40 years at the Detroit Free Press, and I still feel like the luckiest guy

Kelly and Matthew Stafford Education Center opens in Detroit

The star QB and his wife, Kelly, may have left Detroit, but the impact they left behind will go beyond just football memories, thanks to a new children's center with Mitch Albom's Say Detroit charity.

FOX – 2 Detroit

Here's something I once did at this job: I lit my lunch on fire.

It was 1989, an earthquake had just struck San Francisco, and I was sitting inside Candlestick Park about to write about a World Series game. The stadium was shaking, players and fans were frantically evacuated, and it was getting dark. No lights. Although the police warned us to leave, I stayed with several other sportswriters to get a story.

But I couldn't see.

So I got a match and lit my lunch box on fire. While the cardboard burned, I read the words on my screen into a pay phone, while my sports editor on the other end brushed them off.

Just another night at work – one I've been doing, they tell me, for 40 years. It doesn't feel like that long. Some of them, like writing about Michigan taking on Ohio State for all the marbles, seems like it was yesterday.

Then again, some of them, like the Lions snorting for the Super Bowl, certainly seem new.

40 years of amazing moments around the world

Here are some other things I've done at this job: I was chased by bulls in Pamplona. He walked on the Great Wall of China. Lance Parrish raced into the pool. John took Sally to his first hockey game. He flew in a biplane to cover the Iditarod in Alaska. I watched the lights go out at Tiger Stadium.

I visited Scott Skiles in prison. He sat next to an injured Kirk Gibson on the long drive home. He got into an argument with Bo Schembechler when he came out of the bathroom, wearing only a towel. I went to sit in the home of a grieving mother from Detroit who lost her son to gun violence and heard her warn me, “Don't sit there. They're shooting through the windows.”

Willie Hernandez threw a bucket of ice water on my head (sadly, one of his most accurate throws that year). He became a lucky driver for Jacques Demers during the Red Wings playoffs. A fictional World Series was created after a baseball strike canceled the real one.

She went to Pearl Harbor on December 7. I went to Honduras after the devastation of Hurricane Mitch (of all names) in 1998. I went to Haiti after the disastrous 2010 earthquake.

I've written a lot of columns about rich, selfish athletes, but a lot more about the truly humble and amazing. I've written a lot of stories about drunk drivers taking the lives of innocent people, but many more about brave people who help save them.

I've written a lot of columns defending Detroit, but a lot about the great things about it. And I've written a lot of columns about loss — my parents, our young daughter, friends, teachers, key influences — but a lot about inspiring the people who are still here, who are shaping our lives for the better.

When I started writing newspapers, there were no cell phones, and our computers ran on batteries. However, one way or another, we have earlier deadlines today than they did then.

When I started, about 650,000 people got the Free Press every day. Today, this is a small part of that, and the majority read it on their phone, tablet or computer screen.

It's a shrinking business, harder than ever. So why stay?

I think, also when I started, I got a letter at the Free Press offices — before I wrote my first column — from a couple. I think they were older. He welcomed me to Detroit, wished me well, and then added – and I'm paraphrasing here – “We know you won't stay in Detroit long, because none of the good people do. But we hope you enjoy our city while you're here.”

If you're wondering why I'm still here after 40 years, the answer is somewhere in that letter.

A mission to make connections, in Detroit and beyond

I mentioned what I did for this job. Here's what this post did for me.

It has taken me all over the world. You exposed me to some of the most amazing and saddest moments in sports.

It gave me access to places people dream of going — champagne-soaked locker rooms, Olympic stadiums, championship parades, and spring training cages.

She gave me a bad name and taught me humility. It brought me face to face with people I will always remember, and some I wish I could forget. It sharpened my writing skills the way a grinding wheel sharpens a blade, and taught me never to get too attached to your sentences, because they might end up being trimmed to fit a tire ad.

But mostly, I've offered a megaphone and a hearing aid to a city and state I love, a city I'd never been to before arriving in my mid-20s, and yet feels more like a true home than anywhere I've ever been.

The pure joy of this job is not the seats you get in the Super Bowl press box. It's the moments when you walk into a local coffee shop and see someone reading your column. The moments when someone sees you and shouts, “Hey, Mitch, are the Lions doing that today?” Moments when the family of the person you eulogized takes your hand and says, “Thank you.”

What this job does for me, and what I hope to do for it, is connect us, your voice in my ears, my voice in your ears. No matter how the newspaper business changes, until the final printing press closes, this will always be the dynamic.

Which I remain proud to do. Forty years, huh? So be it. Just a number. I feel lucky and privileged to do this job. And if they accept me, I will continue to do so, as long as I can do so decently, with sympathy, and with a wink now and then.

Also, thanks to backlit computers, I no longer have to set fire to my lunches.

So you got that going for me.

And he's nice.

Contact Mitch Albom: [email protected]. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books, and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom on x.com.

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