LAST WEEK THE FOX NETWORK AGREED to pay more than $600 million for broadcast rights to Major League Baseball. Last year they paid $1.58 billion for NFL football (snatched from CBS) and another $155 mil for hockey. None of those deals, incidentally, is expected to make money; media analysts estimate that the upstart web is losing $100 million a year on football alone. So the question is, Are these guys crazy—or crazy like a Fox?

Only time and Nielsen will tell, but here's the logic behind the largesse. Major sporting events bring a network other major benefits: stronger affiliates (the local stations that agree to air your programming); an ideal platform to promote prime-time shows; and an opportunity to fill many hours of the broadcast week with viable entertainment. In Fox's case, the association also provides instant image enhancement, conferring respectability on a network previously known for snickering sitcoms and squad-car vérité. Says Tom Winner, director of broadcast media for the ad agency Wieden and Kennedy: "Fox is still feeling like a stepchild, and they want the legitimacy that comes with sports."

Even more important is what David Hill, the president of Fox Sports, describes as "the big picture." Fox's owner, Rupert Murdoch, who is in the midst of assembling a global satellite system, considers sports the biggest draw for TV viewers around the world. He has already submitted extravagant—but losing—bids for Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the summer Olympics in the year 2000. Fox's first foray into boxing collapsed earlier this month when Iron Mike Tyson developed a sore thumb. "You name it," says Winner. "They want it." That means that everyone else has to pay more to stay in the game. "For the major events, it's become a situation similar to when the elephants play in the tall grass," says Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports who now heads up a sports consulting firm. "If you're not an elephant, you better get out of the way."

HBO (Sat., Nov. 25, 8 p.m. ET)

B+

A macabre romance that mixes comedy and thuggery, this fact-based film re-creates the affair between powerful Chicago mafioso Sam Giancana (John Turturro) and Phyllis McGuire (Mary-Louise Parker) of the popular singing sister trio. The unlikely pairing of the mobster and the squeaky-clean star sparked a furor that was eventually ruinous for both of them. From the time he first saw her in 1960 in a Vegas casino and started to woo her with jewelry, cars, mountains of yellow roses and promises of meeting Frank Sinatra, Giancana and McGuire were locked into an increasingly fervent cycle of fighting and making up.

Though the film is smartly acted and has a believable '60s flavor, it sets out its boisterous beauty-and-the-beast fable without much visual or imaginative flair. There are a number of amusingly wry moments in the script however. At one point, for instance, Giancana meets with a pair of CIA operatives who want him to assassinate Fidel Castro. He quickly agrees but with three conditions: The Mob gets back its casinos in Havana; the government butts out of the shrimp business; and, most importantly, CIA spooks must set up a wiretap on Dan Rowan, of the comedy team Rowan and Martin. Giancana was consumed by jealousy after watching Rowan give McGuire a kiss onstage in Vegas. Mr. Sock It to Me was lucky he didn't end up sleeping with the fishes.

TBS (Mon., Nov. 27, 8:05 p.m. ET)

C

Airing over three nights, this ungainly documentary ostensibly celebrates the century's great athletes. But this special is a Trojan Horse. After luring you in with the promise of Babe Ruth, Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, the program force-feeds you a tedious, empty diet of social commentary—with a few clips thrown in. The first night focuses on racism and athletes like boxer Jack Johnson, the second on sexism, faced by Billie Jean King and others. The third night is a scattered essay on sports scandals like the Black Sox of 1919, commercialism and the impact of TV Even the narration is contrived. Dabney Coleman poses as a sportswriter called the Scribe. The character's superficial commentary ("The '50s...it was early afternoon in America") alternates with surprisingly stale observations from pundits like Bob Costas and Studs Terkel and professional athletes like Frank Thomas and Wayne Gretzky.

Unfocused and long-winded, this sports special spends too much time on the sidelines and not enough on the field.

NBC (Mon., Nov. 27, 9 p.m. ET)

B

A divorced mom (Markie Post) winces as her daughter (Candace Cameron) makes her way through the turbulent teen years. It's not just the truancy or the shoplifting or the seedy boyfriend who looks like the singer for Stone Temple Pilots. The real problem is those giant, intricate designs that keep appearing in fields of grain near town. Cameron's classroom doodles are similar to the markings, so she's suspected of staging a hoax. But there is other, unexplained weirdness too. Herds of horses run loose on Main Street, and power surges blow out appliances and transformers all over town. Hmmmmm—could the problem be...aliens?

The film begins auspiciously by establishing an unusually complex and spooky mood, but it veers almost ludicrously off course in the second hour, when we finally meet the Real Culprits.

Fox (Tues., Nov. 28, 8 p.m. ET)

A-

In this MTV-era version of Dante's Inferno, Peter Facinelli plays one of society's throwaways, a teen tossed out of the house by his stepmother. Down and out in L.A., he drifts through the darker precincts of Hollywood. After panhandling for food and living in an abandoned house, he finds shelter with a young male prostitute (Evening Shade's Jay R. Ferguson) and receives tutorials in street survival and the rigors of gay hustling from a modern-day Artful Dodger named Tony (Steven Martini).

The film offers an unsparing look at child desperados who try to keep an eye out for one another. An unsentimental and unsensational dramatization of a troubling issue, this is the TV movie format at its best.

>TUBE: Idols of the Game fumbles; Sugartime doesn't do justice to Sam Giancana and Phyllis McGuire

SCREEN: Toy Story plays like a real winner; Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston get mixed results in The Crossing Guard 19

SONG: The Rolling Stones are Stripped down; Oleta Adams hits a bump with Moving On 22

PAGES: The cast of Friends whips up silly sitcom snacks; Lydie Marshall celebrates Provence in PEOPLE'S annual cookbook roundup 33

BYTES: Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles offers unearthly fun 45

>SERIOUS SHOWSTOPPERS

TWO OF POP MUSIC'S MOST TALENTED women get by with a little help from their friends on a pair of outstanding specials this week. First, Melissa Etheridge launches a promising new performance series, VH1 Duets (Wed., Nov. 22, 8 p.m. ET). In the rococo setting of L.A.'s Doheny Mansion, the rocker with the leather pants and the leather lungs joins forces with a variety of female vocal partners. The showstoppers are Etheridge with Joan Osborne doing "Bring Me Some Water" and with a barefoot Sophie B. Hawkins in a duet of "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover." Later in the week, PBS presents Bonnie Raitt: Road Tested (Tues., Nov. 28,10 p.m. ET). The vibrant video companion to Raitt's new album of the same name, this film captures the incomparable juke-and-jive queen in peak concert form last July, singing hits like "Have a Heart."

Among the guests stopping by onstage at Oakland's Paramount Theatre are Jackson Browne, Bryan Adams and Bruce Hornsby. Raitt returns the favor next month (Dec. 13) when Hornsby gets his own installment of VH1 Duets and she stops by to sing along.