Reading…is a full-contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources.

It’s amazing how two thin pieces of clothing can hold such deep memories. Laughter, pain, victory, defeat, friendship, fatigue, elation… they’re all there, but only to the person who’s worn the uniform

You teach me baseball and I’ll teach you relativity. No, we must not. You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball.

Only one person can own any plate at a time. It belongs to the pitcher, or it belongs to the batter, Aiken, but not to both. You understand.

When we’re down and the momentum is stacked against us. Those are the moments when we find out what we’re made of. When we learn to trust and lean on each other.

The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: 1) A blind willingness to believe anything you’re told by the coaches, flacks, hustlers and other “official spokesmen” for the team-owners who provide the free booze...

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

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

Quarterbacks shouldn’t leave the pocket, because that’s where the money is. Every politician knows this.

My ballsack drives me nuts. Jogging has got to be the floppiest sport. Definitely not for lovers. Gentlemen prefer gymnastics.

If the clicker became useless in grown men’s hands, no games to watch, no highlights shown, ESPN left with only test patterns and re-runs of Rudy, wouldn’t the indignation level be a whole lot higher?...

I’m sorry he won’t talk to you. And I’m sorry that he keeps hurting you. I really am. I don’t know how to fix things between you two, but I think a place to start...

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...

If you’re not good at sports, that’s OK. Not everyone is. But you still need to be active. That’s what’s so great about Grandma’s class: No one’s going to get picked last.

The one thing that I discovered about European sports is that they’re really good with their feet. I had my choice of something like six kickers, … But to make a long story short, they...

After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head—for...

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

Life would be better if the Leafs would make the playoffs. Life would be perfect if they’d win the Stanley Cup.

Talent is extremely important. It’s like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there’s a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they...

The more you practice the better you’ll be, the harder you train the great in you they’ll see.

I think it’s wrong. It’s discriminatory. They’re penalizing schools that are clean. They can say what they want, but it’s been a football issue all along, and now the lesser sports are getting hammered for...

I was awarded ‘Most Aggressive Rider of the Day’, generally given to the most spectacular loser of the day.

Eighteen holes of match play will teach you more about your foe than 18 years of dealing with him across a desk.

Look, girls. It is important to all of us that we win this game, right? Well, when it comes to athletics, boys are simply better suited than girls. It’s a fact of nature that no...

In Texas, two things are cherished above all else- football and gossip.

I’ve never had an interest, but baseball looks abnormal.

In America, applause is won only by physical exertion.

Don’t let them drag you down by rumors just go with what you believe in.

Football is all about sentiment; if it weren’t then we’d all support Manchester United.

Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football, basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns.

There was no ‘I’ in team, but there was meat in team. And we were all dead meat.

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: “Why do I care if my high school’s team wins the football game? I don’t know anybody on the team, they have nothing...

Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.

Tennis taught me to take chances, to take life as it comes. To hit every ball that comes to me no matter how hard it looks, to give it my best shot.

Running isn’t a sport for pretty boys…It’s about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. Its the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It’s about throbbing...

I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel...

You either commit yourself as a professional racing driver that’s designed to win races or you come second or you come third or fifth and am not design to come third, fourth or fifth, I...

In the field of sports you are more or less accepted for what you do rather than what you are.

AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards...

I’m frozen in place as his eyes rake over me.

I didn’t cry when they buried my father – I wouldn’t let myself. I didn’t cry when they buried my sister. On Thursday night, with my family asleep upstairs, my eyes filled as Agassi and...

Revolution is a spectators sport. The majority will sit in the stands and watch the factions fight. At the end they will choose side with the team that is winning.

And yet, winning is like a welcome drink going down your throat, like a beautiful embrace. It is brilliant while it lasts but it isn’t forever. The high eventually melts away and the journey of...

There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.

I haven’t celebrated coming in No. 2 too many times.

Boxing has become America’s tragic theater.

De La Salle hung on for the 28-21 victory. Afterward, Ladouceur stood before his exhausted team. It was by far the biggest victory in school history at the time, but the coach noticed that several...

There’s something about sports. You can be setting fire to cats and burying them in your backyard, but as long as you’re playing team sports, people think you’re okay.

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.