Today is the first day of football season, and I will again watch a game from the press box. I have enjoyed this perch for many years now, but there was a time when it was the furthest thing from my mind. That memory came back to me last week, sadly, when I got the news: Ed Guthman had died at 89.
Spit, glue, tape, bubble gum. The Tigers are on a leaky boat, grabbing what they can to plug their spurting holes, hoping to survive until the tide washes them to postseason shores. Wednesday night, the grizzled pirate Kenny Rogers, who had a blood clot removed from his shoulder in the spring, was taken out of the rusty trunk and pushed against the gushing water, asked - after six weeks away from the major league mound - to right the ship for a night.
TO THE MICHIGAN WOLVERINES:Tomorrow marks the last day of your national embarrassment. And the first day of the rest of your football lives.Already, you have learned a valuable lesson. How one minute you're on top of the world and the next you're on the bottom of someone's shoe. Remember it well. Remember how certain people thought you were championship material and now, after one loss, think you should stay out of the Top 25 all year. Remember how certain analysts celebrated Lloyd Carr last season and now want him broomed out of town.Remember it all.
Keep walking, Kwame. Out the door, off the stage and into a jail cell. You had a chance, on what could have been the most honest night of your life, to truly stand up, to change the image of who you are and perhaps begin to change yourself. Instead, you put cops at the door, blocked reporters you didn't like from coming in, then bathed in sycophantic applause before leaving in a gush of phony bravado, like an ego-mad athlete being tossed from the game.
Bill Davidson is ready to go. He sits behind his desk, holding his arms, and before I can fully sit down, he grins and says, "OK, let's start."At 84, Davidson needn't wait for anything or anyone. And those who know him suggest, at his age, he's not waiting around for the perfect words, either. He speaks his mind, honestly and frankly. He is at times impish, coy and painfully blunt.
Christine Beatty sat in the courtroom, staring at her feet, hollow as a ghost, even as the columns seemed to be collapsing around her in some Biblical destruction scene, the mayor about to plead guilty, the police chief quitting, helicopters flying over the Manoogian Mansion. And you wondered, as the man she once considered the "love of my life" began his life as a convicted criminal, if she finally realized what everyone in this town should know by now: Charm and arrogance are a treacherous combination.
MITCH ALBOM: YESThe word contend means to challenge for something, and unlike years past, I don't think the Lions will be out of the running by Halloween. If they win the division, they make the playoffs, and with the way Chicago traditionally flip-flops, who knows whether they'll behave like defending Super Bowl participants? So the Lions can contend for their division, which is more than we have said in recent years. Hey. Baby steps. Baby steps.Will Kitna be Lions' first Pro Bowl QB since 1971? NoLions record8-8Lions MVPJon Kitna
In the end, Charles Rogers was a number. Nothing more. He wasn't a star. He certainly wasn't a role model. Heck, he was barely a memory, seeing how little he played.Rogers was a number. His draft number. The No. 2 selection in the 2003 draft. Had he been a fourth-round pick, no one would have expected anything after three subpar seasons. Had he been a fourth-round pick, no one would have argued to keep him after he violated the NFL's substance-abuse rules. Had he been a fourth-round pick, no one would have blinked when the Lions sent him packing this past weekend.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
