Buzz Bissinger

“They are all but forgotten now, as all men in war are ultimately forgotten. They are eternal, as all men in war are eternal. Who they were, where they were from in an America both blessed and brutal, the gung ho innocence that turned into the darkest horror as they traveled through the maze of being a marine, is not some period piece or contrived cautionary tale but the most timeless story of all: of humanity in the face of all that has become inhuman, the inhumanity of all that once was human, the remarkable sacrifice that men are still willing to make even when the world has gone mad, united by that thing you cannot ever control in war, however brave or careful or fearful or raging with revenge: who dies, because so many died after that game; who lives, because many did live despite combat and serious injury. The Mosquito Bowl.”
― Buzz Bissinger, The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II

“The old attitude could also show itself in defeat, as when Eckersley refused to flinch from the fury of reporters’ questions in the clubhouse after he gave up The Home Run to Kirk Gibson in the 1988 World Series against the Dodgers on that fateful back-door slider that went through the front door instead.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager