The hour was late, the game had long since ended, and the last fans were filing out of the Silverdome. Suddenly, Isiah Thomas, still in uniform, emerged from the Detroit locker room, walked down the tunnel -- "That's Isiah! Hey, ISIAH!" -- and entered the room where the Boston Celtics were packing up. He had come to shake hands with the vanquished."Hey . . . " he said, offering a palm to Dennis Johnson."Hey . . . " said Johnson."Hey . . . " he said to Danny Ainge."Nice going . . . " said Ainge.
NEW YORK -- It was all behind her now, the last match, the last press conference, the last walk through the fans as they sang her name and reached to touch her. Chris Evert was alone with a friend in the women's locker room, dressing for the last time after 19 glorious summers of U.S. Open tennis."I have an idea," she suddenly said to Ana Leaird, a high school classmate who now serves as PR director for womens' tennis. "Tell Andy I fainted.""No! Really?""Yeah. Tell him I fainted."
EAST LANSING -- In the end, nothing could hold them back, not history, not the critics, certainly not the Indiana defenders. There was an end zone to reach and California somewhere beyond it, and so the Spartans players charged, dove, banged, twisted, scored, scored, and scored again, until there was nothing left, no way they could lose, and with the clock down to its final seconds the crowd stormed the field in one glorious wave of celebration:Go Green. Go White.Go West.Michigan State is in the Rose Bowl.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- The one question that worried everybody, that made Bill Frieder pace the court and made the Michigan alumni hold their breath and made the basketball media cluck their tongues, was whether or not these guys from Boise State could play basketball.Now, that shouldn't be a mystery in something as orange and round as the NCAA tournament. But that's what the first round is all about. Boise State? Quick. Tell us all you know about the place. Thank you.
We are talking about embarrassment. We are talking about nerves. We are talking about the moment of truth in pro football training camp.We are talking about rookies singing."Dinnertime, lunchtime, whenever we feel like making them do it," says William Gay, the Lions' defensive captain, who need only bang his glass with a spoon -- like an uncle at an Italian wedding -- to make a rookie stand up, open wide and say, "Laa!""Are they any good?" he is asked."Some are good, some are bad," he says, rubbing his chin slowly. "And some . . . are real bad."
ROME -- She was all alone coming down the stretch. That's because everyone else in the race had finished. Some were already back at the hotel, eating dinner.Ha! No. Only kidding there. But she was last, all right. By a lot. These were the World Track and Field Championships. This was an opening heat of the 1,500 meters -- four times around the track -- and she was with the leaders at the end of the third lap. Their third lap. She was still on her second."I heard them coming," says Georgiana Tomisato, "and then, they lapped me. They were going so fast!"
ATLANTA -- One of their guards is called Peanut Butter. The other is called Jelly. The forward, who comes from Venezuela, is called Bread. There's gotta be a Knife in here somewhere."We are explosive," says one."We are a dynasty," says the other.Well. It's nice to see a school with its own publicity department.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- A great thinker once said: "To know a man, you must walk a mile in his shoes." Or, barring that, you must at least learn his bathroom habits.Well. That's the way it worked for Larry Smith:"It was back at Miami of Ohio, 1967. Bo Schembechler was head coach and we were his assistants. We were all living in Bo's house -- he was a bachelor then -- and there was only one bathroom. Of course, since he was head coach, he got priority in using it.
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.
