sports quotes

Fortune finishes the great quotations, #15

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses."
And while you're at it, throw in a couple of those Dallas
Cowboy cheerleaders.

I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in
the world is fixed.
-- Frank Deford, sports writer

Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers...
they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key!

A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in
the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the
rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between
the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be
penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such
uncontrollable physical phenomena.
-- Donald A. Metz

A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
“you could blow it in” may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
to make a travesty of the game.
-- Donald A. Metz

It gets late early out there.
-- Yogi Berra

I would be batting the big feller if they wasn't ready with the other one,
but a left-hander would be the thing if they wouldn't have knowed it already
because there is more things involved than could come up on the road, even
after we've been home a long while.
-- Casey Stengel

FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #14
The Baby Ruth candy bar was not named after George Herman "The Babe"
Ruth, but after the oldest daughter of President Grover Cleveland.

Failed Attempts To Break Records
In September 1978 Mr. Terry Gripton, of Stafford, failed to break
the world shouting record by two and a half decibels. “I am not surprised
he failed," his wife said afterwards. ”He's really a very quiet man and
doesn't even shout at me."
In August of the same year Mr. Paul Anthony failed to break the
record for continuous organ playing by 387 hours.
His attempt at the Golden Fish Fry Restaurant in Manchester ended
after 36 hours 10 minutes, when he was accused of disturbing the peace.
"People complained I was too noisy," he said.
In January 1976 Mr. Barry McQueen failed to walk backwards across
the Menai Bridge playing the bagpipes. "It was raining heavily and my
drone got waterlogged," he said.
A TV cameraman thwarted Mr. Bob Specas' attempt to topple 100,000
dominoes at the Manhattan Center, New York on 9 June 1978. 97,500 dominoes
had been set up when he dropped his press badge and set them off.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
it took seven others to beat him!

Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
-- Indiana University football cheer

I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people's accomplishments.
The front page has nothing but man's failures.
-- Chief Justice Earl Warren

The Fastest Defeat In Chess
The big name for us in the world of chess is Gibaud, a French chess
master.
In Paris during 1924 he was beaten after only four moves by a
Monsieur Lazard. Happily for posterity, the moves are recorded and so
chess enthusiasts may reconstruct this magnificent collapse in the comfort
of their own homes.
Lazard was black and Gibaud white:
1: P-Q4, Kt-KB3
2: Kt-Q2, P-K4
3: PxP, Kt-Kt5
4: P-K6, Kt-K6
White then resigns on realizing that a fifth move would involve
either a Q-KR5 check or the loss of his queen.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again. The fans with the cigars and
the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in
the street and foreign presidents. It's goin' to be back to the fighter who
comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says
he's in shape. Old hat. I was the onliest boxer in history people asked
questions like a senator.
-- Muhammad Ali

Anxious after the delay, Gruber doesn't waste any time getting the Koenig
[a modified Porsche] up to speed, and almost immediately we are blowing off
Alfas, Fiats, and Lancias full of excited Italians. These people love fast
cars. But they love sport too and no passing encounter goes unchallenged.
Nothing serious, just two wheels into your lane as you're bearing down on
them at 130-plus -- to see if you're paying attention.
-- Road & Track article about driving two absurdly fast
cars across Europe.

So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.
-- Yogi Berra

Pedro Guerrero was playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984
when he made the comment that earns him a place in my Hall of Fame. Second
baseman Steve Sax was having trouble making his throws. Other players were
diving, screaming, signaling for a fair catch. At the same time, Guerrero,
at third, was making a few plays that weren't exactly soothing to manager
Tom Lasorda's stomach. Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous
motivational meetings and zeroed in on Guerrero: "How can you play third
base like that? You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball.
What is it?"
"I'm only thinking about two things," Guerrero said. "First, `I
hope they don't hit the ball to me.'" The players snickered, and even
Lasorda had to fight off a laugh. "Second, `I hope they don't hit the ball
to Sax.'"
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"

All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
than others.
-- Alan Truscott

Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee:
(1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
force is technically termed "car suck").
(2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
than "Watch this!"
(3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly
proportional to the cost of hitting it. For instance, a
Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or
a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy.
(4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the
cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the
Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you
in the head and knock you silly.

Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
-- Snoopy

A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game.
The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it
had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably atop a nice
firm tuft of grass.
-- Donald A. Metz

P-K4

Football is a game designed to keep coalminers off the streets.
-- Jimmy Breslin

Football combines the two worst features of American life.
It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
-- George F. Will, "Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball"

Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates,
is my choice for team captain. Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led
off the bottom of the eighth with a walk. The next hitter banged a hard
single to right field. Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and
kept going, sliding safely into third base.
With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at
bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first.
Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy
took off for second and made it. Now we had runners at second and third.
I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy
start to take a lead. All of a sudden, here he comes. He makes a great slide
into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?" He looks up, and
shouts, "Back to second if I can make it."
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"

Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.
-- Yogi Berra in his rookie season.

The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his
eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
-- Dizzy Dean

They also surf who only stand on waves.

If you do your best the rest of the way, that takes care of
everything. When we get to October 2, we'll add up the wins, and then
we'll either all go into the playoffs, or we'll all go home and play golf.
Both those things sound pretty good to me.
-- Sparky Anderson

Football builds self-discipline. What else would induce a spectator to
sit out in the open in subfreezing weather?