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" 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
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" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Amazing
Believe
Fighting
" She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. "
Frank Deford
Memory
She
Eyes
" 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
" 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'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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The strike zone should be what the rule book says it is and not a personal idiosyncrasy. "
Frank Deford
Rule
Strike
Personal
" 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
" You have to do what the market requires of you... You either keep swimming, or you sink. "
Frank Deford
Keep
Swimming
You
" If I'd grown up in Sao Paulo, I'm sure I would've been a great soccer fan. "
Frank Deford
Been
Fan
Great
" 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
" 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
" The dollar is a winner. The euro is a tie. Get off the dime, Europe, and play to win. "
Frank Deford
Winner
Dollar
Off
" 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
" 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 do honestly believe that, in the 21st century, sport is the most significant cultural element in this imperfect world. It calls for serious attention. "
Frank Deford
Most
Attention
World
" First and foremost, Howard Cosell is sports. There are all these people, these fans, who claim that when Cosell does a game on television, they turn off the sound on the TV and listen to the radio broadcast. Oh, sure. You probably know critics in your neighborhood who vow the same thing. Well, too bad for them. "
Frank Deford
Game
Know
You
" We exalted that Michael Phelps-consecrated water. Rose petals were strewn in Peyton Manning's path when he retired. But hey, that's natural. As we should, we admire those in any craft, no less so in sports, who appear out of nowhere to achieve remarkable feats. "
Frank Deford
Water
Rose
Path
" Bill Russell was the pivot on which the whole sport turned. "
Frank Deford
Which
Whole
Bill
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" When I was covering games, and this is back in the '60s, you'd go into the manager's office. I can still visualize Earl Weaver from the Baltimore Orioles. I can just see Earl now in his underwear... with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, holding court. And that was the way it was done then. "
Frank Deford
Manager
I Can
Beer
" All sorts of famous sports people have been suspended for extended periods. "
Frank Deford
Been
People
Sports
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Law
Remember
Supreme Court