Sockers Take Lead in Finals : MSL: San Diego comes back to defeat the Cleveland Crunch, 6-5, in Game 3 of series. But team has a bone to pick with the officials.

The poor Sockers--everyone’s against them.

Maybe that’s why there were so many hoots coming from the visitors’ locker room in the Coliseum after the Sockers defeated the Cleveland Crunch, 6-5, in Game 3 of the MSL championship series.

With the victory Friday, the Sockers grabbed a 2-1 lead in the series, with Game 4 scheduled for 3:35 p.m. Sunday.

So who’s against the Sockers? Coach Ron Newman has a long list, beginning with the referees.

He told this story after Game 3:

“I knew there was something wrong right away,” Newman said calmly. “Esse (referee Esse Baharmast) called a penalty right in front of the bench.”

Newman’s voice was gaining momentum. An all-out shout was only a couple syllables away.

“So I yelled, ‘What was that?’ ” Newman said. “And he said, ‘A foul.’ I said ‘On who?’ and he said, ‘On us.’

“So I knew he was biased.”

Newman was kidding. But he was serious when he related his feelings that if the Sockers are to win a ninth championship, they also must defeat what he says is a biased refereeing corps.

“Think about boxing,” Newman said. “For a champion to lose his belt he bloody has to be knocked out. He bloody has to be knocked out. Well, that’s not the way it is right here, folks.”

The Sockers were whistled for 21 fouls in Game 3, the Crunch for 12. The Sockers served seven penalties; the Crunch two.

But Brian Quinn erased all those numbers with 4 1/2 minutes remaining when he scored the final goal of a tight and highly emotional game in front of 14,571 who saw each team overcome a two-goal deficit.

Quinn put the finishing touches on the victory, but Ben Collins gave him the opportunity to do so.

Collins, the lone man back on what appeared to be another Cleveland breakaway, decided to risk the tie by stepping in front of Hector Marinaro, who was streaking upfield in anticipation of an outlet throw from goalie P.J. Johns.

The pass came, but so did Collins, who stuck out his right foot to intercept the pass.

“Sometimes you have to take chances,” Collins said. “And sometimes they don’t work and you turn out to be the goat. But this time I knew I had it. I knew I had two steps on Marinaro and I knew I could step in front of him.”

So Collins took the ball and headed toward the other end, where he saw teammate Paul Dougherty standing unmarked 35 feet to the right of the goal. He sent a pass up to Dougherty.

“The first thing I thought was to shoot,” Dougherty said. “But I knew Quinny was on the left, so I crossed it over to him.”

Before Quinn first-timed the ball, he decided where he had to put it to get it behind Johns.

“All I was thinking was get it up, get it up, get it up,” said Quinn, who earlier had a similar chance that Johns saved by leaping across the goal mouth. “It was nearly over (the crossbar) but I knew I had to get it up high because P.J. would be flying across.”

It was the Sockers’ third consecutive goal and completed a comeback from a two-goal deficit.

The goal that cut the Crunch lead in half, and the one that tied the game, both came from Rod Castro within 38 seconds of each other late in the third quarter.

“God, he was hot, wasn’t he?” Newman asked rhetorically. “I kept saying, give the ball to Rod--Rod will finish it for us.”

Castro’s first goal came only 12 seconds after Crunch forward Zoran Karic scored his third of the game for a 5-3 lead. It came after he lost defender Bernie James.

“I’ve been working on that the whole series,” Castro said. “I’ve been trying to turn Bernie James. I just spun around and headed to the middle of the court.”

The second came off a free shot from the top of the arc, a shot the injured Branko Segota is usually entrusted with.

“Tonight Ron put me in front of the goal where I had to make the decision to pass it, or shoot. I noticed Cleveland’s wall wasn’t very tall, so I decided to shoot high.”

The ball passed between the crossbar and right post on its way in.

Before Castro got hot, the Crunch scored four goals, two of which came from Rudy Pikuzinski within 40 seconds of another in the third quarter.

Socker Notes

With Branko Segota still hobbled with a strained right hamstring, the Sockers’ offense was further thinned with various injuries in Friday’s game. The most seriously injured might be Waad Hirmez, who came off the field in the third quarter with a strained muscle in his rib cage. Hirmez was in obvious pain after the game and is day to day. Ben Collins sprained an ankle in the game, but should play Sunday. Paul Wright played with a sprained ankle in Friday’s game and said it was throbbing afterward. His status for Sunday is not known. Cleveland, however, may have sustained the most damaging injury. P.J. Johns went down with a bruised right thigh after a collision with Rod Castro in the fourth quarter. Johns is questionable for Sunday. . . . Castro has been an effective weapon. He was the guy who collided with goalie Zoltan Toth of St. Louis in the West finals, forcing Toth to miss most of the series with broken ribs.