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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 1981)
sports mu they return? Baseball has best shot at being resurrected &.s££sp*tz University •nnouZJd°S>'neca^„'ZSS1,> S'"°e intercollegiate sports Of thn!L eliminate four hisappearlo compltfeiy ’h™ h•« on af the dub sport level * S°CCer has Has ITamZlTJcTZoT^n'^1'''9 me Cu«" surprise, shock ana outrage then n'""9 °' ,he announced, and the fructrF* when the cuts were they were earned out 0" and sad"**s when sport orFthe O^goncampus" *" **fUtUre ofeach •ng golfS cTubs^or^ny1 meiTo0^?0" VVOmen swin9* apparatus for the Ducks 9yrating on gymnastic ^,na Zl7stktLb:F^re9°" baseba" 'earn now tZZ?Zat,?lCue‘maaa las» M*> are coaches chopped from the Jthtet* °Ith* ath,etes and now turned to eitt,er hil e,'C department have they're feeling the cuts * 6SS °r res'9nat,on Now by meT^vae?sfty°adm!mstrahonn°hnCement May 7 reviving some of the sports Jan. there was talk of for cuts in the athletic budol oTh^ alterna,,ve Plans "'Nng Dump me neXZLbgT''a,e SP°"S°" down "me haS gona b>. that talk has quiete0 <v Oregon athletic director R,Ck Bay has gone on the record very early jn his administration con cernmg the four eliminated in las? spring s cut As 1 have stated priorities down the Graphic by Max Defiungs road, once we have Jrissr,s ,o res,ore ~aa, tt John CainrwaTnSoUfma7oreaonCCehed ,ormer director were made to cut yet he tru^StH When fhe decisions who made the fmalVho.ce 6 Jud9emenf °f those a lot ofkso0uT searching9 A fof '^USSio.ns thaf there was they were treated unfa.rfvl 6 m'9hf ,eel ,hat nature y’ but that s just human were as tr.ra^hPeey0cieu^be9ed th6 resP°nsibil,ty elim,natededepe^dhseupony0nenfhmq9 baCk the sports "When wp na,n „ e rn,n9 — money we have lost then weCcanadoath,sUm °fr6Venue ,hat 9»ve no timetable on when this I h S3'd Bay can a goal | can't tell you how long this wT^ke th'S Prom most observers st«nHr!J <ake ~ ^hSsis' ara --- U>ay have the longest ?m? ^E'^09'3™ Cut knew the sport even existed iaTt b Relatively few _|ewer s„„ were benefited fay ^ y*a/^st year and wc. Photo by Mark Pynas Athletic director Rick Bay is committed to bringing the sports back to the campus "One of the priorities, down the road, is to restore the sports that were cut." Successful with or without varsity sport funding, women’s soccer may have a much shorter wait for reinstatement Relatively inexpensive — $19.406 — the team could well make the national playoffs this year, barring a disasterous streak of luck The sport would be an attractive addition to the women s program If Bill Ballester had his way, men's gymnastics might never be back "It would be a great injustice to tear it down and then try to build it back up again," said Ballester, the coach of Oregon's winningest sport in history "It would take a long time (to build it back up) When the University cut the sports it was un precedented for a university to cut a nationally ranked program " "Now don't get me wrong I love the University, and I'm proud of the athletic department, but it doesn't change the fact that they screwed up ” Still Ballester believes that gymnastics may one day be resurrected It would take at least five years for effective recruiting and an additional five years to get back on the championship level "But the credibility is gone," added Ballester, who said he'll never be involved in gymnastics at the University again The one sport with a good shot at returning this year is baseball — ironically the least successful o< the sports cut As soon as the decision to eliminate baseball was announced, a group of interested citizens began formulating a way to bring the national pastime back to the campus Bill Triplett, a Portland businessman and former college baseball player organized the Save Oregon Baseball Committee last spring to finance the return of baseball Triplett and committee chairman John Elorriaga, chairman of the board of U S Bancorp, talked with University officials about their goal “I went down to Eugene to investigate the pos sibilities," said Triplett a graduate of Stanford "I talked with Ray Hawk (vice-president for administra tion and finance) and Curt Simic (vice president for public affairs), and they told me that the only way that baseball would be reinstated was if the funds needed were developed from outside the University " Two plans were considered One plan involved a $500,000 endowment fund that, at 15% interest, would yield $75,000 per year — more than enough to fund a team The other was a short-term measure — a stake of $150,000 to fund the team for three years This was the plan decided upon by the committee With 10 or so players from last year's team still in Eugene, the committee thought fielding a team as soon as 1982 was feasible But for the team to be able to play the 1982 season, a deadline of Nov 1 was set by the Northern Division baseball conference for Oregon to be included in this year's schedule And as the deadline approaches, the Save Oregon Baseball fund is still a long way from suc cess $50,000 has been raised thus far, but $100,000 must still come in within two weeks And to compound the problem, Triplett has told those who have donated thus far that the money is for bringing baseball back this year — and that the money will be returned if the deadline isn't met "It's been tough," Triplett said "It's a tough economy now, the lumber industry is in horrible shape People who would normally give can't come up with the money " The money that s come in so far has been mostly in large chunks — Elorriaga s U S Bank chipped in $15 000, while Pacific Northwest Bell added $10,000 to name a few But Triplett's plan for the final push is a personal appeal "I sent 500 letters out last week, asking people to give $150 for three years If we get 200 people willing to do that, we’ll make our goal " Whether or not baseball will make it back is still up in the air "I've been in contact with people who conceivably would be willing to give $40,000 or $50,000 It could be just a couple of phone calls away " Or it could be a lot longer time before baseball and the other three Oregon sports return to the campus A plea from a member of the women's soccer team probably best sums up the feelings of those athletes now truly feeling the cuts "Tell them we want to be varsity again " One more acronym; true-false In Thursday's Emerald, Steve Spate’s column “Acronyms in uniform” should have included one more pair of opposites — true false. it is hue that Micheal Leander was enrolled at USC from the tell of 1870 to spring of 1872. However, ft is also hue that OJ. Simpson graduated from USC In 1869, the year before Leander even arrived at hie school, and was a member of the NFL's Buffalo Bills in the tell of that year. Leander’s claims to have hied out for the same team or to have been in a class with Simpson are false. The Emerald Sports staff regrets the error and pledges to do its utmost to insure against another error of this kind. 1 O Yankees sweep Oakland for pennant OAKLAND (AP) — Willie Randolph snapped a scoreless tie with a two-out homer in the sixth inning and the New York Yankees captured their 33rd American League pennant by beating the Oakland A s 4-0 Thursday night to complete a three-game sweep of the league championship series Graig Nettles, who already had driven in six runs in the first two games of the series, ripped a two-out three-run double over the head of cen terfielder Rick Bosetti in the ninth inning to put an end to the 1981 story of the upstart A's Dave Righetti, the Yankees 22-year-old rookie left-hander, held Oakland scoreless through six innings, but after throwing 112 pitches, he was replaced by Ron Davis and then Goose Gossage who finished up for the World Series-bound Yankees In all, they held the A s to five hits Former Yankee manager and player Billy Martin s A s could score only four runs in three games against New York while the Yankees scored 20 New York stranded nine runners through the first five innings, which took two hours to play Finally, Randolph ended the tension by picking on a 1-0 delivery by Matt Keough that he lofted high over the left field wall for his first home run since April and his first in postseason play since 1977 PriHau r^rfnKar 1 K 1 Qft1
