Detroit Free Press

BOSTON -- It was hell. As usual.

NEW YORK -- Most of the time, I have no affection for this city. It is, as locations go, a good place to get shot. Or run over. Or splashed by muddy water. Shoved through a subway door. Made dizzy by a cab ride. Poked in the ribs by a homeless person. Conned by some fast-talking dude moving a $20 bill under an eggshell.

He used to practice on the metal flap doors that dotted the sidewalks of Harlem. Tappety-tap-tap-tappety-tip. When it got too cold, he danced in the hallways of nearby apartment buildings. Tappety-tip-tip-tappety-tap. One day, when he was 14, a fellow "hoofer" knocked on his door, said they needed somebody up at the Apollo, quick, let's go. A few breathless minutes later, he was auditioning in the basement of the most famous theater in his universe, just him and his dream and the silver plates on his shoes. Tappety- tappety-tappety-tip!

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?"

IDITAROD DIARY, Chapter 6: In which we come to an end.

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.