57 Quotes by John Thorn

In response to the challenge of strangers, sport arose as a sublimated representation of a community's armed might as well as its pride of place and clan.

Why we play as children is not because it is our work or because it is how we learn, though both statements are true; we play because we are wired for joy, it is imperative as human beings.

I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.

If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.

Better than anything else in our culture, it enables fathers and sons to speak on a level playing field while building up from within a personal history of shared experience - a group history - that may be tapped into at will in years to come.

As the game enters its glorious final weeks, the chill of fall signals the reality of defeat for all but one team. The fields of play will turn brown and harden, the snow will fall, but in the heart of the fan sprouts a sprig of green.

Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in a table instead clogs up sentences.

This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.

Do we settle on a regional team because we can go to its ballpark and see its games on television? Or do we choose a team as our favorite because it has an especially appealing player, a Barry Bonds or an Ichiro?