Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/010493/01049932.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5KB | 149 lines

                                                                                SPORTS, Page 69

THE BEST OF 1992


    1. 43,750,000

    Sport is a story of numbers, on or off the field.
Baseball's best player, Pittsburgh outfielder Barry Bonds, got
the biggest ones: $43.75 million for six years in San Francisco.
Hockey's best, Mario Lemieux, got almost as much ($42 million,
seven years) to stay in Pittsburgh. Baseball owners cried
poverty -- and demanded to reopen their contract with the
players' union -- but, like a randy widow, couldn't help
throwing money at those big, handsome athletes. Even the barons
of the N.F.L. can no longer look smugly upon the agitation of
lesser moguls; last week they acceded to the players' suit for
free agency. Serves 'em right: let the bidding frenzy spread
like flu.

    2. 32

    The digits on the jerseys of Magic Johnson and Shaquille
O'Neal. Magic, who with Larry Bird made the N.B.A.'s '80s a
decade of dazzle, brought that era to an end with his (and
Bird's) retirement. But pro basketball soon found a figure
worthy of Johnson's number: O'Neal, a superstar force from the
first tip-off, and spearhead of the league's most glamorous
freshman class since 1979. O'Neal's team: the Orlando Magic, of
course.

    3. 64 and 172

    Number of nations competing at the Winter and Summer
Games. Question: What if they gave an Olympics and everybody
came? Answer, at Albertville and Barcelona: thrills aplenty. And
spills. If the figure skaters' jitters deprived them of
perfection, it hyped the competition, so fiercely did they fight
just to keep on their feet. Star quality counts too. Hungary's
Henrietta Onodi, an elf-enchantress, took silver in gymnastics
but gold in viewers' eyes.

    4. 117-85

    Score of the Olympic men's basketball finals. The boast
that the games showcase amateur athletics was never more hollow
than when attached to the U.S. hoop squad. The Dream Team (the
N.B.A. 11 best players plus Duke's Christian Laettner) naturally
gave opponents the DTs. It was a brutal, pointless spectacle,
akin to the Harlem Globetrotters doing their sideshow
humiliation, for fun and profit, of a flat-footed pickup team.

    5. 3

    Joe Montana's ranking on the San Francisco 49ers'
quarterback chart. How good are the 49ers? Montana, a great
player in his autumnal prime, was arguably not even the team's
best QB. While his elbow healed, his replacement, Steve Young,
had an MVP season, while another ace, Steve Bono, occasionally
spelled Young. This year the 49ers have the form of Super Bowl
winners. But could they beat the University of Miami?

    6. 100, 4x100, 400

    Three Olympic thrills. Gail Devers won the women's 100-m
race 16 months after nearly having her feet amputated. That
ageless sprite Carl Lewis anchored the U.S. men's 4x100-m relay
team that set a world record. And in an inspiring 400-m
semifinal, Briton Derek Redmond collapsed with a hamstring pull,
then rose and, aided by his weeping father, staggered to the
finish line. Amazing feets all.

    7. 1

    Number of women who have played a game in a major league
team sport. For one period of a preseason skirmish, Manon
Rheaume, 20, was in goal for the N.H.L.'s Tampa Bay Lightning,
and her bosses say she has a chance to make the team. Can her
achievement be a harbinger of gender integration? We bet there's
a Little League tomboy phenom who could play shortstop for the
Yankees someday. (And soon, please!) We also bet Oprah Winfrey
could take George Foreman. In six.

    8. 922335

    Mike Tyson wears that number now as a guest of the Indiana
penal system, after being convicted for raping a teenage
beauty-pageant contestant. In doing so, the heavyweight ex-champ
forever damaged the genial stud image of star athletes and
threatened to give boxing an even blacker eye. Evander
Holyfield, the titleholder in Tyson's absence, had a Mr. Olympia
physique but the charisma of a C.P.A. -- until November, when
he fought challenger Riddick Bowe. Holyfield lost the decision,
but in standing up to Bowe's horrifying piston punches he proved
himself the champ Tyson could never be.

    9. 0

    As in O Canada! Baseball was on the move in '92 -- toward
chaos. The San Francisco Giants tried to move to Florida, then
stayed put. Commissioner Fay Vincent tried to move the Chicago
Cubs to another division, but instead the owners moved him out
of his job. So it was apt that the "national pastime" look
elsewhere for its "world champions." Canada's team, the Toronto
Blue Jays (with, O.K., a roster of imported players), defeated
the Braves in a six-game palpitator of a World Series.

    10. 40

    One estimate of top-level male figure skaters in North
America who have died of AIDS-related diseases. The plague also
hobbled tennis immortal Arthur Ashe. And Magic, whose familiar
flair in this year's N.B.A. All Star Game and at the Olympics
proved there is life after HIV, put off an intended comeback
after players said they felt at risk in close contact with an
AIDS carrier. These stories confirm that sport, once a refuge
from matters of life and death, is now a window into them.