Higher Salary Doesn’t Mean Higher Power

There have been few free-agent classes in baseball that compare to the next one, which might include Kirby Puckett, Barry Bonds, Ruben Sierra, Mark McGwire and Cal Ripken.

All could have $25-million contracts by next season. If history is a guide, some can be expected to have disappointing seasons.

“I’ve seen the little things that happened to Darryl (Strawberry),” Bonds says. “Even Reggie Jackson. Rickey Henderson. Even Ryne Sandberg gets it a little bit.

“As hard as it is for those guys, with the salary business and as good players as they are, what are (people) looking for? If you’re looking for a miracle worker, all I ask is look straight up because He’s up there.”

Slump: Ivan Lendl spent 10 years in the top three of the ATP rankings--a record 270 weeks as the No. 1 tennis player in the world--but is now No. 7 after a run of injuries.

Lendl had two operations to remove tissue from his right hand. His back stiffened this summer, causing him to default his fourth-round match at Wimbledon. He can’t jog for conditioning any more and uses a cart to play golf.

Said Lendl, still optimistic: “The rest of me is in pretty good shape.”

Bigger slump: Bjorn Borg is ranked No. 917.

Trivia time: Of the 26 Super Bowls, how many were won by original AFL teams?

Underdog: Asks the Baltimore Sun’s Phil Jackman: “Seriously now, how much of a chance does Tashkent, Uzbekistan, have of beating out Berlin, Milan, Beijing, Sydney, Istanbul, Manchester and Brasilia for the Olympic Games 2000?”

Ah ha!In “Educating Dexter,” co-written with Tom Friend, Dexter Manley tells of learning about the possibilities of Sudafed--from Charles Jackson, the NFL’s assistant director of security who was warning of the dangers of drugs in training camp.

“Meantime, I test out the Sudafed before a game at Buffalo in 1987,” Manley wrote. “I took five tablets before kickoff and five more at halftime. I was foaming at the mouth, I was so loaded. I went off in the locker room, tearing up the chairs and coffee pots and sweating profusely.”

Manley said Washington club officials thought he was on cocaine and ordered a drug test afterward.

Manley sacked quarterback Jim Kelly twice.

Add Dexter: He says many Redskins fake their religious beliefs to get on the good side of Coach Joe Gibbs.

“I’d model my kids after Art Monk if I could,” Manley wrote. “He is real and a lot of other Redskins weren’t. They’d act like Holy-Rolly Bible-toters just to get on Joe Gibbs’ good side, and Gibbs fell for it. . . . They saw that Gibbs was tight with the Bible, and they said, ‘Well, I’ll be a Christian now.’ ”

Trivia answer: Five--three by the Raiders (1977-81-84), one each by the Kansas City Chiefs (1970) and the New York Jets (1969).

Quotebook: Coach Joe Bugel of the Phoenix Cardinals to rookie quarterback Tony Sacca, who complained that NFL footballs slip out of his hand: “Well, if you can’t throw the NFL ball, you might as well quit, because that’s the ball we use.”