One Man's Rise and Fall Stand Tall : Decade in review: Rose's suspension from baseball and breaking of Cobb's record are voted top stories of the '80s.

By HAL BOCK

Dec. 23, 1989 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Athletic achievement and athletic disgrace.

They are the trademarks of the 1980s in sports, the best and the worst of 10 tumultuous years that produced great accomplishments balanced by public humiliation.

And as this roller-coaster ride reaches its conclusion, they are the thread that ties together the top stories of the decade, selected by sportswriters and broadcasters in an Associated Press poll.

Pete Rose was at both ends of that spectrum during the period, and appropriately, his adventures took the first two places in the poll.

The gambling investigation that forced Rose out of baseball in 1989 was voted the top story for the period, and his relentless pursuit of Ty Cobb’s all-time record of 4,191 hits, which he broke four years earlier, finished second.

With a first-place vote worth 10 points, second place nine, etc., Rose’s gambling had 116 firsts and 3,159 points, and Rose’s pursuit of Cobb had 60 firsts and 2,395 points.

They were followed in order by the World Series earthquake (69), 2,142; sports labor, including soaring salaries and baseball and football strikes (9), 1,765; Nolan Ryan’s 5,000 strikeouts (22), 1,593; the U.S.-Soviet Olympic boycotts (38), 1,495; Ben Johnson’s steroids use (24), 1,491; Wayne Gretzky breaks Gordie Howe’s scoring record (15), 1,406; Miracle on Ice: U.S. Olympic hockey (78), 1,210, and drugs, including Len Bias’ cocaine death and Pittsburgh drug trials (47), 1,105.

Rose’s problems first surfaced in February, when he was summoned under rather mysterious circumstances from the Cincinnati Reds’ training camp to meet in New York with Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and his successor, Bart Giamatti. The rumor was that the subject was gambling, but Rose, a frequent visitor to racetracks, shrugged it off.

“That’s been associated with me for 20 years,” he said. “You can’t control rumors.”

Baseball, too, seemed to downplay the affair at first.

“We asked him to do it; we didn’t order him,” Ueberroth said of the visit. “There’s nothing ominous and there won’t be any follow-through.”

But that turned out to be more hopeful than accurate. It was very ominous, and there was a substantial follow-through.

When Ueberroth left baseball and Giamatti took office, the Rose affair was turned over to John Dowd, a prominent Washington attorney. His investigation resulted in a 225-page report, a detailed indictment of the man whose hustle and drive as a player made him the embodiment of baseball for millions of fans.

Each day, new sordid stories surfaced, linking Rose with bookmakers, organized-crime figures and other unsavory characters. The litany of charges accused him of all manner of things, not the least of which was betting on baseball, which calls for suspension from the sport. Rose battled back, suing the commissioner, winning a brief victory in a local court, losing on larger issues in federal court.

The war continued all summer, hanging ominously over the game, blunting nearly everything else in baseball.

Finally in August, Rose gave up the fight and, though he never admitted to betting on baseball, was suspended for life, ending the sport’s most sordid affair since the 1919 Black Sox scandal. It was also one of the commissioner’s last acts. Eight days later, Giamatti died of a massive heart attack at his vacation home in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

In six months, Rose went from being one of the most hallowed figures in baseball history to being one of the most disgraced. It was a long, sad fall.

Four years earlier, he reached the pinnacle of the game when, on Sept. 11, 1985, he broke Cobb’s record for career hits. In his 22nd season, doubling as player-manager of the Reds, he dropped a humpback line drive into left field against Eric Show of the San Diego Padres for the 4,192nd hit of his career. And as he stood at first base, embracing his son and his teammates, tears welled in his eyes. The Cobb chase was finally over.

Rose had come to the Reds in 1963, a cocky, chip-on-the-shoulder kid making the jump from Class B to the majors. He flourished and within a few years was a full-fledged star. There were three batting championships, a record 44-game hitting streak in 1978 and 10 seasons in which he surpassed 200 hits.

Suddenly, he found himself within hailing distance of Cobb’s record. The last part of the journey, however, was not easy.

He had left the Reds as a free agent after the 1978 season, signing with Philadelphia. At the end of the 1983 season, he had 3,990 hits--201 fewer than Cobb--and was a free agent again, but with few takers this time. Finally, he hooked on with Montreal for half a season, then moved back to Cincinnati as player-manager to complete his pursuit. He finished 1984 with 4,097 hits, still 94 short.

Ninety-four hits was less than three months’ work for Rose in his prime. Now, at age 44, it took him five months to reach it. When he got there, it was an achievement as monumental as Hank Aaron smashing Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs, and the acclaim was just as universal.

Aaron’s place in baseball history remains secure 15 years after he broke Ruth’s record. It took just four years for Rose’s to be destroyed.

WORLD SERIES EARTHQUAKE

It was a beautiful fall afternoon in San Francisco, a perfect setting for Game 3 of the 1989 World Series. The Oakland A’s had won the first two games but the San Francisco Giants were hopeful that the switch to Candlestick Park would signal a change in their fortunes.

Then, in a flash, baseball became distinctly secondary. The earth began moving. There was a frightening rumble as the ground shuddered, the upper deck lurched and the light towers swayed. The World Series was in the middle of a classic California earthquake.

At first, there was a shrug-it-off reaction by the fans. Then the electricity went out, and when news arrived that part of the Bay Bridge had fallen, the realization set in that this was a full-scale disaster.

It would be 10 days before baseball resumed and the A’s completed their march to baseball’s strangest World Series championship.

SPORTS LABOR

Never in the history of sports had athletes stood up to management as they did in the 1980s. Twice, in 1981 for 50 days and then again in 1985 for two days, baseball players shut down the game in midseason. Football players did the same thing, walking out for 57 days in 1982 and for 24 days in 1987.

The labor action forced unprecedented responses from the owners. Baseball played a split-season in 1981, crowning pre-strike and post-strike division champions and establishing a second tier of playoffs. Football played a nine-game season in 1982 followed by a tournament leading to the Super Bowl. In 1987, the NFL hired replacement players and kept playing games while the regulars marched on picket lines.

Baseball’s free-agent market went from the extreme of collusion that froze out the players for three years to a spurt of wild spending that pushed salaries past the $3-million mark.

NOLAN RYAN’S 5,000TH STRIKEOUT

Nolan Ryan struck out the first batter he ever faced in the major leagues on Sept. 11, 1966. But don’t feel sorry for Pat Jarvis. Over the years, he would have plenty of company.

Ryan was a rookie with a world of potential when he fanned Jarvis. Nearly 23 years later, on Aug. 22, 1989, Ryan was still throwing fastballs at 95 m.p.h. when he got Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A’s swinging at a 3-2 pitch for the 5,000th strikeout of his career.

Ryan needed six strikeouts that night to reach 5,000 and he moved toward the target in a hurry. He got Jose Canseco in the first inning, Dave Henderson and Tony Phillips in the second, Rickey Henderson and Ron Hassey in the fourth and Rickey Henderson again in the fifth. “He gave me no chance,” Henderson said. “He just blew it by me.”

Ryan’s roster of victims includes 17 Hall of Famers and 42 players who have won MVP awards. Texas coach Davey Lopes, victimized six times by Ryan, once observed, “If he ain’t struck you out, you ain’t nobody.”

U.S.-SOVIET OLYMPIC BOYCOTTS

In January of 1980, one month after Soviet troops crossed into Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter announced that unless they withdrew within the next 30 days, the United States would ask that the Olympic Games, scheduled for that summer in Moscow, either be postponed or moved.

One month later, in the midst of the Lake Placid Winter Games, with the Moscow Olympics still in place, Carter announced an American boycott of the Summer Games.

A number of western nations supported the action, although some, like Britain and Australia, allowed their athletes to decide for themselves whether they would compete. That freedom was denied American competitors, who were threatened with revocation of their passports if they traveled to the Soviet Union.

Four years later, with the Summer Games in Los Angeles, the Soviets responded in kind. On May 8, 1984, the day an extensive Olympic torch relay began across the United States, the Soviet Union announced its own boycott, citing “a gross flouting” of Olympic ideals by U.S. authorities.

BEN JOHNSON’S STEROID USE

Their showdown had been one of the most widely anticipated events of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Now, the stadium clock clicked off the seconds in fractions as Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson swept down the track, their bodies straining for the finish of the 100-meter race.

Johnson got there first, an instant ahead of Lewis. As he broke the tape, the clock read 9.79 seconds, a remarkable time, faster than any man had ever run the distance. He glared across at Lewis. His longtime rival was a well-beaten second in 9.92. Ben Johnson was an Olympic gold medalist.

Three days later, it all came apart for Johnson. A post-race urine sample showed traces of the banned steroid, stanozolol. Despite his denials, he was stripped of his medal and left Seoul in disgrace.

“Everyone was suspecting it,” American quarter-miler Danny Everett said. “You look at old pictures of him and new pictures. . . . You don’t expect one of the top athletes to get caught. The top athletes are usually smart enough not to get caught.”

WAYNE GRETZKY BREAKS GORDIE HOWE’S RECORD

For 26 brilliant seasons, Gordie Howe terrorized NHL goalies, and when he was done, he had 1,850 points, the most in history. The last one came in 1980, the year rookie Wayne Gretzky broke into the league, leading it in scoring.

Over the next decade, Gretzky would set or share 44 regular-season, postseason and career scoring records. It was only a matter of time before he broke the most cherished mark of all, and on Oct. 15, at the start of his 11th season, Gretzky shattered Howe’s scoring record.

He did it in dramatic fashion, scoring a goal in the final minute of a game against his old Edmonton teammates and then scoring another in overtime to win it for the Kings. The record that Howe set in 1,767 games was broken in Gretzky’s 780th NHL game.

But that hardly diminished Howe. Certainly not in the mind of Gretzky, who grew up idolizing him.

“Gordie still is the greatest in my mind,” he said, “and the greatest in everyone else’s mind.”

MIRACLE ON ICE: U.S. OLYMPIC HOCKEY

The young U.S. hockey team weaved its way through the early rounds of the 1980 Winter Olympic tournament, salvaging a tie against Sweden in the opener with a last-minute score, then beating Czechoslovakia, Norway, Romania and West Germany.

The reward was a berth in the medal round and a match against the perennial champion Soviet Union, a team that had embarrassed the Americans, 10-3, in an exhibition the week before the Lake Placid Games. This time, though, it would be different. This time the roster full of college kids would come up with a miracle on ice.

Three times, they fell behind and three times they came back to tie the score. Then with 10 minutes to play, Mike Eruzione scored the go-ahead goal, and for what seemed an eternity, the Americans skated furiously to protect the lead. “It was the longest 10 minutes of my life,” Eruzione said.

Finally, the last seconds of the game ticked away, and the Americans had a most improbable victory. Two days later, after beating Finland, they also had the gold medal.

DRUGS

On June 17, 1986, the Boston Celtics made Maryland’s Len Bias the second choice in the NBA draft. Two days later, the 6-foot-8 power forward was dead of a cocaine overdose.

Eight days after Bias died, on the weekend he was to be married, Cleveland Browns defensive back Don Rogers also took cocaine and also died of an overdose.

The two deaths so close together were the exclamation points in a drug epidemic that hounded sports during the decade. No sport was immune, with baseball, football, basketball and hockey all forced to suspend players for drug violations.

Perhaps the most embarrassing episode was the Pittsburgh drug trial in 1985, when a parade of major league stars testified before a federal grand jury, detailing substance abuse in baseball. After it was over, Ueberroth disciplined 21 players in March of 1986.

Did the penalties have much effect on sports?

Three months after they were announced, Bias and Rogers died.

THE DECADE’S TOP STORIES

FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS

Here are the top sports stories in the 1980s as voted by sportswriters and broadcasters, with first-place votes in parentheses and total points based on 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.

1. Pete Rose’s gambling (116) 3,159

2. Rose breaks Ty Cobb’s record (60) 2,395

3. World Series earthquake (69) 2,142

4. Sports Labor, including soaring salaries and baseball and football strikes (9) 1,765

5. Nolan Ryan reaches 5,000 strikeouts (22) 1,593

6. U.S. and Soviet Olympic boycotts (38) 1,495

7. Ben Johnson’s steroid use (24) 1,491

8. Wayne Gretzky breaks Gordie Howe’s record (15) 1,406

9. Miracle on ice: U.S. Olympic hockey (78) 1,210

10. Drugs, including Len Bias’ cocaine death and Pittsburgh drug trials (47) 1,105

11. Gretzky’s trade (8) 965

12. Jack Nicklaus’ sixth Masters victory at age 46 (7) 836