The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 57

SPORT Cos Anarics (Times San Diego County Thursday, November 8, 1984 OyPart III COLLEGE BASKETBALL PF NS STATE Pitching, Bench Are Top Priorities But Padres Could Stand Pat By STEVE DOLAN, Times Staff Writer SAN DIEGO-During the World Series, it was obvious that a lack of starting pitching and depth helped prevent the Padres from beating Detroit Therefore, it comes as no surprise that pitchers and utility players are San Diego's top priorities in today's free agent draft Although tampering rules prohibit the Padres from disclosing their choices beforehand. General Manager Jack McKeon said the team plans to draft four or five players. All are expected to be pitchers or utility players. The Padres are virtually certain to select pitchers Rick Sutclif fe and Steve Trout of the Chicago Cubs, plus utility players Lee Lacy of Pittsburgh and Jerry Royster of Atlanta. They may also choose relief pitcher Tim Stoddard of the Cubs.

Pitcher Ed Whitson and pinch-hitter Champ Summers are both in the free agent draft The Padres will retain their right to negotiate with Whitson but will not select Summers. Whitson won a career-high 14 games for the Padres in 1984. He was also their only pitcher to get past the fifth inning in the postseason, allowing just one run in eight innings of Game 3 in the National League Championship Series. "Ed has indicated that he wants to stay with us," McKeon said. "We want to keep him, if we can sign him within reason." Just what is within reason? Apparently, the Padres and Whitson's agent, Tom Reich, both place the value at approximately $500,000 a year.

But the Padres are only willing to offer three years and Whitson is seeking five. San Diego is somewhat hesitant Please see PADRES, Page 6 Jim Murray Oh, How a Horse's Looks Can Deceive He was a great, gaunt, growthy colt. His bones stuck out If he was human, they would call him Stick. He was even a bit splay-footed His gait was awkward, ungainly. He was not fiddle-headed exactly but no one called him Big Red or Black Beauty.

A living flame he was not Even his purchase price was an insult $17,500. It meant no one else wanted him. "They must need it for the spring plowing," sniffed the big spenders who ordinarily open an auction at that figure. The name was no help. Seattle Slew.

Most breeders thought it was in honor of the way his feet pointed, but it had a common ring to it You're supposed to get a horse's name out of the songs of "Scheherazade," not a road map. This was a blue-collar name. Poker players are named Seattle Slew, not turf legends. His owners were a New York veternarian and a couple from Yakima, a lumberjack named Mickey Taylor and his wife, Karen. Now, people from Yakima are supposed to buy bucking horses or cow-cutters.

Thoroughbreds are bought by lordly railroad barons or steel magnates and enrolled at Bel Air Stud and raised in white-picket-fence farms. Seattle Slew was raised on backstretches. The horsy set wouldn't have used him to chase foxes. Seattle Slew only became the most important race horse of his time, maybe of all time. It's for certain when you bring up the names of the greats of the track Man o' War, Count Fleet, Native Dancer, Gallant Fox, Secretariatyou have to throw the name of Seattle Slew in there.

Sockers Kick Aside the Dallas Sidekicks HM CK K. VV Tina Hutchinson, now a sophomore, led the Aztecs in scoring and rebounding last season. Aztec Women Seeking No. 1 Spot Last Season's 24-6 Team Looks Even Stronger Now By KIRK KENNEY SAN DIEGO When a coach is hired to rebuild a team, he usually asks for patience from the alumni and fans. He doesn't talk about miracles or overnight success.

Neither did Earnest Riggins, but he achieved it all the same. When Riggins took over the San Diego State women's basketball program last season, he inherited a team that had gone 10-18 the season before. All Riggins did was guide the Northern California's Alta Loma High School. This season. Riggins has added freshman point guard Penny To-Icr.

an All-American from St. Anthony's High School in Washington. D.C. Toler was among the nation's most heavily recruited guards. In her senior year at St.

Anthony's, she averaged 28.2 points. 5.6 assists and 7.5 steals a game. Riggins said Toler is a fine Please see SDSU, Page 16 Aztecs to a 24-6 finish and the school's first appearance in the NCAA playoffs. San Diego State was the most improved NCAA Division I school last season. Riggins, who came to SDSU from Lincoln High in East St.

Louis, accomplished the turnaround with three key recruits freshmen Tina Hutchinson, Toni Wallace and Shelda Arce-neaux. Hutchinson and Wallace followed Riggins from Lincoln High and Arceneaux came from Special to the Times DALLAS Although the Sockers have played better games, their effort Wednesday night was still good enough. They beat the Dallas Sidekicks, 8-4, to take sole possession of first place in the Western Division of the Major Indoor Soccer League. The Sockers are 2-0 and Dallas is 0-2. It was a game that the Sockers figured to win easily.

And, for the most part, they were not threatened. Dallas tied the game for the last time, 1-1, on a Steve Gardner goal midway through the first period. The Sidekicks scored twice in the second period to close the gap to 4-3, but Kaz Deyna scored his second game -winner in as many games for the Sockers with a goal at 6:46 of the period. "It was a game that we should've won and we won," Coach Ron Newman said. "I'm happy about that.

I think we could've played better. Who can be dissatisfied when you are 2-0 and have out- have been personally insulted by their opponents. "This is the most motivated bunch I've ever been around," said Washington's 6-7 linebacker Reggie Rogers, who is also a two-time varsity letterman in basketball. What turns them on? "Maybe they want it (the championship) more than other teams do," said Rogers, a psychology major. Huskies Aren't Great, but James' Gang Is a Rugged Bunch scored the opposition, 18-6?" Goalkeeper Zoltan Toth was both an offensive and defensive star for the Sockers.

Toth had two assists, tying an MISL record that had been accomplished 13 other times. He also had 14 saves, several of which were considered outstanding. Branko Segota was the only Socker to score two goals. Steve Zungul had one goal and two assists, giving him eight points in two games. Zungul was marked throughout the game by Dallas' Manny Andru-szewski, who also held Julie Veee of Las Vegas to one goal last week.

However, Newman still considered Zungul a key factor for the Sockers. "They couldn't stop him," Newman said. "He was still the danger man. He made things happen." The Sockers received one goal each from George Katakalidis, Brian Quinn, Steve Daley, Jean Will- Please see SOCKERS, Page 6 Why should they? "I have a theory about that," he said. "In the last two years, Washington State denied Washington the Rose Bowl in two fluke games.

I was playing basketball then didn't go out for football until this spring but I know it hurt them badly. The seniorsespeciallythey're determined to make up for Washington Please see HUSKIES, Page 14 It's a Bird, to Regret of Clippers BySAMMcMANIS, Times Staff Writer BOSTON He had already done almost everything else humanly possible with a basketball in the Boston Celtics' 135-108 blowout of the Clippers, but Larry Bird, decided to try something different late in Wednesday night's game. Bird, apparently frustrated because not all of his shots were falling, surprised everyone by drop-kicking the ball. It landed about 10 rows up in the Boston Garden seats, Bird drawing both a technical foul and a standing ova- Please see CLIPPERS, Page 11 By BOB OATES, Times Staff Writer SEATTLE During a press con ference here this week, Washington Coach Don James, a slight, sandy -haired figure in metal-rimmed glasses, yellow sweater, brown pants and cowboy boots, seated himself in an easy chair. Surrounded by 20 or 25 sports-writers in a university lounge area, James talked while reading from handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad.

ranked No. 1 in college football this year, the Huskies, who meet USC for the Rose Bowl bid Saturday, aren't a remarkably good team. They just don't make mistakes. And more than that, they force opponents to make them. They are where they are because they have aggressively taken the ball away 45 times this season in nine games.

At all times, they play as if they "I can see him doing that to the alumni or even his team," a reporter said afterward. "But this is the first football coach who ever needed notes to meet the press." An aide explained: "Don James is allergic to mistakes. Can't tolerate them by anybody least of all himself." This pretty much sums the man up. It also explains his team, the unbeaten Huskies. Although It's not that he won the Triple Crown, although he did that easily enough.

It's not that he won 14 of his 17 races. After all, Native Dancer and Man o' War won all but one of theirs. It's not that he had great speed. He didn't leave a string of broken clocks, like Swaps or Secretariat. He just won, baby.

He was like a great golfer. The swing had a loop in it, the grip was loose, he looked up. But he got the ball in the hole. He was like a Stan Musial. His crouch was all wrong, he hit off the wrong foot.

But the ball kept hitting the fence. "I have been beaten by a burro," a rival trainer once moaned as he lost an early 2-year-old race to Slew. "The horse runs like Charlie Chaplin," sneered another. When he kept winning and they couldn't think of anything else to say, they fell back on that old race track put-down, "He beat nothing." He beat everything that got in his way. Except once.

They flew him out to Hollywood Park in the middle of his career and he ran down the track to a local plugger named J.O. Tobin. It was the only time in his life he finished worse than first or second. He had drubbed J.O. Tobin in the Preak-ness but was a tired, overraced horse at Hollywood.

The first duty of a thoroughbred race horse is to win. The second is to beget winners. This is a little refinement of the art that eludes most of the great runners of their day. It's as true of equines as of humans: Greatness is not necessarily transferable. In fact, it usually isn't.

There are 11 Triple Crown winners. Only three have produced Kentucky Derby winners. Only two have sired a Preakness winner. Only two sired Belmont winners. Seattle Slew, only six years out from under the blanket of roses himself, has already fathered a Kentucky Derby and Belmont winner, the late Swale.

It is one of the mysteries of racing why precocity is not passed on. And why indifferent runners become the great patriarchs of the sport of kings. It would call into question, as if any were needed, the whole notion of the divine right of kings. Border circuits are awash Please see MURRAY, Page 19 It Wasn't Just Coaching That Set McKay Apart By MAL FLORENCE, Times Staff Writer There's something about the booth close to the front door of Julie's restaurant near the USC campus that inspires John McKay stories. It should.

It was McKay's booth. He held court there for coaches, sportswriters and Trojan boosters during his 16 years as the school's football coach. Now. McKay's actual.booth is no longer there. Julie Kohl had it shipped to McKay's favorite watering hole in Tampa when he left USC after the 1975 season to coach the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL.

The booth that replaced the original, however, is still known as McKay's booth. It was called that even when his successor, John Robinson, sat in it. Ted Tollner, Robinson's successor, usually sits elsewhere. The booth was filled the other night with coaches past and present a sportswriter and a USC booster. They wanted to share stories about McKay, who had announced Monday that he was leaving coaching at the end of the season.

Please see McKAY, Page 12 Los Angeles Times John McKay will be long remembered in the annals of USC football, both as a coach and as a unique individual. College Basketball A preseason look at United States International University, Point Loma Nazarene and UC San Diego. Please see Page 17. The Breeders' Cup Strawberry Road may be the way to go in the turf stakes, while Folk Art and Seattle Song are injured and out of their races. Please see Page 4.

The Raiders With David Humm out, and Jim Plunkett and Marc Wilson uncertain, the Raiders bring Jerry Golsteyn into the quarterback picture. Please see Page 2..