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" I do honestly believe that, in the 21st century, sport is the most significant cultural element in this imperfect world. It calls for serious attention. "

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" We start 2016 with a command: that the subject of Pete Rose and the Hall of Fame is over, finis, kaput forever and ever. As sure as we will no longer discuss whether Lindsey Graham or George Pataki can be president. "

" Dan Rather pulling on a sweater and thereby winning a whole new chunk of the populace: That's television. President Reagan's press conferences: That's television. Keith Jackson is television. So are Kermit the Frog, instant replay, and the Fiesta Bowl. "

" I've been delivering these little homilies since 1980 - that's 37 years - and altogether, NPR statisticians tell me, my bloviation total is 1,656 commentaries - and I trust you've hung onto every word. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" To compare writing an article for 'Sports Illustrated' to doing a piece for 'Real Sports', the article, it was all me. You know, I'm out there by myself with my pad and pencil. 'Real Sports,' I've got a producer, an assistant producer, and cameramen. It's an individual game versus a team game. "

" Thank you for listening. Thank you for abiding me. And now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I bid you goodbye and take my leave. "

" All sorts of famous sports people have been suspended for extended periods. "

" Johnny U was an American original, a piece of work like none other, excepting maybe Paul Bunyan and Horatio Alger. "

" 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. "

" Nothing made me happier than to hear from literally hundreds of listeners who would tell me how much the commentaries revealed about a subject they otherwise had never cared much for. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm a writer. I'm moonlighting on television. I never made any pretensions to that. As much as I like being on 'Real Sports,' I have been a writer since I was a little boy, and that's still my first love. "

" 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. "

" It's almost impossible to explain how little the NBA amounted to when I started covering it in 1963. It wasn't fair to call it bush, although everybody did. It was simply small - only nine teams - and insignificant. "

" 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. "

" I think the four major leagues ought to set up a joint commission - say, of retired judges - to rule on athletes who are accused of doing bad things away from the game. Then each league would retain its independence in determining what penalties their players should get for infractions committed within the sport. "

" 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. "

" Majesty is a thing of beauty to behold, whatever the particular enterprise. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches. "

" Every now and then, I get a free ticket from someone, and I look at the price, and it says $800, and I'm thinking, 'A thousand dollars to see,' I said, 'There's no ballgame in the world worth that kind of money,' and yet the attendance for sports is more than it ever has been. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Bill Russell was the pivot on which the whole sport turned. "

" NPR allowed me to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture. "

" Since too few Americans go to the polls, I say what this country needs is a bobblehead election, where voters will get free bobblehead dolls of their choice when they show up and vote for president. "