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.

We play because we are wired for joy; it is imperative as human beings.

The caliber of play suffered and attendance declined year by year. Interest in college football was exploding, and there was this new game called basketball.

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.

Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure.

My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.

But the dream is never forgotten, only put aside and never out of reach: Where once the dream connected boys with the world of men, now it reconnects men with the spirit of boys.

Award trophies, as opposed to letting the players define and claim their own. Ultimately, pay them to play so that their activity not only resembles work but is work.

Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.

We know these men are professionals whose services are up for bid and whose bags are packed, and yet we call them our own and take personal, even civic pride in their accomplishments.

Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.

There is a happiness in failure too. At least you tried. There is a happiness in not reaching your goal yet. You have a journey ahead of you...

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did--which was to hide.

Some of the most amazing people I've met in life are cops.

To engage in experiments on heat was always one of my most agreeable employments.

I consider acting a day job - it's not my dream; it's not my be-all, end-all.

If you're constantly stepping outside of the character and judging them, you'll never really be able to fully engage because you'll always be slightly cynical.

No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.

The music was more than music - at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous.

In Hollywood I thought I was large and klutzy, like the characters I played.

My name is Jared Howe. I haven't spoken to another human being in more than two years, so I'm sure I must seem...a little crazy to you.