After a Big Score on Road, Gaston Green Wants to Play It Again

Gaston Green. It is the sort of name that might have belonged to a member of the French resistance during the war, to a spy who smuggled visa papers to the Allies and then hid from the Moroccan authorities in Rick’s Cafe Americain.

But this Gaston Green, aficionado of Humphrey Bogart movies, a man who says he has seen “Casablanca” 30 or 40 times, is a 19-year-old running back for the UCLA football team. He has no real use for guns or trenchcoats or mysterious dames.

All he wants to do is play football, and then play it again.

“I’m just glad to be back in action,” he said. “I missed the excitement.”

After sitting out much of the season with a knee injury, Green returned to active duty a couple of weeks ago against California, got an extra week’s rest when UCLA had a bye, and then really hit full stride in Saturday night’s 24-19 success against Arizona.

He scored three touchdowns, on three runs inside the 10. He picked up 98 yards all told, only 30 yards less than all of Arizona’s rushers combined.

And in a run that turned out to be every bit as significant as any of his touchdowns, Green used a burst of speed to beat four opponents to a fumble at the Arizona four.

It was just the sort of high-speed chase his father, Gaston Green II, used to make in this part of the country when he was a hurdler for Arizona State. Green saw UCLA flanker Karl Dorrell go long, catch a bomb from David Norrie and head for the end zone. He figured he had better tailgate him, just in case.

Dorrell never saw the Arizona player who poked the ball away from behind. It squirted toward the end zone, and four Wildcats made a beeline for it. They were trailing only 17-7 at the time, with nearly 19 minutes remaining in the game.

That third-quarter save probably saved the game for the Bruins, who tried to give it away near the end. “Yes, I think it might have,” Green said. “Arizona was starting to get momentum. If they had beaten me to that ball, you never know what would have happened next.”

Coach Terry Donahue, asked what impact that play had on the game, said: “Huge. Huge! The touchdown we wound up getting there really put Arizona in a hole.”

Green got all of UCLA’s touchdowns. He was back in the form that earned him 144 yards in the 39-37 win over Miami in the Fiesta Bowl, where--as a freshman--he was named the game’s outstanding player. He also looked the way he looked in the second game this season, the 26-all tie at Tennessee, where he ran up 194 yards.

After Saturday’s game, Green limped out of the locker room, his legs trailing so much shredded tape that he resembled someone who had just stepped out of a mummy movie. No matter how it looked, he said, “I’m 100% again, for the first time in a while. My body’s real sore, because those Arizona linebackers could hit hard, but my knee is fine. I think I can do most of the things I did before.”

Highly recruited out of Gardena High School, where he gained 2,811 yards and scored 32 touchdowns while his friends called him “Gas,” the 5-10 1/2, 191-pound tailback gives UCLA’s backfield an explosiveness that it does not have without him. The Bruins have several excellent backs, but none with Green’s acceleration.

During the four games he missed, Green had little to do except prop up his injured left knee and watch television. Same as he did in the summertime.

“On summer vacation, I started watching the late show on TV, and that’s where I got interested in Bogart. The man knows how to dress, how to carry himself, how to talk, even how to hold a cigarette. Lots of style. That’s how I’d like to be.”

Asked if he owned a trenchcoat, Green said: “No. I’ve got to get me one of those.”

In the meantime, all he wants to do is stay healthy so he can keep playing, particularly if UCLA is going to play New Year’s Day. “The Rose Bowl has always been a dream of mine,” Green said. “Maybe I can play in more than one for UCLA before I’m through.”

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.