Great Innings Quotes

After a great blow, or crisis, after the first shock and then after the nerves have stopped screaming and twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things and feel that all possibility of change has been used up. You adjust yourself, and are sure that the new equilibrium is for eternity. . . But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn't the game that is over, it is just an inning, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day.

Sometimes life gives you a second chance, or even two! Not always, but sometimes. It’s what you do with those second chances that counts.

Would that cricketers had better lines, or at least that their most famous were not also their tritest or most banal. 'This thing can be done,' said Fred Spofforth in 1882. 'We'll get 'em in singles,' George Hirst did not say twenty years later. 'You guys are history,' growled Devon Malcolm in 1994. 'You've just dropped the World Cup,' Steve Waugh may have crowed in 1999. At least two of these could have been put into the mouth of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In the first Test of the 1938 Ashes series, Eddie Paynter and Stan McCabe became the first players on opposing sides to score double-centuries in the same match. Bill Brown and Wally Hammond repeated the feat in the very next Test at Lord’s. How quickly the once-unprecedented accumulates its precedents.

I’m sorry. I know how much players have to focus, and I know not to be a distraction. I just got caught up in the moment, in the great game, in your terrific pitching.” But I felt a need to explain more. “Look, Jason, I love baseball. I love the crack of the bat hitting the ball. I love the seventh-inning stretch and singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’ I love eating hot dogs and standing for the singing of the national anthem. I love doing the wave. I love Kiss Cam. I love that the game isn’t over until it’s over. “I love the thrill of a home run and the disappointment of an out at first. I love the way a batter stands at the plate and the catcher readies himself to receive the pitch. I love watching the pitcher windup. I love sitting in the stands and feeling like I’m part of the game. “And tonight, watching you pitch, I forgot that I’m only a small part—the spectator. Watching you, I felt like I was in the game, out on that field with you. You’re out there on the mound, living a dream that so few people ever experience. “I’m sorry, sorry that tonight I ruined the moment for you.” He was staring at me intently. I’d just bared my soul. Why didn’t he speak? What could he possibly be thinking? My nerves stretched taut. “Say something,” I demanded. “There’s nothing else to say,” he said in that quiet way he had. Then he lowered his head and kissed me.

As in diamonds so in batting, perfection requires flawlessness and nowhere is a batting imperfection more quickly recognised than in the dropped catch. For this reason any innings worthy of consideration deserves to have all its flaws studied to establish whether or not it is the genuine gem or just masquerading as one under the glitter of big hitting or weight of runs.

There was a further, rather crazy reason why Neil was my dream batsman. In the 1950s, pop music was innocent and melodic. Top among the vocalists who escorted me through my youth was little Guy Mitchell. That plaintive, joyous, carefree voice gave us Truly Fair and My Heart Cries for You, crystal-clear melodies that lifted and sustained anxious teenagers, exactly as did Neil Harvey’s dainty batsmanship. Neil was a study in cream: no commercial logos then (least of all affixed to the white boundary pickets or splattered even more intrusively across the sacred turf), just a clean bat wielded by a young chap with shirt-sleeves rolled high, pads gleaming white, dark hair unencumbered by cap or sunhat (let alone helmet), head slightly tilted as he walked. "Consequently, whenever I watched Harvey play, a Guy Mitchell song would float through my head. And whenever I listened to those 78rpm records at home, they sparked visions of Neil Harvey at the crease. So I’ve now confessed to a modern readership. And if that portrays the young me as a dreamer, anchored securely in a world of innocence and joy, so be it. Despite all the tensions and crises that life has thrown up, little has changed. I owe a lot to Neil Harvey.

We were in Pittsburgh at the end of September. The Pirates had already clinched the division, and the great Roberto Clemente was looking for his 3,000th career hit. I wasn’t in the lineup again. Clemente wasn’t a power hitter like Mays or Aaron, but he had won four batting titles, was a perennial All-Star, and even at the age of 37 was hitting well over .300. Roberto lined a sharp double down the left-field line in the fourth inning, and we saw history being made again. He joined Willie and Hank and a handful of others to reach that milestone. I remember thinking at the time how difficult it must be to get all of those hits, and for Willie and Hank to get all those home runs. I’d only reached about 900 hits with more than 2,000 to go if I ever was to hit that mark. That put it into perspective for me, that I really was watching one of the greats of the game. It was a dark day for baseball on the last day of 1972 when Roberto’s plane went down while delivering supplies to Nicaragua. He was only 38. I heard about the plane crash the next day, and it was like losing a brother. It was a great loss for the game of baseball and humanity—especially knowing how his fellow Puerto Ricans felt about him. He was a treasure, and he did it the way nobody else could. Some say he did everything wrong at the plate but he had great results behind it. You wouldn’t teach hitting the way he hit, but it was right for him. What he did was in him like it was in with me. He was a man of stature, and it was his calling. Some people are called to preach, some people are called to teach, and some people are called to serve. He was called to serve, and he served his entire island. I believe everything is predestined, and we just have to act out what’s already on the wall of your life. He’d probably always been aware of the need to do something more for others than for himself. He looked around and saw a need and acted on it. I’m certain he looked at who he was and what he accomplished and how he could take being famous into being a blessing for others. I’ve said this many times before, that those who depend on you are seeking a hand up and not a handout. I didn’t think about it then, but I think about it now, how good the Almighty was to wait to call Roberto home after he got his 3,000th hit—a milestone hit that put him next to the greats of the game.

I’m sorry. I know how much players have to focus, and I know not to be a distraction. I just got caught up in the moment, in the great game, in your terrific pitching.” But I felt a need to explain more. “Look, Jason, I love baseball. I love the crack of the bat hitting the ball. I love the seventh-inning stretch and singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’ I love eating hot dogs and standing for the singing of the national anthem. I love doing the wave. I love Kiss Cam. I love that the game isn’t over until it’s over. “I love the thrill of a home run and the disappointment of an out at first. I love the way a batter stands at the plate and the catcher readies himself to receive the pitch. I love watching the pitcher windup. I love sitting in the stands and feeling like I’m part of the game. “And tonight, watching you pitch, I forgot that I’m only a small part--the spectator. Watching you, I felt like I was in the game, out on that field with you. You’re out there on the mound, living a dream that so few people ever experience. “I’m sorry, sorry that tonight I ruined the moment for you.” He was staring at me intently. I’d just bared my soul. Why didn’t he speak? What could he possibly be thinking? My nerves stretched taut. “Say something,” I demanded. “There’s nothing else to say,” he said in that quiet way he had. Then he lowered his head and kissed me.

For a team facing a 12-run deficit, the game is all but over. Almost always. Three times in major league history, though, a club has come from down by a dozen to win. The Chicago White Sox were the first in 1911; fourteen years later, the Philadelphia Athletics duplicated the feat. Then seventy-six years would pass before it happened again. Enter the 2001 Cleveland Indians, battling for their sixth playoff spot in seven years. Hosting the red-hot Seattle Mariners, who would win a major league record 116 games that season, the Tribe found themselves trailing 12–0 after just three innings. In the middle of the seventh, Seattle led 14–2—at which point the Indians began their historic comeback. Scoring three in the seventh, four in the eighth, and five in the ninth, Cleveland forced extra innings. In the bottom of the eleventh, utility man Jolbert Cabrera slapped a broken-bat single to score Kenny Lofton for one of the more remarkable wins in the annals of baseball. On August 6, 2001, not even a 12-run deficit could stop the Cleveland Indians. Those of us who follow Jesus Christ can expect even greater victories. “I am convinced,” the apostle Paul wrote, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39). If you’re deep in the hole today, take heart. As God’s child, you’re always still in the game. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. HEBREWS

For a hitter, there’s no thrill quite like a late inning, game-changing home run. Unless, that is, the shot is called back. On July 24, 1983, Kansas City superstar George Brett was riding high after hitting a two-out, two-run homer in Yankee Stadium. The future Hall of Famer’s blast changed a 4–3 ninth inning deficit into a 5–4 Royals lead. The joy soon faded, though, when New York manager Billy Martin asked home plate umpire Tim McClelland to inspect Brett’s bat. Earlier in the season, Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles had noticed that Brett seemed to use more pine tar than the rules allowed—and Martin had saved that choice information for just such a moment as this. McClelland measured the goo on Brett’s bat, finding it exceeded the eighteen inches allowed. Brett was called out, erasing the home run and giving the Yankees a 4–3 victory. The Royals were incensed by the ruling, which was later overturned by American League president Lee McPhail, who said “games should be won and lost on the playing field—not through technicalities of the rules.” Baseball’s official acknowledgment of the “bigger picture” is reminiscent of Jesus’ approach to God’s laws. Arguing with hypocritical Pharisees, Jesus once said, “You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former” (Matthew 23:23). Our concern for the letter of the law should be balanced by an equal concern for the spirit of the law. If you’re inclined to spiritual pickiness, don’t forget the “more important matters.

BEYOND THE GAME In 2007 some of the Colorado Rockies’ best action took place off the field. The Rocks certainly boasted some game-related highlights in ’07: There was rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki turning the major league’s thirteenth unassisted triple play on April 29, and the team as a whole made an amazing late-season push to reach the playoffs. Colorado won 13 of its final 14 games to force a one-game wild card tiebreaker with San Diego, winning that game 9–8 after scoring three runs in the bottom of the thirteenth inning. Marching into the postseason, the Rockies won their first-ever playoff series, steamrolling the Phillies three games to none. But away from the cheering crowds and television cameras, Rockies players turned in a classic performance just ahead of their National League Division Series sweep. They voted to include Amanda Coolbaugh and her two young sons in Colorado’s postseason financial take. Who was Amanda Coolbaugh? She was the widow of former big-leaguer Mike Coolbaugh, a coach in the Rockies’ minor league organization who was killed by a screaming line drive while coaching first base on July 22. Colorado players voted a full playoff share—potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—to the grieving young family. Widows and orphans hold a special place in God’s heart, too. Several times in the Old Testament, God reminded the ancient Jews of His concern for the powerless—and urged His people to follow suit: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Some things go way beyond the game of baseball. Will you?

You never talk to the pitcher when…” He shook his head. “You just never talk to the pitcher when--” “I just wanted to congratulate him on a good game--” “It’s not over ’til it’s over,” Chase said. “You jinxed me,” Jason said, crouching down in the corner, pressing his palms against his forehead, like he’d been struck with a migraine headache. “You don’t really believe that superstitious--” His head came up so fast, and his stare was so hard that I stopped. He did believe. He really did believe. And judging by the way the other guys were looking at me, they all believed. I backed away, not knowing what to say. I’d just felt sorry for him because he was being ignored. The guy at bat struck out, and Brandon was next. Bird had her fingers crossed while clutching the wire of the fence. “I think I just made a big mistake,” I said, my voice low. “Yeah, I heard you. According to Brandon, you’re never supposed to use the term no-hitter in the dugout.” “Well, I wasn’t technically in the dugout.” “But your words traveled into the dugout. Close enough.” “Great. You don’t really think I jinxed them, do you?” Brandon struck out, the first time he’d struck out since playing for the Rattlers. When he walked by and glared at me, I found myself wishing Harry Potter was real, sitting in the stands, and could turn me into a rabbit’s foot. I didn’t really believe in bad luck. I believed we made our own luck, but I also understood the power of positive or negative thinking. If you think you’ll lose, you’ll lose. The next inning, when six batters in a row got base hits off Jason, the coach put in a relief pitcher. By that time, even people in the stands were looking at me like it was my fault. Someone suggested I sit behind the dugout of the visiting team.

Zap. Sports channel. Normal is nine innings, four balls, three strikes, somebody wins, somebody loses, there’s no such thing as a tie. Zap. Normal is unreal people, mostly rich unreal people, having sex with rappers and basketball players and thinking of their unreal family as a real-world brand, like Pepsi or Drano or Ford. Zap. News channels. Normal is guns and the normal America that really wants to be great again. Then there’s another normal if your skin color is the wrong color and another if you’re educated and another if you think education is brainwashing and there’s an America that believes in vaccines for kids and another that says that’s a con trick and everything one normal believes is a lie to another normal and they’re all on TV depending where you look, so, yeah, it’s confusing. I’m really trying to understand which this is America now. Zap zap zap. A man with his head in a bag being shot by a man without a shirt on. A fat man in a red hat screaming at men and women also fat also in red hats about victory, We’re undereducated and overfed. We’re full of pride over who the f*ck knows. We drive to the emergency room and send Granny to get our guns and cigarettes. We don’t need no stinkin’ allies cause we’re stupid and you can suck our dicks. We are Beavis and Butt-Head on ’roids. We drink Roundup from the can. Our president looks like a Christmas ham and talks like Chucky. We’re America, bitch. Zap. Immigrants raping our women every day. We need Space Force because Space ISIS. Zap. Normal is Upside-Down Land. Our old friends are our enemies now and our old enemy is our pal. Zap, zap. Men and men, women and women in love. The purple mountains’ majesty. A man with an oil painting of himself with Jesus hanging in his living room. Dead schoolkids. Hurricanes. Beauty. Lies. Zap, zap, zap. “Normal doesn’t feel so normal to me,” I tell him. “It’s normal to feel that way,” he replies.

Some coaches think that the best way to deal with pressure is to ignore it, treat every moment of a game the same so as not to heighten the tension even more. La Russa believes that players need to openly acknowledge pressure—literally embrace it as “your friend,” in his words—because the more they embrace it, the less it can intimidate them. He teaches hitters that the best way to deal with pressure is to prepare for it, come into the at-bat with a keen sense of what the pitcher is likely to throw and how you should handle it. Most important, when you’re up there, focus on the process and not the result; don’t project into the future. Forget about the noble but irrational concept of going for broke. Put away the hero complex and simply try to get something started. But don’t hesitate, either: In clutch moments, you’re unlikely to get your perfect pitch, so don’t wait around for it. Be aggressive. Nobody lives these principles better than the great Pujols. Alfonseca serves him a sinker low and inside to start the inning. It’s a good first pitch: difficult to drive, difficult to get into the gap. Pujols stays inside of it with his hands. He doesn’t try to do too much with it; he simply makes contact, and the ball scoots up the middle, past the shipwreck hulk of Alfonseca. It’s a single, an Oscar-

Yet Baig never scored another fifty for India. Early in 1961 he was dropped after scoring just 34 runs in five innings, during three home Tests against Pakistan. It was subsequently revealed that he had received hate mail accusing him of deliberately underperforming against his fellow Muslims. ‘I was flabbergasted,’ Baig recalled. ‘I mean, it hadn’t even occurred to one that anyone could connect my poor form to my being a Muslim.

Hobbs and Sutcliffe. More than any other players in those years they raised the status of the professional cricketer.

The two men gave not a chance, and they were still there at lunch. In two-and-a-half hours, on the stickiest pitch umpire Chester ever saw, they had lifted the total from 49 to 161. Hobbs, the freer of the two, had moved from 28 to 97; Sutcliffe, with his immense self-control, from 20 to just 53. The players and umpires made their way towards the pavilion, but the two batsmen remained for a minute in the middle, meticulously clearing the little divots of earth and patting down the pitch with their bats. “Well played, Jack”, said Sutcliffe. “Well played Herbert”, said Hobbs. Three words each, but in that very English way they acknowledged the ordeal of what they had been through.

Mark Waugh, the most fluent and aesthetically pleasing batsman of his generation but also one of the most frustrating to watch. Often, when he appeared to be a class above the rest and to have the bowling at his mercy, he would play a lazy shot to what appeared, more often than not, an innocuous delivery. And just like that his innings would be over. To make matters worse, he didn’t seem to care; he would nonchalantly wander off the field. No shaking of the head or staring back at the pitch to apportion blame. His fans had to learn to accept 30s and 40s instead of centuries and 150s. His concentration, some would say his interest, never seemed to be there in the Test arena. Despite playing some match-winning Test innings, Waugh was never quite able to shake the ‘lackadaisical’ tag.

Perhaps it is the fate of all great sporting performances to be forgotten somewhat if the team eventually loses. Would we care overly about VVS Laxman’s 281 or Ian Botham’s 149 without the efforts of Harbhajan Singh and Bob Willis who turned these great feats from potentially heroic failures to match-winning epics?

We all know the situation; the brilliant quick bowler with his tail up delivers the ball on a perfect length and line. A hint of swing has it pitching just outside off, before seam movement takes it further away from the right hander who would be well advised, if good enough, to leave well alone. But he only has a fraction of a second to respond and make his decision. Yet somehow this astonishing batsman is neither shouldering arms nor nibbling, he’s standing tall and smashing a wicket-taking delivery through the covers, on the up, to the boundary. 'Wow,' enthuses the commentator, 'I’m here to tell you that was some shot.' And it was. Next over, same bowler, same ball, same response but instead of that beautiful meaty sound of ball meeting sweet-spot there is a heavy click as a thick edge flies waste high to a grateful third slip. 'Gone! And you have to say that was a poor shot – no foot movement.' "The gap between brilliant and brainless was some four centimetres. Or was it? Surely the first shot was every bit as reckless and feckless? Our foolhardy batsman got away with his poor shot selection first time but within minutes he went from hero to zero. So who is our thrilling and exasperating protagonist? Take your pick: Victor Trumper, Stan McCabe, Denis Compton, Barry Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Virender Sehwag. This is how they played, the risks they took made them what they were: the most thrilling, watchable and often frustrating batsmen of their respective generations. If you want the highs then you must take the lows, and for each run-a-ball century there will be a horridly inappropriate early-innings catastrophe signalling disappointment for all neutrals.

There is a splendid story that, during the long sea voyage, Cowdrey was observed by Frank Tyson being addressed with some passion by a well-dressed man whom Tyson didn’t recognize: 'When you reach Australia, just remember one thing,' exclaimed the older gentleman, 'Hate the bastards!' Tyson enquired of scorer and baggage man George Duckworth as to the man’s identity: 'That,” confided the ‘bodyline’ veteran, 'was Douglas Jardine.

Cricket lovers are an optimistic breed.

'Find out where the ball is. Go there. Hit it' "'If there is a ball there to be hit, just hit it' "Two remarkably simple and similar philosophies, reflecting an uncomplicated attitude to batting. It will probably come as no surprise that one of these quotes is attributable to the quintessential Crown Prince of Simplicity, Virender Sehwag. What is more surprising is that the other quote belongs to the actual prince of the batting art, KS Ranjitsinhji; very few traditionalists would mention Ranji and Sehwag in the same breath, yet their approach was, in this essential philosophy, the same.

He played the long game as if he was playing the short game, looking to entertain the crowd and paying absolutely no heed to the calibre of the attack, the state of the pitch or even the situation of the match.

Though he is decried as lucky, it’s just possible that he realised that he could not only get away with playing the way he did, but could prosper by it. It may just be that all of those shots which just evaded a fielder’s outstretched hands were intentional and that he didn’t move his feet much because he didn’t need to. It’s just possible that nobody else played this way because they couldn’t. If he was just lucky and had poor technique, wouldn’t the world’s greatest bowlers have figured him? Instead, he got better and better and faster and faster; his first four Test hundreds were made at a strike-rate of 62 and averaged 122, the four ending with this 293 were made at a crazy strike-rate of 104 and at an average of 315!

Cricket is a team game where individuals inspire each other to achieve performances which surpass what might otherwise be beyond them.

How different South Africa’s cricketing achievements, and indeed the future of the country itself, might have been if racism had not denied Frank Roro the opportunity of batting with Bruce Mitchell in the Lord’s sunshine.

Even genius can miscalculate.

The vast majority of sportsmen are left with little choice as regards how to play, serfs to their talent, but the very best are able to do so as they want, impressing personality upon ability.

Dominating and consistent victories are one thing, seemingly impossible victories something else entirely, and the preserve of the very finest; a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating prophecy that endures even when in all apparent terms, the ability that first created it has expired.

The notion that international competition – the battle between one arbitrary, bordered landmass and another – is not political, is a fatuous notion. But even in that context, cricket is different, its fierceness of a different order to that in almost every other sport. The story of the game is the story of civilisation, its old rivalries based on more than simple you and me, us and them dichotomies, its various antipathies rooted not in sport but actual, real things, a narrative with a genuine moral dimension.

Viv Richards, a man who put the ire into fire, the ow into power and the fucking fury into fucking fury.

There is perhaps no examination in sport more exacting than opening the batting in Test cricket, certainly none more extensive and probing. The Tour de France might be harder, but is repetitive and principally a suffering competition, most of those involved simply trying to finish. Fighting is more obviously dangerous, but lasts a maximum of 33 minutes, tennis more physically arduous, but without the variety of opponents and frisson of harm. Opening the batting, on the other hand, demands from every faculty, physical and mental, that a sportsman can possibly be forced to employ: speed, skill, strength, bravery, application, instinct, intellect and improvisation.

I don’t like exclamation marks as a rule, but this one’s unavoidable. Playing against Neil Harvey! I’d read Arthur Mailey’s poignant essay about playing against his hero, Vic Trumper. If I’d earlier found Mailey’s near-hysterical countdown a bit over the top, I didn’t think so now. So, God, please don’t let it rain. "I’ll keep it brief. Harvey back-cut a ball, which I chased. Picking it up near the pickets, I gazed at it. Gosh, this ball had just been stroked by Neil Harvey! Our wicket-keeper was screaming, 'Come on, Frithy! Throw the bloody thing in!' I did, shamefaced at the silly delay. Then our off-spinner annoyingly dismissed Neil for 10. "On the second Saturday I got in. ABC Radio were experimenting with live broadcasts from grade matches. My old scrapbook shows that I scored 29 in 100 minutes, a dreary effort that may well have been solely responsible for the abandonment of the commentary idea. What must Neil Harvey have thought? What really matters, though, is how my precious innings ended. Harvey bowled a curving off spinner outside leg. I tried to glance it, but that ball was loaded. It swerved, what, two feet? Well, two or three inches anyway. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I left that field slightly elated.

Doesn’t move his feet? Who cares? Neither did Graeme Pollock.

I think a good life will be like a great game of cricket. You need to go out there on the pitch and try to score as many glorious runs as possible within the inning. Undoubtedly challenges will try to bowl you out as quickly as possible perhaps even in your first over; undoubtedly there will be opponents crouched behind and lurking all around the pitch waiting to catch you out.But take some chances anyway; don't stay forever behind your crease , blocking and protecting your wicket. Hit some astounding sixes , steal some dangerous runs.

In 2011 India’s Test team was crowned as world cricket’s leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining performance by VVS Laxman helped to turn a whole series on its head as India, in the face of a seemingly unassailable deficit, staged an unbelievable recovery to go on and overpower what many considered to be the finest cricket team ever assembled.

It seems perfectly reasonable to give the greatest weight to the longest series. South Africa were only offered a five-Test series in Australia and England when they were considered worthy opponents and when the authorities considered that sufficient crowds would allow such a series to be a viable financial option. This link between the duration of a Test series and the money it is likely to generate is a constant throughout the history of the game and has been made more complex over the last three decades by the introduction of the various one-day formats. The constant also remains that a five-Test series (six being a thing of the past) is the ultimate examination of the relative strength of two teams and the current fashion for a quick two-match ‘shoot-out’ can only harm the standing of Test cricket whatever the short-term financial rewards.

In an area so reliant on opinion there is also the matter of received opinion to consider. The old turkey of the innate beauty of left handers is probably a result of the rarer days for ‘cack-handers’ when Frank Woolley bestrode the shires on both sides of World War I. After a long gap, his mantle was languidly accepted in England by David Gower. But for every Woolley there was a Mead and for every Gower a Trescothick as if to balance the equation and bury the turkey.

If proof were needed that statistics alone are not enough in establishing value, then VT Trumper is that proof.

Bowling has the problem of wildly differing methods so that placing Wasim Akram against Bishan Bedi is rather like hanging a Rembrandt next to a Picasso and trying to produce a valid comparison.

His disappointment at not buying the team didn’t diminish his affection for the local nine. Eight years later Fitzgerald was serving his second term as mayor when the Red Sox opened its doors to its new home, Fenway Park. In the first game of the park’s inaugural season, Mayor Fitzgerald christened the stadium by throwing out the first pitch in the field’s history. The opening of the stadium proved to be good luck. It was in that same season that the Red Sox earned their first visit to the World Series. Their opponent was the New York Giants. Before the games began, New York Mayor William Gaynor invited his Boston contemporary, Honey Fitz, to be his guest in New York for the first games of the championship. Fitzgerald boldly replied, “It will give me great pleasure to be your guest as the Red Sox begin their onward march to the World Championship.” The Red Sox won the series in eight games, in a thrilling extra-inning victory-clinching World Series, their first one. In Boston crowds flocked

Bob lives in Marietta, Georgia and recently had the honor of becoming a great grandfather. He enjoys shooting the breeze with guests and staff at lunchtime at nearby Capozzi’s New York Deli. He spends much of his time trying to make people happy with a generous assortment of terrible jokes.

No dog he could summon with a whistle, just to hear the obedient patter of paws. Banjo made it to fourteen years old. Good innings for a collie. Tony should have been ready for it, but it seemed he wasn’t. In the first week, great gusts of grief hit him whenever he put his key in the lock of his front door. A grief hard enough to buckle his knees. Contemptible. A grown man brought to his knees by a dog. He’d lost dogs before. Three dogs over the course of his life. It was part of being a dog owner. He didn’t get why he was taking Banjo’s death so hard. It was six months now, for Christ’s sake. Was it possible that he grieved the loss of this damned dog more than any human he’d lost in his lifetime? Yes, it was possible.

But you've lost so much weight. You've lost stones and stones. Little person! Tiny person! How did you do it?' 'Well, it's not all that much and I ...' She didn't get an inning. 'But you're a tiny person; you used to be a huge, huge person. Remember those great jowls you had? Real jowls, they were darling, and look at you now. A little person. How super. No jowls. Don't ever let it creep on again, will you?' I thought about it for a long time. Would the little person, the tiny jowl-less person like all this praise? Was it the reward for the diet, the self-control, the exercise? Or might she resent the spotlight and the attention of 30 people beaming on her?

baseball, a bit of trivia is in order. The longest baseball game in history spanned a total of 33 innings. The record-setting game in 1981 between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox took a total of eight hours spread across

They sat quietly for a few minutes. Finally, Alex said, “So Ben, right now I like baseball because I just caught one. Why do you like baseball so much?” “I don’t like baseball. I love baseball.” “That’s pretty obvious, but why?” Ben looked at his brother and shook his head thoughtfully. “It’s different than any other sport. It’s like life. The only way you can appreciate it is slowly. The drama of the game builds as each inning goes by. Sure, it’s great seeing your team hit a home run in the first inning, but it’s even better to see one in the ninth inning, especially when your team is down and you win because of it. The entire season is like that too, the same kind of pace from game one until the World Series. It’s not about any individual play, although that’s important. It’s not the home run itself. It’s the drama that precedes the home run, maybe a whole game that’s turned around and changed by it. You can’t appreciate baseball if all you watch are the highlight reels or all you see is one inning or one play. I’m not the first to say this, but baseball is life.” Alex smiled at his brother. “Look, I play basketball and I’ve played it my whole life, but frankly, when you watch a professional game, in my opinion the defense is almost nonexistent and the only thing good about it is the last couple of minutes,” Ben said. “You don’t get that in baseball. The drama of baseball is in every moment of the game, it builds until the last out. Baseball is all about the whole game.” “What about football?” asked Alex. “That has drama. The game is played over sixty minutes. I find it a whole lot more exciting than baseball.” “It’s not the same thing. It has many of the same elements when you look at the basics of it. They both have athleticism, strategy, and tactics, but it’s different. I’ll bet you find it exciting because of its ferocity. The violence is what turns me off about football. Don’t get me wrong, you still have to be able to think to play the game, but at the end of the day football is about violence—linemen trying to kill each other, the defensive guys trying to kill the quarterback, the receiver. The violence overshadows the thinking. I’ve seen games where the fans actually cheered when a visiting player was injured.” “Yeah, welcome to Philly.” Alex smiled. “Fair enough, but I bet it’s the same in any city,” Ben said. “Baseball isn’t about violence. Look, I know it has violence. God must love the catchers. I don’t know how they survive a two-hundred-pound base runner sliding into home, cleats first, and many second basemen have been hurt trying to put a man out at second. But that’s not what the game is about. It’s just a part of it, like life. “If I had to summarize the difference between baseball and football, football is about war; baseball is about life. In football you have two armies clashing, over and over again. They keep at it until one side overwhelms the other. Baseball is different. It’s about going out and working hard and having little victories and defeats along the way and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Hopefully you win, but even if you don’t you keep coming back every day. It’s like when you drive a truck, cut hair, sell buttons and zippers, or do advertising. It’s the same thing for all of us. It’s day-in and day-out work, and you hope at the end of the year you’ve won more than you’ve lost. If I want violence all I have to do is open the paper and read about Korea, or close my eyes and think about Okinawa. I get inspired by baseball to come back every day and try harder and if I work as hard as I can, and have a little luck, I get rewarded for it.