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Baseball Book Review: The Quotable Baseball Fanatic
Leave it to that eminent philosopher Yogi Berra to put the national pastime in perspective: "It ain't like football," he once noted. "You can't make up no trick plays." Maybe it's just that physical straightforwardness that has led to so much written and verbal razzle-dazzle on the game. Yogi's is just one of the many stellar observations collected in The Quotable Baseball Fanatic. Some, like Babe Ruth's poignant reaction to the Black Sox scandal - "It was like hearing that my church had sold out" - are right over the heart of the matter; others, like Reggie Jackson's "I represent the underdog and overdog in our society," are straight out of left field. Given baseball's hold on our imagination, both lines are perfectly fair, as the host of familiar and not-so-familiar quotations that wind up landing safely in between.
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"Did you ever notice that the teams that signed more black players faster tended to win more games?" - Willie Mays
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| The Quotable Baseball Fanatic |
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This is a great collection of baseball quotes compiled by Rubin who has been a lifelong baseball fan and founder and director of Algonquin Books. He was a professor of literature for forty years. The volume features twenty-eight separate chapters with topics such as The Good Old Days; Losers; Batting; Baserunning; the Negro Leagues; the Hall of Fame; Umpires and Baseball Wives. Rubin's focus has been on "piquant comments" and he has admirably succeeded in reaching his goal. All the quotes are interesting and the range of those quoted is wide-from Henry Aaron to George Will.
This book is different from other baseball quotes book in that it frequently gives selections from writers that are a number of lines long. Thus the book is more than a collection of "one-liners." All the pieces cast a unique slant on this uniquely American game which editor Rubin says has always seemed to him like a "high-quality three-ring circus."
No selective sampling can do justice to the great range and interest that this book provides. But here are some of the neat lines you'll find within.
Patricia Dean (Dizzy's wife): "You know what some of these advertising guys are trying to do? They're trying to get Diz to speak English."
Connie Mack (on Rube Waddell): "He had more stuff than any pitcher I ever saw. He had everything but a sense of responsibility."
Monte Irvin: "Trying to sneak a fastball by [Buck Leonard] was like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster."
George Will: "After [Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series], manager Casey Stengel was asked the dumbest question in the history of journalism: Was that the best game he had ever seen Larsen pitch? Stengel said: 'So far.'"
Branch Rickey (on Dizzy Dean): "By Judas Priest! By Judas Priest! If there were more like him in baseball, just one, as God is my witness, I'd get out of the game."
Willie Mays: "Did you ever notice that the teams that signed more black players faster tended to win more games?"
Of course, Yogi Berra shows up as well. In commenting on baseball, Yogi said, "It ain't like football. You can't make up no trick plays."
This is a terrific book for all baseball fans. It is certain to bring smiles as well as pensive reflections about all the varied dimensions of the "national pastime."
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The Quotable Baseball Fanatic
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| The Quotable Baseball Fanatic |
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