CHICAGO -- As someone once said, if you're going to lose a game by forgetting your style, getting slammed on the boards, misplacing your scoring touch, half-hearting your defense, and generally lacking the speed, strength and desire that brought you your success, you might as well do it when you're up three games to none.
DENVER -- The dream died in the mountains, a mile above sea level, where the air is thin and it is difficult to breathe. And as cold reality sank in -- one goal behind, two goals behind, three goals behind -- you could feel the Red Wings players gasping, suffocating, all the good things they had done this season crashing to earth like a boulder during an avalanche. Or should we say, Avalanche?Snowed under.
ATLANTA -- This won't make me any friends in New York, but I'll say it anyhow. I don't like seeing Yankees outfielder Darryl Strawberry in this World Series. It rubs me the wrong way.
First of all, Wayne Fontes is still the coach of the Lions. I don't fire him. You don't fire him. All the pundits on radio and TV don't fire him. That task is for someone named Ford, and if you go by the history of that name and this team, well, there's no telling what might happen.But just as we do our Christmas shopping early for a holiday that is still weeks off, perhaps the Fords already are thinking about a new man for the job, even though the current coach has three games left to endure, er, play.
In March of 1995, a limousine carrying Ted Koppel, the host of ABC-TV's "Nightline," pulled up to the snow-covered curb outside Morrie's house in West Newton, Massachusetts.Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair. He had begun to cough while eating, and chewing was a chore. His legs were dead; he would never walk again.
When Connie Chung was given one of the most powerful jobs in America, she didn't ask questions. She took it. She didn't care that she was made coanchor of the CBS Evening News mostly because CBS wanted to beat NBC to the punch of hiring a woman. She never said, "That's the wrong reason to hire me."Ratings were at stake. She took advantage.
GRANDPA'S HOUSE, THE YEAR 2035 -- The old man put his grandson on his knee and opened a dusty scrapbook."Who's that, Grandpa?" the child asked."That's the greatest quarterback I ever saw," the old man said. "His name was John Elway.""Where's his rocket booster?"
CHICAGO -- Barry Sanders, maybe the best running back in the history of the game, was stuck in the corner with camera lights blinding his eyes. He looked down. He mumbled his answers. For every time he mentioned "pride," he mentioned "disappointment." For every time he said "honor," he said "frustration." He sniffed between questions and pulled on his neck, as if coaxing the words up through his throat. He never smiled.
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.
