Scorecard

She Never Was Barbie

Nancy Kerrigan, America's sweetheart, has, by many accounts, turned into a tart-tongued ice princess. Her mistake? She was caught in the act of being herself.

First, during a long delay before the medal ceremony in Lillehammer, CBS picked up women's figure skating runner-up Kerrigan as she made a snippy remark about gold medalist Oksana Band's uncontrollable weeping. Next Kerrigan skipped the Games' closing ceremonies to fly to Disney World as part of her $2 million endorsement deal with Disney. As she rode on a parade float with her mother, she complained about having to wear her silver medal—the initial reports said she was upset about sitting next to Mickey Mouse but Kerrigan vehemently denied it—which she called "the most corniest thing I've ever done." Finally, in more than one interview Kerrigan bragged that her performance in the Olympic free-skating program had been "flawless" and suggested that the judges had over-marked Baiul.

What happened to our ice queen? Nothing, really. Trouble is, Americans like their heroes and heroines to be one-dimensional. As long as Kerrigan was some sort of skating Barbie doll, smiling beautifully if vacuously in commercials and at press conferences, she was beloved. Once she was away from her carefully orchestrated public appearances leading up to Lillehammer and exhibited, horror of horrors, human imperfections, the same mechanisms that had built Kerrigan up over eight weeks kicked into overdrive to tear her down.

In fact, she has been the same person all along. Kerrigan may have been marketed as a Barbie doll, but she has Boston working-class blood in her veins, a pedigree that fits no one's idea of a charm-school graduate. She is tough and honest. She can be sarcastic and biting and carries a bit of a chip on her shoulder. She is provincial, loyal, determined, ungrateful, graceful and proud, and she comes from a loving family and neighborhood. Deal with it, America. Princesses are for fairy tales. She's one of us.
—E.M. SWIFT

ESPN Snorefest
Our take on last week's award shows: They should have let Frank Sinatra keep talking at the Grammys. And they should have cut off the ESPYs after a minute.

Fay's Say

It will be a shame if Fay Vincent's anger at the publishing industry compels him to scrap his book about Major League Baseball. Clearly Vincent, who resigned under pressure as commissioner in September 1992 after three eventful years, would write some things worth reading if he proceeded with his project, the proposal for which is entitled And the Horse They Rode In On: My Tumultuous Years as Baseball Commissioner.

That 39-page proposal,-which was circulated to about a dozen publishers, was leaked to Richard Sandomir of The New York Times last week. Thus, before. Vincent and his co-author, David Kaplan of Newsweek, had even written their book, Times readers discovered that Vincent planned to call Los Angeles Dodger owner Peter O'Malley a "nitwit" and a "bigot," Milwaukee Brewer owner Bud Selig a "small-town schlepper," Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf "dangerous," and New York Yankee primary owner George Steinbrenner "the most hated man in baseball."

That's sexy stuff. But not necessarily unimportant stuff. Any inside look at the game's pooh-bahs would be valuable. Moreover, Vincent had a front-row seat for the Pete Rose show and said in the proposal that Rose did gamble on baseball, something he would discuss in detail in the book. Vincent's proposal also promised to deal with the subject of owner collusion.