The Best of 1992

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.