Baseball is to our everyday experience what poetry often is to common speech — a slightly elevated and concentrated form.

Football is played best full of adrenaline and anger. Moderation seldom finds a place. Almost every act of baseball is a blending of effort and control; too much of either is fatal.

An almost inexorable baseball law: A Red Sox ship with a single leak will always find a way to sink No team is worshipped with such a perverse sense of fatality.

Of the big four, the PGA is the most fair and the least fun. Basically, it's just the US Open set up by nice, rather than nasty, fellows.

A good umpire, like a good FBI agent, is never noticed if he is doing his job.

Baseball is really two sports -- the summer game and the autumn game. One is the leisurely pastime of our national mythology. The other is not so gentle.

Some things cannont possibly happen, because they are both too improbable and too perfect. The U.S. hockey team cannot beat the Russians in the 1980 Olympics. Jack Nicklaus cannot shoot 65 to win the Masters at age forty-six. Nothing else comes immediately to mind.