“If I categorized home runs that I’ve seen, without a doubt the monumental one is Henry’s. But I’ve seen a lot of classic, great home runs. Gibson’s was probably the most theatrical home run I’ve ever seen.”

You can almost taste the pressure now.

I try to call the play as quickly as I possibly can and then shut up and let the crowd roar because, to me, the crowd is the most wonderful thing in the whole world when it’s making noise.

A man really determines himself by what he does.

I guess my thermometer for my baseball fever is still a goose bump.

It’s a great time of the year. If you can stand it.

If I can get a story about a player, I would give you a ship load of numbers, batting averages and all just for that one precious story. That’s the kind of thing that I love to do.

I’ve told several writers this, and, again, I get back to it, but if you want to make God smile, tell him your plans.

I’m not a military general, a business guru, not a philosopher or author. It’s only me.

As long as you live keep smiling because it brightens everybody’s day.

Good is not good when better is expected.

I don’t like to be alone, but I do cherish the moments that I’m alone with a good book.

Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.

Thank you for sneaking your transistor under the pillow as you grew up loving the Tigers. God has a new adventure for me.

I really love baseball. The guys and the game, and I love the challenge of describing things. The only thing I hate – and I know you have to be realistic and pay the bills in this life – is the loneliness on the road.

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

One of my favorite expressions ever uttered by a player is Roy Campanella’s line about how, in order to be a major-league player, you have to have a lot of little boy in you.

I’m ready to do some classics. Maybe I wasn’t in the beginning. I weighed 179 pounds when I got to New York, and I had that thick Southern accent. I still talk Southern, but I can do without it.

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they.

A wise man knows; learn from others, never get complacent and know where the classic old dangers come from.

It is not that we have class prejudice, but only that we find comfort and ease in our own class. And normally there are plenty of people of our own class, or race, or religion to play, live, and eat with, and to marry.

Now every girl is expected to have: Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy.

What was up with class today? It was watered-down porn. He practically had you and patch on top of your lab table, horizontal, minus your clothes, doing the big deed.

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.