The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 32

SPORTS San Diego County Friday, September 11, 1981 Cos Angeles (ftmes CCtPart III Jim Murray Overkill Is Vida Blue With a Slider 55 "The Showdown' Is a Showdown After a Lot of Sparring, WA and WBC Decide Hearns-Leonard Is a Title Bout if 1 'V yv W. By RICHARD HOFFER, Times Staff Writer The long-awaited and much-publicized fight between champion welterweights Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns, you may have noticed, has been billed as anything, and everything, but a championship fight. Though Leonard commands his title from the World Boxing Council and Hearns his from the rival World Boxing this fight has not, mysteriously enough, been billed as a title unification bout. "The Showdown" has been the billing of preference in Las Vegas, site of next Wednesday night's big money If I I 7 f. --(VI Ballplayers call It "heat." The Ace.

"Flame." No. 1. The "Express." Fire. The Prince of Pitches. The high, hard one.

It was all Walter Johnson had. It was all Walter Johnson needed. It was all Vida Rochelle Blue, Jr. had when he first came up to the big leagues. Like Johnson, he figured it was enough.

So did the American League. There never was a better-looking athlete on a pitcher's mound than Vida Blue. His back was as broad as a lorry. The muscles rippled. The fastball came in so quickly, it arrived scorched.

And 301 batters were strikeout victims because of it in his first year in the big leagues. He won the Cy Young, the MVP, 24 games, eight shutouts, and the Oakland A's were to get in five straight playoffs and three World Series with him. He not only saved the Oakland A's, he saved the American League. And every one of those years Vida pitched for them, Oakland drew more fans on the road than they did at home, sometimes twice as many. si I 1 .7 taut a mtmmt mimtfiimmMM JOHN UcDONOUGH Lot Angela Time Chargers' Charlie Joiner (right) hangs on to a pass while, Rams' Rod Perry hangs on to Joiner.

Cornerbacks Just Don't Buy Charlie Joiner's Deterioration Ron Cey fight. It properly reflected the status of the bout, indicating the ty of Hearns' and Leonard's welterweight tournament. It ignored, at the same time, such niceties as titles involved. If any. Reason? The two boxing commissions simply had not sanctioned the bout.

And the reason for that? The fighters and promoters were insistent on keeping the money to themselves, refusing to deed percentages of the gross to the WBA and WBC, each of which demands healthy fees for sanctioning. Money to Spare In the case of the Leonard-Hearns fight the WBC and WBA each were demanding amounts totaling more than $500,000. The WBC exacts 1.5 of the challenger's gross (expected to be more than $5 million for Hearns) and 2 of the champion's gross (certain to be more than $8 million for Leonard) to sanction a title fight. The WBA's guidelines are similar. On top of that, each appropriates fees from promoters and TV.

To be sure, there would be money to spare for the two governing bodies. With closed circuit TV, pay TV and a live gate that will probably top $6 million, the affair is expected to generate between $30 and $40 million for the principals. The promoters and fighters didn't want to see quite that much of it go for licensing fees. From their point of view, the world is bound to recognize the winner as the welterweight championship. Why can't the WBA and WBC? Well, it turns out they can, after all.

After lengthy negotiation, the WBA Wednesday notified the Nevada Athletic Commission in writing it would sanction the fight for its title. The WBC, which is meeting in South Korea this week, had not yet officially provided sanctioning in writing. However, it did notify the commission of its representatives for the fight, indicating official sanctioning is on its way. Please see SANCTION, Page 14 By DAVE DISTEL, Times Staff Writer SAN DIEGO Fine wine, fine furniture and fine art get better and more valuable with age, but age usually turns fine football players into assistant coaches. The statistical chart for a wide receiver, for example, will often look like a ski slope.

Or a cliff. A wide receiver who catches maybe two passes a game at the age of 30 should probably be contemplating how he might make a living at whatever it was he studied in college. Charlie Joiner was. Joiner thought it might be time to retire before the 1977 season but played and caught 35 passes in 14 games. Tommy Prothro talked him into coming back again, and he caught a mere 33 passes in 16 games in 1978.

Indeed, Joiner has considered retirement every year since 1977. He has an off-season job in the accounting department of an oil company headquartered back home in Houston, and each year he thinks maybe it is time to settle down. Nobody's ever had his nose bloodied by an adding machine. And it was no different this year. But now folks are surprised when Joiner thinks maybe he should deal with the bottom line rather than the goal line.

After all, Charlie Joiner has caught 143 passes guy really going to be 34 years old on Oct. 14? Was that the man who came to training camp this year and said he almost retired because his skills had so greatly deteriorated? One and the same. "Charlie takes a lot of pleasure in not deteriorating," said quarterback Dan Fouts. "Maybe people expect that he should, but he's defied growing old." Ernie Zampese, the Chargers' wide receiver coache, uses one word to describe Joiner. Unbelievable.

And he uses a few others to explain why: "They call him The Professional, and he's just flat one of the great wide receivers in the National Football League. Without question, he is the finest technician running routes and reading coverages." And Zampese wanted it known he was not talking about mental agility alone. "You can forget technique," he said, "and just line him up and he'd be a fine receiver." Joiner himself talks as if Fouts and Zampese must be talking about someone else. He talks as if he would be lucky to win a foot race with Bear Bryant. He understates himself and underplays his hand, like someone with a straight flush who lets the other guys raise the ante.

"I'm just thinking about doing the best I can this year," he said. "Depending on my perfor-Please see JOINER, Page 19 Dodgers Lose Cey for the Rest of the Season By MARK HEISLER, Times Staff Writer CINCINNATI The Dodgers flew here for today's start of a three-game series with the Reds hoping to hear they still had a chance to get back third baseman Ron Cey, hit on the left forearm by a Tom Griffin pitch Wednesday night. But on arrival Thursday they learned Cey is definitely out for three weeks which means the rest of the regular season. There also is a lot of doubt that Cey will be able to play again this year even if the Dodgers make an extended postseason appearance. Cey cracked a bone in his left forearm when he was hit by Griffin in the fourth inning of the series finale with the Giants.

He visited Dr. Frank Jobe Thursday. Please see DODGERS, Page 8 But to give you a real idea how good Vida Blue was, the commissioner of all baseball himself stepped in to block not one but two trades for him, because he said it would "throw baseball out of competitive balance." The New York Yankees were offering everything west of the East River for him. The Cincinnati Reds made a stunning offer. The commissioner blocked both deals but then-get this! OK'd a deal for the Reds to get Tom Seaver instead! Vida Blue was flattered, but you can't eat flattery.

So the Giants then got Vida for seven players and a chunk of cash in six or seven figures. Reggie Jackson cracked, "The Giants got Vida for cash and a team to be named later." A lot of people thought Vida was making a mistake taking his one-pitch repertoire over to the dirty-uniform, stick-itrin-his-ear-league, and leaving the good old boys network, the "brother-in-law" league which they called the American. "They eat astballs for breakfast over there in the National," they warned Vida. for 2,140 yards over the last two seasons. And wasn't that Charlie Joiner catching six passes for 191 yards on national TV Monday night? Is that No Upsets in Open Tennis Borg, Connors Advance With Ease to Round of Four By ALAN GREENBERG, Times Staff Writer 'x Vida had tinkered with a curveball but there was one thing wrong with it.

It curved right out of the strike zone. One day, Herm Starrette, then a Giants coach, noticed Blue trying breaking pitches on the sideline. What was breaking was the manager's heart. "Have you ever thought of trying a slider?" Starrette wanted to know. "How do you grip that?" Vida wanted to know.

Starrette (now a coach with the Phillies) showed him. And the National League was in as much trouble as the American League. "I realize a slider is a hazardous pitch," Vida Blue recalls, now three years since that day. "But it was comfortable for me. It has the characteristics of a fastball but it breaks and it can be thrown at different speeds." Oldtime baseball men, notably the late Fresco Thompson, used to grumble that the slider was Please tee MURRAY, Page 19 tommorow (Friday)," Connors said.

"I'll worry about it Saturday. Worry about it before that and it'll give me an ulcer. I'm too young for that. "I've been stuck on three (Open titles) for a couple of years and three's not really my favorite number. I want to win the Open more than I want to win any other tournament." Connors refused to speculate on how he might change his luck against Borg, his supreme nemesis.

"What the hell do you want me to do for you, draw you a blueprint?" Connors said. "I'm no architect." "We're going to play a lot of points on the baseline," Borg said, "the usual stuff." "The usual stuff" is also what Borg-Tanner Open quarterfinal matches have become. This was the third year in a row that they'd met in the Open quarterfinals. In 1979, they played a night match here. Tanner's serve was on, and Borg might as well have been a batter facing Nolan Ryan at twilight.

Tan-Please see U.S. OPEN, Page 16 NEW YORK It was like Nolan Ryan without his fastball, Joe Fra-zier without his left hook, Wilt Chamberlain without his dipper dunk. It was Roscoe Tanner without his monster first serve, that 140 mile per hour beast rarely seen but often heard. Tanner's first serve isn't something he can turn on or off, the way Magic Johnson can his smile. It's something he just hopes is there, like the last piece of candy.

When it's gone, as it was Thursday afternoon against Bjorn Borg in the men's quarterfinal of the U.S. Open, Tanner's tennis is none too sweet. Sometimes, he hits backhands like a dentist from Des Moines. Grit, he's got. Despite missing 51 of his first serves and making enough unforced errors to stock an all-comers meet (46), Tanner was down two sets to No.

2-seeded Borg, but fought the good fight before losing, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3, 6-7 (4-7), 7-6 (9-7), in a match that wasn't as close as the score would indicate. The win moves Borg into Saturday's men's semifinals against No. 4 seed Jimmy Connors, who beat No. 8 seed Eliot Teltscher Thursday night, 6-3, 6-1, 6-2, in 121 minutes. Top seed John McEnroe plays No.

15 seed Vitas Gerulaitis in a battle of New Yorkers in the other semifinal. Aggressive as ever, Connors hit 39 winners compared to Teltscher's 11. "I just play the way I play," Teltscher said about Connors' mastery of him. "If that's not good enough, it's not good enough." Connors, 28, now has beaten Teltscher, 22, all seven times they've played. Borg is another matter.

He has beaten Connors in both their 1981 meetings, including a five-set semifinal at Wimbledon. Borg has beaten Connors nine times in a row. Connors last beat Borg in the 1978 Open final, Connors' third and last Open crown. "I know one thing, I'm not going to worry about it (playing Borg) ss mmmm Associated Press Somebody must have told George Rogers to stretch until it hurts. The New Orleans Saints rookie running back makes his home debut in the NFL against the Rams Sunday afternoon at the Superdome.

George Rogers Has Problems That Are Bigger Than Football 0 By TED GREEN, Times Staff Writer Will Bum Phillips Be i a Saint Marching In I Story on Pago 3 USCfs Edwards Ready to Tackle Big Season i i Story on Page 4 1 Dolphins Trounce the Steelers, 30-10 Story on Page 5 power back from South Carolina, hasn't set the NFL on its ear. But neither has he fallen on his face. After one training camp, four exhibitions and his first league game, he fits comfortably between those extremes. In his official debut Sunday under the Saints' new head coach, Bum Phillips, Rogers gained 61 yards on 13 carries (4.7 average) against the Atlanta Falcons, whose swarming, hard-hitting defense is nothing like Rogers ever faced during his glamorous college career at South Carolina. For Rogers' second act, he'll run Please see ROGERS, Page 9 Can a Heisman Trophy-winning halfback, facing additional family pressures, find happiness with pro football's worst team, the.New Orleans SAINTS? George Rogers might begin considering that question in November or December, but it may be some time before he can really answer it.

Besides, this is no time for questions like that. For now, the National Football League's No. 1 draft choice is learning the ropes, taking his lumps, adjusting to an entirely new situation and figuring what his own expectations are while trying to politely ignore everybody else's. So far Rogers, a 6-2, 220-pound II 'xWSSSNK PETE BENTOVOJA Los Angeles Times The Flathead Catfish: It's One Hot Item on the Lower Colorado River Story on Page 18.