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Show by Jim Murray TThe jamx. tl m.m . -tat i ' (UUDli US PageBl Thursday, August 27, 1981 r7 4 If 5i S Miners to kick off season Friday After last year's outstanding out-standing 9-3 season which saw the Park City High School Miners battle to the state 1-A football finals before losing to Beaver, head coach Bob Burns had some time to rest and relax. But that time is up as the Miners open their 1981 campaign cam-paign tomorrow at Park High as they host Union High in a non-league encounter. Kick off is set for 4 p.m. Last year's Miner team was the best in recent memory and the first to make it to the championship game. But like any high school, Burns was hit hard by graduation, losing nearly all his linemen, offensive and defensive. "This year, the line is inexperienced and lacks the tremendous size that's beneficial, something we had last year," said Burns. "It'll be a great challenge to our guys. They have to improve each week. And they'll be out-sized seven of nine games this year." One game in which they certainly will be out-sized will be opener tomorrow. Union, a larger 2-A school from Roosevelt, features a line both ways that averages 220 pounds of offense and could go as heavy as 240 defensively, depending on who coach Jay Omer starts. "Our offensive line is certainly the best part of our football team," Omer said. "They are big and they are fast." Though not the biggest, Union's Shannon Rhoades is certainly the fastest. The 5- 11, 210-pound senior is a state-class sprinter and faster fas-ter member of the Union team, according to Omer. Rhoades is pegged to play guard, undoubtly quick guard, on the Union offensive offen-sive line. He will be joined by senior Kevin Adamson, coming in at the same size as Rhoades at the opposite guard slot. Both are returning return-ing starters from Union's 3-7 team of a year ago. At tackles, Union features 6- 3, 220-pound junior Doug Whitge and senior Everett Lube, 5-11, 200. Those two are backed by junior Tracy Warrick, 6-2, 240. On the other side of the line when Union controls the ball, Park City won't have nearly the size of Union. The Miners will counter with defensive linemen Darrin Lawless, a six-foot, 180-pound senior who played at tight end last year, 6-1, 180-pound senior Chris Buehler, who played little there last year, senior Don Putman, 6-0, 170-pound and junior Chris Cooper, 5-10, 115-pounds and didn't play last year. A little difference in the lines. And that difference could be more exagerated when Omer puts in junior Orland Grunewald, who at 280 pounds will be the largest man in uniform Friday, though Omer admits he's a little green and slow. "Geez, I don't know where a little school like that gets so many big kids," signed Burns. But if lacking size and experience at the line positions posi-tions is a detrimental factor for the Miners, it may be made up by the experience and talent the Miners have returning at the skill positions. posi-tions. Back at the quarterback helm will be junior Tom Flinders, 5-11, 160-pounds. Flinders, as a sophomore last year, led the Miners most of the season. And though Park City wasn't too big on the aerial game in 1980, Flinders showed he could throw and may be more this year. "This year, we have an experienced quarterback who knows the system and can throw the ball well," said Burns. As a receiver, Flinders will have Roger Burns back, who played flanker last year and will be at an end slot in Burns' power-1 offense. Opposite Op-posite him at the other end will be inexperienced junior John Howard. At the flanker spot, Flinders will be looking to senior Shawn Packard, who is also inexperienced. Where the Miners may be the strongest offensively is with the running backs where halfback Steve Toly, a 5-11, 175-pound senior returns. re-turns. Toly started every game last year for the Miners. He will be joined by fullback Tom Tebbs, 5-11, 170-pound senior, who started start-ed at a linebacker spot last year Toly and Tebbs will key the Miners' linebacking corps this year and will be joined by senior John Ott, 5-10, 160-pounds, and junior Doug Vincent, 5-7, 155-pounds 155-pounds and a starter last year. Ott will also handle the center chores on offense. In the defensive backfield, senior returning starter Trent Leavitt, 5-7, 120-pounds, 120-pounds, will join Packard and Burns. Lawless, termed by assistant as-sistant coach Bruce Reid as the premier placekicker bar none in the state this year, will handle the kicking V if A. 9- V " to' I - t ' "-St CUSTOM PARK MEADOWS HOME 114- ''i " " 3 bedrooms, TA baths, den, Jenn-Aire, greenhouse dining room, 2 car garage, large lot, huge master bedroom, $154,900 with $82,000 assumable at low interest. June Shuput, Agent 277-5640 Owner 649-8375 i5 u a 3 China Bridge Restaurant Tues. thru Fri. 11:30 a.m. 3:00p.m.r LUNCH SPECIAL Egg Roll, Chicken Chow Mein, Pork Fried Rice S2.95 MmmBay nim pn?irit Perry used illegal substance to get on top chores again this year. Lawless is flawless from inside the 40-yard line, says Reid, and has a range yet to be determined. Last year, the coaches showed their faith in his ability in allowing him to try a 72-yard field goal. Union is an unknown entity to Burns and his staff as they have been able to gather little information on their opponent. Union's Omer agrees ag-rees with a host of new players at several key positions. pos-itions. But shortly after 4 p.m. Friday, everyone will have some idea of what they have to to look forward to. Following tomorrows game, the Miners will travel toAltamont before returning home Sept. 18 to face Beaver in a rematch of last year's state championship. There comes a time in any man's life when he has to say "Okay, no more nice guy. From now on, I make my own rules." It happened to Billy the Kid, Jack the Ripper, Attila the Hun, Willie the Actor, Robin Hood and Al Capone. One day a guy is standing hip deep in a plowed field, looking at a fistful of unpaid bills and says, "What am I doing this for? There must be a better way!" It happened to Gaylord Perry. Oh, he didn't break any of the Ten Commandments. He kept holv the Sabbath Day, didn't lie, kill, rob banks, or pick pockets, he honored his father and his mother, alright. He broke the law about spitting in public. Not the municipal law, baseball's. He didn't spit on the sidewalk, he spit on a baseball. The law is about as popular in baseball as Prohibition was in 1927. Nobody enforces it very much and, while it's not entirely a victimless crime righthad hitters are victimized, alright it's a non-violent one. And a lot of people think it shouldn't be on the law books, at all. Here was the situation that turned Gaylord from a law-abiding citizen into a scofflaw : It was 1964. Gaylord Perry was 25 years old. He had won 55 and lost 46 games in the bush leagues. He had won only six in the major leagues in three years of trying. He was making $8,000 a year and had mortgages on two farms. He decided to spit in the eye of history. Ballplayers call it the "Country Sinker," or the "Irrigated Slider," "The Load," and the "Super Drop." Throwing one is an art. It (The Load) reduces the friction between ball and finger; so the ball doesn't rotate. The pitch comes in with the velocity of a fastball, but a fastball that suddenly takes a direct hit in the fuselage. A fastball rises. A spitball tends to crash at the plate. The forward rotation suddenly encounters the critical forces of wind resistance and gravity. For the batter, it's like trving to hit a ball dropped from a fifth story window. The point is, even when it was legalized, only a handful of pitchers could master it. The Hall of Fame is not awash with spitballers even though, when it was outlawed in 1920, pitchers then throwing it were allowed to continue. Burleigh Grimes, putatively the last of the spitballers, didn't retire until 1934. If all a pitcher had going for him was spit, he'd be well-advised to pick up a knife and a piece of wood and take up whittling, not baseball. Gaylord Perry in 1964 had a fastball that was just fast enough to keep him in the team photo, no the starting rotation. He had control; but so did the batting practice pitcher. What Gaylord Perry really had going for him was the fact he was the son of a tenant farmer who never had electricity in his home until 1951 or took a shower in anything but a rain storm till he made the high school football team. Gaylord had to learn to pitch in the brief periods when the tobacco wasn't ripe or the mule wasn't sick. Gaylord didn't want to go back to that. If all that stood between him and living in the 20th century was a little saliva, Gaylord was ready to overlook such irrelevancies as Baseball Rule 80a and modifications. Baseball is not exactly the Knights of the Round Table anyway. You steal signals, pretend to catch balls you short-hopped, and hide balls on baserunners. Besides, in baseball, everybody spits. What they should outlaw is scratching. Gaylord kept himself in the big leagues with illegal substances, but he's going to put himself in the Hall of Fame with stubbornnesss. A lot of people would have taken the $60,000 bonus the Giants gave him in 1958 and given it all up as a bad job as soon as he found out he couldn't get the ball past professional hitters with just the stuff he had. Several managers asked Gaylord if he ever thought of trying the bullpen for a career. Today, to show his answer, he leads all active pitchers and all but 43 ever in complete games with 294. Only seven pitchers have started more games. Only 14 pitchers have won more. Sometime this September, when he is 43 years old, Gaylord Perry will join the handful of big league pitchers who have won 300 games. Perry didn't just pick up a spitter, he picked up a slider, a forkball, a changeup, he learned to hide the ball as well as the stuff he put on it, he learned to throw out of a kick, without a windup, and by way of third base. He was often a better fielder than his third baseman. He won the Cy Young Award in both leagues, the only player ever to do so, and he pitched a no-hit game. He is a walking encyclopedia of pitching. A reporter found him in the Dodger Stadium dugout the other night sitting in a corner watching his 14-year-old son shag throws, with a pair of earphones stuck to his head. Gaylord Perry wasn't listening to a disco tape. He was tuning in on a pre-game Dodger broadcast. "You'd be surprised how much information you can pick up, who's the hot hitter, who's going to the opposite field, who's injured, in these interviews," he explained. "They get on the pre-game show and say, 'Well, I've been having trouble with the little outside slider, so I shifted my feet, and now I go with the pitch.' So, you know not to give him that slider with a two-and-two count anymore." It's attention to detail like that that will put Gaylord James Perry in Cooperstown quite as much as the preparation Q's, Vaselines, hair greases, prespiration drops and tobacco drool. Sometimes, Perry uses the spitball the way Hitler used leaflets as a threat. He doesn't have to throw it if he fidgets, wipes, twitches, and goes to the resin bag enough. "It builds up anxieties," he grins. A spitter is like an ace. You have to know how to play the rest of the hand, too. Milestones bore Perry anyway. He took up the spitball to meet the mortgage, not a shrine. The 300 games won, 300 complete games are numbers to him. "But, I do want to play in a World Series," he admits. "I never have." The prospect alarms the straitlaced, pitch-by-the-rules set. And some not so straitlaced or so inclined to play by the rules. "If Gaylord Perry gets in a World Series," Billy Martin once hinted darkly. "They'll have to play it in raincoats." 1981, Los Angeles Times PUBLIC WORKS SUPERINTENDENT needed for growing resort community. Minimum 10 yrs. exp. in the construction field with hands-on experience with heavy equipment, water systems, streets, curb & gutter, sidewalks, and equipment maintenance. Requires five years experience ex-perience with municipal public works including a minimum of three years in supervisory position, supervising all phases of public works services. Salary $18,000-23,000. Applications will be accepted until September 1, 1981. Apply to Public Works Director, P.O. Box 1480, Park City, Utah 84060, (801)649-1115. Equal Opportunity Employer HEAR IT LIVE ON KPCW Park City vs Union 4 p.m. Friday If you can't make the game listen to all the action on 9 1 .9 FM bvasrantfrom 4!S " M l the Claimiumnpr ifv - - - - - - - - - j a i |