"So, Mitch," I am asked as the NFL season is about to begin. "How do you know you're a Lions fan?"That's easy.You know you're a Lions fan if you expect 5-11, but still kid yourself about 11-5.You know you're a Lions fan if you believe Joey Harrington is "The One" -- but you once said that about Andre Ware.You know you're a Lions fan if you hate Barry Sanders for quitting the team, but deep down, you don't really blame him.
If you think this means the end of rape, forget it.If you think this means the end of gold digging, forget that, too.If you think the sudden vaporizing of the Kobe Bryant trial means young women will no longer wander starry-eyed into hotel rooms of athletes they just met, wake up.And if you think NBA stars will be more careful about the women they cheat with on the road, well, there's some swampland in New Jersey we'd like to sell you.
By now the U.S. Olympic men's basketball players have put away their bronze medals (deep inside the sock drawer) and probably are wondering why they bothered to go in the first place."One of them told me he felt let down because people back home were rooting against them," Swin Cash, a member of U.S. women's gold-medal team and the Shock, told me.Well, that's a shame. No athlete should sense his country rooting against him. As defenders of this Dream Team have said: "Don't get mad at these guys. They're the ones who gave up their summers."
I have never won an Olympic gold medal, so it is not for me to tell someone what he should do with his. But certain "experts" last week didn't let that stop them. They strongly suggested Paul Hamm, the U.S. Olympic gymnast, should take his gold medal, press it into the chest of his South Korean competitor, and say, "Here, this is yours. You keep it."
How do you eulogize a rival? Joe Falls, a man who did the same job as me for the newspaper that competes with mine, died last week. He lost a long battle with diabetes. He was 76. He couldn't type anymore. He couldn't walk steps. Last year, with a simple, elegant column, he told his many fans good-bye after six decades in the business."It's been a joy," he wrote, "thank you for being there with me."
What is a chair? What is its intent? To provide rest after a hard day? To give order to the dinner table? To pull up in front of the TV set? All of the above? Yet a chair is never more than an in-between stop. In time you rise and get on with your life.Unless it is a wheelchair.Unless you cannot rise.Unless, your life, like Mo Gerhardt's, is shadowed by a congenital disease like Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, an often fatal affliction that robs you of the protein you need to build muscle. In cases like his, a chair looms the way the horizon looms for a setting sun.
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.
