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" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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
" Statues of sports stars are all the rage - especially in baseball. "
Frank Deford
Baseball
Stars
Sports
" 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
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Play
City
People
" 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
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Thank You
Children
Goodbye
" 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
" 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
" 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
" All sorts of famous sports people have been suspended for extended periods. "
Frank Deford
Been
People
Sports
" I think, in accepting the amount of money that athletes make, I think that fans accept that now. It's the nature of the beast; that's the way it is, so they understand it. All, I think, fans have changed - because the price of tickets has gone up so much - that they feel a certain sense of entitlement when they go to a game. "
Frank Deford
Money
Nature
Think
" 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. "
Frank Deford
Community
You
Best
" 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
" If I'd grown up in Sao Paulo, I'm sure I would've been a great soccer fan. "
Frank Deford
Been
Fan
Great
" 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? "
Frank Deford
World
Alone
Football
" The hardest thing in the world is to write something critical about someone and then show up the next day in the locker room. I mean, that is not fun, and that takes an awful lot of guts. And I never enjoyed that. "
Frank Deford
Someone
Never
Mean
" 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
" 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
Me
Sports
" NPR allowed me to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture. "
Frank Deford
Treat
Tree
Sports
" You have to do what the market requires of you... You either keep swimming, or you sink. "
Frank Deford
Keep
Swimming
You
" I remember one time I wrote something very, very critical about Wilt Chamberlain. The next time I saw him - and Wilt was not a man, as huge as he was - he was not a man of confrontation. And we were in the Lakers locker room. And he sent Jerry West over, and he said, 'Frank, Wilt would like you to leave.' "
Frank Deford
Said
Time
You
" People often lump radio and television together because they are both broadcast mediums. But radio, anyway, and the radio I do for NPR, is much closer to writing than it is to television. "
Frank Deford
People
Together
Writing
" I don't think there are many kids who sit around and want to be actors. I don't think there are many kids who want to sit around and want to be senators. But so many of us want to be athletes, so we're envious of them, and we put them up on that pedestal. "
Frank Deford
Want
Senators
Us
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Despite the fact that every sport this side of badminton worries about concussions that result in brain damage, CTE, the National Hockey League refuses to accept the overwhelming medical science. Good grief - the NHL still permits fights. "
Frank Deford
Science
Brain
Good
" 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