Meeting Mitch Albom
On finding the path to your path...
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
My parents used to leave the Detroit Free Press on the kitchen table. Sometimes just lying there because that’s where papers went when they came in the house. Sometimes open to something they wanted me to read. Kids will read most anything you leave out while they’re eating breakfast it seems.
I read through most of the paper while I had my cereal or yogurt in the mornings. But I loved reading about the Tigers so I’d look at the sports and of course the comics. I’d read Dave Barry’s essays too.
I also just loved good writing and there were few, if any, newspaper writers in Detroit at that time than Mitch Albom. He was first and foremost a sports writer. But he also had a column where he could clearly write about most anything he wanted to. He told great stories and he told them well. About the biggest athletes of the time and also more human and personal pieces.
One piece that stuck with me was about how gymnastics was essentially a form of abuse. He wrote:
“I love the sport of women’s gymnastics, it is breathtaking, like dance, the purest command of the human body. But I defy anyone to attend an Olympic gymnastics competition — at least anyone who loves children — and not walk out terribly upset.”
Not far from where he wrote this, even more abuse was happening in this sport. But most of us didn’t know that at the time.
But what I appreciated was that he showed you could be a journalist and write about something non-serious like sports and also make it serious. This was a pretty extreme example, but throughout his writing he tackled bigger topics than the sports themselves. Or he told the personal stories within the broader context of sports. He wrote about whatever he wanted to, and he did it well.
Despite applying to journalism schools, I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to be a journalist. But I was pretty sure that if I did, I wasn’t going to do Pulitzer-winning investigative reporting. Or be a war correspondent. That’s just not what I wanted. But could I write about music the way Mitch Albom wrote about sports? Maybe? Did I want to write like Hunter Thompson. Uh huh. Reading the best journalism of Rolling Stone, or the interviews of Playboy (it’s a book with no illustrations) helped, too.
Albom was also into music. He was part of a band made up of authors called the Rock Bottom Remainders. Over the years it also included Stephen King, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Matt Groening and more. Sometimes they even had actual musicians like legendary guitarist for the Bryds, Roger McGuinn. They would perform to raise money for charity, because heroes give back.
In 2004, they played a show at Chicago’s House of Blues. In exchange for shooting the show, the band asked if they could the photos on their site, which of course I agreed to. Since their performances were for charity, I donated my time, too. But then they asked if I would come early and shoot a band portrait. Which meant I was around for sound check and got to meet some of them, including Mitch. I had him sign one of his books for me, and told him a little bit about how he was an inspiration and why. They are still using my photos on their site, and I had shots posted on Dave Barry’s blog for a while, which was quite a thrill as I was a fan of his, too.
I have been in a position to meet so many of my heroes, like Mitch Albom, because I am a journalist so it was meta to get to thank him for helping me grapple with getting to journalism. By the time I met him, he had inspired younger me to grow into then-current me and both mes were thrilled by the encounter.
College is about connections, and friends and all the things you learn outside the classroom. How I got from journalism school to actual journalism is quite a story. So let’s take a little detour just off campus.