Our stories about our own lives are a form of fiction, I began to see and become more insistent as we grow older, even as we try to make them come out in some other way.

Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.

Friends of mine said later that they had been riveted by a postgame television close-up of Wade Boggs, sitting alone in the dugout with tears streaming down his face …. I suppose we should all try to find something better or worse to shed tears for than a game, no matter how hard it has been played, but perhaps it is not such a bad thing to see that men can cry at all.

The best defense against partisanship is expertise.

I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.

The press box at Wrigley Field in Chicago is an extended narrow shed, two rows deep, that is precariously bolted to the iron rafters just underneath the park's second deck. To gain access, one must climb a steeply angled ramp and clamber down a little starboard companionway, guarded at its foot by a uniformed minion and then proceed giddily along a catwalk that hangs directly above the tiered, circling rows of seats and spectators behind home plate.

Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time.