Quotes from Roger Angell

The feeling of letdown, of puzzled astonishment, persists, particularly in this neighborhood, where we have come to expect a more lavish and satisfactory autumnal show from our hosts, the Yankees, the rich family up on the hill. There has been a good deal of unpleasant chatter ("I always knew they were really cheap," "What else can you expect from such stuckups?") about the affair ever since, thus proving again that prolonged success does not beget loyalty.

Davis, a lifetime .300 hitter who twice won the National League batting title, came over to the White Sox from the Mets in a major trade last winter ("Mets ckoo!")

Morning training sessions at Chain-O'-Lakes Stadium, in Winter Haven, were studied with a mixture of excessive optimism and unjustified despondency by the immense Boston press corps, which has traditionally been made uneasy by success.

Andy also skipped his wife's private burial in the Brooklin Cemetery, in July, 1977. None of us in the family expected otherwise or held this against him. And when his own memorial came, eight years later, I took the chance to remark, "If Andy White could be with us today he would not be with us today.

with luck, you can improve yourself in the happiest fashion, which is to learn something you thought you already knew.

Bob Allison fouled one, took two balls, swung and missed, swung and missed, and winter descended on the northlands.

Offhand, I can think of no other sport in which the world's champions, one of the great teams of its era, would not instantly demolish inferior opposition and reduce a game such as the one we had just seen to cruel ludicrousness. Baseball is harder than that; it requires a full season, hundreds and hundreds of separate games, before quality can emerge, and in that summer span every hometown fan, every doomed admirer of underdogs will have his afternoons of revenge and joy.

Collectively, the Mets are still both too young and too old to afford any but the most modest ambitions, but I think the time has arrived when they can look at each other with something other than pure embarrassment.

Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.

Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time.

Once I could persuade these guys that all I wanted to hear from them was what they did - Tell me what you do - once you can persuade someone that this is all you're after, you can't shut them up because we're all fascinated by what we do.

I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.

I've been lucky. I've met a lot of baseball people, and I've learned to value people who talk - people who talk well and in long sentences and even long paragraphs.