Detroit Free Press

WICHITA, Kan. -- It's funny, sometimes; the ones you expect to grab never do.Juwan Howard had that right. To grab. From the day he came home from the hospital -- and his teenage mother put him in a clothes drawer because she didn't have a crib -- Howard was on the debit side of life. Short on money. Short on comforts. Short on love and, quickly, short on parents, as both mother and father left him to be raised by his grandmother.

Alone in the dark he sits, behind the projector, his thumb clicking the remote button as the players on screen move backwards then forwards then backwards then forwards."Corner trap (click, click)," he says, "now a sprint 15 . . . see how that guard rides the center up there (click) . . . now this is a 15 bend, see that tight end (click) he's supposed to block No. 52 (click) he's gotta get his butt up there, right now! Look (click) he's hesitating (click) he's hesitating (click) . . . GO, RIGHT NOW! (click) . . . too late!"

A lot of people are making a lot of fuss over "JFK," the new movie by Oliver Stone.It has been the cover story on Newsweek, Esquire and GQ. It's the hot issue on the chatty morning TV programs.You cannot find a newspaper this week without a photo of Kennedy, an article about the film or an in-depth feature on Stone, the angst-ridden Hollywood director who likes to create movies about his favorite decade, the '60s -- such as "Platoon" and "The Doors" -- then pass them off as truth, or semi-truth, and watch the money come pouring in.

Now that the Giants have lost and the Braves have won -- and the people at ESPN who were going to televise the single biggest baseball game of the year have buried their heads in a giant fish tank -- it is time to get down to picking a winner. We're talking baseball. The playoffs. They begin tonight. I have examined the pluses and minuses of the teams. And I've come to my conclusion. Advantage: Philadelphia.

Each day he drives to a high school gym and works out with a trainer and an old friend. Then he drives home slowly, "praying I don't get in an accident and ruin everything." It is November, and for the first time in his basketball life, the game is going on without him. No practice. No paycheck.And it's his own doing."To be honest, I really wanted to play for Detroit," Chris Webber says from his home in Oakland, Calif., where he remains a restricted free agent. "When I came home over the summer, I was hoping to stay."

TORONTO -- Here I am in Canada, wandering in the wilderness. I am carrying my bat and glove. I have come to talk baseball to the youth of this nation. Tonight is the first World Series game ever outside America.I have a job to do.Ah. Here come a couple kids now. Hi, kids. What are your names?"Bob." "Doug." Let's talk about the National Pastime. You do know what the National Pastime is, don't you?"Hockey!" "Yeah, hockey!"

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.