Speed Puts the Sockers At the Limit

You can excuse the Major Indoor Soccer League’s membership if it perceives the Sockers as a team that has everything.

The Sockers, after all, entered the 1989-90 season with seven indoor championships in the past eight years and another mini-run of two in a row.

These guys needed to add a new dimension like the Detroit Pistons need another thug or Hilton needs another hotel or the San Francisco 49ers need another quarterback.

This year, however, the Sockers struggled through the regular season with a 25-27 record and looked vulnerable at best and mediocre at worst. It was looking as if, finally, the Sockers did not have enough to keep their dynasty alive.

Quietly though, the Sockers were blending a new element into their repertoire.

Speed.

This was ridiculous. This was overkill.

Giving speed to the Sockers was like giving Ricky Henderson to the Oakland A’s . . . just in case they did not have enough of darn near everything else they needed. It would have been like giving winged feet to Secretariat.

If you were in the tidy little crowd of 7,834 at the Sports Arena Monday night, you saw speed kill the Baltimore Blast. The first half was a chess match, a 0-0 stalemate, and the second half was a track meet, literally a 4-1 Socker runaway.

Baltimore played the first half as if it was afraid to venture out of its own end of the field and the second half wishing it hadn’t.

Reality has it that two guys named Wes Wade and Paul Wright, all of 20 and 21 respectively, blitzed the Blast. Rumor has it that there were really two of each of them, as ubiquitous as they were.

You want to get from one end of the field to the other in a hurry? Book a trip on one of these guys. They are Concordes in shorts.

Wade, a virtual unknown until the last couple of weeks, scored three goals Monday night to give him seven in the past seven games. Understand that he scored all of nine in the regular season.

“You can’t coach speed,” said veteran Brian Quinn. “You have to harness it. But you look at those first two goals Wes Wade scored (Monday night) and only him or Paul Wright could have scored them for our team.”

Wade scored the first goal off a long pass from Quinn, beating Baltimore veteran Bruce Savage so badly that goalkeeper Scoop Stanisic had no chance. Stanisic had no chance on the next goal either, because this time he had his choice between Wade or Wright.

“When I took off down the field,” Wright said, “I expected to be by myself. I looked over and saw Wes right next to me. I had to give it to him. He was wide open.”

Wade scored his first goal 30 seconds into the second half, thus changing the tone of the game. After Baltimore tied it 13:05 into the third quarter, Wade and Wright took exactly 41 seconds to untie it.

As it turned out, these guys were dangerous without scoring.

Midway through the fourth quarter, when Baltimore was down 3-1 and close to going to a sixth attacker, Wright broke loose down the left side again. Paul Dougherty, the former Socker, stopped him . . . with a trip. This affront drew a two-minute penalty, effectively delaying Baltimore’s switch to a sixth attacker until it was too late to make up the ground.

Thus, the Sockers came away with a 3-to-1 advantage and a chance to close out yet another championship tonight. This one, because of the regular season record, might be the most unlikely yet.

What has happened is that veterans such as Branko Segota have returned to health at about the same time Wade and Wright were being blended into the team. They are youngsters and youngsters blend slowly into the mix, especially with such an established team.

Wright, for example, paid his dues in a rather roundabout way. He was a role player with the Sockers a year ago, but was lost to Cleveland in the expansion draft. Since he returned to the Sockers in a midseason trade, the club is 19-10. It was 16-21 before his return.

“With young guys,” Quinn said, “it’s sort of a Catch-22. To improve your game, you’ve gotta play. To play, you have to earn a spot. To earn a spot, you have to improve. Paul Wright’s going to Cleveland gave him some playing time he might not have gotten here.”

Wade, meanwhile, was playing with something called the Arizona Condors as late as last summer.

“The whole year,” Wade said, “I’ve been hearing people say, ‘Just wait ‘til the playoffs.’ I didn’t expect this.”

No one expected this .

No one expected that those rascal Sockers would find another way to win.