Outlook Dismal for Sockers

Comatose.

No, the Sockers are not dead. Yet.

But it is getting to be a little hard to find a pulse. Maybe they should be checked into the Johns Hopkins Medical Center for a day of observation before Saturday’s Game 7 of the Major Indoor Soccer League’s championship series.

It has come to that.

Game 7.

It has come to that because it came to this Thursday night: Baltimore 7, San Diego 0.

No, that is not a misprint. That is exactly the second time they have been shut out in their history, the first in the playoffs. It also stands as their worst playoff defeat.

In just three days, this team has gone from iced champagne to chilled chances. Indeed, it has gone cold at what should be the hottest time of the season. It is dead in the water on the shore of Chesapeake Bay.

Yes, Game 7.

No one, at least no one in San Diego, thought there would be a Game 6. Everyone thought it would end with Game 5 in San Diego Tuesday night. The Sockers would celebrate, and the Baltimore Blast would go home. But the Blast won, 6-3, came home and brought the Sockers with them.

And now the Blast is planning the party. It was a Blast of a blast Thursday night, when a modest crowd of 6,990 managed to make enough noise to bring their heroes out for a curtain call.

Whew. Baltimore had never had a shutout victory in 253 previous games in the Baltimore Arena. That’s how bad it was.

You watch these last two games and you wonder how this ever got to seven games. You wonder how the Sockers managed to survive this long.

Brian Quinn had a word for Thursday night.

“Dismal,” he said.

It was so dismal it is hard to imagine that the Sockers can pick themselves up out of the debris of a 7-0 loss and win this one-game showdown and their seventh indoor title in the past eight years.

“I don’t think we can play like that again,” Coach Ron Newman said, “and be good enough to do it. We’ve got something to prove now.”

Right. The Sockers have to prove that they belong in Game 7.

The only way you could tell that the Blast players were not the only ones on the carpet Thursday night was because they only scored seven goals.

But . . .

“It did seem that there was only one team in the game in the fourth quarter,” Newman said.

Baltimore scored four goals in that fourth period, but this was a game the Sockers never seemed to be in. Every time they got the ball into an advantageous position, which wasn’t often, no one was there.

When the Blast went up, 5-0, Newman pulled people such as Branko Segota, Steve Zungul and Victor Nogueira to rest them for Saturday night.

Yes, there will be a Saturday night. A team defeated in front of its home fans and then blown away on the road has to pick it back up for one more game . . . on the road.

“It won’t be any harder than trying to pick ourselves up after that first game, when we were ahead, 3-1, with a minute left and lost it in overtime,” said Kevin Crow. “It’s a matter now of everything coming down to one game. There’s nothing to hold back for.”

That’s it now . . . a one-game season.

“We’ve got to keep our heads up,” Waad Hirmez said. “We’re professionals, and it’s down to the wire now. It’s like the Belmont Stakes, Sunday Silence and Easy Goer going down to the wire.”

Quinn had another analogy.

“We have to be prepared to fight, fight, fight like heavyweight boxers,” he said. “We have to fight, fight, fight.”

They were stripped of pride Thursday when, during a timeout, a Scottish terrier put on a marvelous ballhandling exhibition that was probably the envy of the San Diego bench.

Brian Quinn is right, though, and so are Ron Newman, Kevin Crow and Waad Hirmez. A different team, in intensity at least, must show up Saturday night if another banner is to hang from the Sports Arena’s rafters.

Somewhere, somehow, the Sockers have to find the fight that has seemingly gone out of them.

It looks dismal. It looks dreary. It looks hopeless.

Comatose, that’s the word.

But there is one thing of which no one is more aware than the Baltimore Blast. When the Sockers need to reach down and get to a higher level, they seem to find it.

Remember that they were down three games to two against Dallas in the semifinals, and came back to win it. But remember also that they came back home to do that.

This will be different. This will be tougher.

Yes, the series is even. It just doesn’t seem like it, not after Thursday night.