As a ballplayer, (Dizzy) Dean was a natural phenomenon, like the Grand Canyon or the Great Barrier Reef. Nobody ever taught him baseball and he never had to learn. He was just doing what came naturally when a scout named Don Curtis discovered him on a Texas sandlot and gave him his first contract.

It is well known that the older a man grows, the faster he could run as a boy.

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention.

Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.

Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection.

Unlike the normal pattern, I know I have grown more liberal as I've grown older. I have become more convinced that there is room for improvement in the world.

I think it's the real world. The people we're writing about in professional sports, they're suffering and living and dying and loving and trying to make their way through life just as the brick layers and politicians are.