* DETROIT 20, CHICAGO 10: Everything the Bears did to the Lions a few weeks ago, the Lions do back today. You wanted something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving? You got it.* DALLAS 28, PITTSBURGH 17: Cheer up, Troy. One of these years you'll actually finish the season.
It was late at night and snow was falling. I was driving home over the bridge. Suddenly, I spotted an old man standing on a girder, staring down into the icy water. He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his hair greased back in a James Dean style. There was a tattoo on his arm and a cigarette dangling from his lips. I recognized him as a character I hadn't seen in a while, Mr. Macho.He squatted as if to jump."DON'T DO IT!" I screamed. He glared at me. "Why the hell not?'"Because you have plenty to live for."
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- I placed the football on the grass and held it upright with one finger. The goalpost was 34 yards away. I asked Gerry Thomas whether he could make it now, and he said, "Oh, yeah."He measured off the steps. He looked at his toes and exhaled. Then he rushed into the ball and thudded his foot against the leather.
The crazy thing about football is that it can take you to places you never dreamed of. One minute you're dancing in the end zone; the next, you're surrounded by doctors asking whether you have any feeling in your legs.There were two touchdowns scored within two minutes of Sunday's game at the Silverdome. Both were pass plays. Both were worth six points to the Lions. Both involved guys named Mike.The similarity ends there. For Mike Farr, it was a play he'd been waiting for his whole life, the beginning, he hopes, of great things to come.
In his home state, the land of his birth, they were counting the hatred, one vote at a time. "I've got a few people who will call me tonight," Joe Dumars said. "I'll find out what's going on, maybe even at halftime of the game."Dumars is a professional basketball player, but at this moment, this Saturday morning in his home, life was not about sports, it was about politics and hate in the place where he grew up, the state of Louisiana. A man there was running for governor. A white man. A handsome man. A man who, in college, used to sleep under a Nazi swastika blanket.
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.
