cap the 1998 season by being named the Associated
Press Male Athlete of the Year. Speculations of ste-
roid use among athletes and the resulting inflation
of statistics produced by these synthetic drugs began
to swirl following the 1998 season.
Hockey The NHL began the 1990 campaign with a
win by the blue-collar Pittsburgh Penguins. That
championship would be followed by a second in
1991 as team captain and new star of the NHL, Mario
Lemieux, led his team to victory. Scotty Bowman,
who would leave the Penguins and resurface in De-
troit, coached the Penguins to one of their two
championships. He then led the Detroit Red Wings
to championships in the 1996-1997 and 1997-1998
seasons, for a total of three championships in the
1990’s.
Another first was the play of Manon Rheaume,
the goaltender for the Tampa Bay Lightning of the
NHL who in 1992 became the first female athlete to
play competitively in one of the four big sports (foot-
ball, baseball, basketball, hockey). The 1994 season
is also well remembered by hockey fans because on
October 1, 1994, the NHL locked out the players in a
labor dispute similar to that of Major League Base-
ball. The dispute would shorten the NHL season to
forty-eight games and conclude with a New York
Rangers victory. Once a perennial powerhouse of
the league, the Rangers ended a fifty-four-year
drought as champions of hockey with their Stanley
Cup victory in 1994.
Tennis Tennis was a sport of rising popularity in
the 1990’s because of four athletes. On the men’s
side, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras dominated in-
dividual play and were responsible for seventeen
grand-slam victories during the era. Sampras won
Wimbledon six times during the 1990’s, as well as six
additional victories in the Australian and U.S.
Opens. Agassi battled Sampras throughout the
1990’s and won the 1992 Wimbledon tournament as
well as four additional Australian, French, and U.S.
Opens. Additionally, Agassi won gold in the 1996 At-
lanta Summer Olympics for the United States.
On the women’s side, two athletes competed as
the face of the 1990’s: Monica Seles and Steffi Graf.
Seles was victorious eight times between 1990 and
1993 in the four grand-slam tournaments. Graf con-
tinued her reign as the best female tennis player of
the 1980’s and produced fourteen additional grand-
slam tournaments in the 1990’s. She won three of
the four grand-slam tournaments in 1993 and 1995,
losing the Australian Open both years, once to rival
Seles. Their rivalry was suspended briefly after Seles
was stabbed on the court by a deranged Graf fan dur-
ing a match in 1993. A rattled Seles left tennis but re-
turned in 1995 and won another Australian Open ti-
tle in 1996.
The domination of these two women opened the
door for many other greats in the sport. One of them
was Jennifer Capriati, but after a brief career that in-
cluded an Olympic title, she would fade from glory
as a result of drug use. The Williams sisters, Serena
and Venus, emerged on the court in the late 1990’s
and would reign supreme over female tennis by the
start of the twenty-first century.
Boxing Boxing was another sport that faced ups
and downs in popularity during the decade. Heavy-
weight champion Mike Tyson was on the losing end
of one of sports most famous upsets. On February
11, 1990, he was defeated by 42-1 underdog James
“Buster” Douglas in Tokyo. Tyson was one of the
most feared heavyweight fighters of all time and un-
defeated coming into the bout with Douglas. The
boxing world would be scarred by the antics of Tyson
for years to come, as he was arrested and convicted
in 1992 for the rape of Desiree Washington, a Miss
Black Rhode Island pageant competitor. He served
three years in prison and returned to boxing in
1995.
In 1996, just as the sport was beginning to lose fan
support, boxing got the fight for which it had been
waiting: a match between Tyson and Evander
Holyfield. Tyson lost in the eleventh round, and a re-
match was scheduled for the next year. Once again,
Tyson would let the sport of boxing down: Following
a second attempt at biting, in which Tyson partially
removed part of Holyfield’s ear, Tyson was disquali-
fied. A near riot broke out, and several people were
injured in the arena.
The 1990’s brought black eyes and bad memories
for boxing, but there were a few bright spots. In
1994, George Foreman became the oldest heavy-
weight champion ever when he defeated Michael
Moorer for the belt. The decade also saw the emer-
gence of champions Oscar de la Hoya, Roy Jones, Jr.,
and Lennox Lewis.
Other Sports The 1990’s also witnessed the begin-
ning and end of careers in several lesser-known
sports. In cycling, the Tour de France witnessed the802 Sports The Nineties in America