Christine

“To me, the mark of a truly great sporting venue has never been what it sounds like or how it feels when the stands are packed. That's easy. Even the most generic cookie-cutter stadium or arena feels electric when the game is big, the lights are on, and the crowd is amped. The real measure of a ballpark's character is how the place feels when it's empty. When the only noises to be heard are produced by the occasional breeze that slips through the concourse. It rattles the ropes on the empty center-field flagpoles. It pushes a stray plastic cup around beneath the feet of the box seats. And if you listen closely enough, that wind carries on it the whispers of the ghosts. The athletes who played between the lines, their toes in the dirt where only those who compete are allowed to roam.

During my career in sports media, I've heard their voices at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway. I've heard them at Lambeau Field and the Rose Bowl. I've heard them at old Boston Garden and Augusta National. And the morning of Thursday, March 3, 1994, I heard them at McCormick Field. Cobb, Gehrig, Dizzy Dean, Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Willie Stargell. From the Hall of Famers to a thousand minor leaguers whose names no one remembers. I swear, they were all there that morning to welcome us into the little mountain ballpark that they'd helped build.”
― Ryan McGee, Welcome to the Circus of Baseball: A Story of the Perfect Summer at the Perfect Ballpark at the Perfect Time

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives- or to find strength in a very long one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Like every other mother in the history of time, I wondered if I would ever be able to love another child as much as I loved her.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“We clump together in our sorrow. In joy we may wander off in our separate directions, but in sorrow we prefer to hold hands.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake