"Defeat, particularly dramatic defeat, confirms our worst impression of ourselves."

“I never heard a thrown ball make that sound before. The ball seemed to accelerate as it came close; an accelerating, impossibly fast pitch that made the noises of hornets and snakes.”

“No game is as verbal as baseball; baseball spreads twenty minutes of action across three hours of a day.”

“At a point of life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams.”

“Baseball skill relates inversely to age. The older a man gets, the better a ball player he was when young, according to the watery eye of memory.”

“The gracious mistress turned bitch in summer heat.”

“In the intimacy of Ebbets Field it was a short trip from the grandstand to the fantasy you were in the game.”