1989

Tremors shake the Bay Area. Oil fouls Alaska 's waters. Troops crush the Tiananmen students. Reform rocks Eastern Europe . Baseball bans a legend. Batman makes a bundle. Zsa Zsa slaps a cop. The world spins on, and the A's, Flames, Pistons and Michigan 's basketball team are on top of it.

INCIDENTALLY
MIXED SIGNALS
Information about Angel reliever Bryan Harvey , as flashed on the Anaheim Stadium scoreboard: WISH—TO END ALL KILLING IN THE WORLD. HOBBIES—HUNTING AND FISHING

IN SI'S WORDS
FALLEN IDOL

Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth announced on Monday that his office "has for several months been conducting a full inquiry into serious allegations" about Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose . Ueberroth , who on Feb. 20 summoned Rose from spring training in Florida to New York City for an unspecified purpose, did not divulge the nature of the inquiry, but SI has been told that the commissioner has information that Rose may have bet on baseball games.
—CRAIG NEFF MARCH 27

Pete Rose never grasped what was happening, not even when his baseball career finally crashed down upon him last week under the gathering weight of his gambling and lies and unsavory associations. Rose seemed to think that as baseball's alltime hit leader, he could not be toppled.... The apparent end of Rose 's baseball career came suddenly. At a press conference in New York City last Thursday morning, commissioner Bart Giamatti announced that under a settlement signed by Rose at four o'clock the previous afternoon, he was banning Rose for life.
—JILL LIEBER AND CRAIG NEFF SEPT. 4

IN SI 'S WORDS
THE EARTHQUAKE
Here we all were in this huge concrete bowl, some of us perched nearly a hundred feet above ground, after being rocked by one of this country's biggest earthquakes on record, and we were acting as if we had been through nothing more extraordinary than a grammar school fire drill. As we left the stadium, a friend of mine said, "I've seen bigger crushes when someone at my house shouts, 'Let's eat!' at a family dinner." But none of us had any idea then how serious the thing was.
—RON FIMRITE

The sword versus the pen.

The fabulous Bakker boy and girl.

Michigan 's understudy coach, Steve Fisher , steals the show at the NCAAs .

Gordie Howe took 26 seasons to amass 1,850 points. Wayne Gretzky takes barely 10. This goal is point No. 1,852.