On the last Sunday in September in smoggy Los Angeles, announcer Vin Scully riffed through some notes as Willie McCovey came to bat for the last time that season before the Chavez Ravine folks. "Let's see," said Scully, "no home runs since September 11. . . .Well, it's been a long season. McCovey's got to be tired. Big as he is, he's probably worn out." So Scully was looking down at his papers when he heard the familiar crack. Worn-out Willie had just driven the ball over the right field fence, over the bullpen, and into Glendale. Scully did not see the pitch McCovey hit. It had been a palm ball lobbed up by Pete Mikkelson, the kind of pitch that floats up like a dead flounder, and usually goes about as far as dead flounders fly when you hit one. If you hit one. This one traveled a couple of miles or more, and Willie McCovey had home run number 45, to break his tie with Hank Aaron and win for McCovey his second consecutive National League home-run title.
Arnold HanoRelated topics
announcer ball break couple crack dead drive far fence field flounder fly folks hit home kind lob looking los national palm pitch ravine right run say second tie time worn well Aaron Chavez miles NOTES pete scullyRelated quotes
McGraw was an improviser, a teacher. He brought much to the game that keeps baseball fresh and suspenseful today-the hit-and-run play, the steal, the squeeze play, the uses of the bunt and the defenses against it. He helped turn the game into a thing of fluid beauty, infielders charging the plate or roaming far from their bases, outfielders moving with each pitch, racing in for base hits before them, backing each other in the outfield, entering the infield itself on rundown plays. Yet when the game changed radically, with the introduction of the livelier baseball, McGraw naturally shifted to a power emphasis, founding his team about such men as George Kelly, Bill Terry, Mel Ott. He knew, too, that the old pitching style of permitting a man to hit a deadened ball because it would then be caught in the big fields had to be changed, and his staffs led the league year after year in strikeouts, in earned-runs.
Arnold Hano
This annoyed me: I was on the phone with somebody today tryin to get a phone number from that person and write it down, but they didn't have phone number rhythm and that pissed me off. You know what I'm talkin about? Phone number rhythm. Especially if there's like an area code involved, like 'two one two - bum bum buh - bum buh bum buh!' That is the rhythm I think we're all familiar with. This guy had no clue! I was like "Okay, Hank. Gimme the number." He's like "Alright. It's two one two nine - fifteen eight eleven six [mumbling incoherently] fou.. tw.. five.. eight.. seven.. two." "Did you throw in your zip code? Cause I got a lot of extra numbers over here. I have extra. I can almost start a new number! What do ya got?! Start again from the top!" They really screw you up on the last four numbers. That's where they get ya. "Five five five - six.. teen forty one" "Dude, I already wrote the six! I made the dash too close, I can't shimmy the one in there now! Forget you!"
Kevin James
If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation. Most do so directly, by breeding. In the few examples that don't do so by design, they do it indirectly, by helping a relative with whom they share a great number of their genes. And in as much as the legacy that human beings pass on to the next generation is not only genetic but to a unique degree cultural, we do the same. So animals and ourselves, to continue the line, will endure all kinds of hardship, overcome all kinds of difficulties, and eventually the next generation appears. This albatross is over 30 years old, she's already a grandmother, and this year once again she has produced a chick. She will devote the next 10 months of her life looking after it. She has faced the trials of life and triumphed, for her little 2 day old chick the trials are just beginning.
David Attenborough
Most motor-cars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity and oil and petrol and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday. Smoke comes out of the back of them and horn-squawks out of the front, and they have white lights like big eyes in front, and red lights behind. And that is about that - just motor-cars, tin boxes on wheels for running about in.
But some motorcars - mine, for instance, and perhaps yours - are different. If you get to like them and understand them, if you are kind to them and don't scratch their paint and bang their doors, if you fill them up and pump them up when they need it, of you keep them clean and polish and out the rain and snow as much as possible, you will find, you MAY find, that they become almost like persons - MORE than just ordinary persons - MAGICAL PERSONS!!!
Ian Fleming
I remember a decade ago at my first annual meeting in St. Louis. After my banquet remarks to a packed house, they presented me with a very special gift. It was a splendid hand-crafted musket.
I admit I was overcome by the power of its simple symbolism. I looked at that musket and I thought of all of the lives given for that freedom. I thought of all of the lives saved with that freedom. It dawned on me that the doorway to all freedoms is framed by muskets.
So I lifted that musket over my head for all to see. And as flashbulbs popped around the room, my heart and a few tears swelled up, and I uttered five unscripted words. When I did, that room exploded in sustained applause and hoots and shouts that seemed to last forever. ... So as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those words again for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: From my cold dead hands!
Charlton Heston
