Baseball grew rapidly in favor; the field was ripe. America needed a live outdoor sport, and this game exactly suited the national temperament. It required all the manly qualities of activity, endurance, pluck, and skill peculiar to cricket, and was immeasurably superior to that game in exciting features.
John Montgomery WardRelated topics
baseball favor field game live national pluck ripe skill sport superiorRelated quotes
On the tennis court, one needs a cool temperament, tremendous ball sense, reflexes, speed, hand-eye co-ordination, power, timing and peak physical fitness. Off the court, the player and support team need skills in planning, execution, travel, an ability to raise funds when needed, and several other talents.
Sania Mirza
Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense.
Lewis Mumford
I think we judge talent wrong. What do we see as talent? I think I have made the same mistake myself. We judge talent by people's ability to strike a cricket ball. The sweetness, the timing. That's the only thing we see as talent. Things like determination, courage, discipline, temperament, these are also talent.
Rahul Dravid
It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavours look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game.
Bill Bryson