It’s Outdoor Season--and the Learnin’ Doesn’t Come Easy

For Joey Bunch, it was like the rookie getting his first look at a major league curveball. The first time a No. 1 draft choice had to throw into NFL zone coverage. The first time a young pug felt what it was like to get hit by Joe Louis. The first time a young golfer’s ball landed in U.S. Open rough.

Joey is a middle-distance runner out of USC. He was twice State junior college champion in the 800, junior national titlist in the event. He had been three times State champion in high school in Hawaii and he once won an 800 race at 6 p.m. in the Pan American Games and a 1,500 at 9 p.m.

But Joey found out what it was like for the rookie who wrote home to, “Get the room ready, they’re startin’ to curve ‘em,” or the fighter who reeled to his corner after a Louis left to wonder, “My God, does he always hit that hard?” when he looked around him at the Pepsi Invitational at UCLA last week and saw that his childhood was over.

Alongside him were Johnny Gray, American record-holder in the half-mile; Dave Mack, seasoned 800 runner; Jeff Roberson, Fresno State flash, and Agberto Guymares, teammate of Brazil’s Olympic gold-medal winner, Joaquim Cruz, and himself a semifinalist in the Olympics.

It was like coming to bat against Sandy Koufax, throwing deep on the Chicago Bears, forgetting to duck against Joe Louis, needing a 1-iron over water just to save par.

Joey grew up in a hurry. The first thing he figured he better do was keep Johnny Gray in his gun sights. That wasn’t hard because Johnny set out on some leisurely 200’s, giving the kid a peek at the wrong walnut.

Joey bit. On the third 200, he decided to go by Gray if that was as fast as he could go. To his surprise--but to the surprise of no one who had ever put a watch on Johnny Gray--it didn’t work. Gray pulled him along like a guy whose foot is caught in a bus door. Ten meters from the finish, Joey realized he had made a busher’s mistake. He had swung at a pitch in the dirt, thrown an interception, led with his right, hit it out of bounds.

He was second with 10 meters to go. He was sixth when he hit the tape.

The field went by him like an express train going through a small town.

Joey staggered home in 1:47.2. Johnny Gray won the race in 1:45.2. After the race, he was kind to the kid. “You used up your race in the third lap, kid,” he explained. “You strained too much to get by me. You should have saved it.”

“He confused me,” admitted Joey Bunch. “I thought the race was just sitting there for me.”

Welcome to the big leagues, Joey. Wipe your feet and smile nice for the picture.

For Joey, it was a sobering experience, not to say a shocking one, but it was not necessarily catastrophic. “I didn’t have my patience,” he admits. “Next time, I will.”

His experience attests again the Sisyphean chore that getting to the top in the world half-mile has become today. Pushing a peanut up Fifth Avenue with your nose is its equivalent.

For some reason, middle-distance running has become the standing-room-only division of world track. The cream of the world’s runners seem to be congregated in this corner of the sport.

Some, such as the incomparable Said Aouita, stop off on their way to winning an Olympic 5,000 or setting a world record in the 1,500 to reel off a 1:44.3 half. Seb Coe is the Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500 but he holds the world record in the 800--1:41.7. Steve Cram is the silver medalist in the 1,500 but he has a 1:42.8 in the half-mile. Steve Ovett has a 1:44.09. These are guys who do the half-mile in their spare time. It’s just a tightener for them and they run world-record times.

Johnny Gray’s American record is 1:42.4, and Earl Jones, the American who won the bronze at the L.A. Olympics, has not yet rounded into half-mile form for the year.

Joey Bunch came out of Hawaii with the reputation of being the fastest prep runner from that state in recent history, maybe in any. A third-generation Army brat (grandpa was a GI out of North Carolina, Dad was a Marine drill sergeant), he electrified the clockers of Track & Field News when he posted a 1:51.1 in a state more noted for its surfers than sprinters.

Scholarship offers poured in. When he got to Clackamas, Ore., so did the rain. He transferred to Taft in California, where he proceeded to win the State junior college championship two years in a row.

USC was on the horn after that, and Joey will be representing the Trojans in the Pac-10 meet at the Coliseum, a competition that will again be awash with medal winners eager to further Joey Bunch’s on-track education.

The Pac-10 is a stepping stone to the NCAA meet next month but it will have most of the tough competition Bunch will have to face then, including the Alaskan prep star now at Arizona, Doug Herron, who stepped off a high school 1:49 once in Fairbanks, and the consistent Dub Myers of Oregon.

For all runners, it’s another step in jockeying for position at the Seoul finals in the Olympic year of 1988. For Joey, it’s more critical: It’s a chance to find out whether he’s going to run better if he runs smarter--or if he should have stayed on his surfboard beyond the reef at Waikiki and not come in where a foot race is a crapshoot with somebody else’s dice.