Late in the game, with the score tied, the crowd on its feet, Chuck Daly leaned toward his captain and snapped an ammonia capsule under his nose. Isiah Thomas jerked his head as if someone had slapped him right across the cheek. The message was clear: Wake up.Message received.
MINNEAPOLIS -- Sports writers get the best seats. That's what people say. But apparently, they are not good enough. Based on what I've heard at recent press conferences for Michigan's Fab Five freshmen -- including the ones for today's Final Four showdown against Cincinnati -- we media would prefer a chair smack in the middle of the court.So we could hear the trash.Trash talk, that is. Never in my years of covering college basketball have I heard more questions about this subject."Chris, what do you plan to say out there?"
* Phoenix 12, Lions 10: Detroit is the only team where quarterbacks fight over who gets to be No. 3, because that means you get to start next.* NY Jets 21, Washington 10: You have to hand it to the Redskins. In the years they don't go to the Super Bowl, they really stink.
Let's face it. Even though men and women live together, work together and sleep together, they are not always on the same page. MAN (watching Three Stooges): Ho! Haha! WOMAN: I'm leaving you. MAN: What's that, hon--ahaaahahaheee!Nowhere is this difference more apparent than in the world of sports, where men will tell you, on the scale of Truly Important Things In Life, there is 1) the 1975 World Series, 2) who was better in his prime, Magic or Bird? 3) the polio vaccine.Whereas women have it all backwards.
OAKLAND -- As I write this from the press box at the World Series, I don't have much time to elaborate. You never know when Jose Canseco may decide to go after another fly ball.And now, this week's picks . . .
All right, America. The time has come. Here, on the morning of the new NBA season, the basketball question you've been wanting to ask for weeks:How come Michael Jordan retired and Bill Laimbeer didn't?"Ha!" Laimbeer says, sneering. "That's easy! I don't have $300 million like he does."Cute. But not the answer. True, Jordan, 30, may be resting his still-lean body while Laimbeer, 36, gets up each morning with a different joint creaking in his freckled white frame.
NEWS ITEM: MONDAY MARKS THE 501st ANNIVERSARY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS ' ARRIVAL IN AMERICA. WHILE SCIENTISTS STILL DEBATE WHETHER COLUMBUS WAS THE FIRST TO ARRIVE ON THESE SHORES, THEY ALL AGREE THAT THE LAND HE FOUND 501 YEARS AGO BEARS LITTLE RESEMBLANCE TO WHAT HE'D SEE WERE HE TO WASH BACK ASHORE TODAY . . .
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.
