Quotes from Tyler Kepner

Jones learned his changeup, or at least observed its grip for the first time, from a future fictional closer. Willie Mueller pitched briefly for the Brewers in 1978 and 1981 but is best known for a role in Major League as Duke Simpson, the menacing Yankees reliever. Bob Uecker, playing broadcaster Harry Doyle, noted that Duke was so mean, he threw at his own kid in a father-son game.

Johnny Sain. Nelson

Show me a cheerful loser and I'll show you a lunatic," Gowdy said in his postgame column for United News wire service. "I never made an alibi in my life and I'm too old to start.

We go through that grind—spring training, 162 games, playoffs, World Series—and you're close to those people. I think about them a lot, and every time I look at that ring, I see them.

A man who is not willing to work from dewy morn until weary eve should not think about becoming a pitcher.

in August 1976, a raging George Steinbrenner offered this morale-booster: "You will never be able to pitch in this league.

Have I ever told you about my agreement with the ball?" Quisenberry asked Angell, who said no. "Well, our deal is that I'm not going to throw you very hard as long as you promise to move around when you get near the plate, because I want you back. So if you do your part, we'll get to play some more.

Doesn't every other field do that, when you have to make decisions with imperfect information in a probabilistic world? I don't think baseball's immune to that. So that's it: we're not trying to script it, we don't think they're robots. We've noticed that they're human beings and they have emotions.

It's so easy for people that aren't there to say, 'I wouldn't have done that,' " Francona says. "Well, you know what? You didn't earn the right to make that decision. He did.

a raging George Steinbrenner offered this morale-booster: "You will never be able to pitch in this league.