In "Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, the American Dream," Free Press sports columnist Mitch Albom chronicles the triumphs and disappointments of the five University of Michigan freshmen who shocked the college basektball world with their talent and their braggadocio. Today's excerpt, the first of five in the Free Press, deals with U-M's desperate pursuit of high school stars Juwan Howard and Chris Webber -- and others' questionable attempts to get Webber to play elsewhere. "Fab Five" is published by Warner Books; 359 pages, $21.95.Rinnng! Rinnng!
MERIBEL, France -- There I was, going down the mountain, when I bumped into the entire Indian Olympic team.Both of them."Where's the rest?" I asked the two skiers."Hello, yes," they said."No, no. The rest of your team. What happened? Miss plane? Bus go off cliff?""Hello, yes," they said.
He gets the glove back now. Thirty-eight years after he put it in the closet and decided that playing baseball was not going to pay the rent and maybe he should try this pizza thing -- 38 years later -- Mike Ilitch is finally back in the game. Better. He's in the big leagues. Thank you, fate. We owe you one. It was a good day for baseball around here Tuesday, the day the ownership committee recommended Ilitch to be the new boss of the Tigers. Now maybe we can think about this franchise without throwing up.
CHICAGO -- Pressure is a funny word. There is the pressure a sports team feels when it needs to win a playoff game, like the pressure the Pistons are feeling, celebrated, famous pressure that inspires big stories on the 11 o'clock news.
I don't know if you caught this story. On Thursday, a Northwest plane full of New York Giants fans was forced to make an emergency landing. Why? Because the fans were getting too rowdy.It's true. The plane was going from New York to Los Angeles, where the Giants play the Rams on Sunday. And being typical New Yorkers, these people got on the plane, sat down, and said, "Stewardess, get me a drink. Now."
NEW YORK -- Near the back of the men's locker room, on a single wooden bench, Aaron Krickstein sat by himself, watching a silent TV screen and counting down the minutes. Soon he would become the loneliest man in New York City, the man who would try to beat the legendary Jimmy Connors, a one-time tennis villain who has finally reached his 39th birthday and who suddenly everyone wants to take home and cuddle."When was the last time you played a 39-year-old?" someone asked. "My coach," said Krickstein, smiling.
ALBERTVILLE, France -- Let's put the Olympics on hold for today and talk about the Mike Tyson rape conviction, because even over here, on a snowcapped French mountain, some things are pretty obvious:
I want my money back. Really. I'm tired of sports stars complaining this is not enough and that is not enough, they want five years not three years, caviar not steak, Jaguar not Mercedes -- and then they break a toenail and spend two months on the disabled list.Andre Ware is unhappy. He wants more money. Lawrence Taylor is unhappy. He wants more money. Rickey Henderson is unhappy. He wants at least as much money as Jose Canseco, who will no doubt be unhappy if Henderson gets it. Now maybe these guys deserve the dollars. But what if they don't?
There are no basketballs here, no cheering fans, only the hard, cold smell of factory life. Instead of applause we have the whirring of air tools. Instead of mink coats we have drab cotton overalls. The light is by fluorescent bulb, the color is concrete gray. Wherever you walk, you hear the chug and clang of the assembly line.They are making trucks here. This is a local Ford assembly plant. Dennis Rodman always calls himself "a regular guy, like everyone else," so I figured I'd go to where regular guys work for a living and see how they felt about Dennis' behavior lately.
One by one they came up to Chris Webber, smiling, batting eyelashes, bearing gifts. They gave him candy.Photographs. Phone numbers. Lots of phone numbers."Call me," a young woman cooed."Call me," rasped another.He smiled at them all. He took their numbers but lost them quickly after they'd gone. He stepped into the limo and marveled at the crowd as the car sped away."They don't even know me," he said, shaking his head. "Why would I call them?"
When an unemployed black man was stopped by police Thursday night and beaten to death for no apparent reason, many of us pointed angrily towards the police department.Why, we wondered, were two of these officers -- with a history of brutality charges -- still out on the streets? Where was the preventative action a police department is supposed to take?For answers, we can look at Brian Yinger.Yinger is a cop in Dearborn. Has been for 15 years. This week he was suspended, without pay, and ordered to undergo psychiatric tests.
She can put the chair away now. The one she jams under the bedroom doorknob whenever her husband is away. She feels safer when that chair is wedged in. She reads. She sews. She watches TV. Now and then she'll run the vacuum, because the whirring noise gives a buffer against the loneliness. And of course she has the radio. She can turn on the radio and have her husband nearby, or as near as a man can be when his life is broadcasting baseball.
