Tucker Elliot > Quotes

“In large part, we are teachers precisely because we remember what it was like to be a student. Someone inspired us. Someone influenced us. Or someone hurt us. And we’ve channeled that joy (or pain) into our own unique philosophies on life and learning and we’re always looking for an opportunity to share them—with each other, our students, parents, or in our communities.”
― Tucker Elliot

“The only thing worse than losing hope is to be the reason someone else loses hope.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season

“I felt so much pride, so much love. You get a handful of days like this in a lifetime. Take in every minute. They’ll be over soon enough, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“My dad once told me that his biggest challenge after returning from Vietnam had been coming to terms with his own callousness. He’d made a deal with the war and traded his humanity for a ticket home.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season

“All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us—and yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth—no one could know so many names engraved in granite if he 'never was in danger.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“There are more good people than bad people, and overall there’s more that’s good in the world than there is that’s bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“It’s Curt Schilling and his bloody sock staring down the Yankees in the Bronx. It’s Derek Lowe taking the mound the very next night to complete the most improbable comeback in baseball history—and then seven days later clinching the World Series. It’s Pedro Martinez and his six hitless innings of postseason relief against the Indians. Yes, it is also Cy Young and Roger Clemens, and the 192 wins in a Red Sox uniform that they share—the perfect game for Young, the 20 strikeout games for Clemens—but it is also Bill Dinneen clinching the 1903 World Series with a busted, bloody hand, and Jose Santiago shutting down Minnesota with two games left in the season to keep the 1967 Impossible Dream alive, and Jim Lonborg clinching the Impossible Dream the very next day, and Jim Lonborg again, tossing a one-hitter and a three-hitter in the 1967 World Series, and Luis Tiant in the 1975 postseason, shutting out Oakland and Cincinnati in back-to-back starts. They are all winners.”
― Tucker Elliot, Boston Red Sox: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports

“... there’s almost nothing worse than spending an entire day anticipating watching a Yankees vs. Red Sox game, only to have the score be 9-0 in the third inning.”
― Tucker Elliot, Major League Baseball IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom

“The reality for teachers is we don’t know if we’ve been successful or not. It takes years to see how a kid turns out, and it’s impossible to know what role we’ve played, for better or worse. It’s why so many teachers burn out—our successes are limited and rarely celebrated, but our failures are always out there for everyone to see and judge.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season

“Baseball really is a glorified game of throw and catch. And if you don’t have guys who throw it really well, you can’t compete for long.”
― Tucker Elliot, Tampa Bay Rays IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom

“He [Ted Williams] was only a 23-year-old kid when he batted .406 in 1941, but then the season ended and our country came under attack at Pearl Harbor—and by 1943 he was a Marine fighter pilot serving overseas who cheated death on several documented occasions. He came back in 1946, and he won his first career MVP after hitting 38 home runs.”
― Tucker Elliot, Boston Red Sox: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports

“If there are any curses left in baseball, they are all on the north side of Chicago.”
― Tucker Elliot, Boston Red Sox: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports

“A son for a flag is a lot of sacrifice.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“The task of teaching has never been more complex and the expectations that burden teachers are carried out in antiquated systems that offer little support—and yet, teachers are finding success every day.”
― Tucker Elliot

“I’m clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“I spent half my childhood trying to be like my dad. True for most boys, I think. It turns with adolescence. The last thing I wanted was to be like my dad. It took becoming a man to realize how lucky I’d been. It took a few hard knocks in life to make me realize the only thing my dad had ever wanted or worked for was to give me a chance at being better than him.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season

“By any reasonable standard (i.e. he didn’t cheat), Aaron is one of the greatest sluggers in baseball history—and there shouldn’t even be a debate about who is baseball’s true all-time home run champion (again, no cheating).”
― Tucker Elliot

“There was a time we laughed at the old guys up on the hill. The ones who graduated a couple of years before us, and who would hang around the school and the ballpark still, and would sit on the hoods of their cars and tell us how when they were seniors they did it better, faster, and further. We laughed, because we were still doing it, and all they could do was talk. If our goals were not met, there was next year, but it never occurred to us that one day there would not be a next year, and that the guys sitting on the hoods of their cars at the top of the hill, wishing they could have one more year, willing to settle for one last game, could one day be us.”
― Tucker Elliot

“I have this thought, it’s horrible, and it makes me sick, but it’s true: one day these students will grow up and have their own kids, and they’re going to name them for men and women who will die in this war.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“Skip Caray was my favorite announcer as I grew up listening to the Braves on TBS and on the radio. One night, listening to a game that was headed into extra-innings, the broadcast was just breaking away to commercial when Skip said, 'Free baseball in Atlanta!' One of the best lines I’ve ever heard.”
― Tucker Elliot, Major League Baseball IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom

“I felt like I should salute. If only I knew how.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“Ted Williams hit 17 career grand slams. He is the toughest batter to get out in major league history. It was never fun for opposing pitchers to have to face him, but that was never more true than it was when there was nowhere to put him—and his grand slam total is only one of the many franchise records that he owns.”
― Tucker Elliot, Boston Red Sox: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports

“Nine equals eight … just ask any math teacher. Well, make that a Tampa-St. Pete area math teacher, one who also likes baseball, and is a diehard Rays fan, and who knows that Joe Maddon deserves more than just the 2008 Manager of the Year Award.”
― Tucker Elliot, Tampa Bay Rays IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom

“Ortiz is now synonymous with walk-off homers. After all, he hit a total of nine game-ending blasts from 2002-07. And that was just in the regular season. It was his blasts in the 2004 postseason that cemented his legacy in Boston.”
― Tucker Elliot, Boston Red Sox: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports

“There's a reason diehard fans get to the ballpark hours before game time. It’s not for better parking. It’s not for extra time to find our seats. It’s not so we’ll have time to down an extra hot dog, heavy on the mustard, prior to the first pitch. It’s called BP.”
― Tucker Elliot, Major League Baseball IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom

“...it was one at bat during October 1975 that defined his [Joe Morgan's] place in baseball history and secured the legacy of the Big Red Machine, all with one swing.”
― Tucker Elliot, Cincinnati Reds IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom

“It’s much easier to remember the World Series heroics of Tony Pérez, Pete Rose, and Joe Morgan than it is to recall who set the table for Rose during Game 7 of the 1975 World Series vs. Boston. The Red Sox led 3-2 in the seventh when [Ken] Griffey drew a free pass. Not nearly as memorable as the home run Pérez hit against Bill Lee that made it a 3-2 ballgame, not nearly as memorable as the hit Rose got to tie the game, and for sure not as memorable as the hit Morgan got to win it in the ninth, but … it’s a shame people forget Griffey stole second base with two outs to get into scoring position.”
― Tucker Elliot, Cincinnati Reds IQ: The Ultimate Test of True Fandom

“I don’t know how long we talked about that game the first time my dad showed me the ticket stub. He admitted he hadn’t even been sure that he still had it, that he was surprised when he’d been able to find it. But we’ve spent hours and hours and hours talking about it since. And it’s pretty amazing, because that ticket stub sat in a box for two decades—once it let my dad into a stadium to see a baseball game, and then later, it let me into my dad’s world, into his past, to learn about the man who taught me to love a game so passionately that it shaped nearly every aspect of my life.”
― Tucker Elliot

“Teaching isn’t rocket science. It’s about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don’t need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what’s best for them.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11

“This is my worst fear. It’s not keeping my students safe from terrorists, it’s knowing what to do when the Chaplain comes to take Johnny out of class because not letting the terrorists win means sometimes the good guys are going to die. And those good guys have kids, and they’re sitting in my classroom.”
― Tucker Elliot, The Day Before 9/11