#ball

Opening day. All you have to do is say the words and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air out, the light pour in. In baseball, no other day is so pure with possibility. No scores yet, no losses, no blame or disappointment. No hangover, at least until the game's over. ↗

— Mary Schmich

#baseball #blame #day #disappointment #feel

That's what happens when you're thirty-seven years old: you do the things you always did but the result is somehow different. ↗

— Michael Lewis

#baseball #moneyball #age

When McGwire started the home run mania, attendance came back. The owners understood that the sudden spike in homers wasn't accidental. All baseball knew it. But baseball is run on money, and home runs meant money. Baseball turned a blind eye. ↗

— Gary Sheffield

#attendance #back #baseball #blind #blind eye

In spring training prior to his 1995 rookie season, Chipper was already so confident in who he was as a player that he famously deadpanned to veteran slugger Fred McGriff, after the Crime Dog grounded into an inning-ending double play, these two words: “Rally killer.” His confidence carried over to the field, just as it had since he began playing as a kid—he batted .265, and he led all rookies with 23 home runs, 87 runs, and 86 RBIs. Hideo Nomo was Rookie of the Year for the Dodgers, but Chipper and the Braves were World Champions. ↗

— Tucker Elliot

#baseball #chipper-jones #home

Things that aren't important, that have nothing to do with winning and losing, don't have to be a rule. ↗

— Peter Richmond

#football #motivation #sports #death

Almost without exception, they are men who dreamed of athletic heroism as children; becoming umpires was their compromise with their own lack of talent. ↗

— Thomas Boswell

#umpires #dreams

no doubt, the early traumatic shocks that young hardy brown experienced had a permanent impact on his future development and capacity to deal with the real world.... the years with the mighty mites within the orphanage setting, a term that we seldom see in modern society, provided him with a safe and non-threatening enclave with which to develop. certainly, the competitive, action-oriented game of football, as meshed with positive team experiences, added to the supportive culture. ↗

— Jim Dent

#experience

Baseball is to our everyday experience what poetry often is to common speech — a slightly elevated and concentrated form. ↗

— Thomas Boswell

#concentration #life #poetry #speech #experience

He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#cricket #description #game #play #life

I have a 12:34 representational time dance. I do it at 3:33 every other Tuesday (twice a day). If you’d like to participate in my choreographed dance routine, bring a football helmet and a half empty can of tuna (keeps the stray cats away, because I perform in a gritty, grimy downtown alley).
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#cats #choreography #dance #dancing #day