Ring Out the Old--Thankfully

As the song says, it was a very good year. Oh, not for the Rams, Raiders, Dodgers, Angels, Trojans, Clippers or Bruins. For the Lakers, it was possibly the worst year ever.

It was not a good year for Pete Rose, George Steinbrenner, Mike Tyson, Mikhail Gorbachev or Bo Jackson.

The Sportsman of the Year? No contest: Steve Palermo, the umpire who came to the rescue of a victim in a robbery and is coming back from paralysis as a result.

It was a good year for Michael Jordan, Mike Powell, Rick Mears, Desmond Howard and Kirby Puckett. Michael Jordan won the NBA, Desmond Howard won the Heisman Trophy, Kirby Puckett won the World Series, Rick Mears won his fourth Indy 500 and Mike Powell finally broke the longest-running track and field record on the books, Bob Beamon’s 23-year-old long-jump mark.

But the man who has done the most for his sport in the past 12 months? No contest. That would be Nick Price. Nick is the South African golfer who withdrew from the PGA tournament at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis to make room for the ninth alternate to come in--fellow by the name of John Daly. No one has done that much for his sport since the day Yankee first baseman Wally Pipp begged off with a bad cold and let a rookie take his place--fellow by the name of Lou Gehrig.

It was not a good year for Tark the Shark. His Nevada Las Vegas Runnin’ Rebels blew the Final Four to Duke, and some of Jerry Tarkanian’s best players were found in a hot tub with a known gambler. They got in the tub, but Tark took the bath.

It wasn’t a very good year for football coaches. John Robinson, Chuck Knox, Lindy Infante, Sam Wyche, Chuck Noll, Dan Henning and somebody named Richard Williamson. Like a lot of their fellow Americans, they ended the year on an unemployment line.

But it was a good year for Atlanta. The Braves made the World Series, the Falcons made the NFL playoffs and the town got the ’96 Olympics. The South has risen again. First thing you know, there will be a statue of Sherman on Peachtree Street.

It was a good year for people in Minneapolis. They got the world baseball championship for their team and the Super Bowl for their town.

It wasn’t a good year for Mike Utley, Bill Shoemaker, Lyle Alzado or Magic Johnson. Utley, of the Detroit Lions, got paralyzed on the 45-yard line against the Rams; Shoemaker had a bad ride, Alzado contracted inoperable cancer that he thinks was caused by steroid use. The music stopped, the lights went out and the cheering died for Magic and sobered a nation.

It was not a good year for Scott Norwood, who probably will be seeing that field goal he missed to lose the Super Bowl with eight seconds to go for the rest of his life. He will always be making it in his dreams. The great author, Gene Fowler, once told me that of all the acclaim and fame he received in his life, he used to spend nights reliving a dropkick he missed in high school, and in his dreams it always went over the bar to give his team the championship. We always curse the chance that was wasted.

It was a good year for Monica Seles (U.S. Open), a fair year for Steffi Graf (Wimbledon) but another not-so-good year for John McEnroe, once again emphasizing the burnout quotient in big-time tennis, where a star such as Bjorn Borg is aces one minute and deuces the next. Jimmy Connors did not go gently into that good night and, at 39, thrashed the youngsters all the way to the semifinals at Flushing Meadow.

It was a good year for Chip Beck. He didn’t win any tournaments, but he shot a 59, which is even harder. Only Al Geiberger had done that before.

It was a good year for Nolan Ryan--he pitched his seventh (seventh!) no-hitter. It was a good break for the republic because it was a break for clean living. It was not a good year for Steve Howe. It was not a good year for Dexter Manley, but he’s had them before. He managed to go five years to a university without learning to read or write. Howe can read and write. He simply doesn’t believe what he reads.

It was a good year for violence. Rob Dibble of the Cincinnati Reds and Albert Belle of the Cleveland Indians decked spectators with baseballs. In the case of Dibble, it was put down to frustration because he hadn’t been able to hit anybody in the batter’s box all year, while the speculation with Belle was he was simply trying to throw out a runner but missed the cutoff man, as usual.

It was a bad year for Reds, generally. Cincinnati couldn’t hold onto its pennant. Neither could the Kremlin. But Sergei Bubka salvaged some Soviet esteem by becoming the first man ever to pole vault more than 20 feet outdoors.

It was a bad year for golf galleries. Spectators were killed by lightning at both the U.S. Open and the PGA, proving something every golfer knows--that a tree-lined golf course is the worst place in the world to find yourself in an electrical storm.

It was a bad year for Steinbrenner, who got kicked out of baseball for dealing with a known loser who should not even have gotten by his secretary. It turned out it was a bad year for the Yankees, too. They not only finished fifth (71-91) in their division but 11th in attendance--in a 14-team league. Some people wanted Steinbrenner back. A better idea would be for them to get Rickey Henderson back. It was a good year for Rickey, who set the all-time base-stealing record.

It was a good year for Toronto, which drew the first 4-million attendance in baseball history. But it was not otherwise a good year for Canada, which not only didn’t get the Stanley Cup, it didn’t get in a World Series--and it never has.

All in all, a pretty good year. But you know the sports fan’s credo. All together now!

Wait till next year!