Detroit Free Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- The last time I wrote a column from this seat, there was fire in my hands. An earthquake had struck, Candlestick Park was dark, most of the frightened crowd had already rushed the exits. Alone, with no lights and one working telephone, I took a cardboard lunch box, lit it with a match, and, holding its flame above me so I could see, I tapped out the keys to send a story to my newspaper.

The floor was thumping, the house was dancing, screaming, dying, waiting for a sign, an assurance, and here came Isiah Thomas, grabbing a pass and turning his back and bouncing it to Dennis Rodman on the baseline. And Rodman rose like destiny and slammed the thing through and hung on the rim with same sweat-soaked determination the Pistons have found to hang on to this crazy series. That was the sign. The Silverdome went insane.

NEW YORK -- She is the trusty sidekick, the co-star, the comic book character destined to be paired with someone bigger. Pam Shriver has won every Grand Slam tournament in tennis alongside Martina Navratilova. But she has not won any alone.She tries. She advances. Then sooner or later, her doubles partner, the best woman tennis player on the planet, comes around to beat her. Sooner or later, Navratilova gets the trophy, and Shriver gets a handshake. This is the way it seems to go. Partners. Rivals. Sooner or later.

When I awoke Monday morning, I pushed a hand through my hair, only to feel something sticky and hard, like straw dipped in molasses.How weird, I thought.Dried champagne.It was not meant for me, that champagne. I was merely caught in the crossfire at Tiger Stadium, a bubbly explosion between one player (Mike Heath) and another (Frank Tanana). Not my champagne, not my celebration, and yet part of it had stuck to me overnight; and, in a certain way, part of me had stuck back.

NEW ORLEANS -- Send in the clowns. And the dancing bears. Super Bowl XX was a joke, a bad joke if your seat was in New England -- because the Patriots were merely the cookies to keep the kids quiet, and the Bears were the show. The whole show.It was merciful when they brought down the curtain on this, the Super Bowl which may have set new records for false expectations. An even match, some had called it? Even?

MOSCOW -- See Ted run. See Ted run to Russia. See Ted shell out $35 million, put his arm around a Soviet official, and raise a vodka glass to their new sports festival."To Mr. Turner!" toasts the Russian."To my Commie buddy!" says Ted.See Ted tour. See Ted tour Moscow. See Ted stop at Lenin's tomb, go inside, view the embalmed body, and come back out."What do you think?" someone asks."He looks good," Ted says. "A little pale, maybe. . . . "

As a kid, the only athlete I knew personally was a gawky, 6- foot-11 basketball player named Craig Raymond. He played for the Philadelphia 76ers, and my mother, who decorated houses, found him as a client. I was thrilled. Never mind that he was the last man on the Philadelphia bench, or that he played only when the team was winning by 25 points or losing by 30. He was a pro. One time he came to our house, and I asked him, meekly, if he would dunk a basketball on my small backyard hoop. I remember to this day how the rim shook with his strength -- my rim, he had dunked it!