The coach sits in a janitor's closet. Two mops rest in yellow buckets. A faucet and drain are in the corner. There are no windows. No desk. A telephone, tethered to the wall with a loose gray cord, sits on the floor."My office," Ben Kelso says with a chuckle.And you should see the gym.The gym is a tile floor, dirty white linoleum, with tape marking lanes from the 1950s, before Wilt Chamberlain forced them to be widened. There is one basket hanging loosely on a tin backboard. The whole "gym" is the size of a large classroom.
Millions of years from now, when all that is left of mankind are some dusty ruins and a tape of the Red Wings' 2004 playoffs, aliens will assume that the closing ritual of every NHL game was to have an opposing player skate toward the goalie, and casually -- some might even say matter-of-factly -- ram an elbow into his head.Which pretty much sums up Ville Nieminen's last few seconds Thursday night.
For the next few minutes, your name is John, OK? And you are a coach. And you have been losing. And you are walking off the court. And this is what you hear:"Hey, John! You suck!""Hey, John! I saw your wife last night and I --- her!""Hey, John! You can ---- my ---, you ---!"How do you like it? What are you thinking? Are you thinking, "I make a lot of money, so I don't hear any of this"? Or are you starting to seethe?"Hey, John! Your mother is a --- sack of ---!""Hey, John! You look like a --- load of ---!"
Twenty years ago last week, IBM gave birth to the home computer.It's been downhill ever since.Oh, sure, our speed is up. Our efficiency is up. We can talk to people in Thailand with just a few keystrokes. And any patient who has ever needed medical information will swear by computers and the Internet.But in so many ways, computers in our homes have changed us forever. The human price we have paid over 20 years?Let me count the ways.
ATLANTA -- I still remember my first ad. I was 6 years old, and my sister and I were selling lemonade on the curb in front of our house. In order to attract people driving by -- not that there were many driving by -- we needed a sign. So we got a piece of cardboard, a red Magic Marker and wrote the words, "Lemonade, 5 cents."Never mind that our letters were too big and that by the time we reached the "d," we were out of space. All in all, it was a good ad. Simple. Effective. Inexpensive. Reached the people.
Last in a series on the challenges of state athletes and their families.Gary Miller is not a famous athlete. But like a lot of us, he can chart his life by the sports he played and the uniforms he wore.He grew up in Detroit, during World War II, and played American Legion baseball on a sandlot behind a bowling alley. He wore a gray-and-red pinstripe jersey. His position was catcher.
It was like asking Britney Spears to dance with the Bolshoi, like watching Nelly try to sing "La Boheme," like seeing if the cashier at the 7-Eleven can crunch numbers with Alan Greenspan. The Lions and Eagles may have shared the same record coming into Sunday afternoon's showdown at Ford Field, but that was where the similarity ended. Coach Steve Mariucci had predicted this game would be "a reality check" for his young team.Guess what?Reality stinks.
Last week, nearly 23 million Americans were glued to their TV sets for that most critical of news announcements: Who would win the karaoke contest?I am talking about "American Idol," a TV show that began as a half-hour of nastiness and somehow, by the end of the summer, was dubbed important enough to go two hours, lead the national newscasts and have its winner jetted overnight, first class, from the "Tonight Show" in L.A. to the "Today" show in New York.Wow. Who knew singing "It's Raining Men" could get you all that?
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.
