Ask Me Again, Next Year

It's the time of year when one sits by a crackling fire and ponders, as beads of remorseful sweat collect on one's forehead, all the things that went unaccomplished in the preceding year. For me, Gravity's Rainbow remained unread, as it has every year for the past decade. The garage door is only half-painted. And though a respected food writer implored her readers at this time last year to "do something with chervil in 1988," the year came and went and I did nothing with chervil.

Worst of all, though, were my failures in keeping up with events and trends in my own profession. Countless times this past year someone said to me: "You're a sportswriter and you don't know that?!"

Well, in 1989 I'm going to knuckle down and find out what's really happening in the wide world of sports. It may leave precious little time to do something with chervil, but life is about choices, right?

Thus I hereby resolve:

?To monitor the results of the preliminary matches around the globe leading up to the 1990 World Cup, so that I'll be prepared for 1994, when the Cup is held in these United States. It won't be easy, because it's said the sun never sets on Cup zone games—this week, for example, Qatar plays Jordan in Qatar—but I'm going to take a crack at it.

?To investigate the phenomenon of the disappearing celebrity golf sponsor. There was a time when any thespian/tap dancer/comedian/crooner worth his subscription to Variety sponsored a tournament, but now, were it not for the LPGA Jamie Farr Toledo Classic and the patronage of those two enduring perennials, Bob Hope and Dinah Shore, the golf tours would be bereft of Hollywood appeal. Andy Williams recently took his name off the Shearson Lehman Hutton Andy Williams Open. Granted, Shearson, Lehman and Hutton were a hell of a vaudeville team in their day, but there's no denying Andy was the drawing card in that mix.

?To try to concentrate on the grace and beauty and finely tuned choreography to be found in NHL games instead of castigating the league for allowing senseless violence. And then I'm going to save the Tyson-Givens marriage.

?To find out what happens to Winter Olympic athletes in non-Olympic years. What do they do, all these speed skaters and Nordic skiers, bobsledders and biathletes? Do they hang out at some mysterious, snowcapped retreat in the Rockies? Migrate to Innsbruck? Dine at Dick Button's? For that matter, what happens to Dick Button?

?To pore over the NBA's illegal-defense rules so I'll know what in the world is going on when the referee suddenly whistles the action to a halt, makes a weird quasi-military salute signifying an illegal-defense call:

1) and all the defensive players whirl and stare at him with you-can't-mean-me looks on their faces.