COMMENTARY : Dave’s World Was a Gasser

In 1994 the owners of major league baseball teams did what World War I, the Depression and Hitler couldn’t do. After closing down ballparks, owners called off the World Series. Then they promised to begin next season with whatever players showed up. These are the acts of firemen who answer a 911 call by spraying the flames with gasoline. Proud may they be come spring to preside over the ashes.

In 1994 the people of Lillehammer gave the world a snowy idyll. Dan Jansen finally did it and carried his baby in his arms. We saw Bonnie Blair a last time and Oksana Bayul a first. We saw a man in a fox-fur coat carrying a moosehead with a sign on its antlers, “For Sale, $850.” Hans Osterud’s coat came from 23 red foxes he shot one winter from his bathroom window. As for why he was selling the moosehead, Osterud said, “Because I have too many.”

Dennis Rodman dyed his hair red in 1994.

In 1994 Dennis Rodman dyed his hair green.

He also covered his torso with tattoos. And wore an earring or two. And a ring in his navel. And one in his nose. And during an NBA-ordered suspension, he sat at courtside with his date, the basketball wannabe Madonna.

“I’m being me,” Dennis Rodman explained. “If people can’t handle it, that’s their problem.”

In 1994 a hip-hop singer who performs with a condom in the left lens of her eyeglasses set fire to the $2-million mansion owned by a football player who once shot a Kroger store in her presence when he thought his manhood had been threatened. Despite the spats, Lisa Lopes and Andre Rison professed unwavering love for each other. Maybe she hid the ammo and he hid the matches.

In 1994 five men were heavyweight champion of the world. Two were knocked out, one was almost 50, one had a bad heart that he said was fixed by a faith healer and one used to be the sparring partner of the best fighter in the world, a man who has six months to run on a lease in an Indiana jailhouse. Where have you gone, Muhammad Ali?

In 1994 the little filmmaker and basketball wannabe Spike Lee called Reggie Miller “Cheryl.” Television interviewer Jim Rome called Jim Everett “Chris.” Baseball Owner Marge Schott called men who wear earrings “fruity,” though it certainly can be argued that a man such as Dennis Rodman is not so much fruity as nutty.

Here’s who should have won the Heisman Trophy in 1994:

Forrest Gump.

And he should be named the next commissioner of baseball.

In 1994 Michael Jordan wrote a book 36 pages long. It sold for $12. At that rate, “War and Peace” would cost $485. But then, Leo Tolstoy never won a slam-dunk contest.

Half the University of Massachusetts basketball team was in academic trouble in ’94. They were locked in combat with such intellectual challenges as “Sports Broadcasting” and “Sex, Drugs and AIDS.” Their coach, John Calipari, was paid $750,000 for a year’s work, which is $750,000 more than his players were paid. But, hey. The players are getting an education. So it’s all even, right?

Well, no. In 1994 the former executive director of the NCAA said college athletes are exploited. Walter Byers said they work under a “neoplantation mentality” that rewards “overseers and the supervisors,” with money going only to the massahs: “The coach owns the athlete’s feet, the college owns the athlete’s body.”

In 1994 a white Bronco moved across our field of vision.

It carried O.J. Simpson, a gun to his head.

We thought we knew him.

We knew nothing.

From his jail cell, marketing being an athlete’s religion, Simpson put up for sale 25,000 statues of himself in football gear, $3,395 each, a total of $84,875,000. He also autographed trading cards. He resigned from the board of directors of a knife-making company.

In 1994 Seattle SuperSonics Coach George Karl said of his star Shawn Kemp’s taunting: “I’m tired of some of that stuff on my team. It’s totally anti-sport. It’s an extension of the individual. It’s the glorification of the individual because of marketing, advertising, Reeboks, Nikes and all that stuff. It’s why my enthusiasm is deteriorating.”

In 1994, after the last round of golf he will ever play in the United States Open, Arnold Palmer wept. After the first round of golf he played coming back from treatment for cancer, Paul Azinger wept. The two-time U.S. Open champion Julius Boros was 74 when he drove a golf cart to a stop by his favorite willow tree on a course near his home in Florida. There he died.

Wilma Rudolph also died, her grace immortal. The sportswriter Mo Siegel died, his laughter yet alive. During the Persian Gulf war, Mo was late to a banquet in Washington. He said, “I’d have been here on time, but my cab driver kept trying to surrender to me.”

In 1994 the games gave us poetry: Roberto Alomar turning two. Mookie Blaylock running the break. Jerry Rice, on a post pattern, catching the back half of a football about to fall uncaught. Ken Griffey Jr. on his knees throwing out a runner at second. Barry Bonds freezing ropes with that stroke. Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders, regal even as they dance with violence.

In 1994, as in every year, it was good and right to remember the words of baseball’s wisest man, Casey Stengel, the outfielder/clown who became a manager/genius. After seven decades in the game, Stengel was asked if he would like to go back to managing.

“Well, to be perfectly truthful and honest and frank about it, I am 85 years old, which ain’t so bad,” Casey said, “so to be truthful and honest and frank about it, the thing I’d like to be right now is . . . an astronaut!”