LOS ANGELES -- The hair! The hair! They are buzzing about his hair, his follicles, his "do", his mop, big brown crown. Does it move? Does it muss in a hurricane? Could he use it as a helmet? Could he melt it with anti-freeze? Does he comb it, or slide underneath it? Can he run his fingers through it, or does he need power tools? The hair! The hair! Jimmy Johnson hears all this talk about his hair, why he wears it in that Glen Campbell, early-1970's, part and dip and swirl back, half-country, half-lounge lizard, spray-until it turns-to- cement style. Such hair!
The van stops and the back door opens. Inside is a feast of garbage. Perfectly good food: coffee, bananas, crackers, frozen pizza, sugar, bread -- food someone was about to throw away."Lemme help you," says a homeless man in a ski cap and tattered shoes. He peers inside the van, like a child sneaking a peek at Christmas presents."Me, too," says an older fellow, unshaven, in a cheap grey sweater. "Right here for ya," says another."Go ahead, we're ready."
* GREEN BAY 21, LIONS 9: The Pack is back; the Lions are backward.* CLEVELAND 28, CINCINNATI 6: The battle for Ohio. Winner gets to take Marge Schott to her favorite ethnic restaurant.
There are days when the blood runs down their noses and the mud gets in their helmets and their arms and legs scream: "Rest! We need rest!" -- just as another 300-pounder comes charging in.On days such as this, there can't be anything worse than being an offensive lineman. Unless, maybe, you are Shawn Bouwens.
He almost always has a cigarette in his mouth, if not that, a sucking candy, and he walks around the room blowing smoke or making tongue-clucking sounds and listening, always listening, because that is what a good teacher does. Listens. Now and then, he'll interrupt with a correction, or write something down, maybe show you how to play it. He makes it seem simple, and when you get frustrated, he'll blow a cloud of smoke, grin and say, "Relax. It takes two or three weeks to become a jazz musician."
I can hear it now: "The ship is sinking! First Ernie, then Bill Lajoie! Look out, Tigers! The water is rising! It's all Bo's fault! Man the lifeboats!"Come on.This town has had enough flash floods over baseball lately, don't you think? The best thing we can do with this Lajoie story is to learn a lesson from the Harwell story, and not turn it into anything more than what it is: and right now, it is a man who has decided to call it quits after squeezing every drop of himself into baseball.That's all.
Maybe he wasn't "a giant in the industry" but he was big, physically big, a furry guy with a mop of hair, thick beard, cotton shirts, old shoes. When he waddled down the hall you had no choice but to say hello, and to say hello to Dorian Paster was to start a conversation that could go for hours. "He never stops talking!" some people moaned.What did they expect? He was a disc jockey.I would call him sometimes late at night at WLLZ, to leave a message for the morning shift producer."Where are you?" he would ask."Houston," I'd say.
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.
