by Mitch Albom | May 7, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
A knuckleballer can make you look like hell, and the Tigers need no help in that department. So Tuesday night at Comerica Park had potential ugly written all over it – even before it started. In that way, it did not disappoint. Against Boston’s Tim Wakefield, who turns 94 as you read this, the Tigers looked impatient, imprudent and totally imperfect.
This is a floundering baseball team.
There’s no other way to say it. You could say “slump,” but that wouldn’t explain the bad defense or tepid at-bats. You could say “growing pains,” but these are not all young guys.
by Mitch Albom | May 6, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
OK, OK, what do you want him to do? Give it back? Chauncey Billups was handed a three-point basket by a clock screwup. Fine. He got three free ones. Detroit won by seven.
No whining.
“It sucks to be on the other end of that,” Billups admitted of the play that ended the third quarter, a play that started under one basket and involved dribbling, passes, a dump-off and a Chauncey three-point bomb, yet on the clock only took less than a second.
I know basketball is a fast game.
It’s not that fast.
by Mitch Albom | May 4, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
She was arrested at 19, when she tried to sell drugs to an undercover cop.She pleaded guilty, hoping for probation. Instead she was given the maximum – 10 to 20 years.One year later, she said, she jumped a fence in prison and met her waiting grandfather in a...
by Mitch Albom | May 2, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
PHILADELPHIA – Less than five minutes into the game, Rasheed Wallace had his headband knocked to the floor. Chauncey Billups managed to pick it up, with the ball in his other hand, and returned it to his teammate, who pulled it on lopsided. Then up court they...
by Mitch Albom | May 2, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
PHILADELPHIA – Less than five minutes into the game, Rasheed Wallace had his headband knocked to the floor. Chauncey Billups managed to pick it up, with the ball in his other hand, and returned it to his teammate, who pulled it on lopsided. Then up court they...
by Mitch Albom | May 1, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
They lost at home. They won on the road.They blew out the 76ers. They got blown out by the 76ers. Tonight, the Pistons finally will end this first-round playoff series. Unless they don’t. They will play like the veterans they are.Unless they don’t. They...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 29, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
Break your nose. Right now. Go on. Break it. Then fly 500 miles and have it reset. Surgically, by the way. None of that cup-your-hands-and-snap-it-back stuff, OK? Now come out of anesthesia, get on a plane and fly 500 miles back.
You with me so far?
Good. Now comes the hard part. Put on a plastic mask, tie it around your head and go out to play an NBA playoff game.
Now the really hard part.
Watch your team stink up the joint.
by Mitch Albom | Apr 27, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
And with the 17th pick, Lions fans said
“Who?”
Gosder Cherilus. That’s the pick. Gosder Cherilus. Yep. An offensive lineman with a name more suited to a horror film (the old guy in the haunted house?) has filled the spot that has been fretted over, agonized over and argued over for months.
Gosder Cherilus. Boston College. Let us say right here that you or I have no idea if he will be any good.
But no one saw him coming.
by Mitch Albom | Apr 27, 2008 | Comment, Detroit Free Press
Earth Day was last week, and the reaction I heard most was laughter. People snickered. They rolled their eyes. Comedians used it in monologues. Why such glee? When did people concerned about the environment get lumped in with UFO sighters and folks who believe Elvis...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 25, 2008 | Detroit Free Press
The first hit that made any noise didn’t come until five minutes in, and two of the loudest cheers came off the scoreboard: One when they ran a replay of Darren McCarty pummeling Claude Lemiuex back in 1997; the other when they showed Al Sobotka taking the octopus he’d been told not to swing on the ice and swinging it in the tunnel instead.
