Thomas Boswell > Quotes

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

“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.”
― Thomas Boswell, Why Time Begins on Opening Day

“Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness. The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off.”
― Thomas Boswell, Why Time Begins on Opening Day

“[B]aseball is diffracted by the town and ballpark where it is played... Does baseball, like a liquid, take the shape of its container?”
― Thomas Boswell, Why Time Begins on Opening Day

“A good umpire, like a good FBI agent, is never noticed if he is doing his job.”
― Thomas Boswell, Why Time Begins on Opening Day

“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.”
― Thomas Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series

“Almost without exception, they are men who dreamed of athletic heroism as children; becoming umpires was their compromise with their own lack of talent.”
― Thomas Boswell, Why Time Begins on Opening Day

“Familiarity, and a few dozen cheap flyballs off the Monster, breed contempt.”
― Thomas Boswell, Why Time Begins on Opening Day

“The naked pinch hitter takes only one thing to the plate: his raw, and somewhat irrational, confidence in himself. That this confidence is so unreasonable adds to its dignity.”
― Thomas Boswell, Why Time Begins on Opening Day

“Bruce Sutter and his new pitch, the split finger fastball, fascinate the manager of the Cuban national teams. 'We must find out about this new weapon,' he said. 'Are the American hitters plotting to murder him?”
― Thomas Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series

“Baseball is to our everyday experience what poetry often is to common speech — a slightly elevated and concentrated form.”
― Thomas Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series