BARCELONA, Spain -- They were fun, they were exciting, they were hot as hell. The 1992 Olympics have officially closed, and we can now look forward to the traditional lighting of the torch in Atlanta, 1996, which will probably be done by a sheriff in a pickup truck.But before we say adios Barcelona, a look back on the best and worst of the Games we witnessed:
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Some games are not about winning and losing. Some are simply about showing you belong. So when Carl Thomas finally walked off the court Friday night, his shirt dangling, sweat dripping down his back, and embraced his teammates at the end of what -- for the starters on the best team to ever come out of Ypsilanti -- was their last game together, the fans began to buzz. Then, slowly, they clapped. And finally, many of them stood and cheered. It was a message, and the message was this: forget the loss.
It is not my place, as a travel-weary journalist with a clanking jump shot, to offer sky-walking, world-famous, unspeakably rich professional basketball players a hair-styling tip.But I'll do it anyhow.Yo. NBA.What's with all the bald heads?I go to a Pistons game last weekend, I'm lost. I can't tell half the players apart. Bald. Bald. Bald. It's like a Hare Krishna convention.No less than six, count 'em, six totally hairless Pistons. Half the team. And I'm not including Ron Rothstein, who is losing his hair the old-fashioned way, though stress.
A friend in Hollywood keeps me up on certain things, which is how I know the following: Nancy Kerrigan, and her agents, accepted an enormous business deal last week from Disney. It includes $450,000 for the rights to make a TV movie about her, plus her own ice show after the Olympics, plus five TV specials, plus her own book, plus a children's book, plus her own video and a few other perks. The friend in Hollywood knows this, because he, too, was bidding for her TV movie. He lost to Disney.
Hmm.Let's see if I rmlr..remeb..remember Oops...V&Tlzj$4$!!!...whoa!"First press 'log on' button."Oh yeah....Well now. Back to work. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Of course, they also say college gets you a good job.I can tell you this much: Sitting on the sidelines all summer has made me a much smarter sports columnist.I have been right about everything.It's incredible. I go away on leave, and I have never been so accurate in my analysis.
PASADENA, Calif. -- In the end there was no Santa Claus. There was no Happy New Year. Bo Schembechler could only stand there, the headphones dangling, as the final seconds of his career ticked away. The wrong way. Michael Taylor, his quarterback, threw wide, the ball hit the ground. He threw deep. The ball sailed past the intended receiver. He took the final snap -- fourth down and miracle to go -- and he was stuffed in an army of Southern Cal defenders.
Most of our mommies are gone here on TV Street. We come downstairs and there's no breakfast anymore, no bacon, no eggs, no toast, no pancakes. None of us knows what's happening. But it's been going on for a while, and we're getting tired of eating doughnuts out of the box.First it was that nice family down the street, from "The Donna Reed Show."They woke up one day and Donna was gone. Never came back. Her kids were real upset. There was nobody to cook those nice dinners and mend the Halloween costumes.
NEW ORLEANS -- They walked slowly into the breakfast room, their feet making no sound on the carpet. James Voskuil pulled at a dry biscuit. Juwan Howard poked at a plate of bacon. They joked softly about the night before, their first trip to Bourbon Street on their final night in New Orleans. For a few minutes, it was as if nothing had happened. Then someone mentioned a North Carolina player who was also there on Bourbon Street, surrounded by a cheering mob.
MINNEAPOLIS -- He came off the bench, right? No? Then he was air-dropped in by helicopter? I know -- he was wearing a Minnesota uniform the whole night and ripped it off on that first play of the fourth quarter. That's it, right? Something like that? There has to be an explanation for how wide open Herman Moore was on that one incredible play, when the weirdness began Sunday night and didn't stop until the Lions had a strange, questionable, but ultimately huge victory.Hey, I know it was Halloween. I didn't know you got to be invisible.
He was such a quiet man, everyone said, but don't they always say that? A quiet man, older fellow, kept to himself. And then one day, the Justice Department is banging on his door, and protesters are screaming on his lawn, waving photos of death, dismemberment, the most horrible evil a man can do. They are saying, years ago, the quiet man was a part of this. And he's gotten away with it all this time. This is a pattern in the hunt for Nazi war criminals. It repeated itself last week, in the Boston suburb of Norwood, Mass. An 87-year- old Lithuanian immigrant. A quiet man.
PRYOR, Mont. -- These are grown men talking:"HO, CATTLE! . . . yo, cattle, yo, cattle! . . . EEEEE YUTYUTYUT! . . . move, you no-goods . . . AGGAGAGAGAGA! . . . HO, CATTLE! YO, CATTLE!"This is not normal conversation. Then again, we are talking to cows. Not we, exactly, because I am on a horse with my mouth open in utter disbelief. But the other people here at the Schively Ranch are instructing the cows to -- in cowboy talk -- git.Git?
I must admit, I was a little worried when the Red Wings traded Joey Kocur a few weeks ago. After all, hockey is a tough sport. And in giving up Kocur, the Wings were giving up one of the toughest guys around.I don't want to say Joey spent a lot of time punching opponents. I will say I once looked at him and said, "Hey, nice leather gloves.""Those are my hands," he said.
