“[B]aseball is diffracted by the town and ballpark where it is played... Does baseball, like a liquid, take the shape of its container?”

“More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.”

“The crowd and its team had finally understood that in games, as in many things, the ending, the final score, is only part of what matters. The process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count too.”

“What most people want to keep under wraps (from reporters) is trivial: petty jealousies, professional feuds, etc. By contrast, most of the things they have thought about most seriously all their lives they are perfectly winning to uncover.”

“Familiarity, and a few dozen cheap flyballs off the Monster, breed contempt.”

“You can say, 'Well, if they tore down Fenway Park, we can build a new one.' But you wouldn’t build it right. It’s better to make the accommodations, to save the old ballparks. If Fenway Park needs sky boxes to bring in the poverty-stricken owners enough money to save the stadium before they tear it down and move it someplace else, then build the damn sky boxes. If Wrigley Field needs lights to survive, put up the damn lights.... Make the damn structural improvements, but save the ballpark because when you try to rebuild a cathedral five hundred years too late, it doesn’t come out the same.”

“If it rained knowledge, I'd hold out my hand; but I would not give myself the trouble to go in quest of it.”