Seasons
SEASON: 44 | YEAR: 1992
HEAD COACH: PAT MURRAY
Game 417 | January 15, 1992 | Tom Kelly, Andy MacPhail, Carl Pohlad, Jerry Bell
The Twins were coming off their second World Series victory in four years. Kelly was the league's Manager of the Year, and MacPhail was the league's Executive of the Year. Team President Jerry Bell and owner Carl Pohlad shared their feelings with the Dunkers.
(LtoR) Norm McGrew, Lou Nanne, Jerry Bell, Carl Pohlad, Pat Murray, Tom Kelly, Andy MacPhail, Warren Spannaus (physician)
Game 418 | January 24, 1992 | John Ziegler
The Commissioner of the National Hockey League since 1977, Ziegler had no idea that he would be ousted by owners at the end of the 1992 season. He championed the expansion of the NHL by three teams in his final two years in office and was credited with stepping in to resolve a players' strike that threatened the 1992 playoffs ... a move that proved to be his undoing with owners.
Game 419 | January 29, 1992 | Dennis Green
Coming off successful head coaching assignments at both Northwestern and Stanford, Green was a hot property when the Vikings hired him after the 1991 season to succeed ,Jerry Burns. At the time of his hiring, he was only the second African American NFL head coach in modern football history. The team responded well to Green's West Coast offense and won the NFC with an 11-5 record before losing at the Metrodome 24-7 to Washington in the first round of the playoffs.
Game 420 | February 13, 1992 | McKinley Boston, Jim Wacker
Both Boston and Wacker were new in their jobs in 1992. Boston, a member of the Gophers' 1967 Big Ten champion football team, emerged late in the search for an successor to Rick Bay. Wacker, hired by Boston, came to Minnesota with a successful history of rebuilding football programs. Winner of four national titles and two college coach of the year awards, Wacker left Texas Christian to succeed John Gutekunst. The team went 2-9 in his first season as head coach.
Game 421 | February 19, 1992 | Phyllis George
A former Miss Texas and Miss America (1971), George gained national prominence when she joined Brent Musburger, Irv Cross and Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder to host NFL Today, the popular CBS show of the 1970s and early 1980s. She was one of the first females to play a prominent role in television sports coverage.
Game 422 | April 3, 1992 | Dick Vitale
After a successful stint as head basketball coach at Detroit University, Vitale was hired to coach the Detroit Pistons. Twelve games into his second season he was fired. Out of work, he accepted the invitation to call the first college basketball game ever broadcast on a new network called ESPN. Since 1979, he has called nearly 1,000 games for ESPN, pairing with play-by-play announcers Brad Nessler, Dan Shulman and Mike Patrick.
(LtoR) Sid Hartman (physician), Norm McGrew, Pat Murray, Dick Vitale, Mark Mulvoy, Lou Nanne
Game 423 | April 23, 1992 | Peter Lund
A Minnesota native, Lund was president of CBS Sports at the time he spoke to Dunkers. Three years later he was promoted to president and chief executive officer of CBS Inc. In a fascinating look into the future, Lund predicted a day when most major sports events would no longer be on the major broadcast channels and would be available to viewers through a combination of cable and pay-per-view.
Game 424 | May 20, 1992 | John Anderson
The young Gopher baseball team won 12 of their final 14 Big Ten games. Led. by Mark Merila and George Behr; the Gophers won the Big Ten Tournament under coach Anderson and started strong in NCAA regional play, defeating George Washington and Cal State Northridge before losing to Oklahoma State.
Game 425 | June 12, 1992 | John Rooney
Later in his career sportscaster Rooney joined the play-by-play team of the St. Louis Cardinals. While a member of the Twins broadcast team in the mid 1980s, he perfected his home run call, "Hrbek swings ... it's a goner."
Game 426 | June 25, 1992 | Jack McCloskey
After the 1991-'92 season McCloskey was named Timberwolves General Manager. For the previous 13 he held the same position with the Detroit Pis-tons, helping build them into a two-time NBA Champion. Nicknamed "Trader Jack," he made 43 deals in his term with the Pistons. His first move with the Timberwolves was to draft Duke center Christian Laettner and trade Pooh Richardson and Sam Mitchell to the Indiana Pacers for Chuck Person and Michael Williams.
Game 427 | July 15, 1992 | Dennis Green
It was Green's second appearance in six months after being named Vikings coach. His topic was the recently completed draft in which the Vikings had no first-round picks for the fourth consecutive year because of the trades involving Mike Merriweather and Herschel Walker: The Vikings had only one pick in the first three rounds, but got guard Ed McDaniel on the fifth round. Green said he was intrigued by his ninth-round pick, a Florida State basketball player and backup quarterback named Brad Johnson.
Game 428 | August 12, 1992 | Jim Wacker
Like Green, Wacker was making his second appearance of the Dunker year. Asked if he was still so excited about the job as Gophers football coach, he repeated the comment he made at his introductory news conference that the job "has my heart a pumpin' and my corpuscles jumpin."
Game 429 | September 1, 1992 | Janie Klecker, John Rothlisberger, Dennis Kosloski
The topic was the recently completed Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Klecker, who burst onto the local running scene as Janis Horns in 1979, had won the U.S. Olympic trials in the marathon and finished 21st in Barcelona. Rothlisberger, son of the Gopher gymnastics coach, was the National All-Round Champion in 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1995. A member of the 1992 Olympic team, he would go on to finish seventh in the All-Around at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Kosloski won a silver medal in 1992 in Greco-Roman wrestling.
Game 430 | September 15, 1992 | Calvin Griffith
It had been eight years since Griffith sold his Minnesota Twins to Carl Pohlad. He said that he hated to let the team go, but that he realized he could no longer compete in the world of free agency. Calvin attended games regularly after selling the team and mixed frequently with fans. He died in 1999 at age 87 and was buried in Washington, D.C., a city he rarely visited after moving the Senators to Minnesota after the 1960 season.
Game 431 | September 21, 1992 | Larry Laoretti
Winner of the 1992 U.S. Senior Open golf championship, the loquacious Laoretti was amazed to find that the Minneapolis Club rules prohibited smoking. A winner of no significant tournaments up to the age of 50, Laoretti, a journeyman club pro, talked of finding a new life on the senior tour. He spent the entire meeting with an unlit cigar in his mouth and lit up as he went out the back door.
Game 432 | October 12, 1992 | J. Gerhard Heibing
Traveling the United States in search of marketing partnerships for the 2004 Winter Olympics in Lillehamer, Norwegian businessman Heibing said he felt at home in Minnesota. As head of the 1994 games, Heibing invited Minnesotans to revisit their roots by joining him in Norway two years later.
Game 433 | November 5, 1992 | Jack Nicklaus
As a player, Nicklaus said he was enjoying life on the Champions Tour, where he won eight majors between 1990 and 1996. His attention, he said, was more and more turning to golf course design, and he was visiting Minnesota at the invitation of former Gopher quarterback John Hankinson to check progress on their new Bearpath golf development partnership in Eden Prairie.
(LtoR) Lou Nanne, John Hankinson (physician), Norm McGrew, Jack Nicklaus, Pat Murray, Dave Mona
Game 434 | November 9, 1992 | Clem Haskins, Doug Woog
With a more veteran team at his command, Haskins' Gopher basketball team improved by six games and qualified for post-season play in the National Invitational Tournament. Led by Vashon Lenard, Arriel McDonald and Randy Carter, the team won the NIT, beating Providence and Georgetown at Madison Square Garden. Woog's hockey Gophers won the WCHA Playoffs before losing to Maine in the NCAA East Regionals. Craig Johnson, Jeff Nielson and Travis Richard led the team in scoring with Tom Newman and Jeff Callinen sharing time in the nets.
Game 435 | November 17, 1992 | Cris Carter, Todd Scott, Mike Tice
Let go by the Philadelphia Eagles after the 1989 season, Carter signed with the Vikings and went on to be leading receiver in the team's history. With Rich Gannon and Sean Salisbury alternating at quarterback, Carter emerged in 1992 as the team's leading receiver. Tice, a tight end who would become the team's head coach a decade later, joined the team in 1992 after stints with Seattle and Washington. Scott, the team's starting safety, was a sixth-round draft choice in 1991.