Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Hard as it is to believe, there were three magazines fighting over me. 'Newsweek' wanted to keep me, 'ESPN The Magazine' was coming into existence and wanted me, and 'SI' wanted to bring me back. Isn't that amazing? I had a choice, like a free agent. "

Related Quotes:

" The NBA Schedule was made up by one man, Eddie Gottlieb, who had owned the Philadelphia Warriors. Eddie had a Buddha-like body and a crinkly smile, and because he had also been an owner in baseball's old Negro leagues, he was known as the Mogul. "

Frank Deford

Man

Baseball

Body

" Football teams represent cities and colleges and schools. The people have built great stadiums, and the game is culturally intertwined with our calendar. We don't go back to college for the college. We go back for a football game, and, yes, we even call that 'homecoming.' "

" Does each of us need to suffer agony to understand how brutal our gridiron entertainment is? Surely, seeing is believing enough. So, what is football doing to us as a people? How do we explain an America that alone in the world so loves this savage sport? "

" Remember when John Roberts was seeking confirmation of the Supreme Court, and he said judges should be just like umpires, just calling balls and strikes? Well, turnabout is fair play. What baseball needs behind the plate are umpires like those judges who are called strict constructionists, which means you follow subtle law to the letter. "

" If I'd grown up in Sao Paulo, I'm sure I would've been a great soccer fan. "

" It's still the tradition for various football powerhouses to pay guarantees to schools with cream-puff teams to come on over to our place and submit to massacre. "

" 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. "

" You're writing about young, vibrant people; there are wins and losses. In other words, it's great drama. "

" 'SI' came to me and said, 'We want you to do a story on Russell as the greatest team player,' which I certainly agreed with. "

" 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. "

" The only thing we know for sure about superiority in sports in the United States of America in the 20th century is that Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics teams he led stand alone as the ultimate winners. "

" She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. "

" You have to do what the market requires of you... You either keep swimming, or you sink. "

" There are some books that get huge numbers of positive reviews, but reading them satiates people. They say, 'I've read enough now'. "

" 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. "

" Before the Colts arrived in 1947, the best athlete in town was a woman duckpin bowler named Toots Barger. Football? The biggest games in Baltimore had been when Johns Hopkins took on Susquehanna or Franklin & Marshall at homecoming. "

" Because I lost a daughter, eight years old, to cystic fibrosis, I think that anytime that I'm dealing with people who, like Andrea Yeager, are trying to help those sick children, I identify very much with them. "

" 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. "

" What we accepted as great art - whether the book, the script, the painting, the symphony - is that which could be saved and savored. But the performances of the athletic artists who ran and jumped and wrestled were gone with the wind. "

" I remember, when I was growing up in Baltimore, we'd get on a streetcar and go down to see the Orioles, and for a couple of bucks, you could get a pretty good seat. Kids can't do that anymore. So I think that changes the whole nature of sports. "

" 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. "

" More and more teams are, in the vernacular, 'going small,' with only one big man down deep. Good grief, the position of power forward is in the process of going the way of short shorts. "

" It's fascinating, isn't it, that whereas so many of our statues have been of military leaders, now it may well be sports stars who are the ones more likely to be so honored. "

Frank Deford

Military

Now

" Statues of sports stars are all the rage - especially in baseball. "

" 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. "

" It costs a lot of money to deliver newsprint. It's so much easier to do it through the air, Internet, radio, television. The second easiest thing is to do it through the mail. But when you have to take something heavy and put it on someone's doorstep, that costs a lot of money. "

" I think there are more good sportswriters doing more good sportswriting than ever before. But I also believe that the one thing that's largely gone out is what made sport such fertile literary territory - the characters, the tales, the humor, the pain, what Hollywood calls 'the arc.' "

" Yes, the Masters is too stylish to be an American icon. It's as out of character for Uncle Sam as a McDonald's is for France. "

" By coincidence, this particular tiny show on earth that consists entirely of me talking about sports on NPR is also folding its tent flaps this May of 2017. Yes, this is my swansong, my farewell, my last hurrah. Adieu, adios, arrivederci, auf wiedersehen. "

Frank Deford

Earth

Sports

" Sport is an art: it has incredible appeal everywhere on this earth, and it fills so many human hearts with passion that it's impossible to dismiss. "