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Show km) Spools ) boards. PEOPLE WILL say something like Bountiful High will always have a tough football team because of their coach Paul Waite, simply because of his reputation reputa-tion of fielding tough ones. Davis will run the double w ing, out of tradition, because of their reputation for running it. Everytime Darrell Dawkins goes in for a slam dunk in basketball people will assume the backboard is about to break simply due to his reputation. A REPUTATION can take one incident or several years to build up but once an individual obtains that reputation he may never be able to get rid of it. This is the hardest thing in the world to achieve. On a person side I have a reputation in soccer of talking a lot and getting in fights. One game, this nice guy and I from South America were just talking about where we learned how to play the game, and yet my own teammates came running over thinking 1 was getting in trouble again. My reputation came through again. I'm trying to change in soccer, become be-come milder toward the officials, and I have done it but still they don't believe it due to the reputation thing. By DAVE WIG HAM ., In the good old days of the wild wild West a per-. per-. sons reputation preceeded him wherever he went. , People all around knew of the fastest gun in the West. ' The guns are gone but that thing called reputation lingers on for eternity. I RECENTLY poor old John McEnroe ran into this r problem at Wimbeldon over in jolly old England. John popped off during a match and said something about being a disgrace to mankind. John claims he was talking to himself. The umpire figured old Johnny John-ny boy was talking about him and hit him up w ith a penalty point for ungentleman like sportsmanship. John got caught up with his reputation. This umpire had heard about this brash brat from the States and wasn't about to let him get away with this. I'm not saying that McEnroe was or wasn't talking to himself I'm just saying that because of his reputation or arguing a lot with officials they assumed he was doing it again. Do you think they would have penalized penal-ized mild mannered Bjorn Borg for saying that out loud, no not Bjorn, he was talking to himself. SAME IS true with Billy Martin. Everytime he goes out to talk to the umpire those guys are ready 9 with the thumb to send him to the shower. He could be walking out there to tell the guy he had made a Sgood call and before he could say anything the guy would send him into the clubhouse. All those fans in the stands see Billy walking out and something must j j be wrong. Simply because of his reputation. ONCE SOMEONE brands you as something then you have to live with it for a long time. If you have a name for yourself as arguing with officials, like McEnroe, then you need only say one word to the officials and they will punish you someway. Yet a teammate may say the same thing and not get anything any-thing said back to him simply because he has the reputation of being quiet. If opposing players and coaches know that they can rattle a player, his reputation says they can, by talking to them and thus taking them out of their game they'll do it. IT'S A shame that reputations can't be changed as quickly as they were given out. Somewhere along the line someone gave them that reputation. John McEnroe McEn-roe has the reputation of yelling at officials, yet I'll be willing to bet the number of matches he's played in and not said anything are at least twice as many as those he has. Next time you come up against someone who you have heard about, don't pre-judge them, let they do their thing. JL'ST KEEP in mind that the person that gave this " guy the reputation of being a loud mouth also has the reputation of being a know-it-all. j 5 Think of any sports or sports figure and they have i j a reputation. j CHEAP SHOT artists in the National Football i I League, first name that comes up is Jack Tatum. I Others follow due to their reputations, whether they are or not they are labeled that way. The all American image in baseball, Steve Garvcy right? Those who create controversy everywhere they go and all the time argue with management, Reggie Jackson. EVEN O.N a local level the reputation thing comes into play. Coaches are known by the officials for their reputations. They know the ones that will get on their case if bad calls are made and those that will ride them for the entire game, i ... By the same token coaches know officials by repu- t$tion. They know the ones that will or will not call I '' charging or which ones will let it get rough under the |