A biography for Frank Defordhasn’t been written yet.
“In days of yore, Opening Day of the baseball season was special, signifying that spring had come at last. Today, however, Opening Day sort of dribbles into existence, and the spiritual start of spring now belongs to the Masters golf tournament, where the azaleas and magnolias and dogwood bloom.”
“Don't dismiss Auriemma and UConn just because their excellence shines on the female side of the coin.”
“It's still the tradition for various football powerhouses to pay guarantees to schools with cream-puff teams to come on over to our place and submit to massacre.”
“Majesty is a thing of beauty to behold, whatever the particular enterprise.”
“'Good Morning America' is television to a fare-thee-well.”
“The NBA Schedule was made up by one man, Eddie Gottlieb, who had owned the Philadelphia Warriors. Eddie had a Buddha-like body and a crinkly smile, and because he had also been an owner in baseball's old Negro leagues, he was known as the Mogul.”
“So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible.”
“That's the greatest compliment I can get: when somebody from Key West says, 'Hey, Bubba.' That means I'm in!”
“When Juan Antonio Samaranch said the Olympics are more important than the Catholic Church, I just couldn't believe it. I said to myself, 'Don't let your expression show that he has just made a total ass of himself. Be cool, and just keep right on talking.'”
“You can tell all you need to about a society from how it treats animals and beaches.”
“First and foremost, Howard Cosell is sports. There are all these people, these fans, who claim that when Cosell does a game on television, they turn off the sound on the TV and listen to the radio broadcast. Oh, sure. You probably know critics in your neighborhood who vow the same thing. Well, too bad for them.”
“The Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, and Pistons are there today as sure as they were when what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Would you rather have a basketball team, or would you rather be Detroit?”
“I do honestly believe that, in the 21st century, sport is the most significant cultural element in this imperfect world. It calls for serious attention.”
“Thank you for listening. Thank you for abiding me. And now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I bid you goodbye and take my leave.”
“I am something of a ham. Yeah, I'd always been a writer. But in high school, I acted in plays. So it wasn't as if you had to drag the words out of my vocal chords.”
“Before the Colts arrived in 1947, the best athlete in town was a woman duckpin bowler named Toots Barger. Football? The biggest games in Baltimore had been when Johns Hopkins took on Susquehanna or Franklin & Marshall at homecoming.”
“By coincidence, this particular tiny show on earth that consists entirely of me talking about sports on NPR is also folding its tent flaps this May of 2017. Yes, this is my swansong, my farewell, my last hurrah. Adieu, adios, arrivederci, auf wiedersehen.”
“The Cowboys were never America's team any more than Anthony Weiner was America's congressman.”
“I think every time I can find a story that touches that human nerve, and even sometimes makes you cry, I think that I've found something that I'll like very much.”