As a kid, the only athlete I knew personally was a gawky, 6- foot-11 basketball player named Craig Raymond. He played for the Philadelphia 76ers, and my mother, who decorated houses, found him as a client. I was thrilled. Never mind that he was the last man on the Philadelphia bench, or that he played only when the team was winning by 25 points or losing by 30. He was a pro. One time he came to our house, and I asked him, meekly, if he would dunk a basketball on my small backyard hoop. I remember to this day how the rim shook with his strength -- my rim, he had dunked it!
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Bobby McAllister took the final snap, dropped to one knee, and when the gun sounded, he rose with a smile. You couldn't have painted a more fitting scene: Off your knees, Michigan State. This morning, you are on top."What were you thinking as the game came to a finish?" someone asked McAllister, after the Spartans upset Ohio State, 13-7, Saturday to take sole possession of first place in the Big Ten.
BOSTON -- We interrupt these NBA championships to take a walk with the Dog. Mad Dog. Bill Madlock. The baseball player. To be honest, I am not sure how you address a man who, among other things, has pushed a glove in an umpire's face, been tossed out of every National League ballpark at least once, and has children nicknamed the Mad Puppies. I mean, do you just say hello here, or do you need a bone?
ST. LOUIS -- The feeling, up to a point, was like trying to run with your shoelaces tied together. Step. Flop. Here were the St. Louis Cardinals, the quick, the fleet, the fastest team in baseball, tripping all over themselves in their World Series tango with the Minnesota Twins. Step. Flop. And nobody felt more confined than Vince Coleman. Born to run? Was there ever a better description for this guy -- the Cardinals' left fielder, three straight years with 100 or more bases stolen? And yet he'd been going nowhere all Series, and his team had followed. One measly stolen base.
Although they are as close as players and coaches can be, you won't see Jacques Demers, Bernie Federko and Brian Sutter socializing during this playoff series, won't see them at restaurants, or chatting before the bus pulls up to the hotel.
BOSTON -- Minutes after the game was over, a mob of reporters was already around his locker. Cameras were steadied. Microphones were tested."When's he coming?" the voices cried."He's not coming," came the answer, "there's not enough room in here. He's doing his interviews out in the stands."
I did not go to the Red Wings game Tuesday night because they were in first place. I went because . . . I love hockey. Yeah. That's it."How about that Greg Stefan?" I said to a familiar-looking face in the press box elevator. "He's looking awful sharp, don't you think?""Who are you?" came the answer.What a kidder. Yes, the Wings are something, aren't they? Bounding back from that embarrassment of a season last year, and now, under coach Jacques Demers, playing a different kind of hockey, the kind with effort, the kind with heart.
"Kids around me 20 and 21 years old, were acting like infants. . . . I said to myself that I had come all the way to California at the age of 18 to find out I was a very old person." Lew Alcindor in 1969, on his UCLA years
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.
