May 07, 1993|By Phil Jackman
* While the NBA is going great guns putting high-wire slam dunks and rejections to MTV-like music, NFL Films won an Emmy for best writing a while back with its "Highlights for Highbrows," game action as seen through the prism of classical literature. It takes all kinds, right?
* A May 22 show on ABC is entitled "Best of Wide World of Sports" and viewers are asked to select the events they most want to see again. Problem is, some of the nominees are weak. For instance, Evel Knievel's ill-fated attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon and some of those demolition derby and barrel-jumping competitions from the early days.
* No one has suggested it yet, but the Washington Capitals were probably licking their chops after learning Dale Hunter had been suspended from training camp and the first 21 games of the regular season as the result of his hideously-overpublicized sneak attack on Pierre Turgeon of the New York Islanders last week.
The club will save $150,000 in Hunter's salary and, while missed, his absence doesn't figure to affect the team adversely in its quest for a playoff spot. Remember, Pittsburgh has fled the NHL's Patrick Division and in its place come two expansion teams to the newly-constructed Atlantic Division.
* Please, Bill Walton, don't lose any of that charming irreverence you bring to pro basketball telecasts. Watching the Charlotte Hornets start out with questionable strategy on the defensing of the Boston Celtics' big men, Walton sputtered, "Don't they have cable TV down in Charlotte?"
* As it has done in the past, ESPN is doing same-day, late-afternoon updates of the progress of the Tour DuPont cycle race which got under way in Wilmington, Del., yesterday. The tour skips Baltimore and Washington this time, but tomorrow's Stage 3 is a 115-mile road race that rolls from Port Deposit to Hagerstown.
* Come Preakness Day May 15, ESPN will precede ABC coverage beginning at 4:30 p.m. with an hour program covering all the doings -- well, not all the doings in the infield -- including the $150,000 Maryland Budweiser Breeders' Cup race (sprint).
