SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- The one question that worried everybody, that made Bill Frieder pace the court and made the Michigan alumni hold their breath and made the basketball media cluck their tongues, was whether or not these guys from Boise State could play basketball.Now, that shouldn't be a mystery in something as orange and round as the NCAA tournament. But that's what the first round is all about. Boise State? Quick. Tell us all you know about the place. Thank you.
We are talking about embarrassment. We are talking about nerves. We are talking about the moment of truth in pro football training camp.We are talking about rookies singing."Dinnertime, lunchtime, whenever we feel like making them do it," says William Gay, the Lions' defensive captain, who need only bang his glass with a spoon -- like an uncle at an Italian wedding -- to make a rookie stand up, open wide and say, "Laa!""Are they any good?" he is asked."Some are good, some are bad," he says, rubbing his chin slowly. "And some . . . are real bad."
ROME -- She was all alone coming down the stretch. That's because everyone else in the race had finished. Some were already back at the hotel, eating dinner.Ha! No. Only kidding there. But she was last, all right. By a lot. These were the World Track and Field Championships. This was an opening heat of the 1,500 meters -- four times around the track -- and she was with the leaders at the end of the third lap. Their third lap. She was still on her second."I heard them coming," says Georgiana Tomisato, "and then, they lapped me. They were going so fast!"
ATLANTA -- One of their guards is called Peanut Butter. The other is called Jelly. The forward, who comes from Venezuela, is called Bread. There's gotta be a Knife in here somewhere."We are explosive," says one."We are a dynasty," says the other.Well. It's nice to see a school with its own publicity department.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- A great thinker once said: "To know a man, you must walk a mile in his shoes." Or, barring that, you must at least learn his bathroom habits.Well. That's the way it worked for Larry Smith:"It was back at Miami of Ohio, 1967. Bo Schembechler was head coach and we were his assistants. We were all living in Bo's house -- he was a bachelor then -- and there was only one bathroom. Of course, since he was head coach, he got priority in using it.
The wrestlers gather on the purple and white mats and make a semicircle around their coach, who is speaking in a whisper. A few of the boys are big and muscular. Others are younger, shorter, and their voices are still high. They are teen-aged, but they are just children, really. And children should never have to witness a murder, not one of their own. But it happened inside Romulus High School, and now they must learn to live with the nightmares. And it is not easy.
Heal the sick, raise the dead,Make the little girls go out of their head -- From the song "Seventh Son"Well, Isiah Thomas can't do all that. Can he? Raise the dead? No. Not that I know of, anyhow. True, he is a seventh son. And true, he can do almost everything else. Especially if it involves a basketball.
Tiny flakes of dead skin fell into David Braxton's left eye. "Blink," said the doctor.Braxton blinked.The flesh around his brow was swollen, and stitches dotted his eyelid likeblack ants. The doctor guessed there were 14 sewn into the outer lid, more inside."OK, here we go," he said, and steadying the scissors, he began, one at a time, to snip the threads of the wound.Braxton is a boxer.He lost.
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.
