The Central New Jersey Home News from New Brunswick, New Jersey • 34

Scholastic 4-6 Columns 11 Scoreboard 10 0 1 1 pets nightmare Braves9 Mxoe 1 1 bemiid him jpast By HOWARD ULMAN JP sports writer YK l- vSTl fc- on's replacement cost the Braves a run. The Braves are back in the World Series. Nixon is back, too, but with a fresh philosophy don't dwell on the past appreciate the present and work at getting better as a person and player. He went into the NL playoffs against Pittsburgh with that outlook. "I looked at that series as a great opportunity for me, but I looked at it as just a series like during the season," he said.

Tm thinking about the-present time and how I feel about today and how it's going to feel if I win this thing. 'Tm not overwhelmed. I'm very happy. It's a different approach to the game, to living. I'm comfortable with myselt" Nixon's suspension carried into this season, but he still played 120 games and hit 294 with 41 stolen bases.

He was an excellent center fielder, making just three errors. He smiled and talked freely between whacks in the batting cage at Friday's workout for Saturday night's Series opener against Toronto. But he wouldn't drift back to describe his emotions of last October. "IVe dealt with that already," he said It was a load. He missed the Braves post-season excitement He went through a 60-day drug rehabilitation period.

He faced off-season uncertainty What would the public think of him? Would any team want him? He spent part of the offseason making a drug education film for youngsters that will be released sooa See BRAVES, Page D8 'ATLANTA Some 9-year-old girls ask their father to buy them dolls. Some ask to have a baseball catch. Some want to know why their daddy is so terrific. Otis Nixon's little girl, Genesis, asked him why he used drugs. "She understands what I'm going through and what I went through," he says, "and that's very important to me." 1 Nixon's team, the Atlanta Braves, was in the World Series one year ago.

It is a milestone for any player, especially one like Nixon who had little success in a major-league career that began in 1983 and was marred by several detours to the minors. Finally, in 1991, he had arrived. It was his first year with Atlanta, and he batted .297, with 72 stolen bases, 119 hits, 81 runs and 10 doubles, all career highs. The numbers could have been higher, but oh Sept. 16, just 23 days before the Braves began the NL playoffs, Nixon's season ended.

He was suspended for 60 days for failing a drug test The Braves nearly were champions without him. "It was very painful," he said. "Sometimes I could watch the whole game and sometimes I couldn't" Atlanta lost the World Series to Minnesota when Jack Morris pitched a 10-inning, 1-0 shutout in Game 7. In the top of the eighth, a base-running mistake by Lonnie Smith, Nix Dick CostelloThe Home News Craig Mitter is pursued by Army's Duncan Johnson after catching screen pass in second quarter. Mitter went 54 yards to score on the catch and run.

A it all together utsers Bum t7 JL fo Scarlet Knights get total team effort in routing Army -W ii quarterback Bryan Fortay. "That's just human nature. "We were at a stalemate. We were 3-3. We could have Men on our faces, or we could have come out and beat a team that's on a lower level than us.

We're not ready for the Top 10 or to be talking about a bowl game every year, but we're not letting teams like Army play with us and that's a big step forward for this program." It was, indeed, a big step for RU. It left a huge footprint on an Army team that fell to 2-3 an Army team that traditionally gives the Scarlet everything it can handle. But not yesterday: The Rutgers ground game produced 345 yards, including career-high totals for both Craig Mitter (159 yards and a touchdown in 23 carries) and Bruce Presley (103 yards and a score in 13 carries.) By BRIAN VANDERBEEK Home News senior sports writer EAST RUTHERFORD Through six games, Rutgers was a perfect 3-3 football team, batting .500 from both sides of the ball Starting with the season opener, the Scarlet defense has played well about half the time, as has the offense, but pity the team that got in Rutgers' way the day it decided to put together a two-platoon effort Poor Army. The Scarlet Knights, in a mirror image of the previous week's loss at Syracuse, scored on the second play from scrimmage and rolled to a 45-10 victory over the Cadets before an intimate gathering of 22,164 at Giants Stadium. "You almost get to the point where one side is blaming the other," said RU starting The Scarlet quarterbacks completed 13 of 22 passes for 171 yards, with Fortay accounting for 12 completions, 159 yards and three touchdowns.

In all, Rutgers rolled up 516 yards of offense, the most since Doug Graber took over the program three seasons ago. And that's only half of the good news, since the defense despite playing without six injured regulars came close to completely shutting down the Army wishbone: The Cadets finished with 278 rushing yards on 65 attempts, but had only three runs longer than 12 yards. Army, which had the opportunity to study the way Syracuse riddled RU with play-action passes, threw only eight times and completed three for 58 yards. "The one thing we talked about to the de-See KNIGHTS, Page 02 Princeton's day full of surprises Tigers shocked; Elias is injured which he rolled right then cut up strong inside, "a great call by Coach Vaas. We had been running the sweep all day.

It was a perfect time to use it It was wide opea" The pass to Hooey to set up the scoring play is "the tight end dump." Hooey took the i- 'V By JOHN BRUNS Home News sports writer WORCESTER, Mass. It was a day of surprises for the Princeton football team yesterday. A few of them were that junior tailback Keith Elias has only three yards on only three carries, that Elias did not start, and that the Tigers' defense outshined the offense. But these pale by comparison to the biggest surprise of all that the previously undefeated Tigers, now 4-1, lost 10-7 to Holy Cross. In gaining their 11th straight Homecoming win before a Fitton Field crowd of 8,114, the Crusaders (2-4) wiped out a Princeton lead that had stood since midway in the first period when senior tailback Erick Hamilton, playing for the injured Elias, raced 74 yards for a touchdown on the Tigers' first offensive play of the day.

The game-winning Holy Cross touchdown was scored by freshman quarterback Andy Fitzpatrick on a 10-yard run in the fourth period, one play after he passed 24 yards to tight end Ron Hooey. Both plays were put in just for this game. Holy Cross first year Coach Peter Vaas called the victory "a testament to the character of our team, that we are not as bad as we played last week" The reference was to the Crusaders' 48-0 loss to Dartmouth of the Ivy League. Fitzpatrick called his touchdown run, on pass in the right flat underneath the deep coverage and bounced off a couple of would-be tacklers to turn it into a 24-yard gain. Princeton captain and linebacker Aaron Harris said both calls caught the Tigers by surprise.

"We hadn't seen either play," he said. For Princeton Coach Steve Tosches, his third loss in three games against Holy Cross was a bitter pill, just as tormenting as the 30-26 loss in 1988 on the last play of the game and the 46-0 rout here in 1989. In addition to Elias really not playing because of an ankle injury, the Tigers lost See TIGERS, Page D2 Marc AscherThe Home News BALL CONTROL -Tim Shields of St. Joseph's tries to get a leg up on East Brunswick's Eric Albrecht battle for ball in soccer game yesterday. St Joseph's won, 4-1.

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