FARMINGTON HILLS -- Don Powell is a
collector. In the lobby of his Farmington Hills company,
American Institute for Preventive Medicine, pewter sculptures
depict people beating smoking and other bad habits. The sills of
his corner office window are lined with a series of apples:
glass, ceramic, wood and others, all a reference to the company
motto, "An apple a day is not enough." Assorted antique irons,
for pressing clothing, not for golfing, are kept at his West
Bloomfield home.
"I've never used an iron in my life. I just
liked how they looked," said Powell, who by day is the CEO of
the institute, which provides businesses with consumer health
information for smoking cessation, weight control and other
wellness issues.
Powell has written extensively on health care,
but he's put a good deal of his focus on a collection of sports
cliches in book form: "The Best Sports Cliches Ever!"
The self-published paperback started when he and
pals Sheldon Kay of Farmington and Joe Benenholz, former
psychology student of Powell's, made a game of talking only in
sports cliches during sporting events. Powell, a licensed
psychologist, noticed an immediate ripple effect in fans sharing
the stands. They added lines or created their own cliched
conversations in what amounted to a verbal wave.
"We criticize cliches, but use them all the
time," said Powell, estimating that half of all conversations
depend on cliches. He has been a lifelong fan of sports and its
iconic language.
Cliches may be considered laziness in a writer,
but allow speakers "to avoid the work of having to think of a
new way of expressing the idea every time he or she wants to
express that idea," said Mike Smith, associate professor of
linguistics at Oakland University.
Powell started documenting sports lines while
traveling by plane from Austin to Detroit, just to see how many
he could remember. By the time the plane landed, he'd jotted 315
on a legal pad and the idea for a book was born. With the help
of friends and his two sons, Jordan, 23, and Brett, 19, the list
grew, from "we came up big time" to "he jumped the gun."
Sports fans who have read the book say it's as
comforting as hearing Ernie Harwell say a guy in the stands from
Hazel Park just caught the fouled baseball. While "The Best
Sports Cliches Ever!" includes Yogi Berra's quip "It ain't over,
'til it's over," none of Harwell's best-loved lines made it.
Powell thought they might be too regional or not translate well
in print. For example, folks from around here know Harwell for
his "loooooong gone!" Description of home runs.
"I guess he's right," Harwell said in a phone
interview from his home in Novi.
"If you're a baseball announcer, you're on maybe
200 games a year. That's 180-60 games, plus exhibition games.
You have to be what you are. In my case, I never sat down and
said, 'I'm going to figure this out and use this.' I'd use a
phrase and from time to time, repeat it. If people would say
they liked it, I might use it again."
Like Powell, Harwell sees cliches as "sort of
like a magic word, a secret code."
"I guess it gives the person who says it a
feeling of belonging to the fraternity," Harwell said.
It was tough making the final selections for the
book, which includes 1,771 classic lines and a 110-question
quiz. Brett Powell suggested dividing the list into categories
by sport and genre. Jordan Powell edited the final edition.
Don Powell asked Andria Witha, an American
Institute for Preventive Medicine employee, to create the book's
layout and design. The final copy was shipped by Delta Printing
in Lansing, which returned 7,500 copies last September. Powell
started hawking them online through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and
on his own site, bestsportscliches.com.
So far, 5,000 have been sold, he said. Online
prices range between $14.95 for new to $10 for used copies.
Online reviews have been positive, for the most
part.
Peg McNichol is a Metro Detroit freelance
writer.
