Baseball players wanted to roll back arbitration eligibility to two years. Owners told them any change to arbitration was a nonstarter. A lockout ensued.
People grew angry about no spring training. Without the American Pastime, they occupied themselves by going to see Driving Miss Daisy, listening to Bonnie Raitt and Milli Vanilli at the peak of cassette sales and talking about Joe Montana, fresh off his third Super Bowl win, as the greatest quarterback in NFL history.
The year was 1990. The Super Bowl rating (39) was the lowest since ’69, barely beating Game 7 of the ’86 World Series (38.9). The halftime show featured a clarinetist and a fiddle player. It would be years before most people realized that something called a browser launched that year. It was called WorldWideWeb.
