Oh, stop your whining, sports fans. So what if baseball struck out and hockey melted down? So what if you were reduced to reading about the hairstyles of soccer players? For jock watchers who stared long and hard enough at the tube, the newspaper, and the silver screen, there were all kinds of worthy competitions, tests of strength, and displays of speed. All kinds. Not to mention the thrill of vandalism and the agony of deceit.
JANUARY
Olympic trials, indeed: Skater Nancy Kerrigan takes a slap shot on
the knee from a metal club. Tonya Harding signs a new coach,
attorney Robert Weaver. Battle of the Has-Beens: Danny Bonaduce
(a.k.a. Danny Partridge) defeats Donny Osmond in an expletive-filled
three-round charity boxing match. Super Bowl titans Naomi and
Wynonna Judd reunite at half-time. The public learns that born-again
Christian tennis star Andre Agassi has traded Funny Girl Barbra
Streisand for Pretty Baby Brooke Shields.
FEBRUARY
Disney signs Kerrigan to a reported $1 million TV-movie-book-
and-video deal. East-West tensions return: CBS sportscasters provide
an instant Cold War analysis of Oksana Baiul's (right) Olympic
figure-skating victory, showing that judges from the former Communist
bloc gave the Ukrainian skater the gold medal by one-tenth of a point
over Kerrigan. CBS' Connie Chung scores in sweeps month -she
interviews Harding on Eye to Eye. Diane Sawyer scores bigger-she
signs a new ABC contract reportedly worth $7 million a year. Playing
famed rodeo bull rider Lane Frost, Luke Perry gets thrown off the
biggest ride of his life and has his crotch stomped in 8 Seconds.
MARCH
Jennifer Jason Leigh breaks all speed records firing her
hard-boiled lines at Tim Robbins in The Hudsucker Proxy.
Leslie Nielsen on the inside game in Naked Gun 33 1/3: ''I like my sex
the way I like my basketball one-on-one with as little dribbling as
possible.''
APRIL
Tom Arnold gets thrown off the biggest ride of his life and has
his crotch stomped when Roseanne files for divorce. She later said,
''I'm not upset about my divorce. I'm only upset that I'm not a
widow.'' Baseball, for some reason, begins. Football, as always, is
more exciting: Saints quarterback Jim Everett shoves aside a table
and attacks Jim Rome after the ESPN2 host keeps calling him Chris
Evert.
MAY
Jack Nicholson retains his amateur status when charges
brought against the actor for practicing his golf swing on a
Mercedes-Benz windshield are dropped. The Los Angeles motorist whose
car he attacked is a little richer for the experience. For a cameo
in the miniseries Stephen King's The Stand, former hoopster Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar stands on a street corner shouting, ''Bring out your
dead! Monsters are coming!''
JUNE
Knicks fan Spike Lee and the Pacers' Reggie Miller trash-talk each
other during a play-off game. Then they make up. Rapper Lisa Lopes
of TLC is charged with arson after the mansion of her boyfriend,
Atlanta Falcon Andre Rison, burns down (she denies the charge). Then
they make up. Univision soccer announcer Andres Cantor (above) says,
''Goooooooal!!'' Over, and over, and over ...
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