Poorer Tyson buys car

     Associated Press
      Hours after Mike Tyson was fined $3 million for biting Evander Holyfield, the former heavyweight champion plunked down at least $200,000 for a new car.
      Tyson bought a Ferrari 456 GT on Wednesday in Spring Valley, N.Y., a suburb of New York City, according to sales representative Nick Saradakis.
      The car has a retail price in the $200,000-$250,000 range.
      Tyson, who flew from Las Vegas to New York on Wednesday morning, told the salesman he had owned the same model in the past and did not need to take it for a test drive.
      Saradakis said Tyson signed about 30 autographs and described him as "kind, and you could almost say a gentle kind of person. Very respectful, almost shy."
      `Sometimes celebrities are difficult, but in his case, he was as nice as he could be," Saradakis said. "There's no question he's a real gentleman."
      Earlier Wednesday, the Nevada Athletic Commission sentenced Tyson to the stiffest possible penalty for biting Holyfield's ears in their June 28 title fight: the revocation of his license to box and a $3 million fine.
      -- OTHER SUSPENSIONS -- Tyson joins a long list of sports figures who pushed the envelope too far and wound up being dismissed -- some for a few games, some for a season, some for a lifetime.
      The roster includes such transgressors as Shoeless Joe Jackson, Paul Hornung, Pete Rose, Diego Maradona and Ben Johnson.
      In boxing, Sonny Liston was denied a license in several states for alleged mob ties and Rocky Graziano was banned in New York for failing to report a bribe attempt. Graziano solved that problem by fighting Tony Zale for the middleweight championship in Chicago.
      Boxing's most celebrated suspension in boxing had nothing to do with action in the ring. That occurred in 1967 when heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali refused induction in the Army during the Vietnam War.
      Ali's license was revoked by the New York State Athletic Commission. He was stripped of his title and sentenced to five years in prison for draft evasion. He appealed and, after being banned from boxing for 3 1/2 years, returned to the ring in October 1970.
      After the courts ordered New York to restore his license, he fought Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction and Ali returned to full-time boxing.
      In 1963, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle thought gambling should cost Hornung and Alex Karras one year away from football, even though Hornung was the NFL's leading scorer and Karras was one of the league's top defensive linemen.
      When baseball found Rose guilty of the same thing in 1989, it banned him for life, with the proviso that he could apply for reinstatement after one year. That was eight years ago and Rose remains separated from his sport.
      Hornung came back and wound up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Rose, baseball's career hits leader, remains ineligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
      Also kept outside Cooperstown is Jackson, who was banned from the game along with seven teammates as part of the 1919 Black Sox scandal.