From those dirty summers in downtown Los Angeles, when he unloaded watermelons from a supermarket truck, now to this: Gray pinstripe suit. Wife in a fur coat. A contract worth $36 million to play a game many would play for free. And you know the thing that made the biggest impression on Cecil Fielder as he sat before the lights and microphones in the Detroit Tigers' conference room? This is what made the biggest impression:They want me. They really want me.
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.
ST. LOUIS -- Steve Yzerman sat on the bed in his hotel room and looked at his watch. The bus would not leave for 20 minutes, but he already was dressed in his blue sport coat and tie. His shirt collar was tight and stuck out. His hair was mussed. He folded his hands uncomfortably across his lap. With his boyish face, he looked like a school kid waiting for the car pool."Last year at this time, we weren't even in the playoffs," he said, staring at the TV. "I was skating down at Joe Louis Arena when the playoffs began for everybody else."
TAMPA, Fla. -- Jim Kelly knocks things over. He wakes up the whole football neighborhood. Noise follows him, it has since his mess-around days as a kid in western Pennsylvania, where his idea of fun was to strap on a helmet and attack his brothers. ARRRRRRRR! Even now, a millionaire quarterback in the biggest game of his life, he admits to a "linebacker's mentality." And given his thick neck, his broad torso, and his affection for a pitcher of beer, he might still become one.
So this is how far it has sunk. Tom Monaghan, who used to worship the turf Bo Schembechler walked on, now fires him in the middle of a Monday afternoon. Sends out a press release. Cites irreconcilable differences. Like some kind of marriage that went south.Which, I guess, in a way, it was. Monaghan is the same guy who once came to Bo's house on a snowy winter night and begged him not to leave the University of Michigan for Texas A&M. He was near tears. He offered Bo a pizza franchise to stay.
SAN FRANCISCO -- On one sideline, the miracle man stood alone, watching, his back stiff, his hand throbbing, his body racked with pain. For the first time in most people's memory, Joe Montana could do nothing about the finish of a championship game. Nothing but pray.
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.
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.
