Twenty in the News : They Came and Went--or Threatened to--and Only a Few Played the Game Well : 1994: THE YEAR IN REVIEW. Only Amateurs gave O.C. fans reasons to cheer.

Some improved the property value of the Orange County sports landscape, others devalued it, all made headlines during the last 12 months. The O.C. 20 for 1994:

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1. John Shaw: Moving the Rams into the Super Bowl never interested him half as much as moving them to another city. Much bigger payoff this way. To get this far, Shaw has bamboozled the Anaheim city council, straight-armed the Save The Rams committee and lined up St. Louis as his sucker-to-be-named later. Any day now, the letter-of-intent will be signed, triggering months of bitter, tedious litigation. For Shaw, the fun is just beginning.

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2. Georgia Frontiere: She could have been beloved in Orange County for all time, and all it would have taken was eight words: “I have sold the Rams to local interests.”

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3. Tiger Woods: The National Sports Review ranked Tiger No. 33 among its top 100 newsmakers of 1994, just behind Jim Courier and ahead of Brazilian World Cup stars Romario and Bebeto. The magazine then asked the question: “Is he the next Jack Nicklaus?” After winning the U.S. Amateur at 18, before attending his first class at Stanford, the question ought to be rephrased: “Who will be the next Tiger Woods?”

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4. Jimmie Reese: The nicest man ever to wear an Angels uniform passed away on July 13, at the age of 92, and those who knew him felt that was much too soon. For 23 years, the legendary fungo master lent dignity, grace and good humor to the Angels’ clubhouse. Jimmie’s old jersey number--50--belongs on the right field fence at Anaheim Stadium, right next to old friend Nolan Ryan’s 30.

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5. Buck Rodgers: Nothing against Marcel Lachemann, a man who knows his pitching, but if you squinted hard enough, you could actually picture Rodgers managing the Angels into the playoffs someday. Now, the feeling is gone.

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6. Chuck Knox: This time, he came to the Rams without the cavalry, and his failure to revive a moribund operation contributed to the drum beat now accompanying the Rams out of town. Sad statistic: This was Knox’s sixth consecutive finish out of the playoffs. Sadder statistic: Take away Knox’s first stint with the Rams, the glory years of 1973-77, and his career NFL won-lost record is . . . 132-132.

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7. Paul Kariya: He leads the Mighty Ducks in press clippings and he hasn’t played a regular-season minute for them. As soon as he finally signed a contract, bringing the 14-month Kariyan Conflict to a close, Gary Bettman decides to lock him out. Duck fans suspect a conspiracy.

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8. Darryl Henley: Nothing epitomized the Rams’ dire on-the-field situation more than the legal maneuvering required to make Henley, a talented cornerback facing felony cocaine-trafficking charges, eligible for 15 games in 1994. Henley started 14 of them and the Rams still went 4-12. Maybe justice was served.

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9. Ila Borders: The first woman to win an intercollegiate baseball game, beating Claremont-Mudd, 12-1, in her debut. Then she proved it was no fluke by concluding her freshman season at Southern California College with a respectable 2-4 record and a 2.91 earned-run average. The Angels already have scouted Borders and let’s just say they need her more than she needs them.

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10. Mark Leiter: He was cut in spring training by the Detroit Tigers and that was the least of his worries. A month later, his 9-month-old son Ryan died of a children’s form of Lou Gehrig’s disease and within four days of the memorial service, Mark Leiter was starting on the mound for the Angels. How he found the fortitude to withstand six innings in a 6-4 Angel victory left teammates shaking their heads, but Leiter said afterward, “I’m strong and healthy. (Ryan) fought for every breath. He never quit. If he can handle that, I ought to be able to deal with a baseball game.”

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11. Lalas Land: Colombian and Brazilian soccer players training in Fullerton. Romanians in Newport. And based in Mission Viejo, the local heroes, Team USA, led by the heavy-metal charisma of head-banging defender and aspiring rock guitarist Alexi Lalas. The World Cup transformed the county into a soccer wonderland during June and July, offering a primer as to why the rest of the globe revolves around this game--tremendous spectacle, full of color and high drama, and in this sport, the strikers keep the ball rolling.

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12. Titan baseball: If it’s an even-numbered year, Cal State Fullerton must be going to Omaha. College World Series champions in 1984, the Titans returned in ‘88, ‘90, ’92 and again in ‘94, where they were an inning away from the championship game--with Dante Powell on third with no outs. Powell was stranded there, however, and Fullerton was eliminated by Georgia Tech, 3-2. There’s always 1996.

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13. Classics, Coming And Going: The John Wooden Classic came and the Disneyland Pigskin Classic, after five largely neglected productions, left, proving what? That Orange County, having experienced the Rams, has lost its stomach for football? The inaugural Wooden Classic drew a sellout crowd 18,307 to The Pond, not that many fewer than the 28,513 who watched Ohio State and Fresno State trudge through Pigskin V: The Final Chapter.

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14. Rent-A-Clipper: At 4-25, they are overachieving. Their starting lineup has included such names as Matt Fish, Tony Massenburg and Charles Outlaw. Yet, once a month, on the average, they play a game at The Pond and Orange County treats them like the Celtics. Four games in Anaheim in 1994 resulted in the four largest home crowds in Clipper history. Only a madman would not want to move his team here on a permanent basis, but then, you already know about Donald Sterling.

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15. Bill Bavasi: What was that about the sins of the father revisiting the son? Young Bavasi was thrown the Herculean task of cleaning up after Whitey Herzog--baseball’s version of the Exxon Valdez--so most Angel fans were willing to cut him a break. But his firing of Rodgers will be his albatross, just as failing to re-sign Nolan Ryan in 1980 was Buzzie’s. As for his player-acquisition acumen, who can tell? Mitch Williams? Lee Smith? Will they ever see the light of an actual Angel game?

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16. Ron Wilson: It can be done, even in Anaheim. Rookie coach, in charge of a rookie team, keeps the playoff drive alive until the final month. Duck fans can hardly wait to see what Wilson might accomplish with a few players who can do more with the puck than fling it down the boards, and they’ve been saying that for the last three months.

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17. Chapman football: Sixty-two years in the making, Chapman University’s return to intercollegiate football was played out at Whittier College on the evening of Sept. 17. Chapman won that one, 30-13, and five others en route to a 6-2-1 season, proving what can be accomplished on a $200,000 budget and a lot of rest.

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18. Retiring Juco Legends: Three remarkable community college coaching careers ended in 1994. Cypress College men’s basketball coach Don Johnson and Fullerton College women’s basketball coach Colleen Riley retired with California state records for victories in their respective sports while Saddleback College’s Ken Swearingen bowed out as the nation’s all-time winningest community college football coach. The final numbers: Johnson, 588-259; Riley, 559-147; Swearingen, 247-80-8.

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19. Jim Huffman: He never won much on the court as women’s volleyball coach at Cal State Fullerton, but in court, Huffman was a crucial 2-0, winning lawsuits that restored his disbanded program and awarded him $1.3 million in damages for wrongful termination. Those rulings prompted an upheaval within the Fullerton athletic department, leading to Bill Shumard’s May resignation as athletic director and his eventual replacement by John Easterbrook.

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20. Brad Holland: In Orange County in 1994, when the going got tough, the opportunistic got the hell out of town--to San Diego, in Holland’s case. Holland bailed on Cal State Fullerton on Sept. 19, dumping the basketball program in the lap of assistant coach Bob Hawking less than a month before the start of fall practice. This mass exodus from Orange County has developed into a full-fledged trend, and it looks as if it will get worse before it gets better.