My family likes to laugh at this: I was 10, and we were on vacation, driving up California’s breathtaking northern coast.
Every couple of miles, my folks would say, “Ooh, look at the rocks! Look at the ocean! Isn’t it beautiful?” And my siblings would clamber to the window for a better peek.
I, on the other hand, never looked up. I was lost in comic books.
“You see that?” my father asked.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.
Their engine, Jerry Stackhouse, was sputtering badly, so the Pistons tried everything under the hood. They jumped the battery, they tweaked the carburetor, they threw the fuses. Finally, they got out and pushed. There is more than one way to win a playoff series, and when pretty doesn’t work, go ugly if you have to, but get there.
“Check it out, check it out,” I say, standing on the street corner, slapping my palm. I catch your eye. You stop.
I wave two pairs of tickets.
“Pistons or Wings? Hockey or basketball? Game 5 or Round 2? What’s it gonna be, my man?”
“Are you talking to me?” you say.
Of course, we’re talking to you. You and the rest of the fever-pitched, dry-throated, double-fisted Detroit sports fans, who face the enviable problem of two big playoff games in one city in one night. Pistons or Red Wings? Downtown or suburbs?
What’s it gonna be?
These days, and at his age, I’m not sure what Chris Chelios’ best move is. But I can tell you this: shrugging is at the top the list.
Ask about the pressure. He shrugs it off. Ask about his skills. He shrugs it off. Ask about his notable performance in the playoffs so far, or his keeping up with guys half his age, or his pounding and finally outlasting a Vancouver goliath named Todd Bertuzzi.
Shrugs it off.
There are people who do so much in life yet feel as if they’re standing still. And then there are those who are really standing still.
Which brings me, once again, to the sad and pitiful story of the line waiters for “Star Wars.”
Two years ago, I wrote about these poor misguided souls — adults, not children — who sat outside a movie theater waiting for “The Phantom Menace.” Not for hours. Not for days.
For months!
MITCH ALBOMBrett Hull loped a shot into the crease, like a Little League coach throwing a grounder to his shortstop — and here came the shortstop, Sergei Fedorov, flying in and tapping the puck so deftly and quickly that by the time the red light flashed he was already circling away, hands in the air, rocking back on one skate like a man without a care in the world.
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