Word: win
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Since the celluloid Gipper has repaired to California and the call to win things for him has happily left the language, maybe it is not too impolite now to remember that the real George Gipp of Notre Dame was a low-life gambler who openly bet on his own football games and everything else from cards and craps to flies landing on sugar cubes. Gipp seldom attended class and only occasionally graced football practice. The sentimental writer Red Smith, a Notre Dame man himself, used to refer to the great dead hero as "the patron saint of eight-ball pool...
While it is possible that on his deathbed young George beseeched coach Knute Rockne to win one someday for the Gipper, it would have been more in character for Gipp to want to get $500 down on the streptococci. Myths, legends and lies are the beams and girders of games, but isn't it a bit much the way the country has been getting ready to be appalled by Pete Rose? O.K., he's a plunger. Everyone knows gambling pervades sports. It pervades life...
...Super Bowl press box, a writer let out a small whoop as the Raiders blocked a Redskin punt in 1984. "I'm sorry, that was really unprofessional," he said sheepishly. "But I've got $2,000 on the Raiders." Win or lose, does the two grand get into the story, affect the quality of the praise, increase the vitriol in the criticism? What...
...win the French Open was a triumph. To do it at 17 was a wonder. But Michael Chang seemed to grasp more than just the moment when he beat Ivan Lendl and Stefan Edberg in Paris to join the company of world-champion tennis players. Chang was wise enough to understand, "These two weeks are going to stay with me the rest of my life," but excited enough to imagine, "Maybe someday I'll be able to achieve something greater." More than a few days later, the sport is still tingling with his possibilities...
...chance against Steffi. Plus, look what Monica did." Monica Seles, a two-fisted Yugoslav giggler, every bit of 15, terrified Graf in their three-set semifinal. "That gave me hope," said Sanchez, who came back in the championship match from a 3-5 deficit in the final set to win the last four games and Spain's only women's title. (Poor, dilapidated old Steffi dropped her first major trophy in a year and a half and, four days later, turned...