Word: barts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sport offers dim prospects for a U.S. medal, it gets scant airtime. U.S. viewers intrigued by all the advance talk about Soviet gymnast Dmitri Bilozerchev were able to view only a smattering of his routines, although the reporting team of Dick Enberg, Mary Lou Retton and especially Bart Conner explained the events incisively. Fans of men's diving were lucky to see Greg Louganis tucked into the bottom right-hand corner while a minor basketball game dominated the screen...
Goff died in 1982 at 78. The design was finished by his disciple Bart Prince, to whom the urban fabric of Los Angeles owes some gratitude: the green bulk that rises beside the La Brea Tar Pits has been toned down from Goff's original sketches. It no longer flaunts pseudo-Aztec mosaic panels; its tower, which looked like a Hawaiian chief's headdress clapped on top of a random-rubble grotto, has been pruned; and the millions of little round mother-of-pearl tiles, like sequins, that were meant to encrust its inside columns have been replaced by cream...
...knobby, swampy world that roils below the level of such Olympian meditations, Giamatti is going to face some real problems, and pretty soon. For one thing, two arbitrators have now ruled that the club owners -- Bart's bosses -- conspired to restrict the movement of players who had become free agents after the 1985 and 1986 seasons. In lay terms, eligible players were allowed to offer their services to the highest bidder, except that few bids were forthcoming save from the clubs for which they were already playing. These judgments could figure explosively when the contract between the clubs...
Giamatti's role in this unfolding, inevitable crisis will be under the closest imaginable scrutiny. Some mutters from the Players Association have already accused Bart of being the owners' apologist. Giamatti is in no mood to criticize the people who hired him. "I've gotten to know all the owners, and I think they are a remarkable set of human beings." He also resists charges of partisanship: "I'm not anti-players, anti-umpires, anti-anybody." He elaborates: "My responsibility will be to serve, as best I can, the totality of the institution...
...have a greater stake in Giamatti's struggle than they realize. The central question hinges on whether collective celebrations should reflect or ennoble their societies. Reflection, these days, means augmented, intensified doses of behavior already lamentably available on the streets: rudeness, insensitivity, the steady thrum of flash-point violence. Bart thinks he has an older, better idea: orderly, considerate crowds in clean, pleasant surroundings, absorbed in a leisurely spectacle performed by happy, fulfilled heroes. How could people exposed to such idyllic wonders fail to carry some of their experiences out into the streets and their own homes...