by Mitch Albom | Jun 21, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
There will be no first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. No strapping on a backpack for a trek through the Alps. No choir trips to Italy, no families posing next to the guards at Buckingham Palace, no couples honeymooning on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Today is the...
by Mitch Albom | Jun 14, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment, Sports
Since Spencer Torkelson was playing baseball before he can remember playing baseball, why not let him join the Detroit Tigers whenever the season starts? After all, there won’t likely be any minor leagues, not in this strange and vacant year of coronavirus....
by Mitch Albom | Jun 7, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment, Sports
With most of the country slowly reopening, let’s check in on sports. An American spring is usually overwhelmed with basketball and hockey playoffs, the Masters, the French Open, MLB’s regular season and NFL minicamps. Instead, since mid-March, we have basically seen...
by Mitch Albom | May 31, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
We were already heading into a long, hot summer of death. Then a Minneapolis police officer put his knee on the neck of an unarmed black man and left it there until the man expired. And suddenly, a nation afraid to gather in the daylight began rushing en masse into...
by Mitch Albom | May 27, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
Ask yourself this question: If America could return to normal life tomorrow, but one of your family members had to die, would you say OK? I’m assuming the answer is no. Now, a second question: If America could return to normal life tomorrow, but a family member of...
by Mitch Albom | May 10, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
Every Monday, Tuesday and Friday, she gets up early to open the testing center. She hears her 16-year-old daughter say, “Mom, I don’t want you to go.” But Tawana Nettles-Robinson goes anyhow. She goes to the SAY Detroit Family Health Clinic in Highland Park...
by Mitch Albom | May 3, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
We are facing a new silent enemy. One that could take us down quickly. It is not COVID-19. It is our patience. Americans are not a patient people. Our news cycle is 24 hours; a big story, 48 hours. We get bored with long reads. We’re making movies in 10-minute...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 26, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment, Sports
“Now what?” sports fans ask. For three glorious days, there was an actual, scheduled sporting event in America. The 2020 NFL draft not only drew ridiculously high TV ratings, it lifted the collective murkiness that the coronavirus pandemic has draped over a...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 24, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Sports
As big-time sporting events go, it was more transistor radio than virtual reality. But in the end, a draft is just a team making a pick. And low-tech or high-tech, the Lions made the pick that wasn’t surprising, wasn’t earthshaking, but filled a need with...
by Mitch Albom | Apr 19, 2020 | Detroit Free Press, Comment
I don’t usually reference biblical anecdotes, but this seems too fitting. In the book of Exodus, when the Israelites are freed from bondage and flee across the Red Sea, all they want is protection from the pursuing Egyptians. They don’t want to die. When the sea...