The judge called it "the most unusual request I've ever had."The defense attorney said, "I've never heard anything like it."Even the crook admits he never tried anything this brazen.Then again, it is Michigan-Ohio State weekend."The first thing he wanted me to do," said defense attorney Tully Rogers, "was to get him out on bond so he could watch the game. He promised to come right back. I said, 'I don't think the judge is gonna go for that. Maybe we can come up with something else.' "
JUST OVER two minutes left in the Super Bowl. The score is tied. You are the quarterback. The ball is yours. What swirls inside your brain? Nerves? Hesitation? Does the inner voice say, "Be careful"? Does the inner voice say, "No mistakes"? Does the inner voice say, "The whole world is watching. Take it easy. Small steps"?Or does it say, "Aw, heck, go for the whole thing"?
Afriend of mine has no children. She hears about it all the time."Why not?" they ask."How could you not want them?""Is there something wrong between you and your husband?"Another friend has three children. She also hears about it all the time."Don't you want a career?" they ask."Are you really taking those kids into that restaurant?"Once upon a time, having children was a given. Those who didn't couldn't. They were to be pitied.
A few weeks ago, Rick Carlisle was in the delivery room, witnessing the birth of his first child. The doctor liked to hear music while he worked, and the song playing as the baby girl emerged was "Rocket Man" by Elton John, which includes the line, "It's lonely out in space."
Good news, Curt. This year, in deference to the grueling presidential election we just endured, I will not engage in the politics of personal destruction -- even though you personally have been referred to as a Swinging Chad.No, sir. I will not tell people that your Super Bowl predictions are normally as reliable as airport soup.Or that your idea of research during Super Bowl week is seeing just how carefully that "six-foot" rule is enforced in Tampa.
Take your sign down.Pull up the stakes. Rip up the cardboard. Throw the whole thing in the trash.We are no longer Bush or Kerry this morning, we are no longer right or left. Our reds and blues need to be united now, by the pure and neutral white that completes the American flag. We have the next president, somewhere in the numbers, and his biggest challenge, when he is sworn in, will be getting this entire country behind him.And our biggest challenge will be allowing that to happen.This is now the question: Will we be led?
COACHING IS dead.The whistle is buried. The chalkboard is blank. The days when a coach spoke and a player listened?Those days are gone.There is no coaching anymore -- not in the NBA, anyhow, where $100-million players are a way of life.Coaching there has been replaced by "managing." Managing means keeping a player happy. Managing means keeping an ego in check. Managing is what Paul Westphal tried unsuccessfully to do in Seattle, with sulking multimillionaires like Gary Payton and Vin Baker.
Take a kid. A skinny, mixed-up kid. A kid who feels picked on, persecuted, bullied -- a kid who vows revenge.Now add a gun. A gun kept in his house, by his father, in a glass case. One morning, when whatever crazy, unloved portion of that kid's brain fires the wrong synapse, he takes that gun to school and opens fire, killing two classmates.Now take that same kid. But subtract the gun. He gets up that same morning and something snaps. But there is no firearm at hand. What does he do? Maybe he takes a knife? Or a brick? Or a can of spray paint?
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.
