#ball

A baseball manager is a necessary evil. ↗

— Sparky Anderson

#evil #manager #necessary #necessary evil

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things -- like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.) I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels. Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! ↗

— Terri Windling

#fairy-tales #folk-ballads #folklore #influences #pre-raphaelite

She was so warm, her drenched clothes had almost dried. Her eyes were rolled back in her head. She started muttering, and I could’ve sworn she said, “Dung balls. Time to roll the dung balls.” It might’ve been funny—except for the fact that she was dying. “That’s Khepri talking,” Setne explained. “He’s the divine dung beetle, rolling the sun across the sky.” I didn’t want to process that—the idea that the girl I liked had been possessed by a dung beetle and was now having dreams about pushing a giant sphere of flaming poo across the sky. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#carter-kane #dung #dreams

You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. ↗

— Jim Bouton

#life

If T. S. Eliot had stayed in St Louis, he would never have held that April was the cruelest month. Well, unless he was a Browns fan. At this moment, in the ragged middle of February, it begins: beneath the snow, roots quicken. In the Deep South, already trees begin to bud. And all over the land – indeed, all over the world, in Japan, in the Caribbean, in Australia – a certain class of mammal, fubsy, amiable, sweet-natured, begins to twitch and wake from hibernation: the baseball fan. Is it the lengthening of the days? Is it some subtle signal that causes them to begin to emerge from a stupor only lightly disturbed by meetings of the Hot Stove League? Naw. It is the magic phrase, ‘pitchers and catchers to report…. ↗

— Markham Shaw Pyle

#nature

The Yankees' Facebook page was hacked. The hacker was immediately purchased and signed to a 5 year contract with the Yankees. ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#facebook #hacking #humour #new-york-yankees #sport

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet. ↗

— Christian Lacroix

#child #going #i #loved #opera

Because a football game is just sixty minutes, but I'm training six, seven hours in every day. So, going for sixty minutes becomes easy. More importantly, I think that your muscles mature and can move in all different directions. ↗

— Ray Lewis

#because #becomes #day #different #different directions

There are a lot of people who influenced me, nurtured me, helped me along the way. But I can just recall looking back, the first time I got my baseball glove. Put it on the wrong hand, all those kind of things. ↗

— Dave Winfield

#back #baseball #first #first time #glove

You are well aware that it is not numbers or strength that bring the victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them. I have noticed this point too, my friends, that in soldiering the people whose one aim is to keep alive usually find a wretched and dishonorable death, while the people who, realizing that death is the common lot of all men, make it their endeavour to die with honour, somehow seem more often to reach old age and to have a happier life when they are alive. These are facts which you too should realize (our situation demands it) and should show that you yourselves are brave men and should call on the rest to do likewise. ↗

— Xenophon

#bravery #cowardive #death #honor #life