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" All sorts of famous sports people have been suspended for extended periods. "
Frank Deford
Been
People
Sports
Related Quotes:
" So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible. "
Frank Deford
Fraud
Sports
College
" The year after Russell retired, in the famous seventh game of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, Willis Reed, the New York Knicks center, limped onto the court against the Los Angeles Lakers, inspiring his team and freezing Chamberlain into a benign perplexity. "
Frank Deford
Garden
Game
Team
" I am something of a ham. Yeah, I'd always been a writer. But in high school, I acted in plays. So it wasn't as if you had to drag the words out of my vocal chords. "
Frank Deford
I Am
School
Words
" I can remember going to see the minor league Orioles. Until I was 15 years old, we'd go down with 3,000 people to watch them play the Syracuse Chiefs or the Jersey City Little Giants. That's what passed for Baltimore sports. "
Frank Deford
Play
City
People
" I think every time I can find a story that touches that human nerve, and even sometimes makes you cry, I think that I've found something that I'll like very much. "
Frank Deford
Cry
Think
Sometimes
" In days of yore, Opening Day of the baseball season was special, signifying that spring had come at last. Today, however, Opening Day sort of dribbles into existence, and the spiritual start of spring now belongs to the Masters golf tournament, where the azaleas and magnolias and dogwood bloom. "
Frank Deford
Today
Day
Baseball
" I think the best thing I've written is a story called 'The Boxer and the Blonde.' It's a piece about Billy Conn, the white would-be heavyweight champion of the world, who lived in Pittsburgh. "
Frank Deford
Story
Best
Champion
" On Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., there are statues of five Confederate luminaries and then, incongruously in this company, one of Arthur Ashe. "
Frank Deford
Five
Monument
VA
" The dollar is a winner. The euro is a tie. Get off the dime, Europe, and play to win. "
Frank Deford
Winner
Dollar
Off
" I think we have enough trouble finding community in this country, and sport does provide that. It is a mediocrisy, the greatest mediocrisy. If you're the best, it shows in sports. Nobody can say, 'Well, he's only there because of his connections,' or whatever. In that sense, I suppose it upholds democracy and the best in us. "
Frank Deford
Community
You
Best
" You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches. "
Frank Deford
Tell
You
Need
" Quickness and momentum. You take the whole last generation of sports, listening to them, even reading about them, watching the games, analyzing them, arguing about them, instant-replaying them, second-guessing them, and all you'll distill from them is quickness and momentum. "
Frank Deford
Sports
Reading
Listening
" Nowadays, of course, flesh peddlers and scouting services identify the best athletes when they are still in junior high. Prospects are not allowed to sneak up on us. "
Frank Deford
High
Best
Still
" I never saw war, so that is still my vision of manhood: Unitas standing courageously in the pocket, his left arm flung out in a diagonal to the upper deck, his right cocked for the business of passing, down amidst the mortals. Lock and load. "
Frank Deford
Vision
Right
Down
" To write long pieces - or not even long pieces - to write stuff like the columns of Red Smith and people like that - they're different then what it is today. Everything today is based on x's and o's. Inside baseball, it's all, 'Who's gonna win?' or you're comparing things - it's not as thoughtful as it used to be. "
Frank Deford
Win
Baseball
Long
" It was not that long ago when the accepted wisdom in football was that the running game had to be established - that was always the obligatory verb: established - before passes could become effective. My, we know how that has changed. Now the pass is established from the get-go, and running is an afterthought. "
Frank Deford
Wisdom
Now
Long
" The stories that are most unfamiliar, the ones that seem to come out of the blue about people that aren't well known, usually come from producers that have really done a lot of homework and looked around. Other stories come from the correspondents. "
Frank Deford
Stories
People
Homework
" I had gone to work for 'Newsweek', left 'Newsweek' and went to work for 'Vanity Fair,' and then went back to 'Newsweek'. I came back to 'SI' as a contract writer. "
Frank Deford
Fair
Gone
Vanity
" As it happens, Cumberland was on the verge of bankruptcy and had to give up football. But the villainous Heisman made it play a game that had been scheduled when Cumberland still had a team, or Heisman threatened to demand a $3,000 forfeiture fee that could well have put the school out of existence. "
Frank Deford
Game
Well
Team
" The Masters is not greedy. You wanna buy a Masters souvenir logo shirt? Sure, let's go over to the nearest Ralph Lauren boutique. Oops, you can only purchase Masters memorabilia at the Masters, this one week of the year. "
Frank Deford
Year
Go
Over
" I'll forever be grateful to NPR that they gave me such extraordinary freedom... It was 37 years of a fond relationship. "
Frank Deford
Me
Grateful
NPR
" If there ever was an 'America's team,' it would be itty-bitty, little Green Bay, stuck way up there somewhere, owned by the salt-of-the-Earth citizens themselves. "
Frank Deford
Way
Up
Green
" There were a lot of places, including Los Angeles, that didn't have major league baseball. There were other really large cities that had no major league teams, but at least they had college football. "
Frank Deford
Los Angeles
Baseball
College
" The Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, and Pistons are there today as sure as they were when what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Would you rather have a basketball team, or would you rather be Detroit? "
Frank Deford
Team
Today
Good
" Pete Rose may not make the Hall of Fame, but a statue of him is going to be erected outside the Cincinnati Reds ballpark. "
Frank Deford
Statue
Fame
Going
" In the summer of 1963, my second with 'Sports Illustrated,' Jerry Tax, the basketball editor, got the Celtics' Frank Ramsey, the NBA's first famous sixth man, to do a piece for the magazine revealing some of the devious little tricks of his trade. Things like surreptitiously holding an opponent's shorts - nickel-and-dime stuff. "
Frank Deford
Famous
Sports
Summer
" Several NBA teams got their best gates every season when they scheduled a doubleheader and booked the Globetrotters and their stooges for the opening game. "
Frank Deford
Got
Gates
Best
" I have survived so long because I've been blessed with talented and gracious colleagues and with a top brass who let me choose my topics every week and then allowed me to express opinions that were not always popular. Well, someone had to stand up to the yackety-yak soccer cult. "
Frank Deford
Blessed
Stand Up
Stand
" NPR allowed me to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture. "
Frank Deford
Treat
Tree
Sports
" Once again it is peaceful at Augusta National Golf Club, after some rather ugly stand-offs in recent years, when the club balked at changing its all-white, all-male membership tradition. African-Americans and female Americans are on the club manifest now along with other golf-Americans, and all is serene once again. "
Frank Deford
Ugly
Golf
Now