You couldn't miss Bob. To begin with, he was too tall. I may be average height, but when we stood together, I felt Bob bent over me like a huge tree looking down at an acorn it had dropped.Or maybe I was intimidated. Bob McGruder could do that to you -- not because he spoke loudly, because he didn't. And not because he was quick to anger, because he wasn't. Not because he glared, stared, looked over you, through you, or dismissed you altogether as some bosses do.
Someone had to go, or no one was gonna come. That's baseball in the Motor City in 2002. Fans don't care. The seats are mostly empty. The saddest part of Phil Garner and Randy Smith's getting the boot Monday wasn't that two nice guys couldn't get the job done.The saddest part was that it took their firing to let most Detroiters know the season had started."Whenever you start off 0-6 it is not pleasant," said Dave Dombrowski, the team president, in announcing the firing of his manager and general manager. "I think we're a better club than we've performed."
Isn't it a shame," someone says, "that we only see each other on such sad occasions?"It is the most common sentence at a funeral. You hear it from relatives, ex-neighbors, friends who moved out of state.Only death, it seems, can make us slow down long enough to reunite. We hug. We kiss. We share a collective grief, until someone remembers a story that makes someone else smile. And in the end, we are reminded not only of how much we love the dearly departed but also how much we love the ones who are still around.
Last week, as I sat before my TV watching Tonya Harding pummel Paula Jones, I was struck with a sudden thought.More.I want Darva Conger next. Linda Tripp after that. Jenny McCarthy should be in the wings, alongside Gennifer Flowers, (Downtown) Julie Brown, Lorena Bobbitt and that witchy woman from "Survivor."
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.
