On Yankees' star Reggie Jackson:
"For the 1970s, Reggie Jackson was a child of his times. Like Babe Ruth, he seemed to come with a pennant attached."

On Pete Rose:
"Pete Rose comes into a lockerroom like a kid on his way to a circus. He tears off his shirt and tugs at his pants. He can't wait to get out of those mundane clothes and into a baseball uniform. You keep waiting for the rest of the parade. The elephants, the clowns, the breakaway cars. The prancing horses."

On Wilver Stargell:
"He looks like what might imagine Uncle Remus looked like, a great kindly giant of a man with sad eyes. When he talks in that deep bass voice, you'd imagine that's how God sounded like talking to Moses."

On quarterback Pat Haden, who was a Rhodes Scholar:
"Patrick Haden found nothing partiularly difficult about throwing a football. Nothing to be compared to the difficulties of Ciceronian Latin, for example, or the logical thickets of Aristotle or even Alexander Pope..."

On Walter O'Malley:
O'Malley changed more than the map of baseball. He changed the philosophy. The game will be poorer without him. Baseball is again at a crossroads and now there is no O'Malley to maneuver a steady hand across the shoals ahead.

On Magic Johnson:
"The nice part about signing Earvin 'Magic' Johnson is he brings the Los Angeles Lakers something they badly need--a smile."