You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.

My occupation is assistant storyteller. It is not "icon."

Baseball was a metaphor for America, both here and in terms of how it was understood by the rest of the world.

You get a sense of reference there. You feel part of something that's got order and balance and harmony to it. All the distraction and noise, all the confusion of misplaced, misdirected energy just don't happen there.

I wanted to be a forest ranger or a coal man. At a very early age, I knew I didn't want to do what my dad did, which was work in an office.

I never followed baseball very much. As a kid, I never followed sports.

[Jimmy] Breslin's [write] really great book on Branch Rickey. And Branch Rickey himself wrote quite a lot. There's some film and kinescope from television.