The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 109

Qlfie fiilabelpfiia Inquirer SUNDAY October 9, 1988 SECTION 1 VJTVl Sixers' Lynam has a low profile and a tall order By Jay Searcy Inquirer Stall Writer There was never a grandiose plan in Jim Lynam's life. No urgency to fill a dream. No race with success. He was an honor math student at West Catholic High, so that became his major at St. Joseph's University.

But he went there to play basketball for coach Jack Ramsay, and he became one of the best guards in St. Joe's history. Then, after his senior year, he planned to marry a childhood sweetheart, Kay Amberg from South Phila and starred at West Catholic after the family moved to Havertown. He used to shoot baskets under the streetlight at the corner of South Salford and Greenway. His father nailed a backboard to a utility pole there when Lynam was hardly old enough to get the ball to the basket.

It has been hard to keep up with Lynam because he moved so much. He coached at St. Joe's and knocked No. 1 DePaul out of the 1981 NCAA tournament. In the four years after he left St.

Joseph's in 1981, he was with three teams in four NBA cities. never coached or considered the idea. That was 1963. Lynam has coached basketball ever since. Now, at age 46, having coached for one high school, four colleges and three professional teams, he emerges in a high-profile position in the National Basketball Association head coach of the 76ers.

But unlike most previous 76ers coaches, he is barely known in NBA cities other than Philadelphia. He is from South Salford Street in Southwest Philadelphia (Wilt Chamberlain grew up on North Salford), delphia, and stay In school an extra year to take advantage of St. Joseph's new math program. Maybe he would teach school. Maybe he would become a certified public accountant.

Whatever. He didn't know. But he was walking the beach with Kay one day, just before the wedding, and a man stopped and introduced himself. It was a priest in a bathing suit, it turned out, and he was the athletic director at little Lansdale Catholic High. He was looking for a coach.

Lynam was just 21 years old, had So everybody is looking at Lynam now, as another NBA season approaches and wondering what on earth he can do that Guokas couldn't do. Whatever it is, whatever he tries, Lynam will do it in front of old friends and a massive family of Ly-nams that occupies much of Philadelphia, Delaware and South Jersey. And he has had a whole summer to think about it. "Nobody's surprised that he's where he is," said his brother, Mike, a former coach at Bishop Kenrick (See LYNAM on 18-F) His son, James Francis 3d, attended four high schools in four years in Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, finally finishing at Cardinal O'Hara High. Lynam joined the 76ers in 1985 as Matt Guokas' assistant.

After his friend Guokas was fired, Lynam stepped into the Sixers' spotlight just as the franchise hit one of its lowest ebbs. And there is no apparent solution. Even the talk-show experts in town can't solve the Sixers' many problems without fantasy drafts and trades involving half the city. ets win a wild one Oakland up 30: Ace reliever ejected as LA. takes 8-4 loss ppiV til i It A's rally to club Sox, 10-6 By Jayson Stark Inquirer Staff Writer OAKLAND If you are beginning to get the impression that the Oak- land A's are one of the truly special teams of the '80s, you are getting the right idea.

Last night, the green-and-gold monster men spotted the Red Sox a 5-0 lead in the second inning. They were so unnerved, it took them all the way until the third inning to take the lead. A two-run homer by the basher of the night, Ron Hassey (3 for 3, three RBIs), put them ahead. Then, a very shaky runner's-interference call by second-base umpire Ken Kaiser helped them stay ahead. And when the night was over, the A's had thrashed the Red Sox, 10-6, and 49,261 people in the Oakland Coliseum were chanting, "Sweep, sweep, i sweep." Well, it is not out of the question.

The A's lead the American League playoffs, 30. They are poised to be-' come the first team to sweep a best-i of-seven playoff series and the first 1 to sweep any kind of best-of-seven series since the Reds swept the Yan-; kees in the '76 World Series. Sweep talk aside, no team in history ever has lost a best-of-seven seines after winning the first three games. And since the Red Sox still have won fewer games in October the Phillies (1-0 look it up), it is clear which way this series is iheaded. The only unsavory element of last Inight's game was the interference that kept the Red Sox from scoring the tying run in the fifth inning.

It was a 6-5 game at the time. Todd Benzinger apparently had hustled down the line to beat a double-play relay by Walter Weiss. Dwight Evans apparently had scored to tie the game on the play. But hold those high fives. After Weiss released the ball, Boston's (See AL PLAYOFFS on 4-F) By Peter Pascarelli Inquirer Suit Writer NEW YORK At times, it resembled two high school teams practicing on a wet spring day.

And, at times, it even resembled a Phillies game. But a game that was often as messy as the playing field and the wretched weather conditions turned into a weird and controversial postseason classic yesterday, as the New York Mets came back for a 8-4 victory over the unraveling Los Angeles Dodgers to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven National League championship series. The Mets can take a stranglehold on the series tonight when they send Dwight Gooden to the mound. He will oppose Dodgers lefthander John Tudor, who has been ailing with a hip injury. i But nothing that happens the rest of the postseason is likely to equal yesterday's 3-hour, 44-minute epic.

Dodgers reliever Jay Howell became the first player in postseason history to be ejected for having a foreign substance in his glove. Howell was thumbed in the Mets' game-winning five-run eighth inning when pine tar was found on the heel of his glove. But even before that unprecedented incident and the Mets' subsequent big inning, this was a strange game. The Dodgers once had a 3-0 lead fashioned from an assortment of walks and infield hits. And with their ace, Orel Hershiser, on the mound, Los Angeles appeared on its way to a victory.

But the Mets came back with a third-inning run, set up by a third-strike wild pitch, and tied the game with two gift-wrapped runs in the sixth, courtesy of two Dodgers errors and assorted other miscues. And after the Dodgers regained the lead on an eighth-inning bases-loaded walk, the Mets' half of the inning in one of the wilder games in playoff annals unfolded. "It's a loss and a tough one, but we've come back from things all ji as. T- undercut by Oakland's Stan Javier, breaking up a double play. Columbia ends 44-game loss skid A running debate on the running QB Darryl Strawberry Drove in three runs jor Mels year, and we'll survive this," Hershiser said.

"Everyone talks about how well the Mets come back. "But this was a game in which we let them come back. We didn't execute when we had to. I'm still in the game if we had executed in that two-run sixth, and maybe all the other stuff wouldn't have happened." But the "other stuff" will be long remembered. Howell arrived to open the eighth, after Hershiser had left for a pinch-hitter in the top of the inning.

He went to a 3-2 count on Kevin McReyn-olds when Mets manager Dave Johnson came out of the dugout and requested' that home-plate umpire Joe West check Howell's glove. "I hear now that they had said something on TV about Howell's glove being black in one spot," Johnson said. "But I came out because IMets first-base coachl Bill Robinson had pointed' at the glove and said Howell was tugging on it between pitches. It's a serious charge, and I wanted to be sure before I did anything. When he did it a second time, that's when I came out." West summoned crew chief Harry (See NL PLAYOFFS on 7-F) bia its much-awaited victory.

With 3V2 minutes remaining in the game and his squad down by three points, Princeton coach Steve Tosches elected to go for a first down on fourth and 7 from the Columbia 27-yard line. But as Jason Garrett dropped back to pass, he was blind-sided by defensive end Matt Zielinski for a loss of 8 yards, giving the ball back to the Lions. "Our defensive coaches kept telling us that disguising our blitzes is (See PRINCETON on 12-F) Nittany Lions sputter past Cincinnati, 35-9 By Ray Parrillo Inquirer Staff Writer UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Penn State looked down the road and saw Syracuse, Alabama and West Virginia queued up to take their shots. That's a tough stretch of highway in the next three weeks.

So State pulled its wagon into the body shop yesterday to bang out some dents and get a new paint job at the expense of woeful Cincinnati. And although the Bearcats (2-3) went down, 35-9, without much of a fuss before a Homecoming Day crowd of 85,693 at Beaver Stadium, Penn State (4-1) emerged with a paint job that was a shade off color and a nick here and there. Rarely has a 26-point winner looked so scattershot on offense. "I think we'jould be better off (See PENN STATE on 12-F) By Bill Ordine Inquirer Stall Writer NFL quarterbacks are like beleaguered natural resources. The more rules that are made to protect them, the more imperiled the quarterbacks become.

Several years ago, the league moved to protect its own endangered species by instituting the "in the grasp" rule, which was meant to stop gratuitous assaults on the quarterback after he was under a tackler's control. The league also added the "sliding" rule, whereby a quarterback could simply dive untouched to the ground to end a play. Then, the "one step" rule was passed to stop defenders from charging into the passer long after the ball was released. While the rulcsmakers were deciding how to protect the league's quarterbacks, former Pittsburgh linebacker Jack Lambert sarcastically United Press International a difference And, so far, he has said all the right things. Among them are these, which should be made required reading: "They say to 'just say no to Great.

But you don't realize it until you've been there. The first time you say no to drugs, great. The second time it comes a little easier. But hell, the first time you say yes to it, every other time after that, you're a goner. It's not just one instance.

You do drugs one time and you do the second time, you've passed from casual (See LYON on 9-F) The Red Sox Marty Barrett is suggested that perhaps the league's signal callers should wear tutus. Despite Lambert's concern that the new rules would put him and his defenders at a disadvantage, yearly epidemics of quarterback injuries have continued. This year, seven teams have already lost starting quarterbacks to injury, and a few more clubs have even seen their No. 2 guys go down. Some teams, like Cleveland, may be able to weather the loss and stay in contention; others, like Indianapolis, seem dead in the water.

The thought of losing Randall Cunningham to injury is enough to send shivers up Buddy Ryan's spine. After the 32-23 win over Houston last week that kept Ryan's Eagles alive in the NFC East at 2-3, the coach said, "There's no question. Randall's the most valuable guy of any player in the National Football League. "Somebody else may have gotten (See QUARTERBACKS on 9-F) By BILL LYON Everyone else on the Giants had already played four games. But Lawrence Taylor, now a two-time loser as a user, had spent the first four games in the exile of a 30-day suspension By Brett Goodman Special to The Inquirer NEW YORK Hell froze over.

Somewhere, a man bit a dog. And the Columbia Lions won a football game yesterday. With a shocked, delirious homecoming audience of 5,420 looking on, the Columbia Lions ended the longest losing streak in major college football, defeating Princeton, 16-13, at Baker Field. Columbia had not won a game since it defeated Yale, 21-18, on Oct. IS, 1983.

After that victory, Columbia sandwiched a loss to Holy Cross around two ties. And then, the losing began. The Lions had lost 44 straight entering yesterday's contest. After a slap-happy celebration in which goal posts at both ends of the field were torn down, Lions coach Larry McElrcavy praised the stubborn seniors who endured, and finally ended, college football's longest running joke. "They've gone, through hell through all this.

They've stuck through thick and thit), and they've finally got the monkey off our back," said McElreavy, who won his first game in 24 tries for the Lions since taking over the program in 1986. Fittingly, it was a senior who turned in the play that gave Colum- Index To eject a pitcher for something that all pitchers do in cold weather is criminal. Frank Dolson on Page 3-F. What kind of manager will Nick Leyva be? Peter Pascarelli, Page 5-F. NHL 2-F Boating 10-F Al Morganti t-f High schools 15-f Bill Ofdme Horse racing 18-F Tlw Philadelphia Inquirer JERRY LOORIliUSS Randall Cunningham in the grasp of the Bengals' Jason Buck.

Lawrence Taylor is back, this time with that is the NFL's automatic penalty for failing a drug test for the second time. "He's a great guy," gushed the rookie Washington quarterback, young Mark Rypien. "He picked me up after knocking me down." But then Lawrence Taylor has had a lot of practice in knocking people down and then helping them up. The biggest challenge has been keeping himself upright. Lawrence of the Meadowlands is back up.

For now. On the third play of the rest of his life, the National Football league's most dominating defensive player struck. Linebacker blitz. The sunlight glinted off his helmet like the reflection off a blue-tipped missile. Iiwrence Taylor, the Ninja of the NFL, scattered the Redskins' back-field, splattered the quarterback with such force that the ball popped loose.

The Giants recovered, turned it into a field goal, and that was, eventually, the difference in a 24-23 victory last Sunday, Lawrence Taylor's first game of the season..