bid to return to the motherland,” said the news agency, quoting the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The co-pilot and mechanic indicated that they wanted to return to Taiwan.
Nearly two months after President Corazon C. Aquino ordered the release of all political prisoners, nearly 500 remain in military and civilian jails, according to some human-rights activists here. Their continuing detention underscores the problem that the Aquino Government faces in getting the armed forces to cooperate with its policy of reconciliation, the activists said. Some military men, including Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, have suggested that if Communist guerrillas and their detained sympathizers are given amnesty, then it should be broadened to include soldiers who committed human rights abuses while former President Ferdinand E. Marcos was in power. As of April 22, Task Force of the Philippines, a church-backed group with leftist links, listed 498 Filipinos inside military or civilian jails for what it said were political offenses. It said it knew of 478 others who had been released since President Aquino issued her proclamation on March 2.
Former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos was barred from selling five New York properties estimated to be worth at least $100 million. In a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Pierre N. Leval prohibited Marcos from disposing of three Manhattan office buildings, the Herald Center shopping arcade and an estate on Long Island until the question of ownership is settled. President Corazon Aquino’s government in Manila has charged in a lawsuit that Marcos and his wife, Imelda, bought the real estate with money stolen from the Philippine treasury and used agents to conceal their ownership.
The Contadora Group announced it will hold a new round of talks with Central American diplomats May 16–18 in a move to salvage a regional peace treaty before a self-imposed June 6 deadline. Deputy foreign ministers of the Contadora Group, made up of Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and Colombia, made the decision at a two-day conference in Panama City. “We hope the negotiating process ends and the treaty is signed June 6,” said Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez de Soto. The two issues remaining to be settled are international military maneuvers and arms reductions.
More than a dozen years since Chileans began to flee their homeland for political reasons, only a few have returned, and critics of the military Government point to the exile issue as one of the worst stains on the national conscience and image. Many who do not share the largely leftist political views of the exiles express outrage at their continuing banishment, saying that one of the most painful things a person can suffer is not being allowed to come home. Only about 2,000 people have returned from political exile out of 200,000 who fled, according to Humberto Lagos Schuffeneger, a lawyer at the Vicariate of Solidarity, the human-rights office of the Archdiocese of Santiago. Mr. Lagos, who spent five years in Belgium for what he described as “some problems,” said 40,000 to 45,000 of those abroad are considered to be actual exiles and the remainder of the 200,000 are family members. Of the exiles, only 3,719 are specifically prohibited from returning, their names having been published on the exclusion lists of the Ministry of Interior. But Mr. Lagos said that others were kept out because they acquired the citizenship of the country where they took asylum and that still others were hindered by bureaucratic red tape. But the majority, he said, do not return because of a combination of economic concerns and “the fact that the same political conditions exist that provoked exile in the first place.”
The Maralheen, Arab tribesmen from the Sudan’s north, have a long history of clashes with the African Dinka tribe in the largely Christian and animist south. The conflicts, traditionally over grazing land, water and raiding of cattle, were once played out with spears and settled by tribal chiefs. But over the last three years, according to local government officials, clergy and witnesses, the Maralheen have come armed with rifles, submachine guns and mortars. Their mission, the witnesses say, has been to cut a wide swath of destruction through the land of the Dinkas. Riding into villages on camels, horses and donkeys, groups of as many as 1,000 raiders have reportedly shot to death hundreds of Dinka tribesmen, castrated, raped and dismembered others, drowned more than 200 children and abducted hundreds of children and women, selling some of them as slaves in Arab countries. The captives’ hands were pierced and they were chained to each other to make escape virtually impossible, some witnesses said.
More than 1 million South African blacks returned to their jobs after a one-day strike in which police reported nine people killed and more than 70 arrested in overnight unrest in at least 24 black townships. In addition, it was reported that police shot several blacks, possibly killing three, at a funeral near Port Elizabeth for earlier riot victims. A witness said police fired tear gas into a church before the funeral started, then shot at mourners as they tried to flee. The strikers, who mounted the country’s largest anti-apartheid protest to date, were joined by another million black students who boycotted classes, calling for May Day to be declared a public holiday.
A senior South African Cabinet minister says that changes in racial policies in South Africa will not be possible without continued segregation of schools and housing to assure whites about their future. In an interview in Cape Town on Thursday, the official, Gerrit Viljoen, a former chairman of the Broederbond Afrikaner secret society, said blacks might join South Africa’s Government in areas like black education. The minister holds two portfolios -education of blacks and the development of the six so-called tribal homelands that have not yet taken nominal independence from Pretoria. A former professor, he is viewed as a leading figure in what is called the enlightened wing of the ruling National Party.
Navy Captain Michael J. Smith, who died in the January 28 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Six white horses, guided by a seventh, pulled Smith’s coffin on an ancient caisson to the grave site overlooking Washington, following an afternoon memorial service attended by friends, colleagues and family. “We lost him long before we could afford his loss,” said Commander Richard H. Purnell, who attended the U.S. Naval Academy with Smith and delivered the eulogy. A black granite tombstone identifies Smith as the pilot of the Challenger and was engraved with a Navy insignia with a shooting star through it.
An unmanned Delta rocket carrying a weather satellite lost power in its main engine and pitched out of control about 70 seconds after launching today from Cape Canaveral, forcing safety officers on the ground to destroy it by remote control. The launching was the space agency’s first since the shuttle Challenger exploded January 28 shortly after takeoff, killing the seven crew members. The accident today was the third successive failed launching of an American rocket. An explosion April 18 destroyed an Air Force Titan rocket moments after it was launched from the Western Space and Missile Center at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California. The explosion is certain to raise troubling questions about the future of the nation’s space program, which has been crippled by the grounding of the space shuttle and the Titan missile fleet.
President Reagan’s approval rating from the American people matches the highest level he has ever recorded, a New York Times poll shows, even though support for the bombing of Libya last month has slipped a bit from what it was immediately after the attack. Sixty-eight percent of the public approves of his handling of the Presidency, according to a telephone poll of 1,099 adults taken April 29 through May 1. Twenty-one percent disapproved, and 11 percent had no opinion.
President Reagan eats his dinner while watching “The A Team” and “Hart to Hart.”
Senator Gary Hart of Colorado remains the top choice of Democrats to be their 1988 presidential nominee, but the gap that separated him from runner-up Governor Mario M. Cuomo of New York in January has narrowed, the Gallup Poll reported. Hart received 39% of firstand second-place nomination votes to 27% for Cuomo, followed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, with 18%; Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca, 14%; Mayor Tom Bradley, 7%; New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, 6%; West Virginia Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, 6%; former Virginia Governor Charles S. Robb, 5%, and San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, 4%.
Harry Claiborne, the first federal judge convicted of a felony while sitting on the bench, has been ordered to surrender to authorities by May 16 to begin serving a two-year prison term for tax evasion. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals filed an order in Reno that requires Claiborne to begin serving his prison term at Maxwell Field Air Base in Montgomery, Alabama. The judge was convicted by a federal jury of charges that he willfully failed to report $106,000 in income on his 1979 and 1980 tax returns.
A majority of air traffic controllers at the nation’s busiest airports consider themselves overworked, congressional investigators said. A General Accounting Office poll, conducted since the crash of Delta Flight 191 at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport last August, said more than half the controllers surveyed at airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver and Dallas said they were handling too much traffic in peak travel periods. The exception was Los Angeles International Airport, where only 20% said they were overloaded.
A man accused of commandeering a commuter plane bound for Portland, Oregon, and threatening to blow it up surrendered quietly after reportedly slashing his wrists, authorities said. Douglas B. Thomas, 29, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was being held without bail on hijacking charges. The 11 passengers and two crew members were held in the twinengine turboprop for about two hours after it landed, but were released unharmed, officials said.
Faced with more than 40 cases in the last two years of Roman Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children, church officials in this country are beginning to talk openly about the problem. More than 100 priests and members of religious orders from the East Coast met Tuesday in Morristown, New Jersey, to discuss what the church could do for victims and for offenders. A similar meeting for bishops was held late last year in Collegeville, Maryland., and one for priests was held earlier this year in Arlington, Virginia. The cases involved a “minuscule” percentage of the nation’s 44,000 priests but “it is the most serious problem we in the church have faced in centuries” because of its implications for the church’s moral leadership, credibility and finances, said the Rev. Thomas P. Doyle.
General Motors Corp. announced the recall of some 1983-85 Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds and 1985 Chevrolet Astro and GMC Safari vans because of possible seat belt and steering column defects. About 738,000 Camaros and Firebirds are being recalled because their front-seat shoulder belts may not retract properly, GM said. About 26,700 Astro and Safari vans are being recalled because there is a possibility that a part of the power steering gear housing could break.
State courts around the country are citing state constitutions to expand the protection of individual rights beyond the minimum requirements set by the United States Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Federal Constitution. State judges say the trend is, in part, a response to some of the conservative decisions of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, who succeeded Earl Warren in 1969. In addition, they say, it betokens a “renaissance of state courts,” a determination by state judges to rediscover the meaning of their own state constitutions. Using this new brand of federalism, state judges have expanded freedom of speech, press and religion, the protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to bear arms, and other rights. This trend is “probably the most important development in constitutional jurisprudence today,” Associate Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the Supreme Court said last month in an interview with The New York Times.
A panel of American Roman Catholic Bishops is to re-examine the morality of deterring attack through the threat of nuclear retaliation, a doctrine that the bishops gave conditional acceptance in a 1983 pastoral letter. The six-member committee will make a recommendation to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops after studying President Reagan’s proposal for a defense against missile attack, the evolution of the United States and Soviet nuclear arsenals and other topics, officials said last week. Creation of the committee, which includes Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago and John Cardinal O’Connor of New York, reflects the ferment in United States church bodies over nuclear issues and related subjects. The Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church approved a pastoral letter last week that rejected threatening nuclear retaliation to deter attack as unacceptable.
A judge has temporarily prohibited Tennessee from collecting millions of dollars in inheritance taxes from Elvis Presley’s estate, pending a decision on its value. The judge, Robert S. Brandt, made the ruling Friday after lawyers for the estate argued that Graceland, the Presley home, might have to be sold to pay the taxes assessed by the state Department of Revenue in 1981. The State Board of Equalization, has reduced inheritance taxes on the estate’s assets, excluding Graceland, from $6.3 million to $2.5 million, said Daryl Brand, Assistant Attorney General of Tennessee. But it has not ruled on taxes on Graceland, now operated as a tourist attraction. Presley died in 1977.
A San Francisco physician and his wife have been sentenced to prison in a case that investigators said involved about 1.6 million doses of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Federal agents said the couple headed a ring that distributed about a fifth of the nation’s illegal supply of LSD. The doctor, Paul Stepak, 40 years old, was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison and his wife, Diane, 50, was given a 10 year sentence. They pleaded guilty last month to one count each of distributing the drug.
More money for the B-1B bomber may be needed because the primary builder expects to exceed the contract’s cost target by $500 million. Air Force officials say they were told in March by the Rockwell Corporation, the primary contractor on the $20.5 billion program, that it expected excess costs. The Air Force must pay four-fifths of such excess costs.
The level of Lake Sidney Lanier, the 39,000-acre reservoir that supplies most of Atlanta’s drinking water, is six feet below what it should be, and it is still falling. “If we don’t get some rain soon, things are going to get a lot worse this summer,” said Ron Blue, the manager of the Holiday Marina, where boaters are already being warned to look sharply for low spots in the lake. “The problem in the spring ought to be too much water, not too little.” In wide areas of the Southeast, including parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and the western Carolinas, rainfall levels since the first of the year are the lowest since forecasters began keeping records a century ago.
American Mousketeer-actress-singer Annette Funicello (43) weds American harness racing horse breeder and trainer Glen Holt (55), they remain married until her death in 2013.
31st Eurovision Song Contest: Sandra Kim for Belgium wins singing “J’aime la vie” in Bergen.
Although Mike Tyson failed to finish James “Quick” Tillis after decking him Saturday, the knockdown punch was the difference that gave Tyson the 10-round unanimous decision. Tyson of Catskill, New York, improved to 20-0 but had his knockout streak ended at 19. Judges Al Reid and Bernie Frieken scored the fight 6-4 in rounds and Tony Moratte had it 8-2 for Tyson.
112th Kentucky Derby: Bill Shoemaker aboard Ferdinand wins in 2:02.8. A horse from California was supposed to win the 112th Kentucky Derby today at Churchill Downs, but hardly anyone expected it to be Ferdinand, a 17-1 shot ridden by a 54-year-old jockey and saddled by a 73-year-old trainer. But at the finish of a slow and roughly run Derby, it was Ferdinand, ridden by Bill Shoemaker and trained by Charlie Whittingham, drawing away to a 2 1/4-length victory over Bold Arrangement and Broad Brush, with the favored Californians, Snow Chief and Badger Land, off the board. Shoemaker steered Ferdinand, a son of the English triple crown winner Nijinsky II, through heavy traffic from last place to first while covering the mile and a quarter in a dull 2:02 4/5.
Major League Baseball:
The Boston Red Sox beat the Oakland A’s, 4–3. The home run that wasn’t, got more attention than the homer that was, Saturday in the Boston Red Sox’ victory over the Oakland A’s. The umpiring crew of Ken Kaiser, Terry Cooney, Steve Palermo and Larry Young cost Boston’s Dwight Evans a two-run homer in the third inning at Boston. However, the collective ruling that forced Evans to settle for a double didn’t hurt the Red Sox in the end. Two outs later, Jim Rice drilled a two-run homer high into the left-field screen. After Marc Sullivan opened the third with a line single high off the wall in left, Evans hit a tremendous shot to left-center. Virtually, everybody in the ballpark saw it hit a stanchion holding up the net above the 37-foot wall and bounce back onto the field. But the umpires missed it. Cooney held his ground at third, Kaiser at second, Young at first and Palermo behind the plate. No one made the usual trek to the outfield grass to follow the flight of the ball. They wound up with a ruling that the ball hit the wall, not the upright. That held Evans to a double, with Sullivan stopping at third. Sullivan later scored on an infield grounder before Rice homered.
Brett Butler hit a run-scoring single in the eighth inning to lead Cleveland to its sixth straight victory, beating the White Sox, 8–7. Rich Yett (1–0) pitched two and two-thirds innings of relief for the victory. Bill Dawley (0–1) was the loser. With one out and Chicago leading 7–6 in the eighth, Mel Hall drew a walk off starter Joel Davis. Bill Dawley, 0–1, relieved and Andy Allanson walked before Carter singled to score Hall. Butler followed with another single to score Allanson with the go-ahead run.
In other years with other teams, John Denny became the greatest Met-beater among active National League pitchers, with a 16–5 career mark. But he had never faced any Met team quite like the 1986 edition. The Mets not only beat Denny and the Cincinnati Reds, 4–1, today, but they also got him so angry that he threw a bat at a television camera not long after Keith Hernandez had belted him for a two-run homer in the seventh inning. The victory swelled the Mets’ season mark to 15–4 with victory No. 13 in their last 14 games. It improved their current road-trip record to 8–1 with one game to go, here at Riverfront Stadium Sunday. Hernandez’s homer — his first of the season — came after he was given a second chance by Denny, a former St. Louis Cardinal teammate. With Len Dykstra on third base and two out, Denny purposely did not field a grounder along the first-base line that Hernandez was apparently going to beat out for a run-scoring single. Denny let the ball go foul, preventing the run, but giving Hernandez another chance. That’s when he stroked the homer that stretched the Mets’ lead to 4–1.
Minnesota’s Kirby Puckett hits a home run on the game’s first pitch (from Walt Terrell) for the 2nd consecutive night, but the Twins lose to the Tigers 7–4. The night before Puckett hit Jack Morris’s first pitch for a home run to spark the Twins to a 10–1 victory. Walt Terrell allows 4 runs — three on homers by Kirby Puckett and Gary Gaetti (2). Darrell Evans cracks a grand slam for Detroit. Puckett, the hottest hitter in the major leagues, hit the first pitch of the game for a home run for the second straight night. He hit Jack Morris’s first pitch of the game Friday night for a homer. Puckett leads the majors with 11 home runs and has hit one in each of his last four games and six in his last seven. Detroit took the lead in the fourth inning on Evans’s grand slam that scored Coles, who had walked, Lou Whitaker, who had singled, and Lance Parrish, who had been hit with a pitch. It was Evans’s sixth home run of the season and eighth grand slam of his career. Sheridan extended Detroit’s margin in the fifth with his first home run. Coles followed with a two-run homer, his third, after Dave Collins had walked.
The Baltimore Orioles beat the Kansas City Royals, 3–2. Cal Ripken’s opposite-field double scored Lee Lacy in the eighth inning and Ken Dixon pitched a four-hitter for eight innings for Baltimore. Dixon improved his record to 3–1 with relief help from Don Aase.
Fernando Valenzuela pitched a five-hitter tonight for his first shutout of the season and the center fielder Reggie Williams saved a run with a diving catch as the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated St. Louis, 3–0, for their seventh consecutive victory. The loss was the Cardinals’ fifth straight and their 12th in the last 13 games, dropping the defending National League champions into last place in the East Division for the first time this season. Valenzuela (4–1) struck out eight, walked one and retired 14 of the last 16 batters en route to his fourth complete game. It also was the Dodgers’ third shutout in their last four games. Williams, a rookie outfielder recalled from the minors on April 28 when the third baseman Bill Madlock went on the disabled list, helped preserve Valenzuela’s 24th career shutout in the third inning. With Ozzie Smith on third and two out, Terry Pendleton hit a broken-bat fly ball into short left-center. Williams made a diving backhanded grab to end the inning. In the bottom of the third, Mariano Duncan singled and went to third on Steve Sax’s double. The Cardinals’ left-hander Tim Conroy (1–1), making his first start of the season after four relief appearances, then walked Enos Cabell to load the bases. Mike Marshall followed with what appeared to be an inning-ending double-play grounder to third. But Pendleton booted it and could only get the force at third as Duncan scored.
The Brewers edged the Angels, 4–3. Paul Molitor hit a one-out sacrifice fly with the bases loaded in the 10th inning to score Rick Manning and lift Milwaukee. Milwaukee’s Ben Oglivie led off the 10th inning with a single, and Rob Deer sacrificed Manning, a pinch runner, to second. Donnie Moore (1–2), the losing pitcher, gave up walks to Juan Castillo and Charlie Moore to load the bases. Molitor then hit a fly ball to left-center field. Gary Pettis caught the ball, but could not throw to the plate because he collided with the left fielder Brian Downing.
Hubie Brooks tripled home Jim Wohlford from first base in the 10th inning to lead Montreal to a 7–6 victory over the Astros in a game played in near-freezing temperatures. Andre Dawson led off the 10th inning with an infield single against Frank DiPino (0–1) and was replaced by the pinch-runner Wohlford after apparently hurting himself on the way to first base. Brooks followed with his game-winning triple to the center-field wall. Jeff Reardon (3–2) pitched one perfect inning for Montreal.
Don Mattingly ties the Major League record with 3 sacrifice flies in the Yankees 9–4 win over the Rangers. The pitchers gave up a lot of hits and walks (the Rangers got the hits, the Yankees the walks), and their fielders gave up runs on wild throws as the Yankees won the ragged contest on a blustery, chilly day that made both teams wish they were in Florida. Bob Tewksbury and Bobby Witt, rookies from New England, displayed contrasting styles of pitching, and Tewksbury’s style won. He gave up 11 hits in six innings (seven in the first two) but didn’t walk anyone. Witt, who throws significantly harder than Tewksbury, allowed only two hits but walked six in one and two-thirds innings.
Glenn Hubbard hit three doubles and drove in four runs to lead Atlanta to a 10–4 drubbing of the Phillies. The Braves had seven doubles through the first five innings and finished with nine in the game to support the starter Rick Mahler (2–4). The right-hander pitched six and two-thirds innings to break his own four-game losing streak. Atlanta scored four runs off Shane Rawley (3–2) in the second inning. Bob Horner opened with a single and scored on the first of three doubles by Andres Thomas. After a walk to Ozzie Virgil, Hubbard doubled in two runs. Mahler singled Hubbard to third and scored on Claudell Washington’s groundout.
Bill Almon hit a two-out, three-run home run off Rich Gossage in the eighth inning to rally Pittsburgh to a 7–6 win over the Padres. Almon’s game-winning homer came after Gossage, who started the inning, walked Mike Brown and gave up a single to Tony Pena. Gossage (2–2) retired the next two hitters before Almon sent the first pitch over the wall in left-center for his fourth homer of the season. Cecilio Guante (2–0) was the winner in relief. Pat Clements, the fourth Pittsburgh pitcher, got his first save despite allowing a run-scoring single to Graig Nettles in the ninth. The Padres took a 3–0 lead in the third on home runs by Steve Garvey and Carmelo Martinez, Garvey’s fourth being a two-run shot. Martinez’s blast was his third of the year. The Pirates tied it with three runs in the fourth on a run-scoring single by Pena and a two-run homer by Jim Morrison. It’s not the baseball that stinks today. A skunk wandered onto the field in the 7th inning at Jack Murphy Stadium and held up the Padres–Pirates game for 7 minutes. The incident gave life to the rumor that a group of skunks live under the stadium, existing on peanuts and other food dropped by fans.
Cubs third baseman Ron Cey hits his 300th and 301st home runs and Chicago scores 4 times in the top of the 9th to beat San Francisco 6–5. Terry Francona, playing his second game for Chicago, capped a four-run ninth inning with a two-run single for the victory. Jeff Leonard, a pinch-hitter, hit a two-run homer in a three-run seventh inning to give San Francisco a 4–2 lead. But Jody Davis opened the ninth for Chicago with a walk and Greg Minton (1–2) replaced the starter, Scott Garrelts. The pinch-hitter Davey Lopes blooped a single to right-center and Thad Bosley, another pinch-hitter, hit a run-scoring single to center field that cut San Francisco’s lead to one run. The pinch-hitter Jerry Mumphrey’s single to left tied the game.
The Mariners beat the Blue Jays, 4–2. Alvin Davis collected four hits, including a run-scoring double, and Gorman Thomas drove in two runs for Seattle. The loss was the fourth in five games for Toronto. Mike Morgan, 2–2, making his fourth start and seventh appearance of the season, gave up eight hits, walked two and struck out three in seven innings.
Oakland Athletics 3, Boston Red Sox 4
Cleveland Indians 8, Chicago White Sox 7
New York Mets 4, Cincinnati Reds 1
Minnesota Twins 4, Detroit Tigers 7
Baltimore Orioles 3, Kansas City Royals 2
St. Louis Cardinals 0, Los Angeles Dodgers 3
California Angels 3, Milwaukee Brewers 4
Houston Astros 6, Montreal Expos 7
Texas Rangers 4, New York Yankees 9
Atlanta Braves 10, Philadelphia Phillies 4
Pittsburgh Pirates 7, San Diego Padres 6
Chicago Cubs 6, San Francisco Giants 5
Seattle Mariners 4, Toronto Blue Jays 2
Born:
Homer Bailey, MLB pitcher (Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Oakland A’s, Minnesota Twins), in La Grange, Texas.
Pom Klementiff, French actress (“Oldboy”; “Marvel Universe” films), in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
Poppy Delevingne, British model and actress (“Kingsman: The Golden Circle”), in London, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Robert Alda, 72, American actor (“Supertrain”, “By Popular Demand”), father of actor Alan Alda.
History Diaries 