Retro Year in Sports: 1988

Image via Complex Original

Wayne and Janet Gretzky hit if off after meeting at a Lakers game and got hitched three weeks before Wayne got shipped to L.A., leading jilted conspiracy minded Canadians to theorize that their native son ditched the country so his wife could further her acting career in L.A. That year she had a role in Police Academy 5: Assignment in Miami Beach but got snubbed by the Academy in a major Oscar upset. After reading these next few stories you'll realize they were beyond a doubt the athlete couple of the year. 

That's because 1988 was also the year Mark Gastineau left his wife for Bridgette Nielsen who was surprisingly hot in a pre-Flavor of Love era. Our man Mark claimed he would retire from football to take care of Nielsen whom he feared had uterine cancer. Later he revealed it was actually to avoid a steroid test he would've failed. Tinsel Town itself couldn't of scripted a more romantic love story. 

Robin Givens and Mike Tyson walked down the aisle and into the sunset for another public figure fairy tale marriage that lasted about a year and ended with allegations of spousal abuse, money grubbing, and Tyson walking in on Brad Pitt mid-coitus; which had to be more taxing on the future A-lister's heart than all the nose powder in Southern California. 

Not to be outdone in the Northeast, Beantown legend and future member of the 3,000 hit club Wade Boggs' mistress, Margo Adams, did a tell all interview with Penthouse, which is what every athlete yearns to hear. She also filed a $6 million dollar palimony suit, which sounds like total crap for a mistress, but we'll leave that up to Complex Legal (once that section's created). Boggs eventually admitted to having an affair with Adams, something that shouldn't really shock any athlete's wife anywhere; we mean in what other universe would Wade Boggs lay pipe? Anyway, Adams went on an eight-city "publicity" tour, showing youngsters that opportunistic money grubbers with no shame are not exclusive to the present.

In the final year of Reagan a couple of great baseball flicks hit theaters. Eight Men Out  (which featured some of the most sympathetic "villains" in history) chronicled the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal that destroyed Chicago's southside franchise for several decades due to a cheap prick owner who they inexplicably named (two different) stadiums after for dozens of years.

Bull Durham also came out. Not only are we talking about one of the great sports flicks of all time, but you could (and we would) argue that it's one of the great movies of all-time. Kevin Costner showcased some skills with the lumber in one of the few baseball movies that looked like real baseball (well except for Tim Robbins' windup).

Bloodsport featuring Jean Claude Van Damme came out. It's possible that you've received it as an intentionally bad Christmas gift. After all it's about 50 cents at any retail store with a bargain bin. We'd say it was the worst sports movie of '88 except for...

Caddyshack II which let us all down by having nothing in common with the original beyond golf and Chevy Chase. You knew it wouldn't live up to the golf classic without  Dangerfield, Murray or director Harold Ramis. The film was a box office bust and the recipient of two "Golden Razzies." 

In Canada the fifteenth Winter Games rolled around in a balmy Calgary where the mercury reached a high of 63 degrees. You'd think those unseasonable temps would've made a Jamaican bobsled team (later immortalized) feel right at home, but after making their improbable trek to the land up north the crowd favorite finished 30th (out of 41) in the two man event and (predictably) dead last in the four man competition.

Another popular loser was Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards, a Brit who looks more apt to fix your hard drive than he did on the slopes got absolutely (and also predictably) blown out in the ski jumping events. His spectacular failure was so appalling that he was featured on the Tonight Show during the Olympiad and then got ten grand per appearance in the months after the games. His performance led directly to the IOC implementing a rule that said there were no longer free rides for the nation's only rep if he/she wasn't competent enough (MLB All Star Game take note). The rule had the intended effect and he consequently failed to ever qualify for the Winter Olympics again. 

When it came to actual winners the Soviet's led the 57 nation pack with 29 medals and 11 golds. The U.S. finished ninth with half a dozen total medals and two golds. They may have lost the race to the moon but at least they took gold in the men's 7.5 kilometer biathlon relay. 

The average price for a Major League Baseball ticket was $6.21, not a bad deal to watch the first juiced up supermen swat a ball 550 feet without a single sportswriter batting an eye. At the time the average MLB player salary was a little over $430,000, or in other words about a BMW short of today's league minimum. The average Super Bowl ticket was a bargain at $100 but it still marked the first time it eclipsed three figures.

The average price of an NBA ticket was $15.21 while on the ice Ralph Nader cited the price of an NHL ticket as $7.87 (which sounds low to us since in 1990 it was up to $20). That being said the average NHL salary quadrupled in just six years starting at $180,000 in 1988, so it's entirely possible, if you have any old stubs feel free to dig through them. Nader fought valiantly on the behalf of consumers with an advocacy group called FANS (Fight to Advance the Nation's Sports) which should actually be FTATNS, either way that group failed miserably in the long term as all four major sports have fully embraced gouging as the wave of the future and until fans strike back it'll get even more ridiculous. 

That money's got to go somewhere and in 1988 a chunk went into the pocket of John Elway, who banked $2.17 million, to make him the highest paid player in the NFL .For perspective that would put him slightly above league average for today's quarterbacks, third stringers included.

One of the quietest great players of all-time Eddie Murray (then of the Baltimore Orioles) was in the fourth year of a five year contract but was still the highest paid player at about $2.6 million annually.

Both those contracts pale in comparison to Iron Mike Tyson who brought in (a conservative estimate of) $50 million. Of course he later went broke but that's why we call these pieces "retro years." When he started throwing down money on white tigers you probably figured that retirement fund was emptying. 

In a showdown between two future Super Bowl winning Dallas Cowboys coaches (Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson) Miami brought home the national title from the '87 season on the first day of 1988 after upsetting, then, top ranked Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl 20-14, which was played on the Hurricanes' home turf; now you know why Snoop pays tribute to "The U in the eighties." During the 1988 regular season Notre Dame played well enough to get into the title game and the greatest running back in football history, Barry Sanders, put in almost 3,000 yards ON THE GROUND to take home the Heisman.

Super Bowl XXII was played in San Diego, the Broncos came in as three point favorites but the Washington Redskins walloped Denver 42-10 behind a five touchdown second quarter. The matchup was between a quarterback who won the regular season MVP (John Elway) versus a quarterback who only played in five games that season (Doug Williams). Not only was Williams (the Super Bowl MVP) the first African American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, but he was also/obviously the first African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl.  

In the NCAA tournament Larry Brown's Kansas Jayhawks bonked Oklahoma 83-79, behind Danny Manning's 31 point, 18 rebound, five steal performance, to take home the school's second title in the (as of now) last national title game to feature two schools from the same conference. 1988 was off to a laborious start for the Sooners after dropping two title games in three months. But (as we already noted) they played Miami in the Orange Bowl and played the Jayhawks 40 miles down the road in from KU's campus in Lawrence. 

The NBA Finals that year were legit, they came down to a Game 7 win by the L.A. Lakers over the Detroit "Bad Boy" Pistons. Pat Riley, the Lakers coach at the time, had guaranteed a title in the victory parade after winning the championship in 1987. Detroit just missed claiming the series after six games (behind 25 3rd quarter points from an injured Isiah Thomas) but after a Joe Dumars shot missed badly the Pistons lost 103-102. After a "phantom" Bill Laimbeer (his words) foul led to two last minute free throws by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; The Lakers won Game 7 behind a 36-16-10 triple double from Finals MVP James Worthy. "Big Game James" did what "Big Game James" does, showed up in a big game.

The 24th Summer Games were held (ironically) in the fall in Seoul, South Korea. The games themselves were tremendously difficult to organize as communist countries and South Korea didn't mix. In case you're new to the Olympics you already realize that opportunistic politicians screw the athletes over in order to posture their agendas. In the '80s that spirit was in overdrive with boycotts in the first two games of the decade. But South Korea countered by ousting their president and having their first true democratic election in 1988. There's your feel good moment of the day. 

Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson won the gold after setting a new world record in the 100m but was disqualified for testing positive for steroids. Johnson's coach Charlie Francis put on an honorable defense of his pupil: yeah Ben cheated but so did everyone else. He also argued Johnson couldn't have possibly used Winstrol (the drug in his urine) as Furazabol was his PED of choice. 

American, Greg Louganis won titles in both men's diving events, even after smacking his head on the board in one but caused a controversy years later when he was found to be HIV positive during competition. The controversy was short lived when people started paying attention in science class and realized you couldn't transmit the disease in a sterilized pool. The 1988 team was the last U.S. basketball squad sent that was loaded with amateurs; they shamed our country by winning a bronze (the ladies meanwhile took home gold). After that the Dream Team era began.

 Out of the 159 countries competing the Soviet Union (just like in the Winter games) dominated winning 132 total medals and 56 gold’s. Placing second was East Germany (neither of these two nations even existed come the next Olympics in 1992) finishing secondwith 102 medals, 37 of them gold. The U.S. finished an embarrassing third, with 94 medals, 36 of which were gold. 

In the battle for Lord Stanley's Cup the Edmonton Oilers swept the Boston Bruins four games to zero in a five game series. Oh wait, does that not make sense? That's because Game 4 was called while the score was tied 3-3 due to a power outage. The MVP was given to Wayne Gretzky who scored the winning goal (13 total points in the series) in what turned out to be his last game as an Edmonton Oiler.

Two hours after he was celebrating his fourth championship in five seasons he found out Edmonton planned to trade him in the ultimate instance of "selling high." On August 9 the deal was done and Wayne was headed to the L.A. Kings. Not only did a member of the Canadian parliament demand that Canada block the move but likenesses of the Oilers' owner were burned in effigy, while Canadians (with nothing better to do apparently) declared him a "traitor." Talk about first world problems. 

The Fall Classic was an all-California affair with Tommy Lasorda's L.A. Dodgers taking Tony La Russa's heavily favored Oakland A's (with MVP Jose Canseco who had the first 40-40 season in MLB history) four games to one, in a series which featured one of the most iconic endings of a game ever. The series MVP was Orel Hershiser who threw five consecutive shutouts late in the season and continued his dominance well into October. In Game 2 alone Hershiser threw a shutout and had as many hits as he allowed (three) as well as scoring a run and driving another in. Orel again threw a complete game in Game Five to clinch the series for the tenants of Chavez Ravine.

In other news, Scotland's future golf hall of famer Sandy Lyle birdied the 72nd hole to finish with a seven under par and won his first Masters and second major. He beat American Mark Calcavecchia by one stroke.

In London, Stefan Edberg took his first Wimbledon Championship home to Sweden after beating German Boris Becker in four sets. In the tournament for humans with 'XX' chromosomes German Steffi Graf (who had just turned 19) defeated American Martina Navratilova in a showdown of two legends. It was Graf's first of seven career Wimbledon championships. It was a symbolic passing of the torch as Navratilova won only one more Grand Slam event in her career, Wimbledon in 1990.

On June 27 Mike Tyson, right before his 22nd birthday, was recognized as the undisputed heavyweight champ of the world by pounding (literally) Michael Spinks who was recognized by Ring Magazine as the best fighter of the world's big men. It's never good when the fight is shorter than the pre-match hype but 91 seconds into the first round Tyson popped Spinks so hard that it knocked him out of the fight and professional boxing forever. It was the only loss of his career.