Ten years ago, a woman named Bryl Phillips-Taylor went to Washington to support a ban on assault rifles. Her son, Scott, had been killed with one.Last week, she returned for the same reason. Her son was still dead. The bullets had still come from an assault weapon. But there she was again, pleading the same case.
If Super Bowls carried subtitles, then the line beneath this first Big Game of the Millennium would surely be: "What-Are-These-Guys Doing Here?"You would say it about the Tennessee Titans, a movable franchise with four homes in the past four years. What are they doing here? You would say it about Kurt Warner, the St. Louis quarterback who came out of arena football to be this year's MVP. What is he doing here?
So I'm going to see Tiger and Phil. Playing together. That's like Elvis and Mick sharing the mike. Tiger and Phil? Together? Against Colin and Padraig? And, here's the best part. I'm walking to the job.I have never walked to the job, not in 20-plus years in this business. But the Ryder Cup, at Oakland Hills Country Club, is just up the road from my home. I breathe the healthy bus fumes as I approach the entrance. "Ahhh, like the old country," I think, as I approach the security gate, "walking to work. Isn't it grand? Isn't it--""You can't bring that in," the guard says.
Everybody leaves. Larry Brown knows that. He knows it from the time he was 7 years old and his father didn't come home from work. The old man, it turns out, had died in a hospital from an aneurysm; Larry and his older brother were at the movies. Larry's mother was so distraught, instead of telling him, she sent young Larry away with relatives for nearly a month. He missed the funeral. He missed the grieving. He was told his father was on his job as a traveling salesman. "But I knew," Brown says now.
Imust have missed the memo. Apparently the Lions' season began Sunday and those first three losses were part of the exhibition schedule. Ach! If only they had told us! Think of all the nasty adjectives we'd have saved!Finally, Sunday, against the previously unbeaten Saints, we saw the Detroit team they wrote about in the brochures. The defensive front was supposed to be the strength? It was. The new receivers were supposed to be playmakers? They were. Joey Harrington was supposed to be all that? He was. All that.
CHICAGO -- It was as messy as a bachelor party and as ugly as the hangover, but it counted, it's done, and like the groom-to-be crawling home at sunrise, the Lions wear a small smirk on their faces this morning. The streak is over. The curse is dead. The road is no longer lined with poison bricks. The NFL record they never wanted -- three straight years of road defeats -- is someone else's to break now.
Archie Bunker died. That's what people said. "Archie Bunker died." It didn't matter that the man's real name was Carroll O'Connor, that he was a trained actor, a veteran of Broadway and the European stage. To most Americans, he was, and always will be, the lovable bigot from Queens.Archie Bunker died. But to be honest, while O'Connor passed away Thursday from a heart attack at age 76, character-wise, Archie died some time ago. Not just his show. His concept.
If you live in Detroit, there are certain things you never want to hear on the first night of the hockey playoffs:1) Your car is in the last row on the Cobo roof.2) The guy next to you is hiding something slimy in his jacket.3) Steve Yzerman has an injury.Well. The good news is, your car is safe. The bad news is, Yzerman, the heart, soul and captain of the Red Wings, was on the ice for the first period Wednesday night and was gone by the second.In the broadcast booth, the announcers said, "Count the players. Someone's missing."
Forgive me a moment while I turn into my grandfather.In the old days, I loved baseball. My heart pounded the first time I saw a major league game. I diligently took pencil to scorecard and filled in every play, every ground out and fly ball. In those days, I knew all the players on my team -- and it wasn't hard, since they were pretty much the same players from last year.
Doug Zyskowski finally felt the last five years were all worthwhile when a 9-year-old boy threw a tantrum and had to be dragged out of his building screaming the whole way."I don't want to leave!" the kid bellowed as a frustrated mom pulled him out the door to the parking lot.Is this a new video arcade, you think? Maybe a movie?
BOBBY Ross walked into the locker room and asked the players to listen up. They didn't know it, but he already had resigned, already had told management he couldn't do the job anymore, that his body, spirit and tolerance were spent.Yet as the players looked up, Ross first took care of housekeeping. He reminded them of a banquet they had to attend Monday evening. He reminded them to lift weights, start thinking about the next game, Sunday against Atlanta.Only then, with the small details attended to, did he clear his throat.And told them he was quitting.
What if Terri could talk?What if, for five minutes, Terri Schiavo came out of the vegetative state she has lived in for 13 years, and said what she was thinking, not what others were thinking for her?Would she smile at her husband, Michael, and say, "Thank you for defending my wish to die. Let me go. It's what I want."Or would she scowl and say, "How could you? I'm your wife. You'd let me die? What if they find a cure?"
