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Any sportswriter who thinks the world is no bigger than the outfield fence in not only a bad citizen, but also a lousy sportswriter.
Red Smith -
Dying is no big deal. Living is the trick.
Red Smith
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I think it's the real world. The people we're writing about in professional sports, they're suffering and living and dying and loving and trying to make their way through life just as the brick layers and politicians are.
Red Smith -
Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.
Red Smith -
I have known writers who paid no damned attention whatever to the rules of grammar and rhetoric and somehow made the language behave for them.
Red Smith -
Ninety feet between the bases is the nearest thing to perfection that man has yet achieved.
Red Smith -
Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection.
Red Smith -
Baseball is a dull game only for those with dull minds.
Red Smith
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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.
Red Smith -
It was an ideal day for football - too cold for the spectators and too cold for the players.
Red Smith -
Writing is easy. Just sit in front of a typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.
Red Smith -
It is well known that the older a man grows, the faster he could run as a boy.
Red Smith -
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.
Red Smith -
Today's game is always different from yesterday's game.
Red Smith