Detroit Free Press

It was a ride to work like any other ride to work, except Brendan Shanahan had 50 cigars in the backseat. He would give them out to his teammates. He would shake their hands. He would tell them the details of the story, the date (Saturday); the time (3 in the afternoon); the names (Maggie and Jack); the birth order (Maggie first, Jack second, one minute apart); his wife's condition (good); his condition (good); the grandparents' condition (over the moon).It was a ride to work like any other ride to work -- except everything had changed.

BECAUSE I like Brett Favre, as a guy and as a quarterback, I almost felt bad for him at the end of Sunday's game, surrounded by Lions, looking desperately downfield, forcing a bad pass and watching it land in the arms of the wrong guy to choke a would-be miracle....Well, I said "almost."In the end, I choose to feel about Favre's fate the way I did about eating crocodile down in Australia: It's payback. Eat or be eaten.

SYDNEY, Australia -- Eight years ago, when NBA players arrived at the Barcelona Olympics, it was Moses at the Red Sea. Everything stopped. Everyone stared. The first game of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and the rest of the Dream Team was an E-ticket ride, dignitaries, high rollers, impossible to get a seat.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- And that's that.No repeat title. No championship parade. No Colorado or Dallas. No May. No June. No anything, really -- which is what happens when you suffer the biggest no of all: no wins.Four times the Red Wings took their pride and power onto the ice against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, a team with a laughable name and a nonexistent tradition, and four times they skated off humbled. Wednesday night was the final indignity, a night when the Wings vowed they would show what they were about.

SALT LAKE CITY -- I will never win an Olympic gold medal. But I did, last week, make an Olympic-sized mistake.I caught a flu. In the middle of these Olympics. OK. It happens. I was sneezing and wheezing and blowing my nose all over the Alpine world.One night I got back to my hotel room early, hoping for a long sleep to knock the bug from my body.I should correct something. I said "hotel room." This would suggest that I was staying in a hotel. In truth, it was a motel. In truth, it was the TraveLodge. And not the world's greatest TraveLodge.

First in a series on the challenges of state athletes and their families.There's something wrong with Thomas! It is the only sentence the coach really remembers. There's something wrong with Thomas! After that, things began to blur, kids and adults, doctors and nurses, belief and disbelief, life and death.

The anniversary came and went. There was little fanfare, at least compared to the same day six years ago, when everyone in America was saying, "Quick, turn on your TV set! O.J. Simpson is on the run!"