The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 51

Sunday, Sept. 23, 1084 Scoreboard 2 Baseball averages 8 Pomona entries 10 IE The Sun San Bernardino, California State speedway chaiap crowned Inland Empire riders Mike Faria and Mike Bast came on strong at the California Speedway Championship Saturday night, but Bobby Schwartz of Balboa took the title at Inland Motorcycle Speedway. Story, E-3. Angels beaten by 200-foot HR, fall to 3rd The raco Wy' corner Gregg Patton GB Team Kansas City Minnesota ANGELS 80 74 79 75 1 78 75 IV Angels argued the call, but replays appeared to show McKean made the proper call. "The first time we got a call that the replay showed it foul, but then (the players) watched the replay a number of times and said it hit right on the line," said Angels manager John McNamara.

"He (McKean) did a good job." The Rangers weren't quite finished putting runs on the board. George Wright and Mickey Rivers had run-scoring singles before the Angels were able to get out of the (Please see Angels, E-8) Texas a 7-6 lead. "When I rounded first I knew that there was nobody backing up Beniquez and I had a chance to reach home plate," said Ward, who did just that. Said Beniquez: "I think it was a foul ball, but the ump called it fair. I saw my glove reaching out over the foul line, so I don't know how it could have bounced on it.

When I looked back (at the infield) the ump had called it fair, but by then I was too far from the ball and there was nothing I could do." First base umpire Jim McKean ruled the ball had landed on the foul line, making it a fair ball. The ond homer of the day. When the dust settled, the Rangers had won 9-7 thanks to a four-run eighth-inning rally. Thus, with one week left in the season, the Angels fall to tl ird place, ltt games behind Kansas City and a half-game behind Minnesota, which climbed back into second. The difference in this one was probably the shortest homer reliever Luis Sanchez (9-7) has given up since he was in Little League.

With the Angels leading 6-5 in the eighth inning, Alan Bannister tripled and Ward followed with a blooper he fisted down the right-field line. By CINDY ROBINSON Special to The Sun ANAHEIM What you see isn't always what you see. For instance, it appeared in the seventh inning of Saturday afternoon's game at Anaheim Stadium that Reggie Jackson had hit his third home run of the game. At least it looked that way until Texas right fielder Larry Parrish reached over the fence to snag the ball. It also appeared as if Ranger Gary Ward blooped a ball foul in the eighth.

Guess again. The ball was ruled fair and gave Ward an inside-the-park home run, his sec Angels right fielder Juan Beni-quez reached out for the ball but missed, and it went rolling by him and into foul territory in the right-feld corner as Ward rounded the bases and scored to give TT 0 -Mm X. 4 i if USC gives Arizona St. the boot By VIC WEST Sun Sports Writer TEMPE, Ariz. About the last thing USC could have expected was to get lucky in a place where it had known nothing but misfortune.

But that's exactly what happened on a very strange Saturday evening at Sun Devil Stadium, where the Trojans won for the first time ever when Arizona State's Luis Zendejas suffered through what must have been a first of his own. Zendejas, the all-American kicker from Don Lugo HS in Chino, missed two of three field goal tries, including a chip-shot 28-yarder in the final minute, as USC hung on for a 6-3 victory. Making matters worse for Zendejas, he had to watch his counterpart, Steve Jordan, boot a pair of 50-yard field goals, the last one coming with 9:14 remaining in the contest to win it for the Trojans. The chances of Jordan showing up Zendejas were probably as remote as USC's chances of winning here, considering recent history. The Trojans were 0-3 in Tempe, losing twice to ASU (1978 and '82) and once to Penn State in the 1982 Fiesta Bowl.

But the fates were with them on an evening that featured, among other things, a driving desert rainstorm that defied a pre-game weather report which listed no chance of rain, and a knee injury that quarterback Sean Salisbury suffered in strange deja vu fashion he had hurt the same knee in a game here two years ago. Salisbury left early with what was diagnosed, for now, as a sprained knee. It might be much worse, however he will undergo tests today to see if he suffered torn cartilage. If so, his season could be over, as it was after he went down in USC's 17-10 loss here two seasons back. On that occasion, a blitzing ASU defense bottled up the Trojans for most of the evening.

But Saturday, USC came up with some stout defense of its own to limit the Sun Devils to only Zendejas' third-quarter field goal of 20 (Please see USC, E-6) ,........1. iV -ry (L Staff photot by Ren Lenden Nebraska's Jeff Smith tries to fly between UCLA defenders Ron Pitts and Tony Phillips. Huskers leave Bruins with big, red faces Huskers are college game's No.l menace PASADENA When Ralph Nader gets through with the nation's automakers, he might turn his attention to Nebraska's football team. In the best interests of safety on America's playing fields, the consumer advocate might insist Cornhuskers opponents come equipped with air bags. Playing against Nebraska without effective safety devices of any kind Saturday at the Rose Bowl, UCLA suffered nine physical injuries not to mention a big bruise on its ego, a 42-3 loss to the nation's top-ranked football team.

"Nebraska's gameplan is to line it up and pound you down," said Bruins linebacker Neal Dellocon-no. "They bring in fresh guys and there's no slack off (in talent). It's no fluke when you see people (get hurt)." Wide receiver Mike Sherrard, who absorbed his punishment from the offensive side of the line, said, "They're in better shape and stronger than us overall. They knocked our guys out with clean shots." The reason for this is that, first and foremost, year in and year out, Nebraska beats the bushes for high school linemen of Bunyanes-que proportions, involves them in its state-of-the-art weight-training and conditioning programs and creates a squad of young men who probably could have clean-and-jerked the Rose Bowl Saturday instead of merely winning a football game, dislocating two Bruin shoulders, spraining three Bruin ankles, etc. Nebraska beats you (and beats you) at the line of scrimmage.

That's why they can follow up last year's 42-10 victory over UCLA, in which they had superior skill-position people like quarterback Turner Gill, wingback Irving Fryar and Heisman Trophy-winning running back Mike Ro zier, insert slower and less-polished replacements this year, and squish you even worse. Asked to compare Rozier and this year's tailback Jeff Smith, new quarterback Craig Sundberg said, "Jeff isn't as strong a runner or the breakaway threat that Mike was, but he's great for this offense." "Great for this offense," basically, means being able to stay on your feet while a cordon of school buses clears out the riffraff in front of you. You've heard of 3 yards and a cloud of dust. This is 10 yards and a spray of blood. Smith gained 123 yards Saturday, but third-string tailback Doug DuBose also had 104.

Smith and fullback Tom Rathman each had 100-yard games against Wyoming. You could go 10-deep into the Huskers backfield (and dip into the linebacking corps, too) and produce a 100-yard rusher at Nebraska, as long as the guy didn't tie his shoelaces together. So three weeks into the season, Nebraska is No.l with a stranglehold, outscoring the opposition 122-17. The Huskers were No.l from September to January last year, too, until Miami pried it away from them with a 31-30 win in the Orange Bowl. That's the way it happens with the Huskers: When they lose, it's never an embarrassment.

The last time they lost a game by more than a touchdown was six years ago. The big question mark this year was, how would Nebraska fare without the flash of the Gill-Fryar-Rozier triad. "They're better defensively and better in the kicking game (than last year)," said UCLA coach Terry Donahue after getting an up-close look Saturday. "They might not have the finesse players they had, but the power is just the S3 me." Said tailback Smith: "I don't feel there's a dropoff from last year. Just because we don't score every 30 seconds doesn't mean we're not as good a team." Or as hazardous to one's t' if By MIKE DAVIS Sun Sports Writer PASADENA UCLA's annual Red Dawn arrived on schedule this morning the morning after the Nebraska game.

On Saturday, the Nebraska Cornhuskers pounded, pummeled and punished the Bruins, treating them no differently than they treated Wyoming and Minnesota earlier this season, or UCLA last year. The score was 42-3, and few among the 71,355 at the Rose Bo or in the national television audience would dare suggest that the No.l-ranked 'Huskers didn't deserve to win by that much. That was the not that Nebraska won (it was favored by 9Vi points), but that it won so overwhelmingly. Beating Wyoming 42-7 and Minnesota 38-7 is one thing the Big Red does that all the time. But this was UCLA, the No.8 team in the country, considered a national championship contender in the preseason.

It also was a Nebraska team supposedly weakened a little by the loss of so much offensive talent from last year's Superteam of the '80s Mike Rozier, Irving Fryar, Turner Gill, Dean Stein-kuhler. So what happens? The 'Huskers beat the Bruins even worse than the 42-10 shelling they administered last year in Lincoln. It was, in fact, UCLA's worst loss since Terry Donahue became the coach there in 1976 actually, since a 61-20 defeat at Washington in 1970. Admittedly, this was a UCLA team playing without its starting quarterback, senior Steve Bono, who missed the game with a sprained ankle. The man who took most of the Bruins' snaps Saturday, sophomore Matt Stevens, had thrown only one college pass before this game.

But the truth is, any difference Bono might have made was probably negligible. Nebraska was simply too good "A superior football team," in Dona- (Please see UCLA, E-6) Top 20 scores 1. Nebraska beat UCLA 42-3. 2. Clemson lost to Georgia 26-23.

3. Texas was idle. 4. Miami lost to Florida St. 38-3.

5. Ohio St. beat Iowa 45-26. 6. BYU at Hawaii (night).

7. Penn St. beat William Mary 56-18. 6. UCLA lost to Nebraska 42-3.

9. Washington beat Houston 35-7. 10. Boston College beat N. Carolina 52-20.

11. Oklahoma beat Baylor 34-15. 12. Oklahoma St. beat San Diego St.

19-16. 13. SMU beat N. Texas St. 24-6.

14. Iowa lost to Ohio St. 45-26. 15. Florida St.

beat Miami 38-3. 16. Michigan beat Wisconsin 20-14. 17. USC beat Arizona St.

6-3. 18. W. Virginia lost to Maryland 20-17. 19.

Auburn beat S. Mississippi 35-12. 20. Georgia beat Clemson 26-23. UCLA tight end Derek Tennell can't get a handle on pass.

Press a double winner in stock series at Orange Show With the key break. Press' earned $4,125 $2,000 for each race (payoff was based on finishes in each individual race) plus $100 for the pole position he won Friday and $25 for finishing fourth in Friday's trophy dash. Thirkettle, who built a one-third lap lead in the second race, missed on a $2,000 first-place pavoff. Second place was worth $1,000. "I can't cry about it," said Thirkettle.

"It (the car) suddenly veered to the right. "I thought it was our race. It's the first mechanical failure we've had in a year." Press knows about such things. Everywhere he's raced, he said, "We've led By JIM LONG Sun Sports Writer SAN BERNARDINO Dan Press of Newhall had never won a motor race outside the friendly confines of Saugus Speedway, where he does all his super modified racing. Jim Thirkettle of Sylmar hadn't had a mechanical breakdown in over a year, a major reason why he's emerged as one of the hottest racers on the small-oval, super-modifieds circuit.

Both of these matters changed Saturday night at Orange Show Speedway, as Press won both 75-lap finals of the OSS portion of the five-stop $135,000 Western States Open seriey'before an estimated 6,600 onlookers. Meanwhile, Rialto's John Haney, the pole sitter in the $10,000 California Street Stock Championship, scored a wire-to-wire victory in the 50-lap final which was also held at OSS on Saturday. Just three weeks ago, Haney had rolled the car he drove to victory. After the race, everyone in the pits was talking about Thirkettle's breakdown. Press, the pole sitter, went wire-to-wire to win the first 75-lap race while Thirkettle took second.

In the second race, Press lost a slim lead to Thirkettle on Lap 15 only to get it back on Lap 43 when Thirkettle suddenly stopped on the back straight with what turned out to be a broken U-joint. Thirkettle was finished. Press went on to 'tis sweep and Highland's Glen Cum- mings, the OSS super-modif ieds champ, finished second. Cummings was third in the first race. "I didn't see him the first time I came around on the yellow light (called when Thirkettle stopped)," said Press.

"The second, third time I noticed him there." Press said he let Thirkettle take the lead because a steering adjustment on his car backfired. "The first race, I think we had a little too much stagger," said Press of the steering. "We tightened it up. Then in the second race, we found out we'd gone too far. "I figured the car just wasn't handling quite right.

Instead of spinning or crashing, I decided to let him (Thirkettle) set the P(p." (Please se Press, E-8) health. Jf:.