1993 : An Emotional, Mystifying Year Touched by Tragedy

Real life isn’t in the same ballpark with sports when it comes to playing fair. If something bad happens to you in sports, someone tries to make up for it. They give you a draft pick, free throws, five yards, a trip to first base, a power play. Real life doesn’t play by those rules.

It can come in and just take over. Especially in a year like this one, it can leave you wondering, as Andrew Young did in quoting Arthur Ashe’s lifelong query at Ashe’s funeral, “Why, oh Lord, why?”

You won’t find the answer on the scoreboard, which made 1993 so sad and mystifying for anyone with an emotional investment in sports. The world lost Ashe, who made the connection between life and sports better than most people. And there were far too many other occasions to mourn.

We were just getting used to the idea of real life intruding on sports in the form of big money, labor negotiations, corporate machinations. Then it all hit higher and harder in 1993.

The top sports story, in fact, was rooted in tragedy. Michael Jordan retired after leading the Chicago Bulls to their third consecutive National Basketball Assn. title, largely because he still was reeling from his father’s murder.

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To be sure, triumph also had its day this year. Joe Carter of the Toronto Blue Jays was its chief spokesman, bounding home after ending the baseball season with a once-in-a-generation swing.

Revivals burst out all over. The Dallas Cowboys and Montreal Canadiens recaptured past glory. When history looks back on ‘93, it will recall a blistering pennant race in the National League West, a zestful debate over who’s No. 1 in college football and a madcap heavyweight title fight.

Still, problems that would have seemed extraordinary most years looked tame. The New York Mets, for instance, could be said to have experienced the worst year a baseball team ever has had--based on expectations, salaries and decorum. Except the Cleveland Indians’ year was much worse. Pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews were killed in a spring training boating accident that seriously injured teammate Bobby Ojeda. When pitcher Cliff Young was killed in a car accident after the season, Cleveland was asking, why, why?

Ashe had started phrasing that question at age 6, when his mother died. Eulogists invoked it 43 years later, after pure blind chance gave him the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion. He was remembered for what he did in between, to make this kind of scene possible: 1,400 people an hour passed his coffin in the state house of Richmond, Va., a city that once denied him and every other black child access to its public tennis courts.

“Life, to him, was more than a moment of triumph,” Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., said at a memorial service in New York. “It was a gift of time. His was a life well-lived.”

As much as anyone, Jordan is larger than life. But he felt the world was forming too tight a circle around him, what with speculation about his gambling habits. He leaned on his dad, even asking James Jordan to speak on his behalf during the playoffs. “Makes me feel pretty good, you guys consider me a good substitute,” the elder Jordan said at the time. Michael, stunned, left the stage in the fall, two months after his father was found dead.

Basketball already was staggering from the loss of two players in their prime. The New Jersey Nets’ Drazen Petrovic was on the verge of becoming the NBA’s first European star when he was killed in an accident on a rain-slickened German road. Reggie Lewis already was a captain and fixture with the Boston Celtics before he collapsed on a practice court in July.

Sports generally are spared that grief. But it kept happening. Race drivers Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki were killed in a helicopter and plane crash, respectively. Jim Valvano, still vibrant as a basketball analyst, died of cancer, as did golf pro Heather Farr. Houston Oilers lineman Jeff Alm was a suicide victim.

Among other former athletes who died in 1993, were baseball Hall of Famers Don Drysdale and Roy Campanella, whose storied careers were with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. Both had heart attacks, Campanella on June 26 and Drysdale on July 3.

Julie Krone’s milestone in the Belmont Stakes--she became the first woman jockey to win a Triple Crown race--was shaded by the loss of Preakness winner Prairie Bayou, who broke down and had to be destroyed. Krone herself, later in the season, suffered severe leg and ankle injuries while racing at Saratoga.

Even when life imitated art, the result was tragic. Syosset High football player Michael Macias was paralyzed when he was hit by a car while trying to copy a scene from the movie “The Program.”

At least real life occasionally pulled its punch, with grim news that could have been much grimmer. Monica Seles is expected to recover from the stabbing she suffered during a match. Paul Azinger, who finally won a major title at the PGA Championship, is given a good chance to fight off lymphoma. Bobby Hurley, the Sacramento Kings’ rookie point guard, is improving from critical injuries he suffered in a car accident. Krone is expected to ride again.

On the other hand, 1993 did provide the more exciting ebb and flow, the unexpected that keeps us tuned in. You never know how things might fall--possibly by parachute, which provided a burlesque interlude in Evander Holyfield’s title decision over Riddick Bowe. You can’t tell how the ball will bounce--or if Leon Lett will take a poke at it.

The Mets would just as soon throw away 1993. They tossed out most everything else: threats, fireworks, bleach, a manager and general manager. It was mostly chaotic and, in the Vince Coleman cherry-bomb incident, criminal. The most infamous throwing was done by team symbol Anthony Young, with his record 27-game losing streak. When the streak ended, he said it wasn’t a monkey off his back, “it was the whole zoo.” Yet the circus kept spinning.

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner returned from a suspension in characteristically tasteful, understated manner. He dressed as Napoleon atop a white horse on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

There was enough life in 1993 to keep a lot of people hoping. There’s always a chance some kid will be as good as George Brett or Nolan Ryan, who said goodbye this year.

For them, 1993 was a victory lap. For these people, too:

--Wayne Gretzky overcame back surgery and lifted the Los Angeles Kings to their first Stanley Cup final.

--Mario Lemieux eclipsed even that. He overcame Hodgkin’s disease and won the league’s MVP award.

--A year after he won his first World Series and four years after it looked as if he were finished, Dave Winfield got his 3,000th hit.

--Time was on Chris Webber’s side after all. His gaffe in calling a timeout that Michigan didn’t have was costly in the NCAA final, but he was lauded only a couple of months later when he became the top choice in the NBA draft.

--Barry Bonds matched pay with productivity, sending the seemingly overmatched San Francisco Giants to 103 wins, only one short of the Atlanta Braves.

--Greg Norman, The Guy Who Always Chokes, won the British Open.

--Paul Molitor, a good and unheralded soldier all his career, was the star of the World Series.

--Dennis Byrd walked.

Sometimes it’s a wonderful life.