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2B
Tuesday, October 4,1994
SPORTS UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Player walkouts hurt many people in each pro sport
By Jim Litke The Associated Press
The baseball strike and hockey lock-out are threatening to fracture October.
The chill in the air, instead of building anticipation, serves as a sobering reminder that one season has ended prematurely and a second may never get under way.
A few relevant examples:
Still, life goes on even when most of the games do not. How much it changes depends on how much you have invested.
— The bookmaker says he and his cohorts will learn to make do, even if business is off.
make do, even if business is on.
"I can't say by how much," said the manager at Las Vegas Sports Consultants. "I don't know how much baseball or hockey we usually do and I don't have time to look at the handle. The football people, God bless 'em, have the phones ringing off the hook."
— The baseball manager says some of his friends have lost their jobs, probably for good.
lost their trust, probably for good. Had the baseball season played itself out, Sunday would have pitted the contenders in all three National League division races against one another. The San Francisco Giants, with Matt Williams still in the hunt for Roger Maris' single-season record of 61 homers, would have been at Dodger Stadium.
Dogger said, "If anyone was going to do it, he was the one," said Tommy Lasorda, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. "Now, we'll never know. I do know, this, though — there would have been 50,000 people there, and we would have been celebrating, getting ready for the playoffs.
— The agent, with clients in both baseball and hockey, says he is losing money. Lots of it.
"But that's the cost of doing business," agent Tom Reich said from his hotel room in New York.
Once the season was under way, Reich planned to track down those members of his 50-strong baseball pack and start preparing for next season's baseball-contract talks.
Instead, he is in New York, trying to keep up with the labor negotiations between baseball 's owners and players as well as hockey's owners and players.
— the marketing consultant, who helps corporations spend advertising and sponsorship dollars with sports teams, is not complaining. Business is booming.
"Except for football, the public is a little turned off by professional sports right now," said Nye Lavalle, head of the Sports Marketing Group. "But all that means is the Olympics and the so-called minor sports — gymnastics, volleyball, swimming, figure skating, that bunch — are great buying opportunities."
Los Angeles policemen face civil rights suit from former Olympian
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Al Joyner recalls the scary incident of nearly two and one-half years ago vividly, which isn't a surprise since he remembers thinking he was going to die.
Joyner says he was terrorized by the members of the Los Angeles Police Department, even though he maintains there was no reason for it.
It was Friday, May 8, 1992. Joyner, who won the gold medal in the triple jump at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and was hoping to compete in the 1992 Games, was driving in Hollywood about 10:30 a.m. when he was pulled over by police.
joyner said. "It put the living fear in me. I had just left the White House with the President of the United States, and two days later that happened. No matter how far you go, I'm still a black man and not a human being."
What happened that day triggered a civil rights action against the City of Los Angeles and several LAPD officers, including former chief Daryl F. Gates.
Now 34, Joyner believes he was stopped and treated improperly that day for only one reason — because he was a young black man driving a nice car.
A trial is scheduled to start today in U.S. District Court.
"Everytime Ithink about it,it scares me."
According to the complaint, police stopped traffic in both directions on Sunset Boulevard and ordered Joyner from his car by loudspeaker, forcing him to kneel at gunpoint and handcuffing him in front of numerous onlookers.
Police incorrectly ran his special Olympic license plate so that it came back registered to a pickup truck rather than the 1984 Nissan registered to Joyner's wife,
the complaint says.
It also says that Joyner was never asked for his driver's license and registration, which would have shown the car's plates matched the vehicle.
Instead, he was treated as a "high-risk felony suspect," and the treatment caused him to experience "unbelievable humiliation and terror."
While Joyner was still handcuffed, the car's plates were finally run correctly. Joyner was then released without receiving any traffic citation or an apology, the complaint says.
According to the complaint, one of the police cars pulled Joyner over a second time a block away, allegedly to interrogate him as a suspect in a hit-and-run accident that occurred earlier in the day. The complaint says that was "to provide a cover for the first unlawful stop."
"I was going to a press conference and all of a sudden I got pulled over," Joyner recalled. "When I slowly turned to my left and looked up, I saw a gun. I could tell by the look in this his gey's eyes, if I had slipped he would have blown me away."
Joyner was supposed to run in a meet at UCLA the day after he was stopped but was unable to, the complaint says, because he was so distressed.
"The dispute in this case is simply whether what they did cost Al an opportunity to compete in the 1992 Olympics," said John C. Burton, one of Joyner's attorneys. "They (the defendants) say it didn't, we say it did. That's what the trial is going to be about."
Joyner said he is not looking to make money over the incident, and the case would never have gotten this far had he received an apology.