NEW YORK -- Near the back of the men's locker room, on a single wooden bench, Aaron Krickstein sat by himself, watching a silent TV screen and counting down the minutes. Soon he would become the loneliest man in New York City, the man who would try to beat the legendary Jimmy Connors, a one-time tennis villain who has finally reached his 39th birthday and who suddenly everyone wants to take home and cuddle."When was the last time you played a 39-year-old?" someone asked. "My coach," said Krickstein, smiling.
ALBERTVILLE, France -- Let's put the Olympics on hold for today and talk about the Mike Tyson rape conviction, because even over here, on a snowcapped French mountain, some things are pretty obvious:
I want my money back. Really. I'm tired of sports stars complaining this is not enough and that is not enough, they want five years not three years, caviar not steak, Jaguar not Mercedes -- and then they break a toenail and spend two months on the disabled list.Andre Ware is unhappy. He wants more money. Lawrence Taylor is unhappy. He wants more money. Rickey Henderson is unhappy. He wants at least as much money as Jose Canseco, who will no doubt be unhappy if Henderson gets it. Now maybe these guys deserve the dollars. But what if they don't?
There are no basketballs here, no cheering fans, only the hard, cold smell of factory life. Instead of applause we have the whirring of air tools. Instead of mink coats we have drab cotton overalls. The light is by fluorescent bulb, the color is concrete gray. Wherever you walk, you hear the chug and clang of the assembly line.They are making trucks here. This is a local Ford assembly plant. Dennis Rodman always calls himself "a regular guy, like everyone else," so I figured I'd go to where regular guys work for a living and see how they felt about Dennis' behavior lately.
One by one they came up to Chris Webber, smiling, batting eyelashes, bearing gifts. They gave him candy.Photographs. Phone numbers. Lots of phone numbers."Call me," a young woman cooed."Call me," rasped another.He smiled at them all. He took their numbers but lost them quickly after they'd gone. He stepped into the limo and marveled at the crowd as the car sped away."They don't even know me," he said, shaking his head. "Why would I call them?"
When an unemployed black man was stopped by police Thursday night and beaten to death for no apparent reason, many of us pointed angrily towards the police department.Why, we wondered, were two of these officers -- with a history of brutality charges -- still out on the streets? Where was the preventative action a police department is supposed to take?For answers, we can look at Brian Yinger.Yinger is a cop in Dearborn. Has been for 15 years. This week he was suspended, without pay, and ordered to undergo psychiatric tests.
She can put the chair away now. The one she jams under the bedroom doorknob whenever her husband is away. She feels safer when that chair is wedged in. She reads. She sews. She watches TV. Now and then she'll run the vacuum, because the whirring noise gives a buffer against the loneliness. And of course she has the radio. She can turn on the radio and have her husband nearby, or as near as a man can be when his life is broadcasting baseball.
MINNEAPOLIS -- Drop dead. I hope you die. You are trash. You are scum. I get letters like this all the time. So do most journalists I know. And most politicians, civil rights leaders, talk-show hosts, and movie stars. Just about anyone in the public eye can scoop through the mailbag and come up with a few juicy gems about how "your type of people" should take the next boat to Russia, Africa or hell -- depending on who was offended.
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.
