For 350 years we have been taught that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. Football's place is to add a patina of character, a deference to the rules and a respect for authority.

It's no accident that of all the monuments left of the Greco- Roman culture the biggest is the ballpark, the Colosseum, the YankeeStadium of ancient times.

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention.

As a ballplayer, (Dizzy) Dean was a natural phenomenon, like the Grand Canyon or the Great Barrier Reef. Nobody ever taught him baseball and he never had to learn. He was just doing what came naturally when a scout named Don Curtis discovered him on a Texas sandlot and gave him his first contract.

Today's game is always different from yesterday's game.

Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.

Writing is easy. Just sit in front of a typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.

Any sportswriter who thinks the world is no bigger than the outfield fence in not only a bad citizen, but also a lousy sportswriter.

Young men have visions, old men have dreams.

It is well known that the older a man grows, the faster he could run as a boy.

In entertainment value, the Democratic clambake usually lays it over the Republican conclave like ice cream over parsnips.

The Russians have a weapon that can wipe out two hundred eighty thousand Americans. That puts them exactly ten years behind Howard Cosell.