by Mitch Albom | Mar 16, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
The Michigan basketball players walked slowly to the airport gate, some talking, some joking, some, like Rumeal Robinson, wearing headphones to tune out the world. If you expected anger, grief — well, there was none. No tears. They had lost their coach to a better offer, they had been stiffed two days before their biggest tournament, but if they learned anything from Bill Frieder, Papa Hoops, who had kissed them good-bye on the evening news, it was to take care of yourself, baby.
by Mitch Albom | Mar 15, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
He worked here under a cloud of suspicion. He leaves much the same way.Nobody really knew Bill Frieder. Oh, they knew he could get basketball players, knew he could out-hawk and out-visit and out-telephone almost any coach in the country until the kid finally said,...
by Mitch Albom | Mar 13, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
LAKELAND, Fla. — “The weirdest thing,” says Jim Walewander, ripping open a miniature box of Cheerios, “was when one of these guys asked me for an autograph. What should I write? ‘Good luck in taking my job’?”
We are sitting in the dimly lit cafeteria of the Tigers’ minor league complex, surrounded by lanky, young baseball players. We are eating breakfast. Actually, Walewander is eating. I am watching.
“Milk,” he says, pouring some onto his cereal. “You got to conserve this stuff down here. You’re only allowed one glass per breakfast.”
by Mitch Albom | Mar 12, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
LAKELAND, Fla. — In a minute, we will get to the pitch that broke his jaw, and his reputation for being difficult, and the stories about his youth, when he was the brother of a gang leader and the high school student of a certain Mr. Anderson, who happens to be...
by Mitch Albom | Mar 10, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
LAKELAND, Fla. — I am the hotline that never rings. I am the good boy in the back of the class, the one with his hands folded neatly on his desk.I am covering the Detroit Tigers.”Whatcha got? Whatcha got?” the writer from Boston asks in his weekly...
by Mitch Albom | Mar 9, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
LAKELAND, Fla. — If you cut him, he says, he will bleed burnt orange. Texas colors. Go Longhorns. Once upon a time, it was Saturday afternoon on the college football field, and 90,000 fans were roaring for him to knock the nasty out of those boys from Oklahoma, or Baylor, or Texas A&M. Push em back, shove em back — aw hell, just break their legs. “There is nothing,” admits Keith Moreland, “like Texas football.”
by Mitch Albom | Mar 8, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
LAKELAND, Fla. — Where have I been?
A) At Adrian Dantley’s house, cleaning up.
B) On vacation.
C) With Salman Rushdie.
If you guessed (A) you would be wrong. If you guessed (C) you would also be wrong, but you get credit for imagination. If you guessed (B) — “On vacation”
— aha! You were reading the newspaper in my absence!
And you would also be wrong.
by Mitch Albom | Mar 3, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
He finally hit bottom in the cold dawn of Thursday morning, when a U.S. customs agent made him drop his pants and watched a packet of cocaine fall out of his underwear. Standing there, in a windowless room at the American border, alone, about to be charged with drug smuggling, Bob Probert was no longer a hockey player. He was no longer a Detroit Red Wing. He was no longer some tragic hero to the boozy faithful at Joe Louis Arena, who all along have continued to chant, “Hey, leave Probert alone!”
He was a criminal suspect.
Arrested. Cuffed. And led away.
by Mitch Albom | Feb 16, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
Farewell to the Teacher. Farewell to that body, hard and strong, and that face, which always seemed halfway between amusement and anger. Adrian Dantley came in with a bad reputation, and, ironically, he leaves in exchange for one. Known as selfish, moody and a...
by Mitch Albom | Jan 29, 1989 | Detroit Free Press
I see him leaping into trees to save lost cats. I see him leaping onto skyscrapers to pick flowers from the penthouse. I look in the sky and it is not a bird, it is not Bird, it is . . . Dennis Rodman.Rebounding Machine.”How do you account for this?” I ask...
