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" NPR allowed me to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture. "
Frank Deford
Treat
Tree
Sports
Related Quotes:
" All sorts of famous sports people have been suspended for extended periods. "
Frank Deford
Been
People
Sports
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Nothing
Tell
Never
" You can stand at a bar and scream all you want about who was the greatest athlete and which was the greatest sports dynasty, and you can shout out your precious statistics, and maybe you're right, and maybe the red-faced guy down the bar - the one with the foam on his beer and the fancy computer rankings - is right, but nobody really knows. "
Frank Deford
Beer
Statistics
Stand
" 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
" In the television era, the second week of the Olympics is reserved for what is considered the marquee event: track and field. "
Frank Deford
Field
Television
Track
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Winning
Sweater
New
" 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
" If you're a father of a child who dies, it's an experience that never leaves you. It scars you forever and ever and ever. And so when I do any kind of story with somebody who's in the same position as my daughter was, there's no question that something comes out of me and embraces that story in a way that only a father who lost a child could. "
Frank Deford
Child
Me
Experience
" I get very envious of my general news colleagues who are always being handed sexy new stuff like global warming, China, and Donald Trump, while my sports colleagues and I must be eternally satisfied with the same old home-court advantage, soccer, and momentum. "
Frank Deford
Soccer
Colleagues
News
" 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
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Deep
Man
Power
" While swimming was always a spotlight sport, I was, if you will, sort of present at the creation when gymnastics became the new star lead-off hitter. "
Frank Deford
You
Swimming
Always
" ESPN is all meat and potatoes. It's pretty much scouting reports. There isn't a great deal of humor, and when there is, it's pretty sophomoric. "
Frank Deford
Humor
Potatoes
Meat
" 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
" That's the greatest compliment I can get: when somebody from Key West says, 'Hey, Bubba.' That means I'm in! "
Frank Deford
Key
West
I Can
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Growing Up
Sports
Nature
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Daughter
Children
Think
" 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
" It's interesting too, that the coach of that Georgia Tech team who led his valiant warriors to those 222 points was none other than John Heisman. Yes, he whom the Heisman trophy is named for, an award that honors that college player who best exemplifies excellence and integrity. "
Frank Deford
Award
Integrity
Team
" You have to do what the market requires of you... You either keep swimming, or you sink. "
Frank Deford
Keep
Swimming
You
" The wonderful thing about delivering sports commentary on NPR was that because it has such a broad audience, I was able to reach people who otherwise had little or no interest in sport - especially as an important part of our human culture. "
Frank Deford
Important
Culture
People
" 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.' "
Frank Deford
Humor
Doing
Believe
" 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
" Johnny U was an American original, a piece of work like none other, excepting maybe Paul Bunyan and Horatio Alger. "
Frank Deford
Like
Maybe
Original
" 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
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Homecoming
Woman
Best
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Love
Television
Sports
" There are some books that get huge numbers of positive reviews, but reading them satiates people. They say, 'I've read enough now'. "
Frank Deford
Reading
Say
Positive