Different Breed of Celebrity : Snowboarding: Damian Sanders, role model for a new generation, cashes in on his reputation for unforgettable free falls.

Maybe you grew up in New York, and when your buddy threw tennis-ball curves in the driveway, you were always Mickey Mantle. Or maybe you were Bob Cousy when your game-winning jumpshots swished through the hoop above your garage in New England. Or maybe it was always Walter Payton racing for a touchdown across that snow-covered Midwestern lawn.

But now you live in Southern California and you wonder about your kids’ playtime fantasies. If they’re more interested in skateboards, snowboards and surfboards than baseballs, basketballs and footballs, who do they pretend to be when they’re--OK, we’ll say it-- shredding ?

Wonder where all the role models have gone?

Meet snowboarder Damian Sanders and wonder no more. Outrageously spiked hair. Lots of black leather. Long dangling skull earring. . . .

Before you groan too loudly, you might want to consider some of the alternatives--how about Roger Clemens or Zeke Mowatt?--as well as get to know Sanders a little better.

Sanders is 22 and soon-to-be the world’s most famous snowboarder. He’s now starring in a McDonald’s commercial--the ‘90s version of having your face on a Wheaties box--and is gaining a worldwide reputation for his mind-boggling free falls off backcountry ledges.

If you’ve seen the commercial, you’ve already got the picture. Sanders soars off a cliff, flies through the air for a couple of hundred feet and then eats a steak sandwich.

Sanders is one of a few professional snowboarders who make a living from the sport, but his income comes mostly from endorsements, not prize money. (The McDonald’s ad could net Sanders as much as $50,000, depending on air time).

In fact, he doesn’t compete in enough contests to gain a high ranking on either the Professional Snowboarding Tour of America or the World Cup Tour because he’s too busy doing promotional photo sessions. Sanders represents a collection of clothing, snowboard and sunglass manufacturers who pay him a monthly salary. And they would much rather see his picture--and their product--on a poster or in a magazine than his name on a contest trophy.

And underneath the neon ski clothes and Mohawk-like hairstyle is a young man most people would be happy to have their children idolize.

He seldom drinks alcohol. “There’s something in it that makes you lazy,” he says.

He won’t touch drugs. “People are always offering and I’m always turning them down. I come from a strong family, my older brother and sister were never into drugs and I just followed in their footsteps. I’ve seen it mess up too many other people’s lives, so I just avoid it.”

His roommates used to tease him for cleaning the house and mowing the lawn so often. “My friends litter in front of me on purpose because they know I’ll pick it up.”

And don’t tell the folks at Ocean Pacific, but, heck, he doesn’t even like neon. “I hate Day-Glo. A couple of years ago it was real embarrassing, but now they’re coming out with some great stuff in black and gray, so I’m comfortable with the clothes now.”

Sanders is a bit less comfortable with his position as a role model, however, if only because he understands the responsibility and ramifications that go along with success in sports.

“I always want to be on my best behavior in public,” he said. “There are a lot of guys in the industry who aren’t. They get drunk at the competitions and go crazy and all those kids look at that. I think you really have to watch out for that stuff.”

Like a lot of other young couples, Damian and Brandy Sanders are house-hunting these days. They’ve been married less than a year and would like to buy something in the Huntington Beach area where they’ve been renting. But, also like a lot of other young couples, they say they’re probably going to wait another year and save some more money.

The Sanders, however, are unlike a lot of other young couples, certainly in appearance, anyway. Fresh from house-hunting, Damian has his hair moussed down and isn’t dressed in his usual Mad Max black leather costume, so as not to scare anyone. And Brandy, a former Penthouse Pet of the Month (May, 1990), is dressed semi-conservatively in blouse, leather skirt and cowboy boots.

Still, they attracted more than a few stares when they entered a restaurant recently. People kept looking back at the door to see if the rest of the rock band would be coming in.

“When I started (snowboarding) eight years ago, there were only four resorts that allowed snowboarding. Now, there’s only about four that don’t,” Sanders said. “We’ve come a long way.”

All the way to a lucrative appearance in a television commercial. He seems a perfect fit for the role--he’s got the looks and the guts--but the match was more the work of good fortune than good casting.

“They went around to a couple of (snowboard) shops and got my name,” Sanders said. “It was kind of a freak thing. They called, I was available and we went out to Telluride (Colo.) and shot for three days.

“It was pretty Hollywood. They brought tons of extra people who didn’t need to be there. That cliff was about 60 feet. They couldn’t believe it, but they loved it.”

He might have lucked into landing the job, but landing on the job wasn’t so lucky. A split second after you see Sanders float back to earth into a puff of powder, he bit halfway through his lower lip.

You don’t see that part, of course.

“On the jump that ended up being in the commercial, the impact was so hard my knee hit into my chin and I bit a hole through my lip and had to get a bunch of stitches,” he says, pointing to the scar. “That’s the third time I’ve done that.”

Brandy Sanders, who harbors a fear of her husband’s flying, prefers not to watch these feats. She loves to snowboard, likes the people involved in the sport and enjoys the travel. She doesn’t especially want to see Damian hurl himself off a cliff, however.

“I was riding up the mountain in a van when they told me he’d been taken to the hospital,” she said. “You can imagine how scary that is.”

But even Sanders will admit that the danger is a big part of his fascination with the sport. He’s more a thrill-seeker than a competitor.

“It’s fun to compete, sort of,” he said. “I mean it’s fun to be with all your friends and go out at night. We just got back from the World Cup in Japan and it was great. The people treat you like rock stars, autograph-signing and everything. But when it gets down to the competition, when you’re standing around waiting for your run and getting nervous, that’s no fun.

“If I couldn’t jump, I wouldn’t do it. I love the exhilaration. Hiking out with your friends, looking for good jumps every day, that’s fun. It all evolves around finding good jumps.”

There’s always a new trick to be mastered, a new ledge--and the following free fall--to be conquered, but Sanders thinks he and his few peers have begun to push the limits of the envelope.

“We’ve gotten to the point where pretty much every time you do one of the really big ones, you get hurt,” he said. “It’s such a long drop and the landings are never steep enough. I think we’ve pretty much topped it out.”

When Sanders was 14 years old, his family moved from San Jose to Arnold, Calif., a small town in the mountains east of Stockton.

“My parents still live there,” Sanders said. “It’s a nice retirement town, but no kid would want to live there. It’s really boring. I went to Angels’ Camp High. It was just a bunch of hard-core rednecks who wanted to beat me up every day.

“They hated me. I had earrings and hair standing straight up and all I wanted to do was skate(board). Everybody there was into rodeo and football. The only thing that saved me was my sister was a senior and she had a lot of big jock friends who protected me.

“Looking back, the whole scene was kind of funny. But at the time I was pretty bummed. I spent all my time fixing my (skateboard) ramp after the cowboys shot holes in it.”

When Sanders was 15, his older brother, Chris, gave him a snowboard for Christmas. Sanders put his skis in the rafters, strapped on the board and a career was born.

Because of his intense dislike for Arnold and his love for snowboarding, Sanders’ parents allowed him to live with Chris in Lake Tahoe during his junior and senior years. He attended South Lake Tahoe High and the backcountry school of big jumps during the winter and returned to Arnold in the summer.

When he was 16, Sanders went to the first snowboarding World Championships at Soda Springs, Idaho. The competitors had “refined” their new sport on the back hills because few resorts allowed snowboarders. The meet, Sanders recalled with a laugh, wasn’t exactly an exhibition of finesse.

“No one could even turn,” he said. “If you could go 100 feet without falling down, you were great. We were all just trying to get as much air as possible on every jump and then falling down. It was really hilarious.”

Then, one winter afternoon near the Donner ski area, Sanders saw his destiny, not to mention his life, flash before him.

“It was about a 25-foot cliff and I needed to get some speed up to fly over the rocks below,” he said. “The snow fell off the lip just as I hit it, my board hit the rock and I went straight over toward the rocks. I rotated just enough to land on my butt on the rocks and bounce off into the snow. All I got was a huge bruise and I couldn’t walk for a few days. But I was definitely lucky to be alive.”

Sanders was out jumping less than a week later, but says he’s much more cautious these days when it comes to selecting a jumping-off point.

“I don’t know if I’ve mellowed,” he said, “but I think I’ve gotten a little smarter.”

When he was 18, Sanders signed his first contract with Op. . He couldn’t believe anyone would pay him to snowboard so he didn’t even read it. In fact, he probably would have cut his finger and signed in blood if a pen wasn’t handy.

Now he has an agent and a travel itinerary that looks as though it belongs to the secretary of state. He also has enough money for “Brandy and I to live like kings.” But this measure of wealth and prestige has done little to push Sanders toward conservatism.

At least, his wife points out, he had enough sense to get rid of his motorcycle last fall.

“It’s a lot scarier watching him ride a motorcycle than it is jumping a cliff,” she said. “And most of the time I was on the back in my bathing suit. I was scared to death every time. He’s more crazy on a motorcycle than he is on a mountain.”

Forget the postcard, this guy’s sending a complete manuscript from the edge.