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Show Park City News Friday, April 1, 1983 Page B3 by Jim Murray MuniHPgay nim SpqpiPttg , . Inn ft The Dodgers' Steve Sax: a budding Pete Rose According to Jeff Newsome, Nordic Golf requires "very technical driving skill." Nordic golf has potential, says local skigolf pro by Nan Chalat Nordic golf has arrived in Park City, at least according to 15 local residents who will try anything the Park City Recreation Department suggests including a round of speed golf on a snow-covered snow-covered course. Park City's golf pro, Doug Vilven, and the White Pine Touring Center acted as the Recreation Department's straight men in the scam. They set up a five-barrel course and provided the clubs and. balls.? They also, wrote the rules.-: " "It wasan. experimental event to see what the bugs were," said Vilven. Evidently it was a success. According to White Pine's Jim Miller "It is definitely going to be an annual event." Responses from the participants were equally enthusiastic. "It was pure delirium," said Jeff Newsome of the racing event. The tournament was divided into two rounds. The first tested driving skills. The men's division ended in a tie for first place as Bob Irvine and Doug Vilven each completed the five holes in 21 strokes, at least ahead of the rest of the field. Kym Davis was proud of her first-place standing among the women. "I'd never handled a club before," she explained. "It was sort of hard because tennis balls don't go very far and they tend to ice up." Davis won $6 in prize money. Only four men participated par-ticipated in the second contestthe con-testthe speed event. Bob Irvine, Steve Erickson, Jeff Newsome and Al Bronston teed off in a mass start followed by a comedy of errors around the course. Bronston accidentally whacked his ski instead of the ball, taking a sizable chunk of fiberglass off his favdrite racing ski. In1 tte meantime, Newsome chipped chip-ped a high fly which landed six inches under the snowpack somewhere. "Irvine "Ir-vine and Erickson immediately im-mediately took advantage of the fact that I lost my ball and surged ahead," said Newsome. Bob Irvine, who has had a considerable amount of golfing experience, summoned sum-moned this advantage to pull ahead of Erickson. He finished the course in six minutes and four seconds to win the $12 purse. "The ball was the biggest problem," said Vilven, who is looking for an improvement im-provement on the tennis ball. "We need that dayglo green or orange, though. It kind of gives off a glow under the snow. "But hey," he said. "I can see this catching on, you know permanently. I think we ought to keep these clubs around here so people can play when they get tired of just skiing." The golf tournament followed White Pine's last relay race of the season. Both were part of the Park City Recreation Department's Depart-ment's Winterfest Celebration. Cele-bration. Eleven teams competed in the five kilometer relay race for the fastest combined time. The final results were adjusted with the help of a handicap system based on the skiers' ages. According to the handicapped han-dicapped scores, Bob Woody, Ted Sundquist and Carol Lauder won first place. Jeff Newsome and Bob Irvine (Newsome ran twc laps) placed second. Third place went to Rich Groth, Marit Glenne and Adolf Imboden and fourth was won by Jim Miller, Kym Davis and Steve Erickson. The fastest actual time, though, was recorded by Newsome and Irvine who successfully met the White Pine challenge. Last week Miller, Davis and Erickson offered to buy dinner for any team beating their unadjusted unad-justed time. Vero Beach, Fla. Stephen Louis Sax, the leadoff man, is such a tangle of fast, furious, perpetual motion that some teammates who have been with him two years don't know what he looks like. He goes through life as if he were double-parked double-parked or late for a bus or wanted in Colroado. One of the hazards of standing around the Dodger dugout in season is that this identified flying object may come hurtling hurt-ling through the air and crash land you you. It is Stephen Louis in full freefall. He always looks as if he arrived by parachute. One that didn't open. He looks as if someone hit the "eject" button, or he fell through the skylight. Interviewing him is like spending an afternoon after-noon in a washing machine. Or a crashing plane. Steve Sax is always a dot on the horizon. Getting bigger, then smaller. He doesn't walk, he darts. He has enough energy to light a city. If you could bottle him, you could tell the Arabs to keep their oil. "He was here a second ago," is the most frequently heard refrain when you're looking for Steve Sax. When he does show up, he comes in hot like a landing fighter plane or a duck hook hitting a lateral hazard. He should have instruments and landing lights. His driving style is early Hollywood stuntman. If he were a race driver, his nickname would be "Crash." He goes around camp like a guy leaving a burning building or a deer who has just heed a shot. When he was a kid, his mother always knew when he came home by the sound of the crash upstairs. If he wasn't throwin or hitting hit-ting a baseball, or talking about it, he was asleep. You can always spot the type. Bright, burning burn-ing eyes, the eager, hot look of a kid just opening a package on Christmas morning or blowing out cake candles. He always looks as if it's his first day in Disneyland. Getting Mickey Mouse's autograph. He can't believe he's getting paid for having all this fun. Life is a brand new bicycle. A parade. A ride on a Ferris wheel. He's Pete Rose II. Son of Charlie Hustle. A Rose by any other name. Like the original, he looks as if he's going 90 miles an hour when he's standing still. The body is 23 years old but the eyes are 3 going on 2, and he's just meeting Santa Claus. He may have wrecked the Dodgers franchise. fran-chise. Consider that, a year ago, the front office of-fice took an uncalculated risk in dismissing a veteran infielder and calling up Stevie Hustle. One hundred and 80 hits and 88 runs later when Stevie became Rookie of the Year, management said, "Whew! That was easy ! " and promptly unloaded the rest of the infield, or most of it. It remains to be seen if this was the way to play that hand. ,. Prior to Pete Rose, "hustle" had a bad name in the grand old game. It usually connoted con-noted a guy who had little talent to get noticed any other way. I mean, no one ever accused Babe Ruth of hustle. Mickey Mantle even pinned the nickname on Rose derisively. Except Pete made the laugh die in everyone's throat. So, Sax doesn't have to be apologetic for liiltiiil 11 li l! C2r n ci(LU(:,dli(3 in Park City, Utah is having an -.Ml 4 Saturday & Sunday, March 26, 27 3 to 5:30 p.m. Luxury Condominiums $174,000 -$230,000 11.75 Interest Annual Percentage Rate 12.018 2,200-3,200 sq. ft. 314-4 baths Security alarm system 3 bedrooms Double garage Fireplace, Jacuzzi, patio Free color television with purchase and save 50 on service fees (This weekend only) From Salt Lake City Take 1-80 exit to Park City Turnoff. Turn South to Park City. Project located just past Park Meadows turnoff and directly behind Windrift community. Offered for sale by For information Call Mr. Frost 531-5693 or Mr. Kimball 487-4482 ext. 215 running out bases on balls or playing the game as if he were having the time of his life. Pete Rose made that respectable. Of course, Pete charted a hard way to go. Twenty-one years of keeping the adrenaline pumping and the heart pounding is a long time. Some guys' interest flags after seven innings, never mind 21 years. It's fruitless to establish a timetable that will extend through the year 2033, or into Buck Rogers century. But for years, baseball writers have been charting the climbs of home-run hitters in terms of where they were on the ladders of Babe Ruth's totals. None of the best bets, such as Hank Greenberg or Jimmie Foxx, made it. The unlikeiies (i.e., Roger Maris) did. Still, it's possible to start a distant-early warning system on Steve Sax and consult the early blips on the box. Item: Pete Rose, who was to specialize in the 200-hit year, got 170 hits his first full season. Steve Sax got 180. Item : Pete Rose, who was to specialize in 600-or-more-at-bat seasons, had 623 his first full season. Steve Sax had 638. Item : Pete Rose, who was to specialize in one-base hits (only Cobb got more), had 130 his first full season. Steve Sax had 156. Item : Pete Rose, who was to disdain the base on balls in his career, had 55 his first full season. Steve Sax had 49. Twenty years is a long time to chase an elusive a target as Pete Rose. Particularly one which shows as little inclination of slowing down or coming to a complete stop as Rose does. Still, you'd have to say Steve Sax has a good jump on it. If there's a cloud on the horizon, it's a matter mat-ter of philsophy. Pete Rose, you see, knows every base hit he ever made, who he hit it off, what pitcher, batting which way, what hour of the day it was and what the temperature and curvature of the earth was at that particular partic-ular time. An&where it put him on baseball's historical ladder. Pete kept himself motivated. Every day was a new high adventure. adven-ture. A climb of the Andes. No place for boredom, ever. "I'm not big on numbers," confesses Steve Sax in a big break with his idol. And quarry. "If the numbers come, fine." Pete Rose didn't let the numbers come. Pete went out and met them. Pete never let anything come, so to speak, sub-Rosa. He gave them a ticker-tape parade and fife-and-drum fanfare. Pete made sure nobody missed his milestone. For Steve Sax, that process may come with experience. Most things do. For the present, he's moving too fast to let experience or anything else catch up to him. He is 3,656 major league hits behind Pete Rose. But, shoot ! That's nothing. He can catch cat-ch him, easy, by, oh, say, the year 2003. If he gets 200 hits a year every year between now and then. Of course, that's assuming Pete himself isn't still around by then. If so, what Steve Sax and the rest of baseball has got is the pursuit of infinity. (c) 1983, Los Angeles Times EASTER WEEKEND CLEARANCE j"" 3 I Friday, Saturday and Easter Sunday All clothing size 6 months to 4 years 40-50 off Junior ski mittens, fr-l Q95 regularly $25, sale s 1 Stretch ski bibs, size 4 to 18. Regularly $95, sale $65 95 Junior and Ladies ski gloves, regularly $29, sale $21 95 Kicis Are Our Business 580 South Man, Qpe Monday through Sunday, f am 7 pm f SKI SALE 30-40 Off Everything Rental skis $40.00, Starts Sat. 26th WHITE PINE TOURING At the Golf Course, next to Adolphs, 649-8701 Tor the collector: 71 A. Great-Grandfather Clock 8' high, Circa 1860 B. Reproduction: carved Louis XV arm chair with leather and nailhead (quotes available upon request) complete residential and commercial design, featuring antiques and fine furnishing by John Widdicornb, Brown Jordan Chapman, Marbro, Orrefors, Hutschenreuther and other fine lines. 270 East on First South, Salt Lake City. Utah 801-355-1727 Showroom hours: Monday thru Friday 10 - 5:30 and by appointment J |