By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 21, 2015
There is no question that Mitch Albom does a lot of good charitable work. Earlier this month the prolific novella author raised over a million dollars during his annual WJR Radiothon.
The Freep columnist has also raised a ton of money for inner city youths in Detroit so they can have a safe location at which to participate athletically. Hell, Mitch has done so much for the people of Haiti following their horrific earthquake of 2010 that I jokingly nicknamed him “Wyclef Albom.”
And there was a time when Albom wasn’t a constant target of this website. In fact, I used to be a total Mitch Albom slappy. I was a huge fan of his early work at the Free Press, purchased all of his “Live Albom” books and was a regular attendee at E.G. Nick’s in West Bloomfield for his old “Sunday Sports Albom” on WLLZ.
Hell, a year after I graduated high school, my journalism adviser at West Bloomfield H.S. invited me back to class because Albom was going to be doing a Q & A for her students and I excitedly accepted.
In fact, if I told you in 1989 that I would be spending the Sunday before Christmas in 2015 goofing on Albom at a Costco, I would have had you institutionalized.
I worshipped the dude.
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And if Albom would have just stepped aside from his job as this city’s preeminent sports writing voice after it became abundantly clear in 2003 (after the wild success of “Tuesdays With Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”) that his Freep gig was more nuisance than responsibility, I wouldn’t be writing this today.
But instead of stepping aside so he could concentrate his time on penning death-obsessed fiction for the menopausal masses, Albom contaminated his legacy with the Cleaves/Richardson debacle, began a series of attacks on baristas, refused to learn the importance of sabermetrics in today’s sports world, further sullied his damaged reputation with his quota-meeting Dr. Football series and finally refused to recuse himself from Matthew Stafford articles after accepting a seven-figure check from the Lions QB for one of Albom’s charities.
Unfortunately, Albom isn’t a character in one of his horribly reviewed books so he can’t enter some wormhole and return to the year 2003 and step down as the lead columnist for the Freep before he irrevocably damages his sports journalism career.
Because once hanging out with Hank Azaria and Oprah Winfrey became more important than covering the Wings, Pistons, Lions and Tigers, he became a scourge to Detroit sports fans.
Which is how I ended up at the Costco by Great Lakes Crossing on Sunday afternoon with Mihir Bhatnagar … the DSR’s own version of “Stuttering” John Melendez.
You see, Albom was signing his most recent book, “The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto” and I thought it would be entertaining to purchase a couple of copies of Mitch’s most recent sappy and overly sentimental work of fiction and ask Albom for a goofy personalized dedication.
And after waiting in a 45-minute line that snaked around the members-only warehouse, Mihir and I finally arrived in front of Albom. So what did we ask the New York Times best-selling author to write in our copies?
I thought you’d never ask!!!
And if you somehow doubt the authenticity of those signatures and believe we are making this up, well …. we did a live Periscope of this momentous occasion.
All in all, Albom was a very good sport about the entire situation.
And his quote, “You got some cult going there …” to me?
Well, it’s nothing compared to the army of 55-year-old Ellen DeGeneres fans you had lined up around Costco yesterday, Mitch.