Because I work for a Detroit newspaper, I tend to focus this column on Detroit sports. And in the fall, that means football.Only lately Detroit football has been depressing. Especially the Lions' games on Sunday afternoons. Those can be hazardous to your health.
Alan Trammell swallows a mouthful of water from the fountain, wipes his chin, then plops down on the dugout bench."Listen, I don't want to talk about me, OK? I'll talk about the team, howwe're doing. Anything. But nothing about me."He pauses."I just don't want any features on me. I don't. I'll talk about other things, but not about me."Another pause."OK?" he says, looking over. "All right? Nothing about me, OK?"Slumps are death.
ROME -- There are two things you can count on whenever you hold a big international track and field competition: (1) A lot of medals will be won by communist-bloc athletes; (2) sooner or later, somebody will yell "DRUGS!"All week long at these World Track and Field Championships we've had the former: East Germany and Russia are cleaning up in the medal department. And now we have the latter. "DRUGS!" This from the mouth of Carl Lewis. Where you usually find a foot.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Forget about the Grace Jones hairdo and the lip gloss and the sunglasses and his agent's "bigger than Michael Jackson" predictions. When Carl Lewis blows his trumpet at the top of the long jump runway, people still drop what they're doing and watch. So it was that most of the media at these Pan American Games were sitting in the midday heat Sunday, in a nearly sold-out track stadium, as Lewis stripped off his sweats and shook loose those glorious muscles, in another attempt to kill the ghost that lives inside the pit.
Because I work for a Detroit newspaper, I tend to focus this column on Detroit sports. And in the fall, that means football.Only lately Detroit football has been depressing. Especially the Lions' games on Sunday afternoons. Those can be hazardous to your health.
OAKLAND, Calif. -- He was doing everything he could do, everything he could think of. The Dodgers got someone on base, he struck somebody out. The Dodgers tried to rattle him, he struck somebody out. Bob Welch was mowing them down and waiting for support, mowing them down and waiting for support. His teammates, the suddenly punchless Oakland Athletics, were giving him nothing to sit on in this Game 3 of the World Series and all he could do was go back out and keep throwing.
BOSTON -- "Come out, come out, wherever you are," I coo at the Boston Garden walls.Silence."Come out, come out, wherever you are. . . . "They are in here somewhere. I know it. Those ghosts or leprechauns or pixies or whatever you call them, the invisible spirits that ensure the Celtics never lose a crucial game in this building. They are in here. I have come to lure them out."Look what I've got! . . . " I sing, waving a piece of green cheese. "Yoo hoo! Little sprites! Look what I've got!"Silence."Little spri-i-i-ites! . . . "
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Wouldn't it be funny if beneath that crusty exterior, those dagger eyes, those tightly crossed arms that look as if they'll squeeze the heart from his chest, beneath those throaty screams, that pounding on the table, the slap on the forehead as he collapses in his chair, beneath the pacing feet and the churning stomach and that look to the heavens whenever Dennis Rodman makes a boo-boo that seems to say, "Why me, Lord? What did I ever do to you?" -- wouldn't it be funny if beneath all that, Chuck Daly was really . . . an optimist?
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.
