The wrestlers gather on the purple and white mats and make a semicircle around their coach, who is speaking in a whisper. A few of the boys are big and muscular. Others are younger, shorter, and their voices are still high. They are teen-aged, but they are just children, really. And children should never have to witness a murder, not one of their own. But it happened inside Romulus High School, and now they must learn to live with the nightmares. And it is not easy.
Heal the sick, raise the dead,Make the little girls go out of their head -- From the song "Seventh Son"Well, Isiah Thomas can't do all that. Can he? Raise the dead? No. Not that I know of, anyhow. True, he is a seventh son. And true, he can do almost everything else. Especially if it involves a basketball.
Tiny flakes of dead skin fell into David Braxton's left eye. "Blink," said the doctor.Braxton blinked.The flesh around his brow was swollen, and stitches dotted his eyelid likeblack ants. The doctor guessed there were 14 sewn into the outer lid, more inside."OK, here we go," he said, and steadying the scissors, he began, one at a time, to snip the threads of the wound.Braxton is a boxer.He lost.
Already some people are licking their chops at the thought of Petr Klima coming to Detroit. Klima is a hell of a hockey player -- maybe the best in Europe. Fast. Strong. Gifted.He is also 20 years old, alone, and in the middle of defecting from his country, Czechoslovakia.Early last week, he disappeared from a hotel in West Germany, where his Czech team was training. The whispers began. He's doing it.
The top rebounder in the NBA cannot dunk a basketball two- handed. His leap is a laugh. In a team footrace, he might finish behind the trainer.The top rebounder in the NBA never struggled as a child. Never walked the streets. At age 17, he had a new car, a gift from Dad. His only summer job -- in a tire warehouse -- lasted a week."Manual labor," he groaned. "I hate that."
SAN FRANCISCO -- The last time I wrote a column from this seat, there was fire in my hands. An earthquake had struck, Candlestick Park was dark, most of the frightened crowd had already rushed the exits. Alone, with no lights and one working telephone, I took a cardboard lunch box, lit it with a match, and, holding its flame above me so I could see, I tapped out the keys to send a story to my newspaper.
The floor was thumping, the house was dancing, screaming, dying, waiting for a sign, an assurance, and here came Isiah Thomas, grabbing a pass and turning his back and bouncing it to Dennis Rodman on the baseline. And Rodman rose like destiny and slammed the thing through and hung on the rim with same sweat-soaked determination the Pistons have found to hang on to this crazy series. That was the sign. The Silverdome went insane.
NEW YORK -- She is the trusty sidekick, the co-star, the comic book character destined to be paired with someone bigger. Pam Shriver has won every Grand Slam tournament in tennis alongside Martina Navratilova. But she has not won any alone.She tries. She advances. Then sooner or later, her doubles partner, the best woman tennis player on the planet, comes around to beat her. Sooner or later, Navratilova gets the trophy, and Shriver gets a handshake. This is the way it seems to go. Partners. Rivals. Sooner or later.
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.
