Detroit Free Press

Second in a series on the heartbreaks and hopes of unsung Detroit area athletes.The trouble, James says, began ...

The year is almost up. I want a refund.I don't want money. I want time. I want back every minute wasted on subjects that were trivial, gossipy or just plain idiotic.Subjects on which I can't believe we wasted any breath at all. Things that dominated our newspapers and our TVs and, therefore, our conversations, like whether the Spice Girls have any talent.The answer is no. There. That took half-a-second. I want back anything over that.

First in a series on heartbreaks and hopes of unsung Detroit area athletes.His 17th birthday was held in a ...

They gathered around him as he gave a postgame interview, big beefy men with one thing in mind. Closer now. He was ...

The last time I saw the mother she was hiding on a couch, her head wrapped in a bandana, her eyes as narrow as coin slots. She was coming off a crack cocaine high, in a burned-out house in Detroit's northwest side, with a hole in the roof, no heat, one working light bulb, floors covered in dirt. This was home to Dorothy Chatman and her teenage son, Deshawn."Have you ever seen your son play basketball?" I asked her that day."Basketball is what he's into now," she sniffed. "Next year ...it'll be something else."

I find him in the basement of a Miami baseball stadium. He is sitting at a desk, in a cloud of cigar smoke, talking on the phone."So you'll take him?" The Dump Man says into the receiver. "Great. I'll send over the paperwork ...uh-huh ...ciao."He hangs up the phone."We just dumped Kevin Brown," he says, crossing a name off a list."Kevin Brown?" I say. "The ace of the Marlins?""You got it.""The guy who helped win the World Series?""The one and only.""But why would you dump Kevin Brown? He's a local hero. He's a champion."