Notebook : Housing Shortage for the Athletes

INDIANAPOLIS —  Pre-competition controversy at international sports events is about as predictable as records in swimming. The tempest in the teapot at the Pan American Games is a shortage of housing for the athletes.

Pan Am and U.S. Olympic officials apparently decided that fewer athletes would show than had signed up. Surprise, Indianapolis. All the RSVPs for this party were true to their word.

So, in explaining the solution that would mean as many as 300 Americans would be moved out of the athletes’ village, President Robert Helmick of the United States Olympic Committee, said, “When you have a lot of house guests arrive and somebody has to sleep on the porch, it should be the hosts.”

American officials asked for, and got, volunteers. The women’s softball team and the swimmers were among the first to offer to move. Now that’s a nice, warm gesture.

Just the day before, the president of the Pan American Sports Organization, Mario Vasquez Rana, was saying that the local organizing committee was showing a “lack of human warmth.”

Rana lightened up a little by Friday afternoon and was saying that any undertaking of this magnitude will have some glitches.

There were no complaints about the accommodations. Even the food was getting good reviews. But the athletes’ village was overbooked.

Rana said that he knew part of the problem was that some countries did not met the deadline for reserving space.

To make more room in the village at the site of Fort Benjamin Harrison, the Army moved soldiers out of two additional barracks. Mark D. Miles, president of the Pan Am Organizing Committee of Indianapolis, said that PAX-I is paying the cost of housing the soldiers in hotels.

The Puerto Rican basketball team, coached by Gene Bartow, may have fouled out before it even got into the game. Or onto the mainland, for that matter.

Two Puerto Rican players failed drug tests and were dropped from the team before it left.

Scripps-Howard News Service reported Friday that Wesley Correa’s drug test showed traces of marijuana and Francisco Leon’s traces of cocaine. Both were starters, and Correa, a 6-foot 4-inch guard, was expected to be the team’s leading scorer, having averaged 38 points in recent tournament competition. Leon is a 6-9 center.

Speaking of Puerto Rico and basketball, Pooh Richardson, UCLA’s fancy-passing guard, had an interesting story to tell here about the selection process for the U.S. Pan Am team.

“They held the tryouts in Colorado Springs in May,” he said. “They invited 65 players and were going to keep 12. And they took six or seven days to watch us play and decide. There would only be one cutdown.

“On the selection day, they got us together at 5 a.m. They did this because a lot of the guys had 7 o’clock flights. But it was kind of strange, kind of quiet at that time of the morning.

“And then Bobby Knight came out and read off the names, in alphabetical order, of who made it.”

Bobby Knight?

The coach of the Pan Am team is Denny Crum of Louisville, and his assistants are Jud Heathcote of Michigan State and Jerry Jones, Crum’s assistant at Louisville.

Knight is a member of the selection committee and, according to Richardson, was the fourth person directly involved in the choices.

He is not in Indianapolis, of course, since his presence would likely stir up old memories--not to mention lots of sarcastic sports columns--of his celebrated run-in with a policeman in the Pan Am Games in Puerto Rico in 1979. Recently, the Puerto Rican government announced that it was still debating whether to extradite Knight to stand trial in the incident.

“Bobby has assured us that he will be fishing in Montana,” said Mary Bergerson, a Pan Am ticket official.

Ron Fraser, the U.S. baseball coach, has a new approach for the Pan American Games, but it is not nearly as unorthodox as the one he used as coach of the U.S. team in the 1973 World Championships.

Fraser selected only pitchers who threw left-handed and only hitters who batted left-handed.

It worked. That was the only time the United States has won the World title.

Fraser, coach at the University of Miami for 25 years, is hoping his “little ball” attack in this tournament will enable his team to upset favored Cuba.

“I’ve decided to go with a more aggressive kind of club,” he said. “I decided to go with speed instead of smashers.”

His team won two of five games in Havana before coming here, the first time the Cubans have been beaten at home in 20 years.

Fraser was released earlier this week from the hospital after receiving treatment for kidney stones.

He said a Venezuelan journalist told him Friday he could correct his condition with “coconut water.”

Mike Moran, USOC press officer, said a search for coconut water in Indianapolis was fruitless, but he had an alternative suggestion.

“I prescribed Jack Daniels,” he said.

The most-requested movies by athletes in the village:

“Top Gun,” “Up the Creek,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “A Trip to Bountiful.”

Jim Abbott, a University of Michigan pitcher, will carry the U.S. flag, and Cynthia Stinger, a team handball player from Colorado Springs, will take the athletes’ oath at today’s opening ceremonies at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Abbott has only one hand, but has overcome his disability and become a star pitcher for the Wolverines and a starter on the Pan Am team.

Stinger was the second-leading scorer on the 1984 U.S. team handball team in the Los Angeles Olympics.

Two members of the Canadian shooting team, Christina Schulze and Michael Ashcroft, are celebrating their honeymoon in the athletes’ village.

They were married last weekend, saying it was the only Saturday they had free.

They are two athletes who are glad to see the press. Schulze said that since she and her husband are not allowed to share a room in the village, she appreciates it when photographers ask them to pose in an embrace.

“That’s the only time we get to kiss,” she said.

Times staff writer Tracy Dodds and sports editor Bill Dwyre contributed to this story.