DENVER -- The ugly thud could be heard in the rafters. It was Brendan Shanahan's head smashing into glass. The bone cut the skin. The blood surged down his face. It ran in map-like lines, down his cheeks, chin and neck, trickling into a thin red river that dripped into the neckline of his jersey.The fans jeered. The players cursed. The refs blew the whistle and dived into the scrum.Game on.
SHE AWAKENS today as she always has, her lid open to the sky, her grass stretching for sunlight. But this time, there is something in the autumn air, something final, something sad. Like a fading belle of the ball, she seems to sense it, yet ignores it. This will be the last morning of her baseball life. She knows it. She inhales proudly and raises her blue and white chin to the morning light."Are you ready?" the city seems to ask."Ready," Tiger Stadium sighs.
He remembers his goals. Both of them. You ask Kris Draper if he can describe the two times he scored during the regular season and he gushes, "Oh, yes, of course. . . . You want me to describe my assists, too?"
LONDON -- Now I know the real reason our forefathers left this country: the rain.I'm not kidding. The way it's been coming down, I'd have been on a boat, too. "America? Yeah, yeah, fine. Just get me outta here."This has been the wettest week I can remember. At Wimbledon, they have a budding tradition: play a game, run inside, play a game, run inside. It's not strawberries and cream anymore, it's strawberries and skim milk.Excuse me, I have to help pull the tarp over the grass . . .
WIMBLEDON, England -- You see lots of ponytails in women's tennis. Some of them will fool you. Take Monday at Wimbledon, a wet, cloudy day that was the grass-court equivalent of a soggy biscuit.Across the net at Centre Court stood two female players, both in short white skirts and designer tennis tops -- and both in ponytails. But on Martina Hingis, who's 15, the hairdo was an extension of her teenage exuberance. On Steffi Graf, 27, the ponytail was all that remained of a carefree life.
Right off the bat, I confess a certain nostalgia for my school years. I had fun. I had friends. I had laughs. So perhaps my logic is blurry. I never realized that being a boy was such a distraction.I knew girls were a distraction. I discovered that in sixth grade, when the first girl I liked cast a quick glance in my direction, fluttered her eyelashes, and I felt a queasy, goose-bumping rush. At that moment, the teacher could have said "America was discovered by hyenas" and I would have written it down.
All week long, I've heard people dismiss this new book which claims Isiah Thomas had a gambling problem. Not because they know Isiah. Not because they were at the house where these high-stakes dice games supposedly took place.No. They dismiss it by saying, "I don't believe anything that uses unnamed sources."I heard the same thing a few weeks ago, when all those charges were comingout about the Michigan basketball program, charges that a booster had been funneling money to players for years. The critics' response?
A scout's journal . . . I don't follow the big names. The big names, they got plenty of guys following them. You think Ki-Jana Carter is gonna go unnoticed? Come on. We already know his shirt size and his favorite sports car. How much more can a lousy scout dig up?Me, I go for the small names. I beat the bushes. I check under rocks. I scour the country for every backwater college that still believes in the tackle and the forward pass.And I watch. And I make notes.Sometimes I have a drink and fall asleep.
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.
