The sticks played taps. Twenty-three sticks, lightly banging a wooden applause, as the banner began to rise to the rafters. This is how hockey players show respect and admiration. Tap the sticks. Curved wood against frozen ice. Louder now. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Alonzo Jackson plunked down $34 and bought two new shirts from an Eddie Bauer warehouse. One was green-and-white plaid, a lumberjack-looking thing, and he wore it the next day. After school, he and two teenage friends went back to the warehouse to shop again.It should have been just another breezy afternoon in a high schooler's life. Instead, it became something more. An off-duty cop working as a temporary security guard came up to Jackson and asked him about the crisp new shirt. The suggestion was that Jackson might have shoplifted it.
MEMO TO: Bobby RossFROM: William Clay Ford, OwnerEureka, Bobby! I think you've found it.Remember that team you talked about when I hired you? The kind of team you wanted to build here, the kind that hits and makes plays and beats teams it's not supposed to beat? Freeze it right there, Bobby, my boy. Freeze it on this victory against the Packers. You're onto something here. As my granddaddy said, "I think they'll buy this model."
Set 'em up. Pull the trigger. Knock 'em down. Start over.It sure feels like ducks in a penny arcade, this business of watching celebrities tumble. Marv Albert is the latest. Finished now. A good sportscaster, a pioneer in many ways, gone, history, see ya. And while I have no doubt, after a week's worth of kinky stories and gasping courtroom revelations, that Albert is, as they say in the sex biz, a freak, I'm still not exactly sure what he's guilty of.
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.