The ghosts of Roberto Clemente and Jackie Robinson, and the indomitable presence of Billie Jean King, hovered over 1997, a fat and contentious year in which we were supposed to draw inspiration from the Great Lessons we would learn from three significant anniversaries. It has been 50 years since an African-American first played in modern Major League Baseball and 25 years since the death of the game’s first Latino superstar and since the passage of Title IX, federal laws enacted to level the tax-supported playing field for women. Invariably, the Great Lessons turn out to be the old ones, re-soled and available in trendier colors. Fair enough, truth is the baby of the universe and must be raised by each new generation. . . . Come the end of the week, the lessons of 1997 will be over. They will become unfinished business for 1998.
