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Show by Jim Murray Mlmnnrg&y sm pirfe Newspaper An inch lower, it would have been Cey goodbye 1 I mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm y.:- -- was: . -m I HmMMMMMHM U hi I Page Bl "I've got it! No, you take it." A pass from defender Dave Packard (61), but falls out of Miners upset Tiinioveirs by David Hampshire Think back-for a minute. It was Sept. 28, 1981. The " Park City Miners were in Kamas to face the undefeated un-defeated South Summit Wildcats, the top-ranked team in 1A football. Although their offense managed only 70 total yards, the underdog Miners took advantage of seven South Summit turnovers to hand the Wildcats their first loss, 10-6. Last Friday, the Wildcats returned the favor. Playing in Park City against the undefeated, top-ranked top-ranked Miners, South Summit Sum-mit managed only 121 total yards but took advantage of eight Park City turnovers to hand the Miners their first loss, 28-13. The similarities don't end there. The winning quarterback quarter-back in last year's upset was junior Tom Flinders. The winning quarterback in this year's upset was senior quarterback Matt Flinders. "I guess it was a matter of karma, or the law of averages, or whatever," said Miner Coach Bob Burns, groping for an explanation. explana-tion. It had been four years and one day since the Wildcats last won on Miner Field. The score in that game was 28-12. The Miners had not lost at home since October, 1978. The Park City offense, which piled up 297 total yards Friday, showed flashes of brilliance. But the eight turnovers, tur-novers, the loss of star running run-ning back Jamie Puckett on the first play of the second half, and some sensational open-field running by South Summit halfback Travis Hatch were Park City's undoing. un-doing. In spite of his limited playing time, Puckett rushed for 61 yards and one touchdown, and caught a 22-yard 22-yard pass from Tom Flinders Flin-ders for Park City's other touchdown. He was taken out of the game with a shoulder injury, but is expected to be available for action against South Rich Friday. But the hero of the game was Travis Hatch. Late in the second quarter, Hatch scooped up a Park City fumble fum-ble and ran 55 yards for his team's second touchdown, then ran back a Park City kickoff for another touchdown touch-down less than two minutes later. Hatch's heroics gave the Wildcats a 20-13 halftime lead which they never relinquished. Park City fans watching for omens didn't have to wait long. The Miners took the opening kickoff, then fumbled fum-bled on the third play from scrimmage. The Wildcats recovered and marched 30 yards for a touchdown. With 6:50 to play in the first quarter, quar-ter, the score was 7-0. That was to be South Summit's longest drive of the afternoon. The stingy Park City defense allowed the Wildcats only 91 yards from scrimmage in the rest of the game. "I thought we played well," Burns served later. 'But you can t make that many turnovers and win a ballgame." It was the Park City defense which bottled up the Wildcats Wild-cats deep in their own end and led to the first Miner touchdown midway through the second quarter. The Wildcats were stopped at their own 19 yard line and a short punt gave the Miners a first down at the 29. Keeping the ball on the ground, Park City covered the distance in 10 methodical plays, with Puckett slamming slam-ming into the end zone from two yards out. Craig Griffin's Grif-fin's conversion tied the game at 7-7 with 5:35 to play in the half. The Wildcats took the following kickoff, but an aroused Park City defense, led by Mike Kusiak, kept them pinned inside their own 35. The Miners took over at their own 46, and a pass from Flinders to Bill Reed gave them good field position at the South Summit 42. Then came disaster. An attempted at-tempted handoff from Flinders Flin-ders to Puckett ended up on the ground in the backfield. Travis Hatch was in the right place, and with only Flinders to beat, raced all the way into the Park City end zone. The conversion gave South Summit a 14-7 lead with 3 : 09 left in the half. "Two fumbles, 14 points! Man, that hurt," Park City Assistant Coach Jesse Schaub was heard to mumble mum-ble on the sidelines. The first half fireworks were far from over. The Miners recovered a short South Summit kickoff at their own 40 yard line and immediately took to the air. A completion from Flinders to flanker Pete Gilvarry gave Park City a first down at the Wildcat 41. On the next play, it was Flinders to Gilvarry again, good lor another 19 yards. photo by David Hampshire South Summit quarterback Matt Flinders is tipped by Park City the reach of Paul Mawhinney (41 ). tell the tale With a first down at the 22, Flinders attempted to find Puckett open on the right sideline. The pass was just out of his reach. But on second down the same combination com-bination worked to perfection. perfec-tion. Puckett caught the ball over his shoulder and danced down the sidelines into the end zone. "They had it covered, but it just dropped right in," Burns said later. "One of Tom's (Flinders) skills is that he can dump the ball over the top." The attempted conversion went wide, but with 1:26 left in the half, the Miners trailed by only a point, 14-13. But not for long. On the following kickoff, Travis Hatch gathered in the ball at his own 25 and picked his way through the whole Park City team. The last Miner with a shot was Doug Vincent, Vin-cent, who made a diving attempt at-tempt to stop Hatch at about the Park City 20. Hatch stumbled, but recovered his balance to roll into the end zone. The conversion attempt went wide, but the Wildcats Wild-cats had a 20-13 lead. There was still 1:11 left in the first half. Over a span of less than 42 minutes, four touchdowns had been scored. The Miners made one more dramatic attempt to tie the score. Following the kickoff, a completion to Reed gave Park City a first down at the South Summit 48. Then Flinders Flin-ders went for broke, lofting a high, long pass down the right sidelines. Gilvarry was there, at about the five yard line, but the ball fell just past his outstretched hands. The half ended with the Miners trailing 20-13. If the news for Miner fans was bad in the first half, it was terrible in the second. On the first play from scrimmage, Puckett was injured in-jured at the end of a 14-yard gain. "He got a slight shoulder separation a while back, and it has been bothering him ever since," Burns said later. Puckett was taken out for x-rays. On the second play from scrimmage, the Miners fumbled. Fortunately this miscue did no damage, and they quickly regained possession. On their next play from scrimmage, Flinders threw an interception. And so it went. Late in the third period, I he Miners managed to -, . - Defensive lineman Chris Cooper was named the KPCWXewspaper most valuable valu-able player in the South Summit game. reach the South Summit 25 before (you guessed it) turning tur-ning the ball over on a fumble. fum-ble. And the Wildcat in the right place was (you guessed it) Travis Hatch. He ran back to the South Summit 45 before being hauled down. The coup de grace came midway through the fourth quarter. A Wildcat punt had forced the Miners back to their own 15. On third down, an attempted reverse backfired back-fired when a South Summit defender stripped the ball out of the hands of Bill Reed. Three plays later, the Wildcats Wild-cats were in the end zone. A two-point conversion made the score 28-13 with about three minutes to go. The shrieks from the South Summit sidelines suggested that the fans felt the game was in the bag. And it was. A last-gasp Park City attempt ended when a third Tom Flinders pass was picked off. In spite of the three inter- Thursday, September 30, 1982 ceptions, Flinders iiniMieu with 10 completions in 17 attempts at-tempts for 164 yards and one touchdown. "Tom threw the ball well," Burns observed. "He had a couple of (other) passes that should have been caught." Puckett's 61 yards made him the Miners' leading ground-gainer, but fullback Greg Foote was right behind with 13 carries for 58 yards. Bill Reed was the leading pass receiver with three catches cat-ches for 47 yards, and Gilvarry also caught three passes, good for 46 yards. The season statistics find Puckett leading the team with 510 yards rushing, followed by Foote with 301 yards. In pass receiving, Gilvarry is the team leader with 15 catches for 384 yards and five touchdowns. This Friday, the Miners will travel to Randolph to jke on the South Rich Trojans. That game is set to begin at 4 p.m. The pitch was right where it had to be, high and tight, and coming out of the eerie twilight at 94 m.p.h., as unhittable as a rifle bullet. And as deadly. It hit the batter with the sickening sound of a rotten pumpkin dropped from a high window. The Yankee catcher remembers thinking "My God, he's not wearing an ear flap! " as Batter Ron Cey sank to the ground. A hush fell over the Dodger Stadium crowd and the rest of the Yankee ballplayers couldn't bear to look. Pitcher Goose Gossage looked as if he had just been kicked in the stomach. There has been only one on-field fatality in Major League history. But Ron Cey looked that Sunday afternoon like a good candidate for No. 2. Trainer Bill Buhler running out on the field looking for telltale sounds of blood running out of the ear, shined a light in Cey's eyes. The ball had been thrown so hard, it ricochetted off Cey's helmet and into the dugout on one hop. If it had been an ordinary groundball, it would have been too hot to handle. It may have been The-Pitch-That-Won-The-World-Series. It's for sure the Yanks were never the same after that. The situation was, they were down 2-1, at the time, it was the fifth game, the bottom of the eighth, one out and a runner on first. The count was one ball, and Pitcher Gossage was trying to prevent Cey, a notorious home run threat, from digging in. What you do when you get hit by a pitched ball is what you do when you get a plane shot out from under you. You go right back up. But, when Ron Cey went to Centinela Hospital that smoggy afternoon, he didn't feel much like flying. That fuzziness was not all smog. The ache might go away, but it didn't seem to have its bags packed. They give encephalograms in two phases-one phases-one quick scan, then another with traceable dye injected into the bloodstream. Ron Cey didn't know that. When they hooked him up for the second or back-up brain scan, he was positive they had found something possibly terminal, the first time around. "I saw my whole life going up in flames. I saw myself in a wheelchair the rest of my life. I saw my life going out the back door. I started to scream. I asked the neurologist what they were doing. I told them not to be playing games with me." The medics soothed him and convinced Ron the second scan was routine, that they were probing for aneurysms, not confirming them. They found none. He was concussed, they said, not fractured. "Then, they told me the bottom line," recalls Ron Cey shivering. "One inch lower on that pitch, and I'm dead." Most ballplayers fear death by fastball the way mountaineers fear avalanches, miners, cave-ins, and sailors, typhoons. It's a longshot, but it's always there in the back of the mind. "If a pitcher wants to hit you, he cS ParkCity 1 S ""il Home Video SfJ Special Mon. thru Rent one movie at rent a second at Open Mwi. thru Thurs. 9:ii) a.m. Yx l'i i i-pct ror As c. Subaru Wagons OF MURR on Thurs. regular price, Vi price We will reserve your favorite shows and VCR.s, just call ahead. 7Veiv releases in store, VMS & Beta: "Death Wish II" & "Death Trap" T.iOp.m., Fn.ffSal., ).()( a.m. hclim,! tlu- ( irtib Su-;ik Ki.'.t,iur,i 1 4 Wheel ow m mm . rwi r ., the winter rush. UBARU 53rd So. & State Murray can," explains Ron Cey soberly. When Ron Cey was released from thy hospital, he could have been pardoned for wondering if he could ever step into a letter-high fastball again. Only one fatality-has fatality-has occurred from a pitched ball in the majors, but the recordbooks are full of players whose careers were shortened or ended abruptly by the ear-high fastball, or who were never the same player afterward They took Ron Cey back to New York for Game Six of the 1981 World Series more ;i.s a courtesy than for service. He had started the World Series (and the final playoff series) with one arm in a cast, thanks to being hit by a Tom Griffin brush back on Sept. 9. Now, with his ears ringing, and his wrist aching, he seemed to be less combatant than an honored guest. "The option was mine, to play or not to play," Cey recounts. "I figured I hud to make the incident part of my past, and not of my future. But I wouldn't have done it ( played ) solely for myself. 1 saw the team gb'mg through a real transition after I left. The uncertainty of who was going to play what position, the jockeying of the lineup, were things we really didn't need. We didn't need any juggled lineups or uneasy positions at that stage." Ron Cey didn't know it but he needed Game Six for more reasons than the team did. He had to go back into the dog fight or he might have spent the whole winter brooding over what he would do with 0-and-l pitches the rest of his life, wondering whether he would be Ron Cey, power hitter, or Ron Cey, coward hitter, whether he would be battinj: cleanup or bailout. He and the Yankees found out quickly. He stepped into a pitch and ripped a hit his first time up and, in the sixth inning, with the score tied 1-1, and the Series on the line, Cey came up with Davey Lopes on second base and two out. Cey stepped into the pitch, drilled a hit up the middle, scored Lopes, and that was the old ballgame and, as it happened, the old world championship. Dusty Baker doubled him to third and Pete Guerrero singled them both home. Dodgers 4, Yankees, 1, and, up in his box, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner began drafting an apology to the city of New York. Ron Cey has never been known as a "contact" hitter. But, when he gets a hit, it's a big one, as his 22 homes and 76 rbi this year shows. He has hit the ball safely nearly 1,400 times in his career. The ball has hit him more than 40. But the Gossage pitch he made contact with was one of the historic hits of his career and of the game. As they say, Baseball is a game of inches. One inch lower, and the 1981 World Series would have been ; tragedy, not a triumph. Ron Cey is fortunate to have won a co-MVP World Series award But he's even more fortunate it wasn't posthumous. 1J!2 Los Angeles Times Syndicate Special on Fri. & Sat. Rent 4 moei for the price 0f3 ):(h) p.m., Sunda-. . .' r 11 .11 1 i .1, ju. u v. Drive and avoid 262-2661 AY 1 |