Dukes ride Big Papa’s big shoulders, hot bat
The Duluth-Superior Dukes needed someone to take charge, if they were to make anything out of the second half of the Northern League season. Anthony (Big Papa) Lewis responded.
The result is that the Dukes are still alive and kicking, as they head into a four-game series in St. Paul against the Saints that begins a pivotal road trip.
When the Dukes beat first-place Madison 14-9 on Tuesday, it might have been their biggest victory of the second half. When the Dukes prevailed 10-9 in 12 innings against the same Black Wolf on Wednesday night, it was even bigger.
“But now tomorrow is the biggest game of the year,” said Lewis, after running his incredible hot streak through his second straight 4-hit game, as he looked ahead to Thursday night’s series-finale against Madison.
[INSERT 1-GRAF UPDATE ON DUKES THURSDAY NIGHT GAME…]
That’s what happens with big games. You win them, and they make the next game bigger.
Actually, every game seems pivotal for a team that seemed to be slow-learners. They dug themselves a deep hole with a six-game losing streak early in the first half, then they roared back into contention and lost the first-half title to Schaumberg in the last game. Knowing the problem of being in such a hole, the Dukes repeated the disastrous start, winning the opener of the second half and then plunging into another six-game losing streak.
The difference is that this time, the Madison Black Wolf team that almost willingly finished last in the first half, gathered itself together for a strong start that put them into first place, and left the struggling Dukes a distant last. Things looked pretty bleak when the Dukes came out of the all-star break by lapsing into another four-game losing streak — three at Madison and one at Schaumberg going into last weekend.
And then, suddenly, the formidible figure of Lewis came to life.
At 6-feet, and 215 pounds, Lewis looks like he could play a mean linebacker in pro football if he wasn’t playing first base in baseball. Since joining the Dukes last season, he always looked like a threat. A left-handed hitter, he doesn’t wave his bat around or follow any weird tendencies as he digs into the batter’s box. Instead, he stands ready, with his bat resting motionless on his large left shoulder. His swing is swift, compact, and powerful.
But this season there was some concern because when people refered to him as “around 220,” they were talking about his batting average, not the big man’s weight. He acknowledged that he only hit “.220-something” the first half of this year, and he was reluctant to say he’s never had a hotter streak. It’s one of those one-at-bat-at-a-time things.
If the Dukes make something of this second half, they will be able to trace their woes to a sudden falloff in team hitting, followed by a resurgence ignited almost singlehandedly by their Big Papa.
After going hitless in the last game at Madison, Lewis went 1-for-3 in the first game at Schaumberg last Friday. Not bad, but nobody else hit and the Dukes lost 1-0 in 10 innings. In the second game of that series, Lewis went 2-for-4 with a double and the Dukes won 9-4. On Sunday, he went 3-for-5 with two doubles and the Dukes won 7-1.
The two-game win streak was modest, as the team came back home and the one strong game didn’t foretell what Lewis was about to do. After Monday’s open date, Madison came to Wade Municipal Stadium comfortably in first place with the Dukes’ last-place status and Lewis’ reputation as a dangerous power hitter with limited average still valid.
In Tuesday’s series opener, the Dukes spotted the Black Wolf a grand-slam head start, then rallied from the 4-0 deficit to whip them 14-9. Lewis hit two home runs, two singles and a sacrifice fly in a 4-for-4 performance with five runs batted in.
On Wednesday night, Lewis slashed two singles, two doubles and another sacrifice fly that made him 4-for-4 again. It would have ended that way, except the Dukes blew a 9-5 lead in the ninth and Lewis finally was retired on a fielder’s choice in the 10th. His 4-for-5 night accounted for four more RBIs — and he might have had more, but two of his hits led off innings — and meant that the Dukes were in position to snatch a 10-9 victory in the 12th inning.
As the winning streak reached four games, Lewis had sizzled at a 13-for-18 clip — a .722 average — with two home runs and five doubles in those four games. His sacrifice flies in each of the first two Madison games obviously were assets, because both drove in runs, but they also technically interrupted his eight otherwise-consecutive hits. From his line out at Schaumberg on Sunday until his soft liner was dropped but resulted in a force-out in the last of the 10th on Wednesday, Lewis had gone 8-for-8. And there could have been more.
“When I went 3-for-5 at Schaumberg, I hit a line drive to the left-field wall in my last at-bat, but I was out,” said Lewis, recalling the catch that prevented his streak from being even more impressive. “It feels good up there at the plate right now, and I’ve got to try to kep that feeling going.
“If you have a bad at-bat, you’ve got to try not to carry that with you. We need to keep winning. No matter what it takes, we’ve got to get it done, with no ifs, ands or buts about it. It was especially important to start the ball rolling against Madison.”
Lewis, who hit .260 last year, has ridden the hot streak to vault up to .295 for the overall season. And while “.290-something” has a better ring to it than “.220-something,” Big Papa is focused on not slowing down, while the rest of the Dukes have found it comfortable to ride his broad shoulders.
Surprise Cup visit surprises Hermantown’s Byrnes
Jeremy Byrnes became a news item last year when, after battling leukemia into remission, he returned to play hockey on Hermantown’s state tournament team, as well as football and baseball as a senior for the Hawks. But last week, he went in for a monthly checkup and learned that a different form of the persistent disease had again invaded his strong, young body.
“I was getting my blood checked last Wednesday at the clinic when I sneezed, and got a nosebleed,” said Byrnes, who was promptly plunked into a room at St. Mary’s Hospital for immediate transfusions for red blood cells and platelets. Frustrated, he was no less determined to challenge and whip the disease, but Friday wasn’t qualifying as the best day in his life.
It got better when his girlfriend, Beth Prosnick, stopped in for a visit. “I was just sitting here in bed, talking to my girlfriend,” Byrnes said. “All of a sudden, she points to the door, and says, ‘Look!’ ”
Standing in the doorway of Byrnes’ hospital room was Derek Plante, former Cloquet and UMD hockey star, now with the Dallas Stars. Only Plante wasn’t alone. He had with him a 4-foot high silver chalice — the Stanley Cup.
“He had no idea we were coming,” said Plante. “He just said, ‘Unbelievable…’ ”
Byrnes is still smiling about the whole scenario, a smile that broadened with the word that he probably could return home on Tuesday. But he still couldn’t get over the Cup showing up.
“I had seen it before, but only in pictures,” Byrnes said. “Derek asked if I wanted to drink out of the Cup, but the nurses wouldn’t let me. It was pretty cool that I got to have it here, all by myself. The base of the Cup has all kinds of nicks and dings in it from being handled so much. They all give it a lot of character.”
Byrnes’ Hermantown hockey team is coached by Bruce Plante, Derek’s dad, so Derek has stayed as close as he can to the Hermantown team. “Derek skated with us when he came home during the all-star break,” said Byrnes. “I’ve watched him play since I was little and he was at UMD. But it’s amazing how gracious he was about bringing it here. He just kind of gave me the Cup and sat back.”
His dad, Tim Byrnes, snapped photos of Jeremy with Plante and the Cup, and of Jeremy alone with the Cup, standing and holding it over his head, the way he would if he were skating circles around some NHL rink, having just won the most famous trophy in all of sports.
By tradition, every player on the Stanley Cup winning team gets to have the trophy for one day, under the watchful eye of a guardian. Jamie Langenbrunner, also from Cloquet, had the Cup on Thursday and made headlines by taking it tubing, where he had to put the Cup inside a life jacket.
On Saturday, Brett Hull, who lives in Duluth, had his turn with the Cup, putting it up for display at Grandma’s where young hockey players could have their pictures taken with it while he went golfing at Nemadji, returning to Grandma’s for a private party that night.
In between those well-publicized days, Langenbrunner and Plante met over 5,000 fans at the Cloquet arena Friday morning, then the Cup was turned over to Plante for the rest of the day.
“I got a lot of pictures shot with it,” said Plante. “And I took it to some friends’ houses, and to my dad’s, and to my fiance’s parents. I also took it to KBJR, where a friend of mine [and former UMD teammate] Joe Biondi works. We ended up live on TV when we were there. When I brought it home, I slept with it. No kidding; I laid it on the bed, and slept right next to it.”
A hectic schedule, but in the midst of the busy day, Plante took time to bring the big Cup to St. Mary’s Hospital.
“When we were at the Cloquet Arena, my dad stopped by,” said Plante. “He had just heard that Jeremy had to go back into the hospital, and he was pretty down about it.”
So on his way to take the Cup to his dad’s house, Derek stopped at St. Mary’s.
Earlier this week, Byrnes, tethered by tubes to his transfusion devices hanging from a tall stand, sat on his hospital bed and discussed his battle with leukemia.
“I found out I had ‘A.L.L.’ [acute lymphocytic leukemia] in September of 1997, just before my junior year,” Jeremy said. “It was in remission by November that year, but hockey practice started only a couple days after that. I tried to skate, but I could hardly go up and down the rink. It took most of my junior season before I could go a full shift. I didn’t play in the state tournament my junior year; I was in the stands, but it was still a blast to see them win it.”
He played this past year, and said, “We could have won it this year, but that’s the way the puck bounces.”
The fact that Byrnes had challenged and battled to clear himself the disease made the latest disclosure seem particularly unfair.
“On June 21, I went in for a routine monthly checkup,” he said. “They found new cancer cells in my blood. That was pretty frustrating, because I had worked so hard to get rid of it, and then it threw a curve at me, because it’s back and it’s different. It changed to a different form.”
His previous A.L.L. had changed to A.M.L. (acute myelocytic leukemia).
“They have no idea why, but it’s more aggressive, so my treatment is more aggressive,” said Byrnes. “Last time, I had chemotherapy and radiation; this time I’m getting just chemotherapy, but a more aggressive pattern of it.”
Byrnes said there is no history of any kind of cancer in his family. His dad, Tim, is an engineer for SEH/Seaway Engineering, and his mom, Dixie, is a loan officer at Republic Bank. His younger brother, Dustin, 16, plays football and tennis but prefers snowboarding to hockey in wintertime. Jeremy was a right guard in football and a left fielder in baseball, but his first love is playing right wing in hockey.
After graduating from Hermantown with a 3.7 grade point average, Jeremy is heading for St. Scholastica this fall, where he plans to major in chemistry. He doesn’t plan to let the leukemia interfere.
“They say it might be in remission by fall, when school starts. If it is, I could do a bone marrow transplant operation by the end of January,” he said. “Up until about a month ago, I planned on playing hockey at St. Scholastica, but now it looks like I’ll have to take this year off, because the chemotherapy makes you pretty weak.”
Jeremy’s attitude is unflinching and confident while facing the disease.
“It’s all about fighting,” he said. “You’ve got to keep swinging.”
As for his interest in chemistry? “I used to think I might think about becoming a doctor,” he added. “But when I get through with this, I won’t want to see any hospitals again.”
UMD loses Dynamite’s Lamphier for 1st season
Coach Shannon Miller has put together an impressive array of talent for UMD’s first-year women’s hockey program, but before the Bulldogs hit the ice for the first time, they also have now experienced their first setback — temporary though it may be.
Tresa Lamphier, the star scorer of the Duluth Dynamite’s state tournament team last season, and one of the prize recruits by Miller, missed retaking her ACT entrance test and will not be eligible to play in the upcoming season. Lamphier, a 3.0 student, had not done well enough on her collegiate entrance exam, and she missed the opportunity to retake the test earlier this summer.
“I encouraged her to take the test again, and she could have taken it up until the end of June,” said Miller. “She didn’t stay in touch with us and we thought she had retaken it, but now she can’t take the test again until October.”
Lamphier acknowledged that she was uncertain when the ACT was given after the school year and didn’t stay in close enough contact with the UMD coaches. “By the time I found out, there were no more test dates until October,” Lamphier said.
At first she thought she could retake the test in October and still qualify for the upcoming season, but NCAA rules require achieving a certain level before starting school. Lamphier said she would stay out of college and try to play with an amateur team, possibly the Twin Cities-based Minnesota Thoroughbreds, and would then reapply for UMD next fall.
“I definitely want to go to UMD, and I’m not considering going anywhere else,” said Lamphier, who scored 47 goals in 28 games for the Dynamite, which finished 21-6-1 last season.
Unity could solve CART, IRL problems
Motorsports captivates audiences because it is totally unpredictable, full of surprises and surprising results. Clearly, however, the biggest surprise and the biggest upset would be if the Championship Auto Racing Teams and the Indy Racing League could get together and return some semblance of order to the scene by reuniting into one governing body.
For the uninitiated, the split has virtually destroyed the casual interest and respectability of both CART and the IRL. Basically, IRL boss Tony George, who owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, didn’t like the bigshots of CART, namely Roger Penske and his team-owning cohorts, dictating rules and policy to the Indianapolis 500, which had become the crown jewel of CART’s season. So he passed rules that effectively outlawed all the super-costly CART cars, then he backed up his lockout by claiming that CART was boycotting the Indy 500.
Four years later, the IRL has an entire 11-race series that includes the Indy 500 but there is precious little interest in the other 10 events on the circuit, exciting or not, because they are mostly comprised of inexperienced drivers in spec-race cars that are virtually identical in body and engine; CART has by far the more sophisticated racing over 20 events with better drivers and more exotic, different cars and engines that are all at the pinnacle of competitiveness — but it doesn’t have the Indy 500.
Reports are that the top honchos from both sides are meeting and claiming progress is being made to reunite. That is fantastic. The IRL stresses tight, stock-based engines and only a couple of allowed body styles to keep racing within a budget, while CART has much more expensive cars and engines. How they could compromise is up to technocrats on both sides.
One of the key elements in such negotiations might be that Roger Penske’s once-dominant Marlboro team is now uncompetitive. Penske – designed cars with Ilmor-Mercedes engines don’t contend, with Al Unser Jr. at the helm and others trying the backup car. He even foresake his namesake cars for test Lolas.
Still, other teams are winning with the Mercedes engine. It appears obvious that Little Al has lost his competitive flair, his once-dominant aggressive spirit, and drives now with understandable caution that leaves him among the tail-enders. Now Al Jr. is saying he intends to race at the Indy 500 again next season. Could it be a split with Penske, or with Penske?
Penske has sold all his race track holdings in what first looked like a merger with NASCAR, but now obviously is a sellout. A sustained lack of success can do that to a race owner, even one as powerful as Penske. That move could help get NASCAR to mediate the CART-IRL battle. Whatever. Anything is better than what we now have.
Both CART and the IRL have been trying to outdo the other, even in PR moves. When a tire flew off a CART racer and killed three spectators a year ago at Michigan International, CART officials made the tough decision to continue the race, supressing the news of the fatalities. CART was soundly criticized for that insensitivity. This year, in a similar mishap, a tire flew off an IRL car at Charlotte and killed three spectators. Having the CART incident as a precedent, the IRL called off the race immediately, and was unanimously praised for such sensitivity.
A cynic, however, wondered what might happen had the incident occured at the Indy 500. We were soon to find out. During the 500, two cars collided in the pits, one entering and one exiting, and one of them swerved into another pit, striking a crewman, who fell heavily, head to concrete. An ambulance took him away, but information on his condition was extremely guarded, even more than usual in a sport where tradition says you try to conceal serious bad news. The race continued, and a good time was had by most.
Now, however, we find out what really happened. The Conti Race crew chief, Steve Fried, 47, suffered skull fractures, several broken bones in both inner ears and to his right eye socket and jaw, plus internal brain injuries, fractured ribs, a fractured left shoulder, and both lungs collapsed. Only weeks after he was released from Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis do we get the straight information. According to reports from the team, reported by On Track magazine, Fried was not breathing when medical personnel arrived at the site of the incident, and his heart stopped on the way to the hospital. Miraculously, he was revived, and has mostly recovered.
The point is, as far as IRL and Speedway officials knew, Fried was clinically dead when he was taken from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but there was never a hint that stopping the race was even considered.
Both CART and the IRL immediately made helmets mandatory for pit crewmen, then they argued and boasted about which one implemented the rule first. The IRL declared it, but CART put it into effect first.
But enough of such bickering. Rules for safety and policies for such tragedies should be made without public relations concerns.
For example, in an attempt to make pit stops less chaotic, both groups now force racers to stay on the course, with the pits closed, after a yellow-flag slowdown. After a couple of laps, the pits are opened, and virtually everybody pits. Apparently nobody has figured out that such a move guarantees chaos in the pits, because of the traffic jam. Leaving the pits open all the time would spread out the stops much more and alleviate the snarl that has led to so many incidents in recent years.
The respect for open-wheeled racing suffers because of such a tangle of rules.
Last weekend, for example, Dario Franchitti was battling hard at Toronto to hold off the challenges of series leader Juan Montoya and Gil de Ferran in the CART race on the temporary street course. Montoya pits, and when he’s waved out, he pulls out abruptly, but his peripheral vision catches the sight of another car coming by, so he cuts back in, just a bit, then goes out, having safely missed a crash. Turns out, he cut the corner of the adjacent pit, and ran over an air hose that had been left there. Officials, following rules installed because of the pit snarls, moved Montoya to the back of the pack, eliminating the anticipated duel for the victory between the top two point-getters in the series.
A few laps later, de Ferran pulled out similarly from his pit, but his right rear nicked a tire that had been taken off a car in the adjacent pit and left just inside the corner of the marked-off pit. Officials moved de Ferran to the back of the pack, too. Victory to Franchitti. Excitement eliminated.
The week before, Montoya was leading at Road America, which is a 4-mile road course 60 miles north of Milwaukee, and the race was speeding toward its conclusion, nationally televised on ABC. Suddenly the announcer said that because there had been a couple of incidents at the start, that led to a time-consuming restart, ABC couldn’t show the last 15 laps, or whatever was left of the race, because it had to switch to a PGA golf tournament, ironically in nearby Milwaukee. I sat there incredulously as the scene suddenly shifted to some guy I had never heard of, chipping out of a sand trap on the 10th hole.
Sponsorship commitments, you understand.
Now, I like golf, although I don’t want to watch hours of it, from any tournament. If, however, the British Open had been televised live and its playoff ensued, I would agree that ABC should stay with it rather than leave before it ends to pick up an auto race. But ABC also could have waited until the CART race ended, then picked up the British Open at the 13th hole instead of the 10th.
That pretty well tells you how much respect open-wheeled racing has in the U.S. these days. It deserves better, but it should get its act together first.
Copp demands to win after move up to Late Models
The spectators may have loved it, but last Friday night’s Late Model feature will not go down among Donnie Copp’s “greatest hits.” More likely, it was merely an example of two of auto racing’s most prominent traditions: 1. Expect the unexpected, and 2. No matter how good you are, you need luck to win.
Anyone doubting those twin truths need only to have been observing Don Copp, particularly last Friday night at Superior.
Copp, 36, is not only a stock car race driver, he’s one of the best in the area, a veteran who got comfortably used to winning in his 20 years on Up North dirt tracks. For his first 19 years, he won all sorts of track championships in Street Stock and Modified racing, and he’s not at all comfortable with a lack of similar success this season — his first full term in Late Models.
“I started racing in 1980,” said Copp, who operates Copp Racing Products, a race part and NAPA automotive parts shop in Iron River, Wis. “I won three Steet Stock championships, but I went broke while winning them.
“Somebody put me in a Modified, and I won 21 championships in Modifieds at Superior, Proctor and Ashland, including last year, when he also finished fifth in national Wissota Modified points. In 1993, he was second in national points.
A year ago, car owner Dean Johnson approached Copp about moving up to his Late Model team, so Copp finished the season driving both Late Models and Modifieds, and while he dominated the Modified races, he never won a Late Model feature. Still, coming close was good enough for a debut. This year, he drives Johnson’s No. 3c, while Pete Wohlers of Hermantown drives the No. 3w Chevy. The letters that go with the numbers are important, because otherwise the numbers are the same and so are the matching yellow paint jobs.
The season started off impressively, with both Wohlers and Copp running up front and winning more than their share of Late Model features. Three weeks ago, Wohlers had won six features but Copp had won three, two at Proctor and one at Superior, in a strong start to the season. On Sunday at Proctor, the team had a good night, with Wohlers first and Copp third in the heat, but the features all were erased by fog. That means a bigger show with makeup date this Sunday, when races start at 5:30 p.m.
But it also means another week without a feature win for Copp. “I’ve still got three feature wins,” he said. “I guess I haven’t had such good luck lately, but talk to me Saturday, and I’ll have four wins.”
It’s not boasting, just some frustration being transformed into a determined outlook by Copp, who was predicting he’d win the Friday night Late Model feature at Superior.
Watching Copp drive gives a quick indication that he’s skilled, and that he doesn’t overdrive his equipment with the kind of reckless abandon some drivers exhibit. On a good night, Copp will drive hard in the turns, appearing at first to be too hard, judging by the way it slides up to the top of the banking, but then he cocks it hard and comes shooting down the far side like out of a launching pad.
It works well, sometimes, but then those two aforementioned traditions seemed to conspire to befoul Copp’s strong season start.
Friday was the worst, although it looked promising, right up to the start of the Late Model feature, when Tom Nesbitt, a veteran racer from Thunder Bay, was on the pole. “I was third, outside,” said Copp.
When the field thundered by for the start, Wohlers, Copp’s teammate, tried to sneak inside of Nesbitt on the first turn. There was neither adequate room, nor adequate willingness by Nesbitt to yield the spot.
“Pete tried to go under him, and the two came together,” said Copp. “There was a big tangle right in front, and a big pile-up, so I moved to the outside, but Nesbitt’s car ended up sideways and stopped right in front of me. I hit him — there was nothing I could do — and luckily, nobody else hit me.
“I was the only one who couldn’t keep racing, although Nesbitt tried to go and had to pull off.”
That took care of the tradition about needing luck, and immediately following the big crash, Nesbitt climbed out of his race car, and so did Wohlers, to engage the other part of that tradition — the part about expecting the unexpected.
Things got pretty intense, although by Thursday Copp could get a chuckle out of the scene.
“Nesbitt was chasing Pete all around the track,” said Copp. “People said they hadn’t seen Pete move that fast in years.”
When order was restored, Timmy McMann won the feature, Wohlers was fifth, and Copp was 20th — last — with a bent-up race car.
In the next week, the Head of the Lakes Fair comes to Superior, highlighted by big race shows that feature Modified and Super Stocks on Wednesday, with Late Models and Street Stocks on Thursday. The carnival rides, however, will be in place by this weekend, which means there will be a festive atmosphere for Friday night’s races. With the Late Models featuring Nesbitt and Wohlers renewing acquaintances, and Donnie Copp has guaranteeing a victory, the wildest rides will definitely be on the track.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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