PASADENA, Calif. -- Suddenly, the grass had turned to track, the football to a baton, and he was back in his lane, chugging his arms and lifting his legs and leaving them all in the dust. Tyrone Wheatley was gone, baby, he was cape and boots, nobody would touch him. The crowd was roaring and the TV announcers were gushing and the end zone was getting closer and closer, he was going in -- he was going in! -- the longest run in the history of the Rose Bowl, 88 yards of gobbled grass, and nobody knew that he was doing it all on one leg. The right leg.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- On the last day of the year, and the day before their college football careers end, I'd like you to meet five guys you've never heard of. Sometimes, I think their coaches never heard of them either. They do not start. Some back up the backups. One guy never got in a game in four years.They are about to leave Michigan. The Rose Bowl will be their swan song --and if any of them get in the game, it will be big news. But where you would expect bitterness, you don't hear it. Where you would expect anger, there is none.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- The helmet will not go easily. He has had it since arriving at Michigan, five years, five autumns, same helmet, same face mask. Every spring he would hand it to the equipment man for safe-keeping, and every fall he would make sure to get it back. Once, after a practice in his junior year, an excited fan tried to grab his chin strap, yank it off as he ran past. Elvis Grbac made the save."It was down to its last snap," he says, clearly relieved. "I got it just in time."
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- The helmet will not go easily. He has had it since arriving at Michigan, five years, same helmet, same face mask. Every spring he would hand it to the equipment man for safekeeping, and every fall he would make sure to get it back. Once, after a practice in his junior year, an excited fan tried to grab his chin strap, yank it off as he ran past. Elvis Grbac made the save."I almost lost it," he says. "It was down to its last snap."
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- I plop on the hotel bed. I turn on the reading light. Here, in my lap, are rosters, old newspapers, and media guides. I blow off the dust.It is bowl week.Time to relearn everything."Let's see," I say. "Michigan. OK. I know they had a decent season. I think they won the Big Ten. It seems to me there was something about ties, wasn't there? Lots of ties?"
Like most people, I wanted to be liked. I wanted to walk into every room and have people smile, reach for my hand, slap me on the back.I picked the wrong job.I became a sportswriter.My kind are greeted with sighs, smirks, head shakes and spit. Occasionally a poke in the chest. Now and then, a bucket of water. I am blamed, vilified, avoided, ignored, sometimes tolerated, never trusted.I am a sportswriter.And I wonder what went wrong.
* SAN FRANCISCO 20, LIONS 10: If the Lions really want to bug Joe Montana, they should yell across the line: "Hey! Aren't you the guy who backs up Steve Young? Tough gig, huh?"* NEW ORLEANS 21, NY JETS 6: The Saints sent their entire starting linebacker corps to the Pro Bowl. The whole set? Is that allowed?
The instructions are taped to the wall above his bed. They show diagrams of hands and feet, with arrows pointing left and right. His mother pulls on his limp right arm, forward and backward, forward and backward, as if rowing a boat."He couldn't move nothing at first," she says. "Now he can do some on his own. Show him, Damon."
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.
