Steve Minard

“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

“To some Germans and, no doubt, to most foreigners it appeared that a charlatan had come to power in Berlin. To the majority of Germans Hitler had — or would shortly assume — the aura of a truly charismatic leader. They were to follow him blindly, as if he possessed a divine judgment, for the next twelve tempestuous years.”
― William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

“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

“Anti-intellectualism is one thing, but faith in wrongheaded pseudointellectualism is far worse.”
― Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics