TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/060589/06058900.049

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 6KB | 107 lines

SPORT, Page 87

The Global Cry: Play Ball!

U.S. leagues and foreign athletes are breaking down boundaries

By Tom Callahan


    Something is abroad in the games people play, or about to go
abroad, anyway. Suddenly the globe is ready to play ball, with the
Soviet Union leading off. In their hearts, the Soviets probably
still think they invented baseball, or lapta, an innocent
steppes-child that supposedly predates both British rounders and
Tommy John. But the bench jockeying has quieted considerably since
the Reds dropped an April game to the U.S. Naval Academy, 21-1, and
their coach was heard to mutter, "Throw to second, not first.
Second is the one in the middle."

    At the moment, Western sports pages are lousy with Soviets, who
are lousy only at baseball. Three more hockey players from the
vaunted Red Army team resigned their commissions last week. By the
grace of a fresh understanding between Moscow and the National
Hockey League, stars Vyacheslav Fetisov, Igor Larionov and Sergei
Makarov are now free to negotiate with the teams that drafted them:
the New Jersey Devils, Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames (which
already employs Sergei Priakin). Only one Soviet applicant has felt
the need to defect. Alexander Mogilny saw Buffalo and just couldn't
live anywhere else. Shrugging everything off, Soviet authorities
have invited the Flames and the Washington Capitals to play a
revolutionary series in Moscow and Leningrad come September.

    In the tennis community too, freethinking Soviets are
multiplying. Olga Morozova, the pig-tailed pioneer who occasionally
popped into grand-slam finals during the '70s, now coaches a raft
of promising young countrymen and -women known as the Glasnost
Gang. The most precocious gangster is Natalia Zvereva, 18, who is
also the most perestroika-emboldened. She has won $515,000
professionally, but since much of it has been diverted into state
coffers, she gripes, "I still don't have enough money for a
Mercedes." When last seen, Zvereva was stomping back to the Kremlin
to have it out with her agents. "If you don't see me at the French
Open," she giggled in parting, "you'll know what happened."

    The Soviet Union is just a piece of a new picture. Cleared to
participate in the next Olympics, the National Basketball
Association plans to contribute one team to a Milan tournament in
October and assign two others to open next season in Tokyo. Japan's
association with American baseball, of course, goes back to Babe
Ruth. Just last November, on a typical All-Star tour, the Dodgers'
Orel Hershiser capped his nearly scoreless autumn by yielding a
Ruthian homer to Fujio Tamura of the Nippon Ham Fighters ("I was
told he couldn't hit a curve ball"). But Japan is importing all
sports now, and the Los Angeles Rams will confront the San
Francisco 49ers there in August.

    The most daring development, as usual, is coming from the
National Football League. Tex Schramm, the exiled general manager
of the Dallas Cowboys, has been forming an international spring
league that will announce its franchises any day now. "And they'll
be kicking off next April," Schramm says.

    Montreal and Mexico City will likely join four U.S. and four
to six European cities in a twelve-game season leading to a
summertime World Bowl. Towns tired of hoping for N.F.L. expansion
franchises (Jacksonville, Memphis, Oakland and Baltimore) would
seem the prime American candidates for the auxiliary league.
London, Dublin, Frankfurt and Milan are among the European
possibilities.

    Television inspired both the European players and the American
plotters. "The people saw delayed broadcasts and taped highlights
and liked them," says Schramm, who notes that live N.F.L. telecasts
are scheduled in London this season, along with the latest Wembley
exhibition (this year Philadelphia vs. Cleveland). "Television
stations in Europe are doubling and tripling. With the complete
common market in 1992, a great melding of entertainment is about
to take place."

    Comparing football with soccer, whose charms are mysterious
only to Americans, Schramm says, "Games where the players use every
part of their body, not just their feet, and where there's
generally a lot of scoring, have a good chance to win the world
over." But will the world be open to this militaristic game of
bombs and blitzes? Maybe so, if Richard Tardits is any barometer.

    Tardits is a Frenchman from Biarritz who, through a series of
family coincidences, matriculated at the University of Georgia four
years ago. Apprised by his father that he would need a scholarship
to remain, Tardits donned his rugby shorts and knee-high stockings
and went out for the Bulldog football team. The first day on
defense, he ignored the ballcarrier and tackled the blocker. But
Tardits was quick, tall and weighed 200 lbs. Coach Vince Dooley was
intrigued. For one thing, he had never had a linebacker whose
previous experience consisted of running with the bulls in
Pamplona.

    In situations where Tardits could do no harm, Dooley tossed
him into games for a play or two. He started to sack quarterbacks
with a move the other players dubbed the Tour de France. During a
spring practice in Tardits' sophomore year, just as his father was
about to summon him home to the University of Toulouse, Dooley
called for quiet. In the manner of a battlefield commission or the
awarding of the Croix de Guerre, Tardits' scholarship was presented
on the field. Last month he was drafted fifth by the N.F.L.'s
Phoenix Cardinals.

    Tardits has attempted to tell his French friends about the
amazing spectacle of "a stadium with 85,000 filled seats and people
still fighting to buy tickets." He tries to mix in "all the colors
and the vehicles and the screaming" and even tosses out a "How
'bout them dogs?" Mais zut. "They can't realize what it's like,"
he says in dismay, and concludes with a sigh, "Only in America."