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

It was an ideal day for football - too cold for the spectators and too cold for the players.

I like to get where the cabbage is cooking and catch the scents.

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.

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

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

In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing heroes, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them--Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams.