NEW YORK -- A bead of sweat was dripping down Jon's forehead, from his thick, sprayed hair toward his makeup- covered cheekbone. He tried to ignore it and hold his microphone straight, but man, it was hot, damn hot. The heat seemed to burst from the subway grates and the exhaust pipes of buses that rolled past Madison Square Garden, past rows of blue-uniformed riot police, hundreds of them, just waiting, leaning on their blue barricades, wiping sweat from their foreheads. It was June 14, almost summer, the latest day in hockey history, and the fever was all over 33rd Street.
BOSTON -- The last time I had breakfast with Bill Laimbeer he stole my grapes. Just reached across the table and grabbed them. Didn't even say thanks -- although he did close his mouth when he chewed. "These are good," he said, swallowing.Then he stuck me for the check.So it's risky business eating with Laimbeer. But I am doing it again, four years later. I am sitting here as he orders eggs Benedict, two bagels, cream cheese, large orange juice, coffee -- and I am doing it because I want to know one thing: I want to know whether he is ready to quit.
MINNEAPOLIS -- I would like to tell you how this dead skunk of a football game ended, but I must admit, I stopped watching somewhere between the Vikings' third touchdown and the Lions' fifth stupid penalty -- which, I believe, was about nine seconds into the game. Talk about quick death! I could have left the stadium knowing the outcome of this game and scalped my tickets to fans still coming in.
I am starting my own talk show. I figure everyone else has one.My show will be called "Get A Life."It will be not be like Phil or Oprah or Sally or Maury.It will never be confused with Geraldo."Get A Life" will have no guests."Get A Life" will have no male strippers. No lesbian truck drivers. No teacher-student love triangles, or circus performers who worship the devil.There will be no men who want to be women. Or women who want to be men. There will be no porn queens who drive school buses. No Mafia hit men. No nudist cops.
* Detroit 24, Minnesota 20: And I'm gonna keep on picking them until they lose.* Arizona 16, NY Giants 15: I'm not sure what kind of kid Buddy Ryan was, but I bet nobody wanted to sit next to him.
LAKELAND, Fla. -- So there I am standing in my cornfield when this voice comes out of nowhere."If you go there," it whispers, "they will play.""I beg your pardon?" I say."If you go there . . . they will play."I poke my hoe in the ground. I look at my dog. I check to see if I left the transistor radio on. I look at my dog again."If you go there . . ." the voice of baseball repeats, "they will play."I cock my head. "You gotta be kidding me."
LILLEHAMMER, Norway -- Things are getting crazy here in the emergency ward of the Media Hospital."Doctor! Doctor!" a nurse screams. "This man is critical!""What's the problem?" I ask."He was shoved by a reporter and swallowed his camera.""Mmmph . . . rnhmmph . . . smthtzyrt . . . yreez!""What's he saying?""He says whatever you do, save the film. He's got a shot of Tonya Harding sneezing."Before I can react, a man from "Inside Edition" offers me $1,000 for the tape of Tonya sneezing -- $1,500 if I wipe it off first.
Jerry Ball wanted somebody dead. He knew what had happened, he'd seen it a million times, only this time it had happened to him, this nasty football trick, one guy holds you up, the other chops you low, and now it was his knee that was throbbing and his turn to sit on the motorized cart that would drive him off the field and into his street clothes and damn it, he wanted no part of this. Better a crane should lift him through the roof than to ride off like some wounded soldier in front of the enemy with its cheap trick garbage.
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.
