Top 27 Sportswriter Quotes & Sayings

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

What's the difference between a three-week-old puppy and a sportswriter? In six weeks, the puppy stops whining.

Any sportswriter who thinks the world is no bigger than the outfield fence in not only a bad citizen, but also a lousy sportswriter.

I'm not a sportswriter.

They should have a rule: in order to be a sportswriter, you have to have played that sport, at some level; high school, college, junior college, somewhere. Or, you should have had to have been around the game for a long time.

Michael Bohn provides a rare opportunity to experience the American sporting scene in the Roaring Twenties. A constant stream of legendary characters marches across these pages. You’ll meet them all: The Babe, The Four Horsemen, The Manassa Manassas Mauler, The Wheaton Iceman, Bill Tilden, Gertrude Ederle, and Grantland Rice, the sportswriter whose purple prose made them all come alive.

I covered hockey for a few years in the late '90s and early 2000s for the 'Colorado Springs Gazette,' and I covered the Avalanche for some of the glory years. I've done hockey off and on as a sportswriter but never played it.

It's people stories that make good reading. I don't feel like I'm a sportswriter. I feel like I'm a guy who writes about people who happen to do sports. The best columns are the ones where you tie it somehow into the fabric of the country.

A sportswriter once referred to him as our future president. With a name like Kevin, I don't know whether that's possible.

I have a wonderful husband, sportswriter Peter Talbert.

I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory... And why not? Victory is good for you, and don't let anybody tell you different.

I told another ESPN friend here, I love all sports. I can't think of any I don't love. I've even come to appreciate cricket. Maybe I could play a sportswriter. I don't know. Anything in the sports realm is appealing.

Grantland Rice, the great sportswriter once said, 'It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.' Well Grantland Rice can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not a sportswriter. I don't get to vote. I don't get the ballot in the mail, so it's out of my hands either way. I can say that in the history of the Hall of Fame, there are no suspicions about guys who are in the Hall of Fame.

Who is the best the sportswriter who wore shorts? I keep trying to envision Grantland Rice or John Lardner in shorts. It never occurred to me to wear shorts. I'd look too silly to wear shorts.

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier.

The dumbest question I was ever asked by a sportswriter was whether I hit harder with red or white gloves. As a matter of fact, I hit harder with red.

When you're a sportswriter, you learn how to use your imagination and to flex your literary muscle, because it's the same game played over and over again. There's nothing unique or marvelous. It's not an earthquake, or a weird mass murder. It's just the same old game played over and over, and you have to bring out the personalities. You have to drag them kicking and screaming out into the light of day, or you're not a good sportswriter.

In my later years I have sought to become simpler, straighter and purer in my handling of the language. I've had many writing heroes, writers who have influenced me. Of the ones still alive, I can think of E.B. White. I certainly admire the pure, crystal stream of his prose. When I was very young as a sportswriter I knowingly and unashamedly imitated others. I had a series of heroes who would delight me for a while and I'd imitate them--Damon Runyon, Westbrook Pegler, Joe Williams.

A sportswriter's life means never sitting with your wife or family at the games. Still working after everyone has gone to the party... Digging beneath a coach's lies, not to forget those of athletic directors and general managers and owners of pro teams. Keeping a confidence. Risking it.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.

It bothers me that the average fan, the average sportswriter for that matter, pays so much attention to what's in a box score. A box score does not properly represent the most important thing - team play. It shows some guy scoring 27 points, but it doesn't show that my 27-point man let his guy score 30.

At times during high school and college I wished to be a sportswriter.

A sportswriter is entombed in a prolonged boyhood.

My first name, with the rare two-r spelling, came from a sportswriter named Garry Schumacher. My parents didn't know him personally, but my mother liked the spelling.

If I had my life to live over, I would have liked to have ended up as a sportswriter.

I love 'The Sportswriter' by Richard Ford. Ford really captures for me the bittersweetness of the quietly suffering American man. It's stoic, sad, and really beautiful.