Detroit Free Press

The Last True Sports Fan was ready to die. He stood on the bridge, peering down into the icy waters. His hood was up, his coat was long and tattered. I recognized him by the tattered baseball glove and the broken transistor radio still hooked to his ear."Stop!" I yelled, running from my car. "Don't jump!""Why not?" he whispered.His face was old and sad. There were faded trading cards in his pockets and a cardboard sign that read "Go Dodgers!" under his arm. The word "Brooklyn" had been crossed out. "Have you got any money?" I asked.

"He's human, but not by much." Todd Woodbridge, on Pete SamprasQuick, somebody, get the man a rival. A foil. An enemy. A villain with a sword. Get him a Wilt Chamberlain for his Bill Russell, a Pharaoh to his Moses, a Lex Luthor to his Superman. Otherwise, Pete Sampras, the greatest tennis player we have ever seen, may skip over our horizon without anyone realizing what a remarkable talent he truly is.

Ienter the Red Wings locker room and come to the head coach's office. I tense my shoulders. I clench my fists. I am prepared for a lecture. I am prepared for an argument. It is the new hockey season, and I am ready for whatever flames come flying from the famous coach's mouth.I poke my head in the door. I close my eyes.I open my eyes.Nobody here."No Scotty?" I say."No Scotty," someone says.

A few years ago, in writing the book "Fab Five," I discovered that Steve Fisher had paid a friend of Juwan Howard's a tidy sum to coach at Fisher's summer camp. This stunned me. Hiring this friend -- who then brought young Juwan to Ann Arbor as a camper -- and even interviewing this friend for a coaching position at the University of Michigan, was, to me, unseemly, and perhaps an NCAA violation.So one night, at Fisher's house, I confronted him about this incident. He was uncomfortable, admitted what he'd done, but said, "It happens all the time in college basketball."

SAN DIEGO -- There's a scene in the "Godfather" films where a member of Michael Corleone's Mafia family is about to confess to a Senate subcommittee. Michael arrives at the hearing with an older Italian man by his side, who turns out to be the would-be snitch's long-lost brother from Sicily. The snitch looks up, sees the old man, and immediately takes his whole story back, says he lied and made it up.Later, when Michael explains to his wife what happened, he says this: "It was between the brothers."

IDON'T STARE. I haven't in a long time. When you work as a sportswriter, you get used to seeing famous, large, muscular human beings entering your field of view. Staring is the worst option. Nothing says "outsider" more than a gape.Nonetheless, I stared when I met Wilt Chamberlain. Ogled him like a kid seeing his first Santa Claus. I knew better. Knew it was inappropriate. I still did it. He was that big. Bigger than the normal rules of behavior.

For the last few summers, you might have seen someone who looked like Joe Dumars playing in local tennis tournaments. He never registered under his own name -- he often used "Joe Dee" as a pseudonym -- but it was he all right. Joe Dumars. Captain of the Pistons. NBA All-Star. He wasn't the best one out there. Sometimes he got beat in the first round.But there he was, swinging away.

Here was the worst thing that ever happened to me on Halloween. I was 7 years old. I wanted to be a mummy. Since mummy costumes were hard to find, my mother cut white rags into narrow strips. Then she wrapped me from head to toe. To keep the rags tight, she safety-pinned them together. As ideas go, it was long on love and short on practicality.