35 Quotes by Red Smith

Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man has ever come to perfection.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at the typewriter, cut open a vein, and bleed.

He had splendid conformation-broad shoulders, white hair and erect carriage-and was beautifully turned out in an ensemble of rich brown. One was inclined to hope he would, in the end, award first prize to himself.

Look at him and you'd think he's 16. Talk to him and you think he's 26. Talk baseball with him, and you'd think he's 36.

I've had many writing heroes, writers who have influenced me. ...When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others ... But slowly, by what process I have no idea, your own writing tends to crystallize, to take shape. Yet you've learned some moves from all these guys and they are somehow incorporated into your own style. Pretty soon you're not imitating any longer.

I like to get where the cabbage is cooking and catch the scents.

The natural habitat of the tongue is the left cheek.

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

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.