IN 1988, LOS ANGELES WAS THE CITY OF CHAMPIONS

In the Chinese scheme of things, 1988 is the year of the dragon, but in Los Angeles, 1988 is the year of the winner.

The Dodgers, unbelievable as it might have seemed through the long summer, are the World Series champions.

The Lakers, forced to live up to Pat Riley’s guarantee that they would repeat, are the champions of professional basketball.

Hockey fans in this most illogical place for an icy winter sport are winners since Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, came here from Edmonton last summer to skate in the Forum with the Kings.

There are other great ones who created never-to-be-forgotten winning moments for Angelenos in 1988. Among them were:

--Florence Griffith Joyner, the darling of the Seoul Olympics whose dazzling smile was worth a gold medal as much as the three she won sprinting on the track.

--Orel Hershiser, the wholesome Dodger pitcher who put more zeroes on National League scoreboards--59 of them in a row--than had ever been done before to earn the Cy Young, playoff and World Series MVP awards.

--Kirk Gibson, hard-talking and hard-nosed, who came from Detroit to lift the Dodgers from the doldrums of the National League to the championship with the sheer force of his will as well as his bat.

--Magic Johnson, the impresario of showtime at the Forum, giving the Lakers a flair seldom seen in professional sports.

--Jockey Gary Stevens, winning the Kentucky Derby aboard a filly, Winning Colors, and becoming the leading rider at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar.

--Janet Evans, the high school teen-ager from Placentia who seemed to amaze even herself as she swam to 3 Olympic gold medals.

The list could go on and on in reviewing the strange, wonderful and tragic world of sports in 1988.

Strange because so much of the news revolved around drugs, steroids, fighting--not in the boxing ring, but on the hockey ice--politics, recruiting violations, strikes, probations and the Mike Tyson-Robin Givens soap opera.

Wonderful because the year produced such memories as Doug Williams turning the Super Bowl into a personal crusade with a 35-point second quarter; Danny Manning carrying unheralded Kansas, a third-place team in its own conference, to the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball championship; Jose Canseco hitting 42 home runs and stealing 40 bases; Alysheba thundering down the Churchill Downs stretch in mud and slop, with darkness dropping over the track, to win the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic; floodlights turning Chicago’s Wrigley Field into daylight-at-night for the first time in that venerable baseball park’s history; teen-ager Steffi Graf overpowering women’s tennis to win the Grand Slam at 19; Mike Tyson disposing of his challengers with awesome efficiency; Bobby Allison racing his son Davey to the wire to win the Daytona 500; Curtis Strange beating England’s Nick Faldo in a playoff to keep the U.S. Open championship in the United States.

Tragic, too, because of shocking incidents such as auto racing entrepreneur Mickey Thompson and his wife Trudy being gunned down, gangland-style, in front of their palatial Bradbury home; basketball Hall of Famer Pete Maravich, 40, collapsing and dying of heart failure while playing a pickup game in a church gymnasium in Pasadena; pro football’s David Croudip, an Atlanta Falcons defensive back, dying of an alleged overdose of cocaine; and race driver Al Holbert killed when his private plane crashed en route home after testing for a race.

Others who died, of natural causes, included football’s Art Rooney, baseball’s Carl Hubbell, auto racing’s Enzo Ferrari and track’s Glenn Cunningham.

The biggest strange and wonderful story, though--and tragic only if you rooted for the New York Mets or the Oakland Athletics--was the saga of Tom Lasorda and his ragtag assortment of Dodger players that included Mickey Hatcher, Rick Dempsey, John Shelby, Mike Davis, Jay Howell, Tim Belcher and, of course, Gibson and Hershiser.

Gibson, a free agent who signed in February, set the Dodgers in motion in spring training when he was made the target of a practical joke by Jesse Orosco. Orosco lined the inside of Gibson’s cap with eye-black, the stuff ballplayers smear under their eyes to cut down on glare in day games. Instead of laughing off the dark smudge on his ample forehead, Gibson stormed into the dugout and out of the ballpark, refusing to play.

The message was well taken. Baseball, as Gibson perceived it, is a serious business, to be played to the hilt, and is not a fun-and-games affair.

His impact on the team was felt again, in another way, in the World Series.

After a National League MVP season, Gibson was sidelined with painful injuries when the Series opened against the heavily favored A’s in Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers were down to their last out in Game 1, trailing 4-3 with Mike Davis on first when Gibson came limping off the bench to face the year’s best relief pitcher, Dennis Eckersley.

Gibson dramatically worked the count to 3-2 before hitting the final pitch over the right-field fence for a most improbable 5-4 Dodger victory that set the stage for a 5-game World Series win. Gibson’s pinch-homer will live forever in baseball lore, alongside Babe Ruth’s called-shot home run off Charlie Root and Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard around the world” off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca in the New York Polo Grounds.

Hershiser’s performance in September and October was almost too much to believe. He hummed hymns in the dugout, carried a personal notebook on how to pitch with him to the mound, and when he took a baseball in his hand, he was just about perfect.

The regular season ended with Hershiser throwing a record 59 scoreless innings, breaking a mark held by Don Drysdale that had been thought to be as unapproachable as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

Then, Hershiser won 2 playoff games and saved another in relief with only a day’s rest against the Mets, shutting them out in the seventh game and then kneeling in prayer next to the mound after the final out.

In his 2 World Series games against Oakland, he threw a 3-hit, 6-0 shutout in which he got 3 hits himself, then finished the Series with a 4-hit, 5-2 win. It was a performance that got him a personal visit with President Ronald Reagan at the White House.

The Dodgers weren’t perfect, however. They were the victims of a perfect game thrown by Cincinnati’s Tom Browning. And they said goodby to their winningest pitcher, Don Sutton, and one of their most controversial hitters, Pedro Guerrero.

The Angels? Their season was symbolized by a game on June 25 at Anaheim Stadium against Milwaukee. When the game started, there were only 8 Angels on the field. Center fielder Devon White was still in the clubhouse, talking on the phone.

The season, like the lineup that day, came up short.

Manager Gene Mauch quit a week before the season started, replacement Cookie Rojas was fired before it ended and the result was a fourth-place finish, 29 games behind Oakland.

Before the Dodgers, it was the Lakers who stormed to the heights.

In the dressing room after the final championship game in 1987, as the Lakers savored their National Basketball Assn. domination over the Boston Celtics, Coach Pat Riley stunned his listeners--and his players--when he guaranteed that his team would repeat in 1988, a feat no team had accomplished since the Celtics 19 years before.

Riley’s word looked good when the Lakers’ 62-20 record was the best in the regular season and San Antonio was blitzed in 3 straight in the first playoff round. Then trouble started.

In the Western Conference semifinals, the Lakers fell behind in games, 2-1, against pesky point guard John Stockton and the Utah Jazz and had to come from behind to win a seventh game, 109-98, to move into the conference finals with Dallas. Neither team could win on the road and the Mavericks forced L.A. into another seventh game before dropping out, 117-102.

The Detroit Pistons, breaking an 8-year stranglehold held by Boston and the New York Knicks in the Eastern Division, faced the Lakers in the finals. As a prelude to each game, the two superstar buddies, Magic Johnson of the Lakers and Isiah Thomas of the Pistons, kissed before the tipoff.

Thanks to inspired play by Adrian Dantley, Detroit moved to a 3-2 lead and needed only 1 win in the Forum to unseat the champions. A minute from the end of Game 6 it appeared they might do it. Thomas, limping at the end on a sprained ankle, made 25 points in the third period and 43 in the game to give the Pistons a 102-99 lead with a minute remaining.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Lakers’ 40-year-old center and captain, sank 2 free throws with 14 seconds left to move L.A. ahead, 103-102. Detroit’s Joe Dumars, with a chance to win it, fired from the lane at the buzzer but the shot missed.

James Worthy came through in the seventh game with an MVP performance that included 36 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists. In the first half, Worthy made 20 of his team’s 47 points as the Lakers prevailed, 108-105, holding off a spirited Detroit rally at the end.

Riley heaved a sigh of relief. In the dressing room after the final game, however, there were no guarantees from him on making it 3 in a row.

Across town, the Clippers, by finishing with the worst record in the NBA, got the rights to select Manning first in the draft. Before joining the pros, Manning chose to play on the Olympic team, which lost to the Soviet Union in the semifinals when Manning went scoreless.

After that, Manning chose to hold out until after the season started, giving fits to the Clippers’ front office who had built most of their promotional campaign around their No. 1 pick.

The feeling of euphoria left after Manning had led the Jayhawks to the NCAA title, also went sour in Lawrence, Kan.

First, the Jayhawks lost their coach, Larry Brown, after a comedy routine in which he said he was going to UCLA, reneged and said he would stay at Kansas and then 6 weeks later left for San Antonio and the pros.

Shortly thereafter, the NCAA put Kansas on 3 years’ probation for recruiting violations during Brown’s tenure, concerning a player who never played for the school, knocking the Jayhawks out of a chance at defending their championship or even being invited to the 64-team tournament.

Although the Olympic Games were 15 time zones away in Seoul, South Korea, nearly 300 hours of television made them seem almost as close as they were when they were here in 1984.

It was a bittersweet Games.

For every Florence Griffith Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Janet Evans, Greg Louganis or Matt Biondi, it seemed that there were Ben Johnson, Anthony Hembrick, stolen property or South Korean boxing officials to muddy the waters.

Griffith Joyner, her Mandarin-like fingernails painted with Olympic rings, USA and polka dots, and Johnson, his muscles bulging like that of a Mr. America candidate, ran two of the greatest 100-meter races in track and field history.

FloJo, her long, black hair flowing behind her, was so far ahead after 60 meters that she threw her arms in the air in exaltation. The result, a 10.54-second win, was second only to the world-record 10.49 she had run in the Olympic trials at Indianapolis. Later, she won the 200 meters, ran on the winning 400-meter relay and anchored a 1,600-meter relay team that broke the American record in finishing second to a world-record performance by the Soviet Union.

Johnson was even more awesome. The Jamaican-born Canadian destroyed the fastest field in sprint history with a world-record 100 meters of 9.79 seconds. Four runners finished in less than 10 seconds. Carl Lewis, in second, set an American record of 9.92 and wasn’t even close.

Three days later, though, a bomb dropped. Johnson’s test for anabolic steroids was positive and he was stripped of his gold medal, kicked off the Canadian national team for life, banned from international competition for 2 years and sent home in ignominy. Also he was in financial disarray as one lucrative contract after another was canceled.

Johnson’s name was stricken from the record books and the gold medal given to Lewis, who had won it outright in 1984. Lewis later won the long jump, but was prevented from a second straight sweep of 4 gold medals when he lost the 200 to Joe DeLoach, and never had a chance in the 400-meter relay after Calvin Smith and Lee McNeill had botched a pass and the United States was disqualified in the first round.

Financiers close to Johnson say the scandal could cost the defrocked sprinter up to $10 million in endorsements.

Kersee-Joyner, FloJo’s sister-in-law, gave claim to being the world’s greatest female athlete by setting a world record in the heptathlon and also winning the long jump.

Evans, with 3 golds, and Biondi, with 5 golds, a silver and a bronze, shared the swimming spotlight with East Germany’s Kristin Otto, who took home 6 golds. Louganis, despite striking his head on the board during a dive, came back and successfully defended both his springboard and platform championships with gold-medal performances.

Swimming received a bit of a black eye, though, when a couple of U.S. medalists celebrated by taking a concrete lion’s mask from a nightclub as a prank and ended up spending 8 hours in jail and getting kicked out of the games.

Boxing and weightlifting were so full of controversy that there was some short-lived discussion of banning both from future games.

Hembrick, the U.S. middleweight boxing favorite, missed a bus and was disqualified in the first round after failing to arrive in time for his bout.

And South Korean boxing officials, including security guards, became so incensed when one of their fighters lost a close decision, that they attacked a New Zealand referee. The disconsolate losing fighter refused to leave the ring, sitting in his corner for 67 minutes, forcing the postponement of other bouts.

Another bout, which ended prematurely when one fighter and the referee became confused over a round-ending bell from an adjacent ring, was fought a second time.

After two Bulgarian lifters, both gold medalists, were disqualified for failing drug tests, the Bulgarian coach withdrew his team and went home. The Hungarian coach did likewise after one of his lifters had lost a silver medal to the drug tests.

Graf, after completing her tennis Grand Slam by winning Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, went to Seoul and became her sport’s first gold medalist since tennis was dropped from the Olympics after 1924. Graf won 72 of 75 matches and 11 tournaments during the year.

Two isolated incidents, both far from the media spotlight, bear noting.

When the taped recording of the “Star Spangled Banner” failed after Arlene Limas of Chicago had won the demonstration sport of taekwondo, she sang the national anthem herself.

And when Lawrence Lemieux, a Canadian sailor, saw one of his opponents in the water after falling overboard, he stopped and rescued him. Lemieux, who was second when he stopped, finished 26th, but became a bigger hero in Canada than Ben Johnson.

The Winter Olympics in Calgary were memorable for a historic figure skating match of “Carmen” interpretations by Olympic champion Katarina Witt of East Germany and challenger Debi Thomas, a Stanford medical student. Interest was so high that the final round knocked “The Cosby Show” off its No. 1 position in TV ratings.

Witt won and immediately cashed in financially by joining an ice show with the men’s winner, Brian Boitano of the United States.

The most unforgettable figure in Calgary, though, turned out to be a third-rate ski jumper named Eddie (the Eagle) Edwards of England. Edwards finished last in both individual events, more than 100 feet behind winner Matti Nykanen of Finland in one, but caught the fancy of both the public and the media and had a commemorative poster issued in his honor by the province of Alberta.

Professional football, which started the year on such a bright note last January in San Diego when Williams, the first black quarterback to start a Super Bowl, led Washington to a 42-10 win over Denver, found itself mired in a series of drug violations only months later.

More than 20 players were suspended after failing substance-abuse tests. Among them were headliners such as Lawrence Taylor, Dexter Manley, Bruce Smith, Mark Duper and the Rams’ Charles White.

Violence on the ice hit a new low when Pittsburgh’s Mario Lemieux, the National Hockey League’s most valuable player and leading scorer, was slashed by the New York Rangers’ David Shaw in a game marred by nearly 300 minutes in penalties. Lemieux missed 2 games because of his injuries and Shaw was suspended for 12.

Edmonton won the Stanley Cup with 4-game sweeps of the Calgary Flames, the team that had the best regular-season record, and the Boston Bruins. Gretzky was the catalyst and MVP of the playoffs as the Oilers won their fourth Cup in the Gretzky era.

After the final game, Boston Coach Terry O’Reilly said: “There should be a league rule where he is passed around from team to team each year.”

So it came as quite a shock when he was traded, not to another Canadian team, but across the border to Los Angeles where, Canadians were led to believe, the only ice was in cocktail glasses at glitzy Hollywood parties.

It didn’t help the image that Gretzky had recently married a Hollywood actress--Janet Jones--in one of the most celebrated and publicized weddings in the nation’s history.

In 1988 BG (Before Gretzky), the biggest thing that had happened on the ice at the Forum might have been when a fan poured red liquid onto it before a game with Vancouver to protest the killing of wolves in Canada.

College football and basketball didn’t escape without problems, either.

Oklahoma, Houston and Texas A & M, perennial football powerhouses were hit with sanctions that will keep them out of bowl games and TV appearances, and will reduce the numbers of their scholarships. In basketball, NCAA champion Kansas suffered a similar fate.

The return of Notre Dame, under the direction of feisty Lou Holtz, to the top of the football rankings helped revive interest in the college game. Just when it appeared that USC might follow in the hometown championship trend set by the Lakers and Dodgers, along came Notre Dame to shoot the Trojans down. The 27-10 win by an opportunistic Irish team over the suddenly befuddled Trojans clouded the fact that, at 10-1, only 2 teams in college football have better records than USC.

Those 2 teams, Notre Dame and West Virginia, will meet on the second day of 1989 in Tempe, Ariz., to decide the mythical championship of 1988.