A National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Famer, Red Smith Award winner Mitch Albom has written a syndicated column for the Detroit Free Press since 1985, archived here exclusively, free of charge. He also periodically writes for national magazines and other press outlets.
He also writes a newsletter, “Life at the Orphanage” from Have Faith Haiti, and hosts the weekly podcast, Tuesday People. He formery hosted the The Sports Reporters podcast with Mike Lupica and Bob Ryan.
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Tigers fans can wake up now for playoffs, regular-season nightmare is over
I find you in the basement, hiding under a blue and orange blanket. “Is it over?” you whisper. The floor is covered with hot dog wrappers and empty Cracker Jack boxes. A Detroit Tigers cap is buried under newspapers. “How long have...
Kalif Raymond was just what Detroit Lions needed to avoid trap game vs Browns
Sometimes it’s your quarterback, sometimes it’s your All-Pro running back, sometimes it’s your sack specialist. Once in a while, when you really need it, it’s your punt returner, the guy you take for granted on all those fair catches and 3-yard dives into a pile of...
Mitch's first column
Give me a Sporting Chance, and I’ll Give it Right Back
AUG 8, 1985
Let’s start with an old joke.
On a plane trip home after a football game, Buck Buchanan, a massive lineman for the Kansas City Chiefs, was sitting next to a sports writer. Buck had the aisle seat. The sports writer was by the window.
Dinner came, and they ate. Soon Buck fell asleep…
Life at the Orphanage
Tuesday People Podcast
The Sports Reporters Podcast
(on hiatus)
Mitch Albom is nationally known sportswriter; columnist for the Detroit Free Press; author of Tuesdays With Morrie, The Five People you Meet in Heaven and other best-selling books; TV and radio personality; and philanthropist. For the past five years, he has been working to help children orphaned after a devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010. He writes about that effort here.
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What I Learned From Tony Bennett
A woman steps up to the table at an Italian restaurant. She is elderly, but as she smiles at Tony Bennett, her eyes widen like a teenager’s. “I heard you perform once in a place near here after the war. Oh, you sang wonderfully. I was with a fella that...
The painful secret that millions hide:”I Cannot Read”
To understand the anguish of the man, see him as a boy. See his drunken father beat him. See his father tell him he’s useless, no good. See his father terrorize the boy’s mother nightly, whacking her so hard he bloodies her forehead. See the boy unable to sleep, hiding under a blanket, crying, worrying.
Now put that boy in grade school in Montreal in the 1950s. He can’t learn. He is too anxious. Too exhausted. He gets his sister or friends to do his homework. He reaches the eighth grade-barely-then drops out.
He can’t read. He can’t write.

