"Robinson, I need a man that will take abuse and insults. If some guy slides into you and calls you a black so-and-so, you'd come up swinging. And you'd be justified. But you'd set the cause back 20 years.""Mr. Rickey, do you want a ballplayer who's afraid to fight back?""Jack, I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back."There was a long pause."Mr. Rickey, if you want to take this gamble, I promise there will be no incident."-- Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, as recounted by the scout who brought them together, Clyde Sukeforth.
The lights flashed on, but she had not flicked the switch. The TV changed channels, but she had not touched the remote. There was a voice on her phone that interrupted her conversations with burps, curses, and laughter -- but there was no one in her house on the other extension.The modern-day version of a haunting was happening to Debbie Tamai and her Windsor family. Only this phantom was not some long-buried soul, but a very real, very alive, very conniving punk who calls himself "Sommy" and who thinks it's cute to terrorize a family.
All week long, I've heard people dismiss this new book which claims Isiah Thomas had a gambling problem. Not because they know Isiah. Not because they were at the house where these high-stakes dice games supposedly took place.No. They dismiss it by saying, "I don't believe anything that uses unnamed sources."I heard the same thing a few weeks ago, when all those charges were comingout about the Michigan basketball program, charges that a booster had been funneling money to players for years. The critics' response?
Some things you do for love, some you do for tradition. In frosty weather, with the season already a week old, and the team -- let's be honest -- not expected to win as many as it loses, those who came out for Opening Day at Tiger Stadium on Monday afternoon did it for tradition. They did it because their folks did it. They did it because they love the first pitch, the organ music, because some rituals you keep alive, even if, for the moment -- with empty seats and an alien roster -- they don't make much sense.
INDIANAPOLIS -- The game had the awkwardness of a teenager learning to dance, the stickiness of wet paint, the color of an unripe banana. Whacks, pokes, dumb passes, ill-advised shots. It simply was not polished basketball -- the inevitable problem with inexperienced feet being asked to walk the highest rope.And yet . . .
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.
