Detroit Free Press

ATLANTA -- You want focus? This is focus. It's freezing cold, and the Tennessee Titans are huddled in the hotel's last warm hallway before venturing outside into the media tent. Most are griping about having to do these interviews in the first place, let alone with their hands stuffed in their pockets and their heads covered in stocking caps.Except one.

Nobody died. No one got sick. But this is a sad story just the same.It is about a phone booth. In the Mojave Desert. "The loneliest phone booth in the world," they called it. It sat by itself, miles from anywhere, in a dusty stretch amidst scrub brush and dirt. Its windows were shot out. Its door was long gone. Its hinges showed decay from the harsh desert climate.But it worked.The phone booth, not far from Death Valley, originally was installed many years ago so that miners could have contact with the outside world in case of emergency.

'Playwriting is an irrational act. It is the Las Vegas of art forms. The odds are terrible. And the most difficult part is . . . I love it."I love writing plays, too, and the reason why is the man who said those things, Herb Gardner, one the best playwrights this country has ever had. He wrote his first in 1962, when he was in his 20s -- "A Thousand Clowns" it was called, and it remains a classic.

The room is quiet. The lights are off."Anybody out there?" the puck says."I don't hear anything," says the stick.The lockers stand empty, side by side, collecting dust. The names are still there. "Yzerman" next to "Shanahan" next to "Joseph." The names are still there, but the players are not."Probably a traffic jam," the puck says."Yeah," says the stick. "You know construction this time of year."

Someone explain this to me. Enron, the seventh-biggest company in the nation, goes belly-up. It inflates its numbers, lies to its employees, avoids taxes, sets up dubious subsidiaries on tropical islands, then collapses under the weight of its own deceptions, leaving workers and stockholders holding an empty bag -- but only after Enron's top dogs have bailed out.Every day, there are new revelations of Enron lies and exceptions. Every day there is new talk of cheating, hiding and shredding any document that could be damning.

Ben Wallace wore his hair in the Afro, and when a man's hair rises, can the man do any less? So Wallace stood up Thursday night, nearly taking the game over, and Rasheed Wallace, bad foot and all, stood up, too, and Rip Hamilton stood up and Chauncey Billups stood up. They all stood up and stared into the snarling dragon of this Game 7, then they dropped baskets down its throat until it choked.

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."