sports

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.

Everything you need is already inside.

I've never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately so is losing.

If a team intimidate you physically and you let them, they've won.

Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.

Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?

You don't just want to beat a team. You want to leave a lasting impression in their minds so they never want to see your face again.

Outcasts may grow up to be novelists and filmmakers and computer tycoons, but they will never be the athletic ruling class.

wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?'As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs.

Any game becomes important when you know and love the players.

My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Cassidy's heart tried to leap out through his taught skin and hop into his wet hands. But outwardly it was all very calm, very serene, just as always, and it seemed to last a tiny forever, just like that, a snapshot of them all on the curved parabola of a starting line, eight giant hearts attached to eight pairs of bellows-like lungs mounted on eight pairs of supercharged stilts. They were poised on the edge of some howling vortex they had run 10,000 miles to get to. Now they had to run one more

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.

i could never be a sports writer, unless my assignment was to write 'sports sports sports sports sports' for three pages

The building of publicly funded stadiums has become a substitue for anything resembling an urban policy.