HOWE LORE: TRUE OR FALSE?

Once I sat with Gordie Howe, who was nearly 70, and fired a series of “urban legends” at him to see if they were true.

“Gordie Howe once suited up with the Detroit Tigers and hit a few balls out of the park,” I said.

“True,” he said. “Well, into the seats.”

“Gordie Howe,” I continued, “who suffered from dyslexia, flunked the third grade twice.”

“False,” he said.

Association stint and then a year with the Hartford Whalers. Then came decades of just being “Mr. Hockey” — plus a one-game appearance with the Detroit Vipers in the International Hockey League that allowed him to say he played in six decades.

I joked with him before that game that he should be careful going over the boards. He said, “That’s why I’m starting. I’ll go through the gate.”

His final years were challenging. A stroke robbed him of his mobility and other functions had many fans bracing for the worst. (And reportedly had Howe telling his family, “Just take me out back and shoot me.”)

But in true Howe fashion, he rallied once more, defying odds with unconventional medicine (a stem cell treatment) putting the “Did you flunk it once?” “Yeah, once.” He paused. “But that’s the year I started playing hockey.”

“Gordie Howe, as a kid, would play with pucks made of ‘frozen road apples,’ another word for cow manure,” I said.

“That’s false,” he said. “I was a goaltender. And in the spring, that would be dangerous.”

Mitch Albom

weight back on, regaining his strength, making a few more appearances to serve his legend.

The news of his death came suddenly. No long deterioration. No sad updates on failing health. He went quietly, with modesty, befitting a child of the Depression who got his first pair of skates from a woman going door to door selling her possessions. Those first blades were too big, and he needed to stuff them with socks.

It was the last time any hockey shoe could not be filled by Howe.

“They used to say if you needed to fill a rink,” Bowman recalled, “you’d probably go for Rocket (Richard). But if you needed to win championships, you’d have Gordie Howe on your team.”

In 1995, the Red Wings were in the Western Conference final against the Chicago Blackhawks, one win from making the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1966. Although they won the first three games, they’d been embarrassed by the Blackhawks in Game 4, and some were worried about a letdown. Star Sergei Fedorov had an injured shoulder and was planning to sit out Game 5.

Howe came to see Bowman and told him he thought it was essential that Fedorov play.

“Why don’t you ask him to come down to the Joe tonight and I’ll talk to him,” Howe suggested.

Bowman did. Fedorov came down that night. They went out on the ice together. As Bowman recalled, “Gordie said to him, ‘Sergei, you’re not going to get into the semifinals every year. This isn’t always going to happen. You got to suck it up and play.’ ”

Sure enough, the next night, Fedorov played. The game went to double overtime. It ended when Fedorov passed to Slava Kozlov, who buried the winning goal.

Twenty-nine years after the Red Wings had last been to a Cup Final, when Howe was a player, they were going again.

Howe was a bridge. A quiet, tell-nobody, era-to-era bridge.

Story after story. What Gordie Howe meant to his sport, what he meant to his fans, is still yet to be measured, because the memories keep exploding from that caldron.

Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.