Byline: Kevin Modesti Staff WriterWhen it comes to sports in the millennium, the 1900s haven't been ...

1. THE 20TH CENTURY; ONE HUNDRED EVENTS THAT
CHANGED SPORTS ALSO: THE MOST MEMORABLE
IMAGES OUR RANKING, 100 THROUGH 1, OF THESE
DEFINING DEVELOPMENTS.
Byline: Kevin Modesti Staff Writer
When it comes to sports in the millennium, the 1900s haven't been the best century yet, they've been
pretty much the only century yet. To risk stating the obvious, American sports as we know them
today didn't exist 100 years ago.
How did we get from there to here? The answers begin on page 4.
The Daily News has devised a list of the 100 most impacting, significant, remarkable developments
of the sports century.
Some of those developments were momentary happenings (such as the 1958 NFL championship
game), some were the result of lengthy deliberation (like Title IX) and some took decades to unfold
(improvements in medicine, nutrition and training) - but all had far-reaching implications.
In a few cases (Bob Beamon's long jump, for instance), the implication is simply the imprint on
history of a standout performance.
Not included on our list are all of those dazzling developments that seemed significant at the time
but were merely dramatic - for example, the 94 plays that sportswriters instantly labeled The Catch,
The Drive or The Call.
To be sure, sports have been shaped not only by their players, coaches and commissioners but by
changes in the nation and world around them. Advances in communications and transportation, the
growth of leisure time and the forces of immigration and racial integration have all had an effect.
In no small part, sports have helped to change the nation in turn, as in the case of the development
we've honored as No. 1.
No more hints. Enjoy the century one last time. If your favorite didn't make the list, we promise to do
better next time.
--100. Birth of the Harlem Globetrotters (1927): Sports is entertainment, and it can fairly be said the
Trotters have served up more of it to more people in more arenas (and cow pastures and empty
swimming pools) than any other team.
-- 99. Return of the two-sport star: Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders and others offered some hope that the
all-around athlete isn't dead (even if he seems to be injured a lot).
-- 98. LeMond's Tours: Almost every American learns to ride a bike, but none had learned as well as
Greg LeMond, who became the nation's first Tour de France winner in 1986 and won again in 1989
and 1990. Having missed two years after being shot in a hunting accident, LeMond won in 1989 by
making up 50 seconds on the final day in America's greatest moment in that universal sport.

2. -- 97. Olga Korbut (1972): The 4-foot-11 Belarussian finished seventh in the all-around gymnastics
competition in Munich after qualifying for the Soviet team as an alternate. But after a tearful
disaster on the uneven bars, she won gold for the balance beam and the floor exercise, a display of
pluck that earned her a place in U.S. television viewers' hearts as the first of the obligatory Olympic
gymnastics darlings.
-- 96. The designated hitter: With a bases-loaded walk by the New York Yankees' Ron Blomberg
against the Boston Red Sox's Luis Tiant on opening day in 1973 at Fenway Park, the American
League began its experiment with the DH, inspiring nearly every minor and amateur league to adopt
the rule. Its merits are still being debated. Its effects on the hitter-pitcher battle are less debatable.
-- 95. ``White Shoes' '' dance: Before wide receiver Billy ``White Shoes'' Johnson of the Houston
Oilers popularized the end-zone dance in the 1970s, the notion of flashy celebrations of an athletic
job well done were considered bad form. In some corners, they still are. That hasn't stopped the
various high-fivers, forearm-bashers, chest bumpers and sports-bra flashers from stretching their
camera time.
-- 94. Dr. J's dunk: Professionals had been dunking for years before Julius Erving made it an art form.
His performance in a halftime contest at the final ABA all-star game in 1976, beating David
Thompson by stuffing the ball through the hoop after taking off from the foul line, marked the start
of an era in which young individualists seemed to want to do little but showoff their fancy dunks.
-- 93. Wrestling's revival (1980s): If the ``legitimate'' sports seem more and more to be moving in the
theatrical direction of pro wrestling, it seems clear they will never catch up. Wrestling grows nuttier
by the cablecast, and more popular.
-- 92. ``Junk sports'': Where there's a fan or TV viewer with dollar, there's an inventive promoter
trying to pry it away from him. Thus the attempts to establish arena football, indoor soccer, team
tennis, roller hockey, beach volleyball and other weird offshoots of the traditional sports.
-- 91. ``X Games'': A generation after Evel Knievel made failure cool, daredevil athletes and action-
hungry cable networks put their heads together and came up with a junk-sports Olympiad long on
creative ways to dislocate your wrist.
-- 90. Rise of the Winter Games: Was it Peggy or Dorothy or Torvill and Dean or Tai and Randy or
Tonya and Nancy....? Sometime in the past three decades, Olympic figure skating achieved
popularity that seems to transcend sports or soap opera, whichever it more closely resembles.
-- 89. Ripken's streak: That Cal Ripken played 2,632 consecutive games proved more than any other
feat that no record is unbreakable.
-- 88. Jacques Plante's masquerade (1959): The great Montreal Canadiens goalie first donned a
protective mask in competition - making it acceptable for scarfaced netminders all over the NHL - in
an early season game against the New York Rangers. Plante had been bloodied by an Andy Bathgate
backhander, and the Canadiens didn't have a backup that night. He'd wanted a mask for years but
club management cited tradition and said no.
-- 87. George Mikan: The star of pro basketball's pre-shot-clock era, the first great Lakers center
inspired a pivotal rule change - widening the foul lane from 6 feet to 12 to keep a dominant big man
from camping under the basket.

3. -- 86. Wilt Chamberlain: Some players, like some events, are significant all by themselves, as icons of
their sports and times. Ruth. Grange. Gretzky. Ali. Chamberlain.
-- 85. Retro stadiums (1990s): A peculiar trend was the construction of ballparks at the end of the
century (notably Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards) that looked like ballparks at the
beginning of the century. Since such tastes go in cycles, how long before we grow nostalgic for
symmetry and faded artificial turf, and somebody builds a replica of the Astrodome?
-- 84. Second-generation stars: From Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. to Kobe Bryant and J.T. Snow,
it seems as if more and more top athletes are sons of top athletes. Of course, none of the above is the
first or greatest son-of - 1935 Triple Crown winner Omaha was the son of 1930 Triple Crown winner
Gallant Fox.
-- 83. Jack beating Arnold (1962): It took an 18-hole playoff for the 22- year-old Nicklaus to knock off
Palmer in the U.S. Open at Oakmont. Their rivalry would stretch through the 1960s until Nicklaus
was recognized as the best golfer of all time and Palmer merely the most beloved.
-- 82. Parimutuel betting: The arrival, in the century's first decade, of the French-invented system of
wagering ``among ourselves'' saved American horse racing (not to mention greyhound racing and
jai-alai) from the corrosive influence of bookmakers.
-- 81. Off-track betting: Back in 1973, people who really didn't attend Secretariat's Belmont claimed
they were there. If it happened today, people would claim they were in the OTB, cashing the
superfecta on the ninth at Calder. The expansion of off-track and simulcast wagering opportunities
has drawn fans away from the rail and robbed the sport of much of its poetry.
-- 80. Bite of the Century (1997): That was the headline in many papers after Mike Tyson bit Evander
Holyfield's ear during a title fight. The incident summed up boxing in the 1990s, when the sport of
Don King and 46-year-old heavyweight champion George Foreman became a joke wrapped in a rip-
off inside a scandal.
-- 79. Decline of the simplest games: Look at an L.A. sports page from the 1950s. Boxing, horse
racing and track and field were all over page 1. Maybe it's mismanagement and scandal that have
caused these most elemental sports to slip in popularity. Or maybe it's evolution.
-- 78. The BCS (1998): In a further break from the traditional college football postseason schedule,
the sport reshaped the Bowl Coalition and the subsequent Bowl Alliance by introducing a
complicated ranking system under the banner Bowl Championship Series. The BCS' formula was the
object of ridicule but seen as a step (we've heard this before) toward national playoffs.
-- 77. Jim Thorpe: The early leader for the title of Athlete of the Century, the American Indian star
was a football All-American in 1911 and 1912 and won the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912
Olympics. When it was revealed he had played professional baseball before all that, he was stripped
of his Olympic medals, which were returned to his family after his death, following decades of
debate on the meaning of amateurism.
-- 76. Pros in the Olympics: Now, of course, there would be no Thorpe controversy. The crumbling of
the amateurism requirement - winked-at though it might have been anyway in many cases - has been
gradual. The dam-burst came in 1992 at Barcelona when NBA players were allowed to represent
their countries in the basketball competition.

4. -- 75. Formation of Little League (1939): It has taught generations of boys (and girls, since 1974) the
fundamentals of baseball and sportsmanship. Now, if it can do the same for their parents....
-- 74. Lowering the mound (1968): Baseball doesn't change its rules too often. If it did, it would be
football or basketball. But it had to give in after a pitching-dominated 1968 season that featured Bob
Gibson's 1.12 ERA, Don Drysdale's 58 2/3 consecutive shutout innings, Carl Yastrzemski's league-
high .301 average, a 1-0 All-Star Game and Denny McLain's 30 wins.
-- 73. The shot clock: The NBA's adoption of the 24-second limit in 1954, to prevent stalling, was a
rule change as effective as it was dramatic.
-- 72. The Fosbury Flop (1968): The United States' Dick Fosbury literally turned high-jumping upside
down as he won the Olympic gold medal in Mexico City.
-- 71. ``Ball Four'' (1970): Pitcher Jim Bouton's kiss-and-tell diary piqued the public's and press'
fascination with the real lives of professional athletes. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn labeled the book
``detrimental to baseball.''
-- 70. SI: Sports Illustrated hit the newsstands for the first time in 1954, a literate weekly much
different from today's sales vehicle. The magazine lost $26 million before reporting its first profit in
1964.
-- 69. Howard Cosell: The imitable Howard, who made Monday Night Football must-see TV, deserves
an entry all to himself for what he did for sportscasters and for sports media critics. He'd have said
so, for certain.
-- 68. TV's jockocracy: In other words, Cosell changed sports broadcasting but not enough. What
Cosell warned against has come to pass, every retiring athlete of minimal note being instantly fitted
for a professional broadcaster's costume.
-- 67. Roone Arledge: As the innovative president of ABC Sports from 1968 to 1975, he
revolutionized the technique and substance of sports television.
-- 66. Instant replay: Introduced by ABC-TV in its 1961 college football coverage, it has been
repeated by every networkin every sport in every possible fashion (slow-motion, Super Slo-Mo,
reverse-angle, with Telestrator...). And repeated. And repeated.
-- 65. TV sports' debut (1939): For the record, the first of the major American sports to get live
coverage was baseball, which debuted on New York City station W2XBC with an Aug. 26 game
between the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers. Red Barber did the play-by-play. Date of first
Budweiser ad is unknown.
-- 64. Carlton Fisk's home run (1975): The Boston Red Sox catcher's 12th-inning drive off Fenway
Park's left-field foul pole, and the body English that seemed to keep the ball fair, to end game 6 of a
World Series the Cincinnati Reds went on to win, was the first great baseball moment to be
enhanced by television.
-- 63. The first NIKEs: University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight put up $500
each to begin a sportswear empire using running-shoe soles molded in Bowerman's wife's waffle
iron. Bowerman died a multimillionaire last week at 88.

5. -- 62. The Harris County Domed Stadium: Otherwise known as the Astrodome, it opened in 1965,
introducing the concepts of climate-control, noisy scoreboard entertainment and (later) artificial turf
to baseball and football.
-- 61. The Seles stabbing (1993): One crazed fan, one vulnerable player. How is it that this never
happened before?
-- 60. Magic Johnson's retirement (1991): Sexually promiscuous pro athlete has the AIDS virus. How
is it that THIS! NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE?
-- 59. Gertrude Ederle's swim (1926): In the most celebrated athletic
http://sherlynpopelkagolf.blogspot.ch/ achievement by a woman to that date, the 19-year-old New
Yorker swam the English Channel in 14 hours, 31 minutes - breaking the record for women or men.
-- 58. Women's World Cup (1999): The United States women's soccer team was expected to win, and
did. What it couldn't have been expected to do was to embody the joy of competition while burdened
with responsibility for the very future of the sport, but it did.
-- 57. Billie Jean King: The first woman athlete to earn $100,000 in a year, the dominant tennis
player of the women's-lib era was a leader in the fight (on-going) for equal prize money. King's 1973
``Battle of the Sexes'' victory over Bobby Riggs had more to do with the popularity of tennis at the
time than gender politics.
-- 56. Wayne Gretzky's trade to the Kings (1988): L.A.'s team had lived on the fringe for two decades
- not only the fringe of the hockey continent, but the fringe of the city's sports consciousness.
Suddenly, with the sport's greatest player a King, the Forum was the place to be for hockey. The
NHL's expansion to Anaheim, San Jose and Phoenix was a direct result.
-- 55. Red Grange joining the Bears (1925): Merely by signing a contract, the University of Illinois'
Galloping Ghost gave pro football legitimacy it hadn't yet enjoyed. By leading the Chicago Bears on a
lucrative barnstorming tour, he put the NFL on the big-city map.
-- 54. Paul Brown's innovations: The most influential football coach of the postwar era is credited
with giving the sport sophisticated playbooks and intelligence tests to determine which players were
capable of reading them.
-- 53. Upstart leagues: Competition from the American Football League and the American Basketball
Association in the 1960s forced the staid NFL and NBA to jazz up their games and to expand.
-- 52. Olympic boycotts (1980, 1984): Politics win the silver medal, sports win the bronze. There is no
gold in years like those.
-- 51. World Series cancellation (1994): It demonstrated Major League Baseball's weakness (ever-
shaky player-owner relations) and its strength (the inherent appeal of the game, which kept fans
coming back).
-- 50. Al Campanis (1987): Old-worldly but hardly a virulent bigot, the Dodgers vice president
bumbled into a villain's role when, in a ``Nightline'' interview on the impact of Jackie Robinson, he
suggested blacks lack ``the necessities'' for management positions. Embarrassed baseball officials
vowed to integrate the game's front offices. The decade since has only demonstrated how slow
progress can be.

6. -- 49. Expansion: Of course, expansion, a necessary response to the forces of supply and demand, has
taken its toll on the quality of the competition. But the fans of Denver would rather have bad
pitching than no baseball at all.
-- 48. NASCAR's rise: Stock-car racing, once the domain of moonshiners and small-towners, zoomed
past the politically split Indy-car circuits to claim widespread appeal in the 1980s and 1990s. When
you see Bobby Labonte caps next to Steelers jackets in the stores, you know the sporting landscape
is changing.
-- 47. The hardship draft (1971): A lawsuit by Spencer Haywood forced the NBA, for the first time, to
admit players before their college classes had graduated, providing they proved financial necessity.
By 1976, that ``hardship'' requirement had been eliminated, and college underclassmen were
declaring their draft eligibility at will, to the detriment of college sports and the debatable benefit of
pro sports.
-- 46. Len Bias (1987): The Boston Celtics draft choice's death after a cocaine binge focused
attention on sports' drug problem. This is one area of concern in which sports do seem to have made
progress.
-- 45. The Black Sox (1919): The revelation that Chicago White Sox players took $100,000 from
gamblers to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds could have destroyed baseball.
Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the sport's first commissioner, banned eight White Sox and is
credited with restoring public confidence in the game. The ban of Pete Rose 70 years later for
betting on his team's games reaffirmed the belief that unchecked gambling poses a particular threat
to sports' integrity.
-- 44. The convenience of air travel: The Lakers' eight-day, Denver- Washington-Detroit-New York-
Miami trip in March doesn't sound like much fun even in this era - but imagine making it by train.
-- 43. Tennis' open era (1968-): A few years after the admission of professionals to major
international events like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, tennis moved beyond the country clubs and
became a winner with the masses. If you're old enough, you knew somebody who swung a Wilson T-
2000 two-handed because that's what Jimmy Connors did.
-- 42. 1994 World Cup: The United States' surprisingly strong showing - on and off the pitch in the
nation's first shot at hosting soccer's big event - created new optimism among the sport's promoters
and led to the creation of the latest U.S. pro league.
-- 41. 12 strokes (1997): The 12-stroke Masters victory by Tiger Woods was simply the greatest
major-tournament performance of the century by a golfer of any race or races.
-- 40. 31 lengths: Shattering the 1 1/2-mile record, winning by an unheard-of 31 lengths, Secretariat
set himself up as a racing icon for generations to come and reestablished the Triple Crown as an
attainable standard for thoroughbred brilliance.
-- 39. 751.251 mph (1997): British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green became the first to break the
sound barrier on land when he drove a rocket-powered car an average of 763.035 mph in two 1-mile
passes in the Nevada desert.
-- 38. Beamon's leap (1968): It doesn't matter that his record has since been broken. Long-jumping
29 feet, 2 1/2 inches at the Mexico City Olympics - an incredible 21 inches beyond the previous mark

7. - the United States' Bob Beamon turned in the greatest one-shot athletic performance of the century.
-- 37. 4 minutes (1954): Englishman Roger Bannister's mile run in Oxford is remembered as the
greatest 3 minutes 59.4 seconds in track and field history.
-- 36. 29,002 feet (1953): Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood on top of the world after scaling
Mount Everest. Before them, 16 climbers had died trying.
-- 35. 56 games in a row (1941): Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak was the feat that launched a thousand
coffee makers.
-- 34. The Miracle on Ice: The U.S. Olympic ice-hockey team's upset of the Soviet Union - and its
subsequent gold-medal victory over Finland - was the feel-good story of the American sports century.
Do you believe it's the standard by which all future U.S. victories will be judged? Yes!
-- 33. Jesse Owens' four gold medals: The African-American track-and- field star's performance at the
1936 Olympic Games in Berlin is remembered for refuting Adolf Hitler's belief in an Aryan master
race. Though, to put the achievement in perspective, it must be noted that Hitler was undeterred.
-- 32. Jack Johnson's title (1908): Even before beating Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, to become
the first black world heavyweight champion, the Texas-born Johnson was America's first famous
black athlete. His reign inspired the first search for a ``great white hope'' by the prejudiced public
of the day.
-- 31. Louis-Schmeling II (1938): Thirty years after Johnson's victory, Joe Louis wasn't a black
champion, he was an American champion, and his revenge victory over German Max Schmeling in
Yankee Stadium as World War II rumbled in the distance was an enormous morale boost.
-- 30. The Intercalated Games: After the failures of the Summer Games of 1900 (Paris) and 1904 (St.
Louis), the Olympic movement was in trouble. The success of the Intercalated (Interim) Games of
1906 (Athens) steadied the ship even though the International Olympic Committee considers them
unofficial.
-- 29. Rise and fall of the Soviet athletic machine (1940s to 1980s): Every hero needs a villian, and
for United States Olympic athletes, the cheatin' communists played that role until their very way of
life expired. Say what you will about the virtue of keeping politics out of sports, the Olympics haven't
been quite the same thrill since then.
-- 28. Internationalization of American rosters: The twists of international politics that have allowed
baseball, basketball, hockey and football teams to raid Latin America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe -
even the old Soviet countries - and virtually every other corner of the map are responsible for the
greatest upsurge in talent since Jackie Robinson.
-- 27. Munich (1972): Arab terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, forcing the Olympic
Games to be suspended for the first time. As for the pretense that sports are immune to the
untidiness of the world beyond the white lines - to paraphrase Jim McKay, it was all gone.
-- 26. The L.A. Olympics (1984): The Games had become a political and economic hot potato. It was a
sure money-loser, an invitation to terrorism and traffic gridlock. Then Los Angeles showed the world
how it's done.

8. -- 25. Jets 16, Colts 7 (1969): Joe Namath guaranteed the win. The win guaranteed the AFL-NFL
merger by proving the junior league competitive.
-- 24. Wooden's hiring: John Wooden replaced Wilbur Johns as UCLA's head basketball coach in
1948. The Bruins embarked on college sports' foremost dynasty by winning their first NCAA title in
1964 - an instant transformation, as Wooden-worshipers remember it.
-- 23. The Russell deal (1956): Red Auerbach traded Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan to St. Louis to
bring Hawks draft choice Bill Russell to the Boston Celtics. Russell went on to lead pro basketball's
greatest dynasty and become the first black coach in a major sport.
-- 22. Texas Western 72, Kentucky 65 (1966): All five Texas Western starters were black. The entire
Kentucky roster was white. It was the starkest racial contrast in NCAA basketball championship
game history. The victory by the school now known as UTEP over the top-ranked Wildcats is credited
with further opening the door for black athletes in the south.
-- 21. Clay's championship (1964): Beating Sonny Liston, who failed to answer the seventh-round bell
in Miami, Cassius Clay began his rise to dramatic-comedic-tragic icon, a rise that included two
further turns as champion as Muhammad Ali, a ban for refusing military induction, the classic fights
with Joe Frazier, and the victory over George Foreman in the ultimate triumph of guile over
strength.
-- 20. Pete Rozelle's commissionership (1960-89): Chosen by league owners on the 23rd ballot, the
young Rams GM would lead the NFL through the decades in which pro football grew to America's
most popular sport and the Super Bowl became a national quasi-holiday.
-- 19. Computers: Once, strategy was something you drew on a chalkboard and statistics were
something sportswriters kept on a legal pad. Now, coaches and managers analyze performances and
trends with the help of computer printouts that tell them everything but the future.
-- 18. Specialization: Also known as situational substitution. Once upon a time you were an athlete.
Then you were a football player. Then you were a lineman. Then you were a defensive lineman. Then
you were a defensive end in obvious passing situations. At this rate, as roles become more narrowly
defined (designated hitter, set-up man, point guard), someday in the future, an entire career will last
one play.
-- 17. Knute Rockne establishes the pass: Rockne's emphasis on the forward pass and other elements
of finesse as a Notre Dame player and coach (1918-31) revolutionized football. And you thought he
just gave a hell of a halftime speech.
-- 16. Safer racecars: From break-apart car bodies to transparent smoke, safety advances have kept
pace with advances in going really fast.
-- 15. The Shot Heard 'Round the World (1951): Bobby Thomson's bottom-of-the-ninth-inning home

9. run off Ralph Branca wins the pennant for the New York Giants and crystalizes the frustration of
Brooklyn Dodgers fans. The radio call of Russ Hodges - ``The Giants win the pennant! The Giants
win the pennant!'' - was as memorable as the home run.
-- 14. Magic and Bird going pro: The NBA already was on the way back up in 1979 after a decade of
growing pains, violence, drug scandals and midnight TV coverage. But the rise was hastened when
the Lakers drafted Magic Johnson, using a pick acquired from the Utah Jazz in a trade, and the
Boston Celtics signed Larry Bird, who had returned to Indiana State after they had drafted him the
year before. Their rivalry - and the revived Lakers-Celtics rivalry - helped to make the league what it
is today (or what it was a couple of years ago, anyway).
-- 13. Michael Jordan going airborne: We say Bird and Magic helped to make the NBA what it is (or
was). It's Jordan who took the ball and ran with it, carrying the league to unimagined heights, a
fitting role for the greatest finisher in basketball history. Jordan's Chicago Bulls won six
championships in the 1990s. Once again, amid attempts at ``parity,'' a league's popularity peaked at
a time when a dynasty gave everybody a standard of excellence and a seasonal storyline.
-- 12. Maris' 61st* (1961): By taking advantage of an extended major- league schedule, Roger Maris
broke Babe Ruth's single-season home-runs record and set off a debate on the hazards of measuring
greatness with numbers.
-- 11. McGwire-Sosa (1998): The last great drama of the sports century, which ended with Mark
McGwire hitting a record 70 home runs and Sammy Sosa 66, reminded us how awesome Babe Ruth
was in an era when homers were less common. McGwire would have had to hit 150 to match Ruth's
impact.
-- 10. Colts 23, Giants 17, OT (1958): Carroll Rosenbloom's Baltimore Colts won the NFL's first
overtime game and the championship when Alan Ameche tumbled 1 yard for a touchdown 8:15 into
the sudden-death period. The entire league celebrated when it saw how the nationally televised
display by Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry and Lenny Moore raised excitement about pro football.
-- 9. Aaron's 715th: By perservering through racist threats, Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's career
home-runs record and struck a mighty blow for black America.
-- 8. The point spread: The idea - whatever its shady origin - of forcing favorite-players to ``give''
points to underdog bettors made sports betting into a billion-dollar industry. NFL officials publicly
deplore gambling, and secretly love it, if they know their audience.
-- 7. Title IX (1972): The federal mandate for gender equity in education leads to the rapid expansion
of athletic programs for women, to the more-than-occasional frustration of male athletes whose
programs were cut back.
-- 6. Curt Flood's freedom fight (1970): Flood lost his lawsuit challenging as ``slavery'' the baseball
rule binding a player to one team until traded or released. He lost his first appeal and an appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court. He sacrificed his career by refusing to report to the Philadelphia Phillies
after a trade from the St. Louis Cardinals. But he won the war as the issues he raised prompted
baseball to negotiate with the players' union for major sports' first free-agency system.
-- 5. The Dodgers' move out of New York (1958): The loser - Brooklyn. The winner - everywhere else.
We can live with that tradeoff. Before the http://fantasysports.yahoo.com/ Dodgers came to Los
Angeles, major-league baseball consisted of 16 teams, all in the eastern and central timezones. The

10. big leagues have doubled in size since then. Before the Dodgers came to Los Angeles, major-league
sports here meant the Rams, the racetracks and boxing ring. In the next 10 years we'd add the
Lakers, Angels, Kings and the ABA's Stars, and built the Forum and Anaheim Stadium.
-- 4. The growing role of science: Improved nutrition, conditioning, surgical procedures and
competition equipment are helping the human animal achieve its athletic potential. A scary thought
for time-travel believers: Babe Ruth puts down the booze and picks up the creatine.
-- 3. Birth of ESPN (1979): The marriage of sports and television might have been old news by then.
But the arrival of ESPN and its cable cousins made sports and television one complete happy family.
Television dictates tip-off times and rule changes. In return players and leagues get rich on zillion-
dollar network contracts. If you puzzle over athletes earning 100 times what the previous generation
did, consider that today's ballplayer entertains millions of viewers, whereas his predecessor
entertained 12,000.
-- 2. Babe Ruth's move to New York (1919): The impact on the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox was
enormous. The impact on sports was bigger: A celebrity-driven sports culture was born. Red Sox
World Series titles before owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth for $425,000 in cash and loans: six. Since:
zero. Yankees World Series titles before the trade: zero. Since: 25. In the big city, Ruth became a
celebrity of, well, Ruthian proportions.
-- 1. Jackie Robinson's impact (1947): The first black major-leaguer of the century helped to make
baseball a truly national pastime, became a symbol of the civil rights movement and embodied the
biblical admonition to turn the other cheek. Robinson was MVP of the National League, 1949, and
MVP of American sports, 1900-99.
CAPTION(S):
24 photos
Photo: (1 -- 9 -- page 1) Various sports (no caption)
(10 -- 24) Athletes of the Century
CHRISTY MATHEWSON
SAMMY BAUGH
SUGAR RAY ROBINSON/MUHAMMAD ALI
JERRY WEST
ELGIN BAYLOR
BEN HOGAN
SAM SNEAD
JIM BROWN
ERIC HEIDEN

11. CARL LEWIS
JACKIE JOYNER KERSEE
MICHAEL JORDAN
STEFFI GRAF
JACK NICKLAUS
MARIO ANDRETTI
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