Tuesday, February 23, 1987/The Battalion/Page 7
Sports
AY AGAIN?
JSERT 254
luminum is fantastic for cans,
angerous for baseball players
[ P THE)/
mi
Seeing blood gush from A&M
ebacker John Roper’s face after a
arterback sack in the LSU game
is a frightening sight. But it
uldn’t compare with the horror of
e sight of a motionless Darin Fer-
a . nd e . Z ’
[niversit y
New Or-
le a n s
Itcher, ly-
Ig on the
lound after
aving a line
•ive by
l&M’s Tom
a r c i o n e
pcket off
Is leg.
1 From my
|erspective
the press
bx, the ball
loked as if it hit Fernandez in the
roin. But the ball made a loud
racking sound when it ricocheted
[iward the UNO dugout as if the
all hit Fernandez’s knee.
My first thought was that he had
Anthony
Wilson
Sports viewpoint
broken a leg or shattered a kneecap.
Fernandez stayed on the ground for
five minutes as A&M’s and UNO’s
trainers attended to him.
Fernandez Finally got up and after
a few practice tosses, finished the in
ning, a credit to his gutsiness.
Fernandez never had a chance to
get out of the way of.the horsehide
projectile traveling at a speed of
close to 200 mph. He was lucky, if
the trajectory of ball had been
slightly higher, it could have broken
his ribs. The worst scenario, and a
aossible one, is that the ball could
lave hit him in the head or face and
easily killed him.
The culprit of this possible das
tardly deed? The aluminum bat — a
potentially lethal weapon in the
hands of any dec ent line drive hitter
with quick wrists.
Ever wonder why aluminum bats
are used in Little League, high
school and college baseball, but not
the major leagues? The answer is
simple — no one in the major
leagues wants to see a pitcher get
killed.
Imagine this hypothetical situa
tion: Fastballer Roger Clemens is on
the mound wielding a small leather
sphere and a glove. Power hitter
Darryl Strawberry is at the plate
wielding a large piece of metal a.k.a.
an aluminum bat. Clemens winds up
and lets fly with a screamer right
down the pipe. Strawberry winds up
and lets fly with his windmill swing.
Strawberry connects with the ball.
The ball connects with Clemens, and
a great talent and a human life is cut
down in its prime.
The major leagues realizes the
danger involved in letting great hit
ters use aluminum bats with a hu
man being standing in a vulnerable
position 60'/a feet away.
Aluminum bats would also give
major leaguers an unfair advantage.
If you think hitters are hitting too
many home runs with the so-called
livelier “rabbit ball,” try to imagine
how many more would be hit with
aluminum bats.
Roger Maris’ and Hank Aaron’s
home run records wouldn’t stand a
chance. Singles would become obso
lete in the Minnesota Twins’ Hom-
erdome. The art of bunting would
fall by the wayside.
Collegiate teams using wooden
bats also would give professional
scouts a better perspective about
how good a hitter really is and po
tentially could be in the majors.
Using aluminum bats does have
its advantages. Trainers never have
to worry about replacing chipped or
broken bats. Hitters don’t have to
worry about breaking bats by hitting
a ball on the label. Aluminum bats
also take away some of the nuances
of the game. When a baseball meets
a wooden bat, the result is a hearty
“CRACK!” that is music to any true
baseball fan’s ears. The sound of a
hit with an aluminum bat sounds like
a sickly synthesizer — “plink.”
The solution — to replace alumi
num bats with wooden ones — could
be implemented in between seasons
at a relatively cheap costs. Of course,
any cost would be cheaper than that
of a human’s life.
Many factors caused
downfall of US team
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) —
Too little international experi
ence and not enough help from
the NHL were largely responsible
for the demise of the U.S. Olym
pic hockey team, leaders of the
squad claim.
Eliminated from the medal
round with a 2-3 round-robin re
cord, the Americans could not
cope with the top veteran teams
in the tournament — the Soviet
Union, Czechoslovakia and West
Germany.
“We played well and we played
hard, but we didn’t always play
wisely,” Coach Dave Peterson said
in the wake of Sunday night’s 4-1
loss to West Germany.“Give me
this team for four years and we’d
win a gold medal.”
But Peterson only had about
six months to put together the
U.S. team. Even though the
Americans played a 60-game ex
hibition schedule leading to the
Olympics, they were criticized for
their generally weak opposition.
While they played nine games
against NHL clubs, the U.S.
hockey team did not always face
the best players the pro teams
had to offer. And while the team
played an eight-game series with
the Soviet Selects, that opposition
wasn’t close to the quality of the
Soviet national team.
A little more than one third of
the schedule was devoted to
games against much weaker col
lege teams.
“That might have hurt us,”
goaltender Mike Richter said.
“We really didn’t get much com
petition from the college teams
we played.”
For General Manager Art
Berglund, it apparently wasn’t
enough.
Had the team played a tough
enough exhibition schedule, one
as demanding as Canada’s?
“Probably not,” Berglund said.
“We probably wished we would
have played more NHL teams.
But you have to get. them when
you can.”
Ag baseball team improves to 9-0
kfter 12-2 demolition of Bearkats
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By Loyd Brumfield
Sports Editor
HUNTSVILLE — T he Texas
\&M baseball team continued to
loll over its opponents, clubbing
Bam Houston State 12-2 Monday
afternoon.
A&M, 9-0 and ranked fourth
in the nation, will play Lamar to-
[day in a doubleheader beginning
|at 1 p.m. at Olsen Field.
The Aggies toppled the Bear-
kats’ upset hopes in a hurry, scor
ing six times in the first inning to
put SHSU away.
After Kirk Thompson’s lead-
off walk, Terry Taylor and Scott
Livingstone both singled, and af
ter John Byington struck out, five
straight Aggies made it to base,
highlighted by Tim McWilliam’s
two-run double.
A&M got some more runs in
the second when Byington
doubled, and he and shortstop
Chuck Knoblauch scored on a
Jim Neumann sacrifice fly.
Both teams went scoreless in
the third, but the Aggies picked
up the tempo again in the fourth
when a sacrifice fly by Tom Car-
cione brought Livingstone home.
The Bearkats scored twice in
the seventh off A&M reliever
Kerry Freudenberg, but the Ag
gies came back in the eighth to
score six runs to finish the scor
ing.
Livingstone hit a two-run hom-
erun in the inning, and Byington
followed with a double off the left
field wall, and four more runs
followed.
Blair leads US to second gold medal
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) — Bon
nie Blair lifted Americans’ morale
and medals count in speed skating
Monday, winning the women’s 500-
meter sprint in world-record time.
It was the first gold medal in
speed skating by an American
woman since Sheila Young won the
500 in 1976 and only the fourth
ever.
It also was the fourth U.S. medal
of this Olympics, the second in speed
skating, and it provided a measure
of revenge for her team.
Blair’s time of 39.10 seconds
nipped the world record set minutes
earlier by her East German arch-ri
val, Christa Rothenburger. In the
men’s 1,500 meters Saturday, Amer
ican Eric Flaim saw his world record
last only five minutes before East
German Andre Hoffman beat it and
took the gold.
“She looked to me and I gave her
the thumbs up,” said Flaim, who set
tled for silver. “She did a heck of a
job.”
Rothenburger took the silver be
hind Blair, while the bronze went to
East Germany’s Karen Kania, her
sixth Olympic medal, in 39.24 sec
onds.
It was the third straight Olympics
that Kania has won a medal in the
500. She won in 1980 and took the
silver in 1984, when she had two
golds and a silver in other events.
Rothenburger, the defending
Olympic gold medalist in the 500,
skated in the second pair and ripped
off a 39.12 to break her former
world record of 39.39 seconds set in
Calgary last December.
Rothenburger’s first 100 meters
were clocked in 10.57 seconds, but
when it was Blair’s turn two pairs
later, she got off the line even faster
— in 10.55 seconds — and made a fi
nal lunge at the finish line to beat
Rothenburger by .02 of a second to
the cheers of a large crowd at the in
door Olympic Oval.
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Texas Instruments
JobRur
Tuesday, February 23, 1988
Texas A&M
Rudder Tower
Room 701
Interviews Scheduled
Please bring your resume and a copy of your transcript or a list of courses.
TALK TO TTS MAJOR
PRODUCT & SERVICE
GROUPS.
Tl’s technical managers want to
see you. They want to tell you
about the job opportunities in the
many technologies which make
Texas Instruments a leader in
electronics.
That’s why T1 is having a J(h
Pair on the Texas A <St M campus
February 23 through 25. It gives
the company three days to bring
in key engineers and managers to
meet you. They’ll come from T1
labs and sites to describe programs,
answer questions, and schedule
interviews.
If you’re a top student, partic
ularly in EE or Computer Science,
this is an event you won’t want
to miss.
SIGN UP FOR
INTERVIEWS IF YOU
ARE GRADUATING
WITH THESE
DEGREES:
Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD
degrees in:
• Electrical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Medianical Engineering
• Industrial Engineering
• Phsyics (Engineering and
Solid-State)
• MBA with technical under
graduate degree
• Business Analysis
Briefings and sign-ups for
interviews: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.,
Febmary 23, Rcxm 701, Rudder
Twer.
Interview's (by appointment):
February 24 and 25 in the Annex.
For more information,
please contact the Texas A&M
Placement Service.
An Equal Opportunity
Employer M/F/V/H
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