The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 21

Qfa jpfalabtlnfua Inquirer Eagles haven't forgotten the Grits Blitz By FRANK DOLSON Monday, September 10, 1979 r' Sports playing pass defense. They didn't lose their rush the Eagles never generated any. What carried the Eagles into the playoffs but didn't carry them into the next round, however, was a solid running attack. In their nine wins last season, the Eagles averaged 171.3 yards a game rushing. In their eight losses, they averaged 117.7 yards.

Their big gainer all year long was Wilbert Montgomery starting wide, coming in. We went in with a different approach to that playoff game than in other games. We opened with two tight ends to contain them." The Eagles blew it at the end with a flurry of mistakes. Mike Michel missed a 42-yard field goal, then, with 13 seconds left, a potentially game-winning 34-yarder. Billy Camp-field lost a fumble at the Falcon 35.

Mike Hogan lost another at the Falcon 13. The Eagles lost their poise finding a cutback lane and wheeling back against the pursuit. Against the Falcons in that one-point disaster, Montgomery was wheeling back into Falcons. Montgomery's game total on a cold, damp afternoon in Atlanta Stadium was 19 yards in 16 carries, the worst day of his accelerating career. The Eagles wound up with 53 yards and a pitiful 1.7-yard average.

Montgom-(See EAGLES on 6-C) coach said at the end of a week of uncertain preparation for tonight's nationally televised rematch with Atlanta's accurately named Grits Blitz defense (Channel 6, 9 p.m.) "They pursued us. They shut us off, just like they shut off the Rams (on "Monday Night Football" last season. "They do so much dogging off their slanting and scraping that you have to do something to counter the dogs By Gordon Forbes Inquirer Statl Writer Dick Vermeil doesn't need to rerun the game film. Old quarterbacks always remember the days when their running backs struggled to gain a couple of feet, which is the way Vermeil, a little rollout guy at San Jose State, remembers last year's Christmas Eve playoff massacre in Atlanta. "They just whipped us," the Eagles det An stin "hnrones Lloyd Open champ felled by youngest winner; McEnroe is titlist By Danny Robbins inquirer SMH Writer NEW YORK They took the trains to Flushing Meadow to see tennis' subway series, the U.S.

Open final between John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis, guys who grew up on opposite sides of Queens. But when those two wound up on opposite sides of the net on the stadium court at the National Tennis Center last night, the thrill was gone, lost in the excitement of a girl winning the women's title. Fans who were hostile to both men last week found themselves cheering a match, instead of personalities, as McEnroe finished off Gerulaitis, 7-5, 6-3, 6-3, in slightly more than two hours. However, the men already had been upstaged by the women's champion a girl, really. At 16, Tracy Austin became the Open's youngest champion ever by gaining a strangely easy, 6-4, 6-3, win over Chris Evert Lloyd, the No.

1 seed who was going for a record fifth consecutive Open title. Maureen (Little Mo) Connolly also was 16 when she won in 1951, but she was three months older than Austin. No question, Austin looks her age, with gangly limbs and pigtails (the braces are off now). But she is a 5-foot, 4-inch machine at the baseline. Lloyd always has been the same thing, but yesterday she was making the mistakes that usually come from her flustered opponents.

Austin, who had lost five of their seven previous matches, was not one of those. "She's on the way," Lloyd said afterward. "She's only 16. If her nerves don't get to her, next year, or the year after, she will be number one." Curiously, it was Lloyd, once the "Ice Maiden," who was nervous and on the defensive yesterday. She piled up an unusual 50 unforced errors, and she made them at costly times.

Serving at 2-3 in the second set, her chance to make it even, Lloyd handed Austin one break point, at 3040, when she eased into an overhead and sent it wide. She brought the game back to deuce, but then she lost it by netting a backhand and going long with another one. The women held their serves in jetUVW 1 'liTi'lii wWJ Elia waiting in the wings EVANSVILLE, Ind. Lee Elia was in Oklahoma City, getting ready for the start of the American Association championship playoffs, when strange things started happening. Dallas Green was there, too, in his capacity as the Phillies farm director.

And then suddenly he wasn't there. Green left in such a hurry that he didn't have time to say goodbye to the manager of his Triple A farm club. All he could do was dash off a note that read: "Lee, I'll explain all the stuff that's about to happen later. Good luck in the playoffs." Dallas, of course, didn't have to explain. The newspapers took care of that.

Danny Ozark had been fired; a rush call had gone out to Green to take his place for the rest of the season. That day, perhaps for the first time, Lee Elia dared think about the possibility of managing the Phillies in 1980. It was a normal thing to think about for a man who had won three titles in Double A and Triple A in five years as a minor league manager in the Phillies' organization. Would like job "1 did get excited initially," Elia said, "because we were winning here and all of a sudden it hit me, 'Hey, maybe there's a I still think there's a possibility, but I don't let myself get overly excited about it now. I'd like to go there (next season).

I'd be a liar if I said I didn't. But whatever happens, happens. Somewhere down the road, though, something will happen. I really believe that." Many of those who have observed Lee Elia from close range in recent years have come to believe that, too. "Is my man going to get the job?" asked Jim Leyland, manager of the Evansville club that beat Oklahoma City in the finals.

"He deserves it." "I've been playing 10 years with different managers," said second baseman Ramon Aviles, "and I've never played more relaxed than this year under Elia. This man is doing a great job. I've learned a lot just watching him." Team pulled together "Lee did a good job of keeping us together," claimed Keith Moreland, whose bat played a key role in Oklahoma City's surge from, a 9-19 start to a division title. "Usually, when things are going bad, you separate. But with Lee's help we started pulling together." He has come a long way, this fiery competitor who played for Eddie Stanky and Leo Durocher in the big leagues, and who spent two years coaching for Jim Bunning in the minors.

As recently as three years ago he struggled mightily in Class A Spartanburg, trying to adjust to los ing games with a mediocre ball club Now the fire is still there, although burning under control, and the aversion to losing is still there, but Elia, at 42, has matured into a solid candidate for a big league managing job. He turned Oklahoma City around, and kept the club moving in the right direction despite losing such key players as Kevin Saucier, Dickie Noles, Mike Anderson, Jim Morrison and John Vukovich in the course of the season. He seems to have that elusive ability to communicate with today's athlete, and to motivate them. Won't sit on bench "I've often thought maybe this sounds corny, but when I get to be a major league manager I'm not going to sit on the bench during batting practice and infield (practice and stuff like that," Elia said. "I'm going to do exactly what I've done in the miner leagues.

I'm going to throw batting practice and do all those little things that I've done my whole life because I don't think it's any different. You just can't sit down and relax and get rid of some of your frustrations if you don't go out and become part of the ball club. "If I'm ticked off at something in the big leagues and I want to flip a table, I'll flip a table. What's the difference if I flip a table in front of Bowa or Boonie or Schmidt? What the hell's the difference? I still got to do it because it's me. I'm not going to change because there are guys there that I respect very much, guys I've admired over the years.

It's not going to make me different. I don't see why a guy should change. It's still a ball game." Even in Philadelphia, where the crowds are so big and the pressures so great and the disappointments so fresh. "They're going to win it" next year, Elia said. "I really believe they'll win It no matter who runs the ball club" a slight pause, a trace of a smile.

then, "as long as the direction is right." The evidence indicates that Lee Elia is ready to provide that direction, If he gets the chance. the next two games, so Austin was serving for the match at 5-3. She let the game slip to 0-30, finally deuce. But she reached a Lloyd net chord and belted a backhand winner to the corner for match point No. 1.

On the next point, she put a backhand into the net for deuce again. But she came up with a second match point, and this time she cashed it in when Lloyd flipped Austin's second serve, which will never make Roscoe Tanner envious, into the net. "I don't think about being the youngest or anything, just the cham-(See OPEN on 6-C) Austin to hit textbooks, not serves NEW YORK Almost obscured by the large silver cup she had just won on the stadium court, Tracy Austin' sat at a table and discussed her greatest triumph and her next order of business: school tomorrow. It is true that, at 16, the woman who took the U.S. Open title is wealthy and poised and a backboard with pigtails on a tennis court.

But she is also a high-school junior in Rolling Hills, Calif. School starts today. "When am I gonna go?" Austin said yesterday, answering a question with a question. "Well, what time is it? I'll try to catch a plane tonight, but I'll get home so late. I guess I won't go until Tuesday." Whenever she gets there, though, school isn't a real chore.

"I enjoy school," she was telling reporters, "because when I'm here I'm always with people who are older, like you guys sorry. But I mean most of the girls players) are, older, too. When I go back to school, I'm with kids my own age. And it's good for me to be with kids my own age a little bit." Some may argue that Tracy Austin (See AUSTIN on 6-C) Associated Preu He had Kucek walk Steve Ontiveros (2-for-his-last-12) intentionally to pitch to Foote, who was 7-for-his-last-14. Green conceded that he had not been thinking about grand slams.

He'd been thinking that Ontiveros hit lefthanded and Kucck pitched righthanded. He also was thinking, he said, that "Footey's got to hit into a double play sooner or later. Or at least we've got to get him out sooner or later." Well, not necessarily. Foote (4-for-5 yesterday) is hitting .362 21-for-S8) (See PHILLIES on 3-C) Tracy Austin jumps for joy after jumping from No. 3 seed to U.

stop Campbell, crush Oilers, 38-7 United Press International S. Open champion yesterday Oilers' Greg Stemrick (left) and Yesterday, Foote ripped Slam No, 7 off rookie Jack Kucck, and what made it seem especially not so good is that the Cubs battered the Phillies, 15-2. Seven may seem like a lot of grand slams to give up in one year. But not only is seven not the National League record, it isn't even the Phillies' record. Those two records are one 'and the same.

The 1974 Phillies allowed eight. The 1933 Phillies also allowed eight. Three other National League clubs have allowed eight, too. So this team still has one to go. Steelers By Bill Livingston Inquirer Stall Writer PITTSBURGH While Pittsburgh and Houston lined up for the opening kickoff yesterday at Three Rivers Stadium, a Steeler fan, clad only in a pair of shorts that iooked like a couple of Terrible Towels knotted together, dashed from the stands onto the field.

The guy stopped at the 40-yard line for a guzzle of the bubbly he was carrying and then, after brief pursuit by stadium police, was handcuffed and led away. It was the only example of restraint by anything wearing black and gold all day long as the Steelers crushed the Oilers, their opponents in last season's AFC title game, 38-7. The Steelers, playing defense, with the savagery that has made them Super Bowl champions three times in this decade, held Houston's Earl Campbell to 38 yards on 16 carries, his all-time NFL low and a mellow 128 yards less than he gained in last week's season opener. With 8 minutes, 18 seconds remaining in the third quarter, Oiler quarterback Dante Pastonni, who haa Shot out in Chicago hardly resembled an inferno anyway, was snuffed for the day when he suffered a badly jammed right arm while tackling a Steeler after throwing his third intercepted pass of the day. Though X-rays revealed no break, Pastorini already had been rendered ineffective by a Steeler pass rush that sacked him five times for 35 yards in losses.

Pastorini hit just four of 17 passes for 16 yards yesterday, and his two-game total is strictly Pete Liske stuff: 16 for 47, with six interceptions. In the fourth quarter, Widener's Billy (White Shoes) Johnson suffered a severe right knee injury while trying to water-bug Houston back into this mismatch on a punt return. He is expected to be out for the season. Since three Steeler regulars L. C.

Greenwood, Dwight White and Gary Dunn were ailing yesterday, the dimensions, of the defensive wipeout were truly terrifying. "We just dominated their offensive (See STEELERS on 4-C) By Jayson Stark Inquirer Statt Writer CHICAGO Some teams are good at some things. Some teams are good at other things. Unfortunately, one thing the Phillies have been real good at this year is grand slam homers. Not hitting them; throwing them.

They've been especially good at throwing them to Barry Footc.On May 15, Foote pounded 1979's Grand Slam No. off Nino Espinosa, two days before the 23-22 game made it seem not so bad. Steelers9 receiver John Stallworth battle for a pass in end zone "Well," Dallas Green said, "we'll work on it. We might just as well go for the record as long as we're this close." If Green had been around all year, he would have known that any time a team fills the bases against the Phillies, federal law requires that the Civil Aeronautics Board be notified immediately. But Green missed the first six.

So that probably explains why, when the Cubs put men on second and third with two out in the fourth, Green filled the bases on purpose..