TO: T. AmakerRE: New JobDear Coach Amaker:First off, is it Tom or Tommy? You're getting a new start, you might as well pick your moniker. Personally, I would lose the Tommy thing, since it makes you sound like a kid, and what you've taken on is definitely a man's assignment.
Oh, please. No more. The places on Earth where you can actually find peace and quiet are already dwindling down to inches. Now this? Cell phone makers are on the verge of technology that would allow airline passengers to talk all flight long?Where's the oven? I want to stick my head in it.See whether this sounds familiar. You get on a plane. You settle into your seat. You open a travel magazine. You begin to drift off, thinking of the places you are about to visit, the people you are about to see, and . . .
As kids, when we got in trouble, we blamed a sibling. As adults, we blame a disease.A guy gets caught with hookers? He's a sex addict. A guy gets caught shoplifting? He's a kleptomaniac.A college coach gets caught drinking beers with coeds? He's an alcoholic.Naturally.
MINNEAPOLIS -- When the gun sounded, Charlie Batch fell to his knees, dropped his head to the turf and tried to disappear. Twenty yards away, Germane Crowell was also on his knees, staring at the sideline that he forgot about a few seconds earlier. He, too, looked like he wanted angels to sweep him up to someplace finer, someplace where the Lions don't find a way to shoot themselves in the cleats week after week.Make you a deal, Germane. Here's 10 bucks. Let us hitch along with you.Vikings 31, Lions 26. It would be laughable, if it weren't so sad.
FOR A FEW DAYS there, George Irvine was my favorite guy in sports.He was a head coach who didn't want to be head coach. A guy in the corner office who dreamt of returning to the office pool.The Pistons asked him to take the reins after Alvin Gentry was fired in March. Most assistant coaches would be wiping the drool from their ties. Not George. His response was more like that of a first-grader being asked to eat broccoli. "Aw, do I have to?"
We're all adults here, right? So you don't mind if I bring up the f-word?You know. Filming.Last week, new footage was circulating showing sexual exploits of blond socialite Paris Hilton, whose job I can't quite discern, other than to be on television and, every few months, lose a videotape.
The gloves were tossed, the confetti came down, and into the happy heap they flew, the old guys and the new guys and the 41-year-olds and the 21-year-olds and the guys who just got a second or third championship and the guys who fnally got their first. They leaped over the top. They barreled in from the side. Yzerman on top of Datsyyuk on top of Lidstrom on top of Hasek. Fedorov on top of Hull on top of Devereaux on top of Larionov. Old on new. Veteran on rookie.
If I ever turn to a life of crime, I know just the judge I want.His name is Alvin Hellerstein, a bald, jowly, 68-year-old federal district court judge in New York City. A few months ago, he sentenced a man named Edward Bello to 10 months.Not 10 months in jail -- 10 months at home, with no TV.Hey. My parents gave me that, and I was only a minor!Judge Hellerstein figured that without TV, Bello, who had a record of petty crime convictions and was now pleading guilty to conspiracy to use stolen credit cards, would have time to think about the wrong he had done.
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.
