Someone once told me Isiah Thomas planned to run for mayor. Why not? He loved power, he had ambition, and at the time — this was a few years ago — he probably had the votes. He was, without question, the most popular athlete in Detroit since Gordie Howe. Billy Sims and Mark Fidrych were big stars, but they never delivered championships. Thomas (Hit Man) Hearns made a name for himself, but not a personality.
At the moment of truth, he ran away, avoided the tackle, as if there were some end zone he could reach and be safe — safe from the handcuffs, the police, the cameras, the courts, the blood of the victims they say he killed, maybe even safe from the death penalty. The police were right behind him, 11 squad cars, like an opposing football team, and they chased patiently along the Southern California highway, even as spectators stopped their cars, some waving signs saying “GO JUICE.” This is what the man who dashed through airports had become. O.J.
NEW YORK — A bead of sweat was dripping down Jon’s forehead, from his thick, sprayed hair toward his makeup- covered cheekbone. He tried to ignore it and hold his microphone straight, but man, it was hot, damn hot. The heat seemed to burst from the subway grates and the exhaust pipes of buses that rolled past Madison Square Garden, past rows of blue-uniformed riot police, hundreds of them, just waiting, leaning on their blue barricades, wiping sweat from their foreheads. It was June 14, almost summer, the latest day in hockey history, and the fever was all over 33rd Street.
Somebody’s gotta pay. That was the last angry yell when they locked the doors at Joe Louis Arena, and that was the echo in the air Friday afternoon, on a quiet street in Birmingham, as Bryan Murray stood beyond the hedges of his front lawn, a few steps off the deck, talking about why he’d just had his head cut off.
“I haven’t even told my daughter yet,” he said, looking down the street toward a group of children riding bicycles. He turned at the sound of TV satellite trucks pulling up to his driveway, one, two, three. “I guess when she sees those, she’ll know something’s up.”
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