The Best of 1992

43,750,000

* Sport is a story of numbers, on or off the field. Baseball's best player, Pittsburgh outfielder Barry Bonds, got the biggest ones: $43.75 million for six years in San Francisco. Hockey's best, Mario Lemieux, got almost as much ($42 million, seven years) to stay in Pittsburgh. Baseball owners cried poverty -- and demanded to reopen their contract with the players' union -- but, like a randy widow, couldn't help throwing money at those big, handsome athletes. Even the barons of the N.F.L. can no longer look smugly upon the agitation of lesser moguls; last week they acceded to the players' suit for free agency. Serves 'em right: let the bidding frenzy spread like flu.

32

The digits on the jerseys of Magic Johnson and Shaquille O'Neal. Magic, who with Larry Bird made the N.B.A.'s '80s a decade of dazzle, brought that era to an end with his (and Bird's) retirement. But pro basketball soon found a figure worthy of Johnson's number: O'Neal, a superstar force from the first tip-off, and spearhead of the league's most glamorous freshman class since 1979. O'Neal's team: the Orlando Magic, of course.

64 and 172

Number of nations competing at the Winter and Summer Games. Question: What if they gave an Olympics and everybody came? Answer, at Albertville and Barcelona: thrills aplenty. And spills. If the figure skaters' jitters deprived them of perfection, it hyped the competition, so fiercely did they fight just to keep on their feet. Star quality counts too. Hungary's Henrietta Onodi, an elf-enchantress, took silver in gymnastics but gold in viewers' eyes.

117-85

Score of the Olympic men's basketball finals. The boast that the games showcase amateur athletics was never more hollow than when attached to the U.S. hoop squad. The Dream Team (the N.B.A. 11 best players plus Duke's Christian Laettner) naturally gave opponents the DTs. It was a brutal, pointless spectacle, akin to the Harlem Globetrotters doing their sideshow humiliation, for fun and profit, of a flat-footed pickup team.

Joe Montana's ranking on the San Francisco 49ers' quarterback chart. How good are the 49ers? Montana, a great player in his autumnal prime, was arguably not even the team's best QB. While his elbow healed, his replacement, Steve Young, had an MVP season, while another ace, Steve Bono, occasionally spelled Young. This year the 49ers have the form of Super Bowl winners. But could they beat the University of Miami?

100, 4x100, 400

Three Olympic thrills. Gail Devers won the women's 100-m race 16 months after nearly having her feet amputated. That ageless sprite Carl Lewis anchored the U.S. men's 4x100-m relay team that set a world record. And in an inspiring 400-m semifinal, Briton Derek Redmond collapsed with a hamstring pull, then rose and, aided by his weeping father, staggered to the finish line. Amazing feets all.

Number of women who have played a game in a major league team sport. For one period of a preseason skirmish, Manon Rheaume, 20, was in goal for the N.H.L.'s Tampa Bay Lightning, and her bosses say she has a chance to make the team. Can her achievement be a harbinger of gender integration? We bet there's a Little League tomboy phenom who could play shortstop for the Yankees someday. (And soon, please!) We also bet Oprah Winfrey could take George Foreman. In six.

922335

Mike Tyson wears that number now as a guest of the Indiana penal system, after being convicted for raping a teenage beauty-pageant contestant. In doing so, the heavyweight ex-champ forever damaged the genial stud image of star athletes and threatened to give boxing an even blacker eye. Evander Holyfield, the titleholder in Tyson's absence, had a Mr. Olympia physique but the charisma of a C.P.A. -- until November, when he fought challenger Riddick Bowe. Holyfield lost the decision, but in standing up to Bowe's horrifying piston punches he proved himself the champ Tyson could never be.

As in O Canada! Baseball was on the move in '92 -- toward chaos. The San Francisco Giants tried to move to Florida, then stayed put. Commissioner Fay Vincent tried to move the Chicago Cubs to another division, but instead the owners moved him out of his job. So it was apt that the "national pastime" look elsewhere for its "world champions." Canada's team, the Toronto Blue Jays (with, O.K., a roster of imported players), defeated the Braves in a six- game palpitator of a World Series.

10

40

One estimate of top-level male figure skaters in North America who have died of AIDS-related diseases. The plague also hobbled tennis immortal Arthur Ashe. And Magic, whose familiar flair in this year's N.B.A. All Star Game and at the Olympics proved there is life after HIV, put off an intended comeback after $ players said they felt at risk in close contact with an AIDS carrier. These stories confirm that sport, once a refuge from matters of life and death, is now a window into them.