It was my uncle, your grandfather, his best friend. It was your dad or his neighbor or his brother-in-law. They were soldiers in World War II, and when they finished serving their country, they came home to a grateful embrace - not just words, but action.There was something called the GI Bill, passed in 1944, and it quite literally changed the face of America. It paid for returning soldiers to study at trade schools, colleges, universities - even medical and law schools. Paid in full.
Niklas Kronwall came plowing into his Dallas opponent like a football linebacker running to make a bus. Shoulder in. Opponent goes up. Opponent crashes. Kronwall skates away. What rust?
When Chris Osgood was a kid in Edmonton, Alberta, his dad was principal of his grade school. One day, the class was asked to write about their fathers. Young Chris turned in his paper, which surprised the teacher."My father," Osgood wrote, "is a fireman."A fireman?"I didn't want the other kids to know," he says now. "I thought it was embarrassing that he worked in the school."
A knuckleballer can make you look like hell, and the Tigers need no help in that department. So Tuesday night at Comerica Park had potential ugly written all over it - even before it started. In that way, it did not disappoint. Against Boston's Tim Wakefield, who turns 94 as you read this, the Tigers looked impatient, imprudent and totally imperfect.This is a floundering baseball team.There's no other way to say it. You could say "slump," but that wouldn't explain the bad defense or tepid at-bats. You could say "growing pains," but these are not all young guys.
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.
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.
