With news stories - as with life - there is the news and then there's the story.A year ago, I wrote a column about a series of e-mails from a couple in Grand Rapids. Their names are Brian and Kathy. I described them as "beautiful people, energetic and upbeat." They still are.Their e-mails were about their newborn daughter, Faith, who'd suffered a stroke in the womb - something I didn't know was possible. Each new update was heartbreaking. She was such an angel. Yet her wings were so clipped. Her face was so small. Yet her head needed surgery.
Josh Hancock is dead. That fact does not change. He was dead the day the accident happened. He was dead the day the Cardinals attended his funeral. He was dead the day they glumly returned to baseball, wearing his number on their sleeves. And he is dead today, with the toxicology report showing he was drunk by nearly twice the legal limit when his Ford Explorer plowed into a tow truck.He is dead today with the news that he was talking on his cell phone at the time of the crash - talking to a woman about meeting her at a bar.
OK, OK, what do you want him to do? Give it back? Chauncey Billups was handed a three-point basket by a clock screwup. Fine. He got three free ones. Detroit won by seven. No whining."It sucks to be on the other end of that," Billups admitted of the play that ended the third quarter, a play that started under one basket and involved dribbling, passes, a dump-off and a Chauncey three-point bomb, yet on the clock only took less than a second.I know basketball is a fast game. It's not that fast.
This is a story about Scott Skiles and it begins in jail - not because what he did to get in defines him, but because what he did once he got out does.It was 21 years ago this month that I visited Skiles in Indiana, after his 15 days behind bars in the Marshall County Jail. Fifteen days with food pushed through a slot, with the lights always on, with five other men in his cell, one toilet, one shower, one phone call allowed every other day.
This is why basketball isn't hockey. Because the No. 1 seed really is better than the No. 8 seed. Because while major upsets are possible, they are not expected. Because the game doesn't hinge on one suddenly hot goalie, but on a team that puts it together as a team - and puts the lesser team away.
When Bud Selig was a kid growing up on the west side of Milwaukee, he didn't use drugs. He didn't know much about them. They were for the "bad" kids and he was a "good" kid. He didn't drink, he didn't take pills, and to this day, he says, he has never let a cigarette touch his lips.
On a night when LeBron James sat near the Detroit bench - two earrings, one pair of shades, one shirttail hanging from his sweater - and Chuck Daly sat a few feet away - one blazer, one silk necktie, one full head of hair - you could argue that the Pistons were surrounded by the future and the past. But this night was about the present. And the present was tense.
Monday morning after the NFL draft is like Sunday morning after a wild college party. You either had a great time, a lousy time or you wait to learn if you made a fool of yourself.The Lions will have to wait. It was a strange weekend. The home team took another receiver with its highest pick. A great receiver, we are told, but still another receiver. That's four in the last five years. And as rare a bird as Calvin Johnson is, his Georgia Tech team last year went 9-5. Guys who catch the ball do not ensure victories.
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.
