“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“[Dr. Johnson thought that] Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

“Don’t you know? – the best love stories are always the most tragic ones.”