BOSTON -- Suddenly, summer. With one swing of Alan Trammell's bat, sending a long fly ball over the Fenway Park wall, everything old was new again: the hot dogs, the scorecards, the razzing from the bleachers. Baseball, ladies and gentlemen. The kind that counts.Opening Day.
LAKELAND, Fla. -- Maybe they're just waiting for the right moment. Some night next week, Darnell Coles will walk into the clubhouse and it will be dark. He'll grope for the light switch. And when he flicks it on, all the Tigers will pop out with little party hats on and scream "Surprise!" and blow horns and then Coles will know he's the third baseman, for sure.
BOSTON -- Suddenly, summer. With one swing of Alan Trammell's bat, sending a long fly ball over the Fenway Park wall, everything old was new again: the hot dogs, the scorecards, the razzing from the bleachers. Baseball, ladies and gentlemen. The kind that counts.Opening Day.
LAKELAND, Fla. -- Maybe they're just waiting for the right moment. Some night next week, Darnell Coles will walk into the clubhouse and it will be dark. He'll grope for the light switch. And when he flicks it on, all the Tigers will pop out with little party hats on and scream "Surprise!" and blow horns and then Coles will know he's the third baseman, for sure.
NEW YORK -- So much promise. That has always been the rock around Aaron Krickstein's neck. When he first showed those powerful ground strokes, when he turned pro at age 16, when he started losing and his ranking dropped like an anchor. "So much promise," the people sighed. No wonder he used to speak with his head down in his chest. Have three words ever weighed so heavily? Do you remember 1983? It was here, at the U.S. Open, that Krickstein, then an amateur, showed the world that promise.
OAKLAND, Calif. -- It was the biggest moment of his baseball life, he was about to pitch the bottom of the ninth, lead his teammates to the promised land of the World Series, and there he was -- sitting in the dugout, his head back, his eyes closed."What were you doing?" someone asked Orel Hershiser."I was singing hymns," he said.Oh.
This is his first hockey game. He is very excited. He hands his ticket to the attendant at Joe Louis Arena, who hands it back and looks up, and up, and up."Aren't you . . .?" the attendant asks."Wayne Gretzky?" says John Salley.
The locker room was noisy and they were slapping Wayne Fontes on the back and someone said to him: "Hey, Wayne. The governor's on the phone."Fontes looked up. Really? The governor? He jogged to the office and someone handed him the receiver and whispered in his ear, "I think he's gonna commute your sentence."Fontes smirked."Hello, governor! How are you!" Something about congratulations."Thank you, sir . . . uh-huh . . . "Something about the offense."Improving, governor . . . that's right . . ."
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.
