MERIBEL, France -- Sometimes your moment comes right on schedule, when you are young and ambitious, ready to snap it off with your teeth. And sometimes, you wait for that moment a long and winding time. The big leagues never call. Your life stops in truck driver towns. You begin to wonder, as you pass another birthday looking out the window of a bus, whether perhaps you are meant to be no more than this, some sort of lyric in a bad country song.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Last time I looked, the NCAA tournament was a sporting event, not a shower. But you listen to the Michigan Wolverines in these suddenly losing times, and they act as if the post-season will rinse away their troubles and leave them smelling like a champion. "Something about being in the tournament," Terry Mills said Sunday afternoon as he slipped on his coat. "You get there, everything moves up a notch."
I'm back. And I have good news. The Tigers will soon have a new owner: Mike Ilitch. He will buy the team. The deal will be in cash, the $80-85 million range. Ilitch is the man. No partners involved. The money is in escrow, and Tom Monaghan is mulling over the offer. Maybe he has even given his OK by now. If not, I know a lot of people willing to camp outside his window chanting, "SIGN IT, TOM! SIGN IT!"
This is why people don't go ape over the Lions. Right here. This lousy Sunday afternoon, this flat, average, too-little- too-late performance that left the Silverdome full of scowling faces and left the Lions with a .500 record.This is why fans around here watch football with fingers crossed and are cautious after wins, even after a great performance like Monday night against Dallas. While the rest of the country is tossing hosannas, around here they say, "Well, sure, if we can keep this up . . ." This is the reason. Sunday at the Silverdome.
DALLAS -- Here we are, standing by the window, craning our necks. A Korean couple in matching red sweatshirts, a middle-age woman with curly hair the color of breakfast cereal. A college student, with long blue shorts and a sweatshirt that reaches his thighs.We are all wearing headphones, attached to portable cassette recorders, listening to a tour guide voice say, "Look out the window now, and you will see Dealey Plaza. This is the where the presidential motorcade turned . . ."
Steve Yzerman wanted to break something. He paced the locker room, while his sweat-drenched teammates slumped on their chairs, reeling from the evening's defeat. Yzerman grabbed a glass and moved to a private area behind the showers. Now he was alone. He cocked the glass like a baseball pitcher -- "Throw it! Vent your anger!" the voices sang in his head -- and he was about to smash it into a thousand pieces, when, suddenly, another voice inside whispered, "What good will that do? It won't change things."And he froze.
OK, I admit it. I watched the entire Michael Jackson interview. And I liked it. I especially liked when the security alarm went off, and they had to rush to a commercial, and when they came back, Elizabeth Taylor was waddling out of the kitchen, looking guilty, with powdered sugar on her lips.But I did have one problem. With the questions. I felt Oprah Winfrey -- who is fine on such major issues as "Women Who Date Their Daughter's Gym Teachers" -- blew her chance with the world's No. 1 Other From Another Planet. She was way too soft.
It's that time of year again. My car knows the way. Every spring, one of the two big schools from Michigan advances to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament. And I am dispatched to cover the event."First we visit the campus," I say, "then we check out the student spirit --""I know, I know," the car says, wearily, "just tell me which school."
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.
