Friday night, at a high school football playoff game, it was damp and cold, and the players bounced on their toes to keep warm. Near the Rochester Adams bench, amidst all these bigger teenagers, stood Jordan Kidder, barely five feet tall, with glasses and braces, a school cap, a jersey, a varsity jacket and a job to do."Watch this for me, Jordan, OK?" a player said, running over."OK," he said."Some water, Jordan," another said."Here," he said, handing over a bottle."How's it going, Jordan?" another said, slapping his hand.
Last year, it was nothing more than a dusty storage area. Old pipes. Dirty walls. Dim lighting. Boxes piled high. It was the southeastern corner of a homeless shelter building operated by the Michigan Veterans Foundation. Through these doors come 160 veterans a day, men who have served this country, worn the uniform, in some cases taken bullets or shrapnel, and who are now, for whatever reason, homeless. "We could really use a kitchen," the executive director, Tobi Geibig, told me back then."Where would you put it?" I asked.
EAST LANSING -The pass was a cannon shot, a third-down wing and a prayer, it traveled at least 40 yards in the air, went high into the lights and came low out of the glare, it spiraled to a backpedaling Mario Manningham in the end zone who leapt up to meet it, hands held high. He caught the ball and, as the defender fell in front of him, gravity took Manningham down until he landed smack on the chests of every Michigan State fan around the country who thought, finally, this was the one they would win.
I had been looking for just the right column to pen before Election Day. I think I may have found it.It's the story of Marilyn Mock.You wouldn't know her. She's not running for president. She is 50 years old and has a rock yard business in Texas, which she runs with her three kids. Last weekend, she went to a foreclosure auction with her son to see him bid on a house.While he was signing the papers, she wandered back to the auction area and sat down on the floor next to a woman named Tracy Orr. Being friendly, Mock asked if Orr was bidding on a house.
He wears long pants, his socks are dark, his shoes have heels and he's not even allowed on the court. He doesn't shoot. He doesn't dribble. He doesn't rebound, post-up or block a single shot. He doesn't even have a number. Yet Flip Saunders - of everyone in the Pistons' organization - is the one on the hot seat? Well, Sports Illustrated thinks so. ESPN thinks so. Stephen A. Smith, the NBA analyst, said Wednesday that if the Pistons didn't make the NBA Finals this season, Saunders was gone, no doubt about it.
Ten years ago, I sat with a literary agent and wondered whether a little book called "Tuesdays With Morrie" was going to hurt my sportswriting career."What do you mean hurt'?" he said."Well," I said, "it's about a dying professor and the meaning of life. What if I go into locker rooms now and athletes start making fun of me, calling me soft?"He thought for a second then waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry," he said, "nobody's gonna read it."Ten years ago. I was a sportswriter then. I am a sportswriter now. But everything else has changed.
When did adults start dressing for Halloween? Last thing I knew, Halloween was for kids and it was mostly about candy. Check that. It was all about candy. I honestly didn't care if I went as a pirate, Scooby-Doo or a bedsheet, as long as my bag was filled with Milky Ways.As for my parents? Their job was not to dress up. Their job was to go through our candy like airport security and remove all apples, marshmallows, anything that might have a razor blade in it or anything that might have been cooked by this weird woman up the street who never came out of her house.
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.
