The mark of a gentleman is that he behaves like one even when he doesn't feel like it, and Lloyd Carr didn't feel like it as he ran off at halftime of the Michigan-Ohio State game. For a moment, in ungentlemanly fashion, he let mood dictate behavior. An ABC reporter fired a question about why Michigan had just run out the clock when it had three time-outs left.Carr glared at him."Why would you ask a dumb question like that?" he said.When the reporter tried again, Carr ignored him and walked away, shaking his head as if the guy were an idiot.
"It is not the critic who counts. . . . The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly . . . and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." -- Teddy Roosevelt
Maybe they're trying to be nice.Maybe they need a bigger vocabulary.But have you noticed how the broadcasters for these NCAA tournament games seem hesitant to call things as they really are -- especially if they are the slightest bit ...negative?Example: A player dribbles the ball off his foot, then bounces it off his head, then runs the wrong way and shoots at the opposite basket.Announcer: "He's struggling today."Example: Team A falls behind by 30 points. Team A hasn't made a basket since last week. There are four minutes left.
They called it "getting the wood." It was a paddle or a stick several inches thick, and the coach gave it to you smack across the butt, sometimes alone in his office, sometimes in front of the whole team. The number of whacks depended on what you did, and how badly you did it.Joel (Tony) Blankenship got the wood in his day. He attended Detroit's Murray-Wright High School in the late '80s. He took his whacks, like most of his teammates. It never bothered him or scarred him emotionally. Parents didn't complain.
My sister married a wonderful guy. His father was a Hungarian Jew. During World War II, he and his eight brothers and sisters were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. Some were killed in gas chambers. Others were put on a boat that was deliberately sunk.By the war's end, my brother-in-law's father was the only one left. For years, his wife would find bread stuffed under his pillow, a habit from Nazi starvation.Every now and then some nut case says the Holocaust was faked. Usually, you dismiss him as pathetic.
It's back-to-school time, friends, and that can mean only one thing: lawsuits.This one comes from the Houston area, where a mother felt compelled to explore legal action after enrolling her child in kindergarten only to find that -- gasp! -- the school had a dress code.One of those dress code limitations -- along with no ripped clothing, no halter tops and no gang-related items -- was no earrings for boys.For girls, earrings were OK.Therein lies the problem.
For almost as long as there has been war, there have been letters home. The image is usually of a weary soldier, huddled over a light, scribbling words to his family or fiancee, trying to be brave.
If you look carefully during these Pistons playoff games, you will observe a small but remarkable ritual.After every buzzer, as the Pistons head back to the floor, reserve Danny Manning, once the greatest college basketball talent in the nation, taps fists with each man to urge them on."It's the only way I feel part of the game," he says. "It's like a little bit of electricity passes through them to me."
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.
