If you have a problem with Keyshawn Johnson, you have a problem with yourself.-- Keyshawn JohnsonSAN DIEGO -- Well, there you go. That answers it. All this time I've been wondering what the problem is, and now I know. It's me. I have a problem with myself. Oh, Keyshawn, if only you had told me sooner. The therapy I could have saved!Johnson uttered this mother of all statements just a few days ago, here at Super Bowl XXXVII. It was so priceless, so amazingly brazen, that at first I thought he was misquoted.Then, the next day, he said it again.
The prosecutor grilled him."Where did you aim the gun?""At his head.""Where did you hit him?""In his head.""That was your mission, to kill him at that moment.""No sir.""You hit your target, didn't you?""No sir."It reads like any murder trial, any prosecutor versus killer. Only this accused killer was 14 years old. And at one point, the veil slipped."What did Mr. Grunow do when he fell to the ground?"Nathaniel Brazill, 14, said nothing.
So you decide to visit the relatives for Thanksgiving. It's a long distance, but that's why we have airplanes. And that's why, in order to make the Thursday afternoon meal, you leave Monday at 4 a.m.Traffic to the airport is normal for holiday time, meaning backed up three miles. When you finally enter the airport complex, you check the signs for your airline. You see a Spirit, a Song and a Ted. These are airlines? Where does Ted fly? Ted Land? And what, you wonder, is an Aer Lingus? Is that X-rated?
LAKERS-PACERS? A prediction?No problem.* GAME 1: The opening tip is delayed 90 minutes due to a limousine backup outside the Staples Center. Because so many movie stars are there -- Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Denzel Washington -- scalpers' prices soar to $10,000 a ticket. Several Lakers scrubs, realizing they're not going to play anyhow, sell their seats, leaving Kevin Bacon, Jim Belushi and Ben Stiller actually sitting on the LA bench.
'Who IS she?"She is the perfect woman . . ."She is your dream wife . . ."So what now? . . ."You can't stalk her . . ."But WE CAN . . ."What you just read is the start of a Web-based pitch for a company called Coi--. The reason I use the dash is because I don't want to send it any business. A matchmaker, I'm not.
IT WAS LIKE going to divorce court, with the judge deciding, in the end, that it was a no-fault marriage. These things happen, he seemed to say. One side wants out. The other side wants things the way they were. Make the math work. Get on with life.So it was that Barry Sanders' career with the Detroit Lions came to a bland, unsatisfying, but apparently legal end. According to the arbitrator, Sanders, who quit the team two years into his six-year contract, has to eventually give back his $5.5 million signing bonus money, but not all at once, as the Lions had wanted.
It was the first kickoff of the first exhibition game. Matt Russell came charging down the field, planted a leg and felt a pop in his right knee.He was done for the year.Just like that? Just like that. He went through surgery. He went through rehab. He lifted weights for hours a day and stood on the Detroit Lions' sidelines, holding a clipboard, while his friends played the game.
So there we were, sitting at this news conference, listening to the new football coach the Detroit Lions had hired, and he was saying some funny things and we were laughing and at one point I turned to a friend of mine and casually whispered, "How old is this guy?""Thirty-eight," my friend said."Thirty-eight?"I stopped laughing.
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.
