by Mitch Albom | Jan 6, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
The Philadelphia Eagles made chopped liver out of the Lions in the playoffs last Saturday, but coach Ray Rhodes still hasn’t eased up on Detroit.
Rhodes couldn’t help but get in one last dig on Lions tackle Lomas Brown’s ill-fated victory guarantee.
“For a guy like myself, I like that kind of stuff,” Rhodes said. “That was the missing ingredient that I needed.”
Rhodes wouldn’t reveal what Brown said to him in their brief postgame conversation, but one Eagles assistant coach said Brown told Rhodes to keep him in mind when free-agency season begins.
by Mitch Albom | Jan 2, 1996 | Detroit Free Press
William Clay Ford, the man who owns the Lions, doesn’t have a coaching problem, he has a credibility problem.It’s just hard to tell the difference.If Wayne Fontes remains his coach, who will take his team seriously anymore? Not Detroit fans. The Lions can...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 31, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
Maybe it’s fate. Maybe it’s coincidence. But my last assignment of this draining year takes me back to the place where I fell in love with sports: Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.It’s about time for a reunion.The stadium was new back then, and so...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 29, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
There’s a new movie out, called “Heat,” and most people who see it wind up talking about the plot, or the violence, or the fine acting of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.Chris Spielman remembers one scene.”Pacino plays the cop,” he says,...
by Mitch Albom | Dec 28, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
She would not cry. She held back the tears as tightly as she once held her first basketball, cradling it all day, sleeping with it all night. Never mind this scary hospital, these sterile walls, these lousy blood tests; never mind what the doctor was telling her now, that she could die if she didn’t have a bone-marrow transplant. She could die? But she was only 18! Never mind. Nekita Burnett, a college player the size of an eighth-grader, was used to laughing, clowning, cracking people up; she never was very good with the sad stuff.
by Mitch Albom | Dec 24, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
You could hear him coming from miles away, the roar of his engine spitting down the gravel road. Noise meant speed, and to a supercharged, grease-under-the-fingernails racer like Chad Schlueter, speed was what life was all about. His family would listen from the kitchen and they’d hear his truck and its eight-cylinder thunder — rrrrrrRRRRRRMMM! — and they’d grin and say, “Chad’s home.” Some nights his sister Nicole, who adored him the way only a younger sister can, would lie awake until she heard his rumble. “Then I knew he was safe,” she says, “and I could sleep.”
by Mitch Albom | Dec 23, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
* Detroit 28, Tampa Bay 10: The Bucs, having missed the playoffs, can’t wait to end the season and get out in the sun. Wait a minute. They live in the sun. Pick vs. spread: Detroit.
* San Diego 30, NY Giants 20: The Giants can’t wait to finish this year and get the heck out of New York. But then, that goes for anyone who lives there. Pick vs. spread: San Diego.
by Mitch Albom | Dec 22, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
First in a series on heartbreaks and hopes of unsung Detroit area athletes in 1995.
“A person like me needs all the support he can get, because of all the things that happen to me.”
— From a 10th-grade English paper by Dewon Jones
by Mitch Albom | Dec 18, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
Let me step to the plate and be the first to offer the Lions this apology on behalf of the media: They were absolutely wrong for doubting you.
OK! OK! I mean, we.
There. Merry Christmas.
Not that there wasn’t cause for doubt about two months ago, when the Lions were 3-6. At that time, we had no proof this team could win a coin toss, let alone its next six games.
by Mitch Albom | Dec 17, 1995 | Detroit Free Press
I am from Earth. You are from Mars. I take your hand and we go Christmas shopping.
“Very big,” you say, as we pull into the mall parking lot. “Is this a center for intelligent life-sharing experience?”
“YO, JERK, THAT’S MY SPACE!” I yell.
We park the car, and walk through whipping wind and blinding snow, as we cross the approximately 37 miles to the mall entrance. When we open the door, we are flattened by an army of exiting shoppers.
“Are their loved ones in danger?” you ask, wiping the footprints off your space suit.
