DAY 14: The Green Flash.BEIJING - Oh, mon, it was a party! Bang the steel drums! Yams for one and all! Anybody in a green "Jamaica" shirt was being swarmed for interviews. We didn't even know who they were. "We're proud to be Jamaicans!" a middle-aged woman declared. "We are the sprint factory of the world!""Is that his mother?" a reporter whispered."He can go faster! You won't see nobody like him for another 50 years!" insisted a middle-aged man."Is that his coach?" a reporter whispered.
In sports, it's good to be original. The first to dunk. The first to throw a knuckleball. The only time you don't want to be original is when it comes to bad behavior.Michael Vick is finding this out. Using drugs? Sexual assault? DUI? Waving a gun? As pathetic as it seems, those offenses no longer shock in the privileged world of professional sports.
As soon as the Tigers wake up this morning, they should go to their calendars and rip out the current page that reads "August."It's September now.Oh, maybe not by the moon and the stars, but by the little white ball that measures the season. "September" is really a frame of mind in baseball. It means crunch time, the shedding of the fat, every game and inning with consequence for the playoffs.
DAY 13: Old gold. New gold. And a little white ball.BEIJING - Let me throw some names at you. Carl Lewis. Bob Beamon. Bob Hayes. Evelyn Ashford. Bob Seagren. Cassius Clay. Sugar Ray Leonard. Greg Louganis. These are athletes who became famous by winning Olympic gold in sports in which the U.S. once excelled - the 100 meters, long jump, pole vault, boxing, diving. There was a time where you could check off American medals in certain events before we even marched in the Opening Ceremonies.
DAY 12: Major duds and a major dud.BEIJING - In a moment, we will get to the injury and abrupt quit of the biggest sports star in China, an event that, on Monday morning, brought this nation of 1.3 billion people to tears. But first, the big news: The suits are back, and they fit great!So do the shirts, which I bought five more of, along with three more suits, two more sport coats, all handmade, and I think I got change from my dollar.
NEW YORK - Two nights earlier, he was sleeping at a hotel in Altoona, Pa., sharing a room with a minor league teammate.Friday night, he had his own key at the Hilton in New York City.And here he was now, Saturday afternoon, at the plate in Yankee Stadium, facing Roger Clemens, a future Hall of Fame pitcher who had already won 40 major league games before the kid was even born.
Elvis thinks people have forgotten him.This is nearly five decades ago. Elvis is fresh off a two-year stint in the Army, much of it spent in West Germany. Now he fears everything is gone, that the public has moved on. Elvis takes a train to tape a TV show with Frank Sinatra. "He was scared to death," Ray Walker tells me. Walker, in his 70s now, was a member of the Jordanaires, Elvis' backup group. He still remembers that train ride.
DAY 10: The big race, the big climb, the big difference.BEIJING -"Fruits? Almonds?" he says in Chinese.His "store" is a table. He sits on it, offering plastic bags to visitors. The sun is hot and the mountains loom overhead, and there are half a dozen vendors trying to sell us the same stuff, and besides, on the way into this village we passed a donkey sitting in the middle of the street, so to be honest, business is slow."Can you take us up to the Wall?" we ask.
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.
