You laughed. You scoffed. You rolled up the newspaper and stuffed it in the cat's litter box.And then the Lions beat Dallas -- just as I predicted one week ago -- and you felt pretty bad, didn't you? Really ashamed. You wanted to send me flowers, but you didn't know the address. It's OK. All is forgiven. Really. Don't worry about it. It's all right. No problem.321 W. Lafayette, Detroit, Mich.OK. Here we go again . . .
"Sometimes bad is bad"-- Huey LewisRicky Mahorn is alone, sitting in front of his locker, eating pistachio nuts."Do you have a minute?" he is asked."Gotta sauna, then leave," he mumbles."Um . . . is that a no?""You can take it as a no," he says, sneering, "or you can take it as a maybe."The visitor says he'll take it as a no, and leaves.
BOSTON -- There was fever. In the streets, in the shops, in the dirty hallways of Fenway Park and in the Red Sox clubhouse, where reporters darted like waterbugs, player to player, gathering news for the third game of the World Series. The Sox had won the first two in New York. Now they were home. The town was juiced. The town was electric. There was fever everywhere.Except here, in the lazy slouch of Wade Boggs, who stood alone by the bat rack, sifting through the lumber, looking for the handles marked "26."His number."What are you doing?" someone asked.
Isn't life funny, Mark Messner thought. He held a spoonful of malted shake up to his father's lips, which were black and peeling, burned from the chemotherapy. "Here you go, Dad," he said. His father rolled his eyes and made a "mmm" sound, like a child. Mark smiled, pulled the spoon out and dug it back into the cup.
They get up each morning, and there is no football. Eddie Murray puts on a suit and goes off to the bulk food business. Jim Arnold rolls out of bed and sees what's for breakfast. When the sun loses its heat they head for deserted fields -- Murray uses a high school in suburban Detroit, Arnold finds a middle school outside of Nashville -- and they kick. And kick. And kick. To absent teammates. To absent opponents. To the air."It's frustrating," says Murray."It's lousy," says Arnold. "I'm ready to rock and roll, and I'm just hanging around here."
SEOUL, South Korea -- He was the old man in the ring, an Army guy with a gold tooth, a soldier who knew how to size up unfriendly territory."I figured," Ray Mercer said, "that if two men were left standing at the end of the fight, I wouldn't have much of a chance."Right. He would be eaten alive. Mercer, a heavyweight boxer going for a gold medal, had the misfortune of fighting a Korean in his native land. And if you've ever heard the crowds here when a Korean is involved in a fight, well, suffice it to say, you'd be looking for a knockout, too. Or a trap door.
ANDUJAR: "You're horsebleep!"UMPIRE: "You're horsebleep too! And you're out of here!-- Alleged exchange between Joaquin Andujar and umpire during Andujar's ejection from Game 7. KANSAS CITY -- Well now, wasn't that a nifty little World Series? A little bit of hitting, a little bit of pitching, a little bit of those nasty words your Mommy always told you never to use when company was over.Kansas City wins. St. Louis loses. The good guys come out on top. The baddies get theirs in the end. At least that's what they're saying around this part of Missouri.
When John Salley was a kid in Brooklyn, he would go door to door on Saturday mornings with members of his church. "Good morning," he would say, when someone answered the bell. "My name isJohn Salley. I'm with Jehovah's Witness. We're have these two magazines, they're going for a small price of 10 cents apiece, and--""Get lost.""I gave already.""No!"Two hours. Every Saturday. When noon came, he was free. He dashed home to his family's apartment in the projects near Jamaica Bay. Off with the shoes. On with the sneakers.
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.
