LONDON -- Now that America has caught soccer fever -- or, as medical experts call it, baseball boredom -- I thought I'd examine how the World Cup is doing here in England.England is a perfect country to study for two reasons: 1) I happen to be here; 2) The English, who love soccer almost as much as they love tea, ARE NOT IN THE WORLD CUP.And America is.
WIMBLEDON, England -- How about this? A couple of normal American kids won at Wimbledon. By "normal" I mean no drug busts, no police records, no terrorizing fathers, no private jets, no exposed belly buttons, no Barbra Streisand infatuations, no earrings. Well. I take that back. The girl wore earrings. But in her ears, not her nose.
Someone once told me Isiah Thomas planned to run for mayor. Why not? He loved power, he had ambition, and at the time -- this was a few years ago -- he probably had the votes. He was, without question, the most popular athlete in Detroit since Gordie Howe. Billy Sims and Mark Fidrych were big stars, but they never delivered championships. Thomas (Hit Man) Hearns made a name for himself, but not a personality.
At the moment of truth, he ran away, avoided the tackle, as if there were some end zone he could reach and be safe -- safe from the handcuffs, the police, the cameras, the courts, the blood of the victims they say he killed, maybe even safe from the death penalty. The police were right behind him, 11 squad cars, like an opposing football team, and they chased patiently along the Southern California highway, even as spectators stopped their cars, some waving signs saying "GO JUICE." This is what the man who dashed through airports had become. O.J.
NEW YORK -- A bead of sweat was dripping down Jon's forehead, from his thick, sprayed hair toward his makeup- covered cheekbone. He tried to ignore it and hold his microphone straight, but man, it was hot, damn hot. The heat seemed to burst from the subway grates and the exhaust pipes of buses that rolled past Madison Square Garden, past rows of blue-uniformed riot police, hundreds of them, just waiting, leaning on their blue barricades, wiping sweat from their foreheads. It was June 14, almost summer, the latest day in hockey history, and the fever was all over 33rd Street.
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.
