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" Years ago, children helped my brother search for his lost ball at Jackson Park Golf Course in Chicago - and even offered to sell it back to him on the next tee. That entrepreneurial spirit, on the site of the 1893 World's Fair - which introduced Cracker Jacks to the United States - exemplifies America, to say nothing of American public golf. "

Steve Rushin

America

Brother

World

Steve Rushin

Shoes

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

" The most enduring Top 10 ever written wasn't written at all, but chiseled onto stone tablets and conveyed down Mount Sinai by Moses, who introduced to the world not just a set of Biblical precepts but also a new format for starting arguments: the list of 10 things. "

" As a kid, I always had my nose buried in the side of a cereal box. "

" In the Gospels, we are reminded, 'The very hairs of your head are all numbered.' And your numbered hairs, like your numbered days, recede daily. "

" Humans had run barefoot for millennia, and some still preferred doing so in the modern Stone Age of the mid-20th century, when the handful of people running for exercise often wore whatever they happened to have on at the moment of inspiration. "

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

Steve Rushin

Road

Part

" Though we endow them with human features - heads, faces, heels, toes - golf clubs are profoundly inhuman tools. "

" In any other context, 'icing' is a great and exciting word: The proverbial icing on the cake, for instance, is a bonus - a wonderful thing on top of another wonderful thing. But in hockey, icing merely results in the referee's raising his right hand, as if swearing an oath to the deity of downtime. "

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

" The only thing wider than my family's mean streak is my family's cheap streak. "

" 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. "

" In our house, the name for all athletic shoes - any that weren't dress or 'church' shoes - was 'tennis shoes,' or 'tennies.' "

" On its surface, the HBO documentary series 'Hard Knocks,' about the New York Jets' training camp, resembles another HBO series, 'The Sopranos.' Both star the stout patriarch of a New Jersey 'family' preoccupied with food, intimidation, and florid profanity. "

" 'Uff da,' for the unenlightened, is Norwegian for 'oy vey' and is a common expression in Minnesotese. "

" Golf balls are sweet: dimpled and sometimes even smiling. "

" 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. "

" Putting is so difficult, so universally vexing, that the best the pros can do is tell us how to miss. 'Miss it on the pro side,' they say, meaning miss it above the hole. I can't even do that consistently. I miss it on the pro side. I miss it on the amateur side. I miss it on both sides of the clown's mouth. "

" I can't stand another night in a hotel. Just being away. You miss the kids. "

" My first interview at 'SI,' I sat in silence next to Guy LaFleur for five minutes on the New York Rangers team bus until he finally broke the ice. Those early interviews, every one of them was like a terrible first date. "

" Sam Snead had perhaps the most stylish solution to the balding golfer: A snappy fedora that became his signature style, so much so that many never knew he was tonsorially bereft. "

" Compassion and empathy are anathema to sports. "

" Trying to keep up is the ultimate act of uncoolness. And so I still retrieve not one but two daily newspapers from the driveway. "

Steve Rushin

Daily

Keep

" I'd watch the news with my dad, and he'd quietly mock the anchors. An anchorman might say, 'Police are searching for...' and my dad would say in the anchorman's voice, 'the man who gave me this haircut.' This was in the real Ron Burgundy '70s. And I would laugh and start doing it myself. "

Steve Rushin

Myself

Voice

" I turned 7 in 1973 and remember Bobby Riggs arriving at the Astrodome on a chariot pulled by showgirls before his 'battle of the sexes' tennis match against Billie Jean King. "

" I had started writing for 'Sports Illustrated,' which was really my dream job growing up. But the writing probably read like I was auditioning to write for 'Letterman' or '70s-era Carson. "

" I'm a product of the 1970s. "

Steve Rushin

Product

1970s

" Hurricane Irene's advance coverage was heavy on worst-case scenarios. Thank goodness they didn't pan out. "

" Every era has its cartoon rich guys, but most of them are actual cartoons - Daddy Warbucks, Scrooge McDuck, C. Montgomery Burns. "

" Golf tough guys - like movie tough guys - are almost always inscrutable, just beyond our full understanding. "

Steve Rushin

Understanding

Tough