City’s Sports Stories of Year Aren’t Worth a Big Cheer

The L.A. Sports Council has released its annual top 10 sports moments in the Southland, listed chronologically. But, as anyone who has followed sports here in the last 12 months knows, with every silver lining comes a cloud.

January: Ron Dayne, who before the year is out will win the Heisman Trophy, scores four touchdowns as Wisconsin beats UCLA in the Rose Bowl game, 38-31.

That is excellent news, if you live in Madison, Wis.

May: UCLA’s women’s softball team upsets Washington to win the NCAA title.

The Bruins could have made it two years in a row if they hadn’t been on probation in 1998 for using a ringer from Australia. Remember her name? How could anyone forget Tanya Harding?

June: The Lakers hire Phil Jackson as coach.

Within the first six months of the year, they fired Del Harris and Kurt Rambis.

July: U.S. Women’s World Cup soccer team beats China in the final at the Rose Bowl.

Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain and Co. earned respect from everyone except the U.S. Soccer Federation, which acted as if the whole thing had never happened when negotiating new contracts, causing the coach to quit and the women to strike.

August: Former USC track star Inger Miller from Pasadena wins two gold medals and one silver at the World Track and Field Championships.

Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks was injured after winning the 100 and finishing third in the long jump.

October: Staples Center hosts first sporting event.

The little people, who proudly held the line against spending taxpayer money to build the new arena, picketed because the building’s owners weren’t catering to them.

October: Dodgers name Bob Daly chairman.

Fox raided the henhouse, then hired someone to lock the door.

November: L.A. Galaxy beats Dallas to reach MLS championship game.

The Galaxy lost the championship game, 2-0, to D.C. United.

November: USC’s football team ends eight-game losing streak to UCLA with a 17-7 victory.

Excuse half of the college football fans in town if they didn’t celebrate.

December: Laffit Pincay Jr. breaks Bill Shoemaker’s record of 8,833 wins with a victory on Irish Nip at Hollywood Park.

His son, Laffit Pincay III, stayed an extra day to see the record-breaking ride, prompting the cable television station he worked for in New York to fire him.

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If Gary Stevens wasn’t the nation’s best jockey before abruptly retiring Sunday at Santa Anita because of his chronically aching knees, he was one of the three best, along with Jerry Bailey and Pat Day.

Stevens had one of his rare low points during the Belmont Stakes in 1997, when he missed a chance to win the Triple Crown by finishing second on the Bob Baffert-trained Silver Charm.

A year later, another Baffert horse, Real Quiet, was in position to win the Triple Crown, and this time Stevens was the spoiler, winning the Belmont on Victory Gallop by a nose over Real Quiet.

“I’ll be back on Silver Charm next Saturday,” Stevens said after that race.

“You think?” said Elliott Walden, Victory Gallop’s trainer.

But Baffert didn’t hold a grudge. On the contrary, he showed his respect for Stevens by giving him his choice of horses from the best-stocked stable in the sport. That included Real Quiet.

Upon learning of Stevens’ retirement, Baffert called him “the best rider I’ve ever thrown on the back of one of my horses.”

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Frank Stronach, the new owner at Santa Anita Park, has had a lot of good ideas, but he expressed his most revolutionary one for the sport Sunday. He said warnings should be printed on admission tickets that gambling can be harmful to your wallet. . . .

“We should say, ‘Be careful when you gamble; don’t gamble your grocery money,’ ” he said. “It’s like drinking and driving. We should take the lead on this and try to be responsible.” . . .

E-2: Anees, Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, is trained by Alex Hassinger Jr. . . .

Wisconsin is favored by 11 points over Stanford in the Rose Bowl game, but I don’t see it as that great a mismatch. . . .

Although oddsmakers see the Cardinal as a mirror image of the UCLA team that lost to the Badgers last January in the Rose Bowl--all offense, no defense--Stanford is considerably better against the run than those Bruins were. . . .

So maybe the Cardinal can hold Dayne to fewer than 246 yards. . . .

I’m sure Moscow police know what they’re doing while investigating the bombing of Russian figure skater Maria Butyrskaya’s car, but, if it were me, I’d start with passport control to see whether Jeff Gillooly, Shane Stant or Shawn Eckhardt have entered the country. . . .

The quote of the year wasn’t uttered until December, but it was worth the wait. In case you missed it, boxing promoter Bob Arum told The Times’ Steve Springer, “One thing about Don King, he’s a scumbag, but he’s a professional.”

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While wondering if the NFL would consider using polls, or even the BCS computer, to choose playoff teams, I was thinking: Good news for the Saints and Patriots is that Al Pacino is available to coach, that wasn’t really I who said Bobby Ross should be coach of the year, how about them Cowboys.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.