Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Quitting has always been the worst possible thing you can do in sports. It's downright un-American. "

Related Quotes:

" Anyone who thinks sports are ruled by athletes need only think of American sports' most enduring tradition: Immediately after a championship, as the champagne sprays and the confetti falls, the trophy is passed not to the team captain but most often to the team owner, handed to him by his highest-ranking employee, the league commissioner. "

" After the abrupt death of my mother, Jane, on Sept. 5, 1991, of a disease called amyloidosis, my dad took up golf at 57. He and my mother had always played tennis - a couples' game of mixed doubles and tennis bracelets and Love-Love. But in mourning, Dad turned Job-like to golf, a game of frustration and golf widows and solitary hours on the range. "

" If you've never quit anything, you really ought to try. And if at first you don't succeed, try again. "

" Because I'm a bald, dim-witted writer, people think I couldn't possibly be her husband, so they occasionally confuse me for someone more glamorous. At O'Hare airport, a man asked if he could take Rebecca's photo. When I reflexively stepped away, he said, 'No, no, no. I want your picture too, Andre Agassi.' "

" Solitary pursuits like playing video games and skateboarding can't compete with the thrill of mobbing a teammate as he scores the winning run - nor do they end with a postgame trip to Dairy Queen. "

" What's certain is that ranking powerful people is inherently self-defeating. For starters, true potentates know who they are without being told, and they have no need to announce it. "

" I spent a year slaving over a hot rollergrill in a Metrodome concession stand and watched the World Series there - and a Super Bowl and a Final Four. I can honestly say - regardless of outcome - that I left every game floating on air. "

" At its root, 'quit' means 'to set free' - think of an acquittal in a court of law - and to quit is often to be liberated. "

" Football, played at its highest level, is catastrophic. Even relatively minor afflictions are grotesque and bookworthy. "

" When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story. "

" In our age of over-sharing, we know everything about everyone else, robbing them of mystery and thus of power. "

" All kingdoms look small through an airplane window - little dominions built on quicksand. But looking up from the ground, where most of us stand, they're rather impressive. "

" In 1984, as a college freshman, I spent a fall weekend at a friend's house in suburban Chicago. His father worked for Beatrice Foods, a sponsor of the Chicago Marathon, and we watched that race from the finish line as a Welshman named Steve Jones set a new world marathon record. I was bewitched by the race and, especially, the clock. "

" I'm a recovering jersey wearer who can't bear to get rid of the blaze-orange Knicks warmup top that makes me look like James Carville on a highway repair crew. "

" Growing up in Bloomington, Minn., I loved the ritual of dressing for Little League - in white socks, blue stirrups, belted pants, a double-knit jersey, and the cap I'd hold over my face to screen out mosquitoes in right field. "

" I can't putt. The reasons are infinite. When lining up a putt, I can't remember if the ball always breaks to the ocean or to the valley or away from Pinnacle Peak. And because I took up the game in Minnesota, in what is often called Middle America, I also grew up asking, 'To which ocean does it break?' "

" The first words Rebecca Lobo ever spoke to me when we met in a Manhattan bar in 2001 were, 'Aren't you the guy who just mocked women's basketball in 'Sports Illustrated'?' I blushed, broke out in a flop sweat and said, 'Yes.' "

" Everything gleamed or glinted on TV in the '70s, from the 'flavor crystals' in Folgers coffee to the yellow dentures dipped in Polident and instantly restored to pristine, piano-key whiteness. "

" The Metrodome was built for football. Fans seated down the third-base line at a baseball game faced centerfield, so that they had to turn and look over their right shoulders to see home plate. "

" A great presidential address - Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Truman's Farewell Address, Kennedy's Inaugural Address - has the power to inspire. "

" The real driver of my golf game is family. The family that plays together stays together, at least literally so. "

" 'Hard Knocks' seems to have done for the self-serious NFL what the witch did for Rapunzel: persuaded it, somehow, to let its hair down. "

" History is not just written by the winners; it's written about them. "

" I've been to all seven continents on assignment for 'SI.' "

" There is something inherently foolish in soldiering on when there is no hope of payoff. "

" Sports and fashion move so fast that I can't possibly keep my ear to the ground. For one thing, my ear trumpet gets in the way. "

" Grafted onto street clothes and removed from the field of play, jerseys don't even flatter men in their physical prime. Witness any baseball player wearing a uniform top over dress shirt and slacks at a press conference podium. "

" I remember seeing Letterman do stand-up on 'The Tonight Show.' Or, it's probably more accurate to say, I remember hearing him do stand-up, because the Carson show existed mainly as sound leaking under my bedroom door at night. I'd hear Johnny telling jokes and my dad laughing at them. "

" Broadcasters calling a big game are often reminded to let the action breathe. A great moment of a televised game doesn't need any narration, which is why the announcers - the good ones, anyway - shut up at the celebration and let the pictures do the talking. "

" Swish: A made basket. Swoosh: The Nike logo. Swish-swoosh, swish-swoosh, swish-swoosh: A thousand coaches in nylon tracksuits, walking through hotel lobbies at the Final Four. "