by Mitch Albom | Jan 14, 1997 | Detroit Free Press
The paper. I kept looking for the piece of paper. The crib sheet. The notes. Something written down that Bobby Ross was no doubt checking as he stood at the microphone, neatly coiffed, rattling off his coaching blueprint. Methodically, he outlined why he came here, how he operated, and the steps he would take to build a winner in Detroit. Surely he was working from a script, no? It was too logical. Too orderly. The Lions haven’t witnessed this kind of organization since the Silverdome crowd sang an on-key verse of “Another One Bites the Dust.”
by Mitch Albom | Jan 13, 1997 | Detroit Free Press
Week after week during this past football season, I would walk into ESPN and see the grinning faces of analysts Joe Theisman and Sterling Sharpe.
“How ’bout those Lions?” they would yell, and then break up laughing.
They would shake their heads, ask me about the latest embarrassment, then ask me to explain again how Wayne Fontes kept his job. And then they’d laugh some more.
They are not laughing this morning. They are nodding in admiration. That is the first thing Bobby Ross brings the Lions. He’s legit. Everyone stops laughing.
by Mitch Albom | Jan 8, 1997 | Detroit Free Press
A thank-you.Since my column about Deshawn Chatman — a young basketball player coping with his mother’s drug addiction — ran in the Free Press last month, people have done some incredibly generous things. These range from a woman who sent blankets...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 30, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
This is how a bullet breaks up a backfield. The quarterback, the running back, the receiver and another friend were together in a white Geo Tracker. It was a Friday night, just before Easter, and they were driving to Canada. They had some beer that they wanted to...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 29, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
The Last True Sports Fan was ready to die. He stood on the bridge, peering down into the icy waters. His hood was up, his coat was long and tattered. I recognized him by the tattered baseball glove and the broken transistor radio still hooked to his ear.
“Stop!” I yelled, running from my car. “Don’t jump!”
“Why not?” he whispered.
His face was old and sad. There were faded trading cards in his pockets and a cardboard sign that read “Go Dodgers!” under his arm. The word
“Brooklyn” had been crossed out.
“Have you got any money?” I asked.
by Mitch Albom | Dec 27, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
On the day after Christmas, when many Americans trade in their unwanted merchandise, the Lions traded in their coach, Wayne Fontes.
There will be no refund.
The Lions get nothing back for this wasted year, a year in which a truly talented team finished dead last in its division. They get nothing back for any of the eight seasons in which they may have been good enough to contend for a title, but were outsmarted, out-prepared or simply too confused by the Fontes regime to win.
by Mitch Albom | Dec 24, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
In his last happy moments, he was a guy you might have envied. Handsome, athletic, 6-feet-2, water-blue eyes, a charmer with women. It was close to Christmas and his buddies were out at the Goat Farm bar on Novi Road. John Foley, only 22 years old, had a few beers...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 23, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
The Lions play their last game of the season tonight, and then we find out just how much Christmas spirit Wayne Fontes can count on.
Fontes and owner William Clay Ford have always had a good relationship, but a season like 1996 could make Romeo and Juliet sleep in separate bedrooms.
So perhaps Wayne is looking to tweak Mr. Ford’s holiday cheer. Why, I can just envision their meeting Christmas Eve, when Wayne will suggest — before they do anything rash — that they share a few Christmas carols.
Christmas carols?
by Mitch Albom | Dec 22, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
Since you can’t bring up a racial issue in this country without whites running to one side and blacks running to the other, let me try a different angle on this Ebonics idea.
If I were black, I’d be insulted.
by Mitch Albom | Dec 20, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
Deshawn Chatman was tired of watching his mother do crack, tired of the smell, the little white pellets, the way she lit up from the four-burner stove in their kitchen. He was tired of finding her incoherent on the couch, her eyes glassed over, too high even to speak to him. So one day last spring he quit the thing he loved the most, the Cooley High basketball team, and he walked the few blocks to his small, decaying, red brick house on the northwest side of Detroit.
