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" 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. "

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" I think the best thing I've written is a story called 'The Boxer and the Blonde.' It's a piece about Billy Conn, the white would-be heavyweight champion of the world, who lived in Pittsburgh. "

Frank Deford

Story

Best

Champion

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

" The strike zone should be what the rule book says it is and not a personal idiosyncrasy. "

" 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. "

Frank Deford

Way

Green

" 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. "

" I think I would die if I couldn't get to the typewriter every day. I really need that. "

" You have to do what the market requires of you... You either keep swimming, or you sink. "

" 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

" At all levels - with men and women - the 3-point shot has utterly transformed the way the game is played. More and more, the players are spread out, looking to pop behind the 3-point arc. "

Frank Deford

Men

Way

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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. "

" 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. "

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

Frank Deford

Maybe

Original

" 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. "

" Sport is an art: it has incredible appeal everywhere on this earth, and it fills so many human hearts with passion that it's impossible to dismiss. "

" You're writing about young, vibrant people; there are wins and losses. In other words, it's great drama. "

" Pete Rose may not make the Hall of Fame, but a statue of him is going to be erected outside the Cincinnati Reds ballpark. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If I'd grown up in Sao Paulo, I'm sure I would've been a great soccer fan. "

" 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. "

" It's fascinating, isn't it, that whereas so many of our statues have been of military leaders, now it may well be sports stars who are the ones more likely to be so honored. "

Frank Deford

Military

Now

" Once again it is peaceful at Augusta National Golf Club, after some rather ugly stand-offs in recent years, when the club balked at changing its all-white, all-male membership tradition. African-Americans and female Americans are on the club manifest now along with other golf-Americans, and all is serene once again. "

" 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. "