The sport to which I owe so much has undergone profound changes, but it's still baseball. Kids still imitate their heroes on playgrounds. Fans still ruin expensive suits going after foul balls that cost five dollars. Hitting streaks still make the network news and hot dogs still taste better at the ballpark than at home.

The field was even greener than my boy's mind had pictured it. In later years, friends of ours visited Ireland and said the grass there was plenty green all right, but that not even the Emerald Isle itself was as green as the grass that grew in Ebbets Field.

You know you're pitching well when the batters look as bad as you do at the plate.

What a player does best, he should practice least. Practice is for problems.

We wept, Brooklyn was a lovely place to hit. If you got a ball in the air, you had a chance to get it out. When they tore down Ebbets Field, they tore down a little piece of me.

My high salary for one season was forty-six thousand dollars and a Cadillac.

Not even the Emerald Isle itself was as green as the grass that grew in Ebbets Field.