A Quote by John Layfield
You want to get something changed, you send sport. Look what happened when Pee Wee Reese puts his arm around Jackie Robinson. That did more for racial relations in the United States through sport.
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My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport.
If I was the Jackie Robinson of golf, I sure didn't do a very good job of it. Jackie was followed by hundreds of great black ballplayers who have transformed their sport... But there are hardly any black kids coming up through the ranks of golf today.
The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.
Bullfighting has some of the elements of a sport or contest, and in the United States most people think of it as a sport, an unfair sport. If you're in Spain or Mexico it's absolutely not a sport; it's not thought of as a sport and it's not written about as a sport. It has elements of public spectacle, but then so does, for example, the Super Bowl. It has elements of a deeply entrenched, deeply conservative tradition, a tradition that resists change, as you pointed out.
People look at black pride in America and sport's impact on it. In the major cities it took off the first time Jackie Robinson stole home. In the deep South, it started with Eddie Robinson, who took a small college in northern Louisiana with little or no funds and sent the first black to the pros and made everyone look at him and Grambling.
The one thing I miss is hitchhiking. Now there's no more of that. When's the last time you saw a hitchhiker? It's not that I consider it a great sport, but it was my way of seeing the country. The open road, especially in the western United States, is still very pristine, but everything else around it has changed.
We need to get more women into sport, whether that's young girls in karting or off the track. The more we get into sport, the more you are going to get rising to the top of the sport.
The thing I always liked about 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure' was Pee-wee's, obviously, an oddball, but nobody in that universe points a finger at him and goes, 'Look at the weirdo!' I think that's why weirdo, arty kids like it so much: because it's sort of like a utopia.
I grew up loving Pee-wee Herman. I was obsessed. I was the kid at school who everyone knew was obsessed with Pee-Wee.
What is at stake is preserving our relations with the United States. They should not be changed because of what has happened. But trust has to be restored and reinforced.
First of all, in any sport where you can measure distance, height speed and all of that, you see how athletes have changed their sport and made it better. I believe, with every generation, the sport has improved. Certainly, in the men's game, that has been the case. I think that I played Pete [Sampras] at his best, I played Roger [Federer] at his best.. I believe wholeheartedly that Roger and [Rafael] Nadal have pushed the game much further than myself or Pete ever did. Their options on the tennis court are considerably more than ours.
Women's sport is embedded in the mainstream consciousness now, and that is a hugely positive thing. That's not to say that our sport can't get even more popular - because I think it can - but perceptions have definitely changed for the better.
In 1997, when I started as a professional athlete, my sport was not like it is now. I needed to develop myself to beat the next generation, but things also changed in the sport. Bikes have changed, the sport has gotten faster, and it's becoming more professional. But my goal always was to try to be one step in front of all the others. That was my motivation. That helped me to work every day during the year, and very hard. And it never stopped.
I was going to go to a midnight screening of 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure' in college, and it's the sort of thing where people dress up. So I got dressed up, and then I got lost. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over while I was wearing a Pee-wee suit. That's a hard ticket to get out of.
I'm looking forward to a long, fruitful career now behind the mic, staying around the sport I love so much and the sport that changed my life for the better.
Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?" "They're beanies." "They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn." "But I'm not in Brooklyn." "But you're still a Brooklynite." "I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie." "You don't mean that, Carl." "Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie." "Why?" "When in Rome do as the Romans do." "Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly. "This is the silliest conversation.
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