A Quote by William Alexander
Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published everyday, like those of a baseball player.
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When a baseball player makes an error, it goes into the record and is published. How many of us could stand this sort of daily scrutiny?
I love to play baseball. I'm a baseball player. I've always been a baseball player. I'm still a baseball player. That's who I am.
So many things will happen, for better or worse, in your career, and it's very easy for those things to bog you down or consume you. But when you get a chance to look back, you realize that those were not the things that were really important.
Your career goes fast, just a blink of an eye and you're an ex-baseball player, longer than you are a baseball player. I try not to think about it too much, but it seems like it does go fast.
There were a lot of moments in my life where I could have died or I could have ended up serving 20 years to life in prison. I overcame those things, those obstacles, because I listened and I obeyed that higher power that was speaking to me at the crucial moments in my life when it really counted.
I suppose I was still optimistic and unrealistic, and I just hoped we could keep going as we were. But no. That was not good enough for Stephen, so off he went. Those were hard times. They really were. But then, I suppose, divorce is always hard.
I was first published in the newspaper put out by School of The Art Institute of Chicago, where I was a student. I wince to read that story nowadays, but I published it with an odd photo I'd found in a junk shop, and at least I still like the picture. I had a few things in the school paper, and then I got published in a small literary magazine. I hoped I would one day get published in The New Yorker, but I never allowed myself to actually believe it. Getting published is one of those things that feels just as good as you'd hoped it would.
There were worse things than dying, and those worse things happened to the people you left behind.
There was nothing worse you could be than a tweener. There was nothing worse you could be, and there were so many good guys that were so good that were tweeners, and they couldn't make it... And when you got that label, it was going to stick. It's like getting branded.
I suppose with so many things suddenly getting better, the things that were still missing hurt even worse.
It (a baseball box score) doesn't tell how big you are, what church you attend, what color you are, or how your father voted in the last election. It just tells what kind of baseball player you were on that particular day.
When I went blind at 13, I realized that I wasn't going to be a good baseball or basketball player like I enjoyed before. It forced me to look beyond the obvious, to things that I could still do well.
Now suppose both death and hell were utterly defeated. Suppose the fight was fixed. Suppose God took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indubitable certainty that despite everything — your sin, your smallness, your stupidity — you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart’s deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy. Would you not return fearless and singing? What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven? To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny — less, a scratch on a penny.
Photography is painting with light! The blurs, the spots, those are errors! But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting. And for that you need as bad a camera as possible! If you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you're doing worse than anyone else in the whole world.
When you win the Cy Young, it's like, well, you're a baseball player, that's what you're supposed to do. When you win the Clemente Award, you don't do it to get recognized for your work, but it means so much more than baseball.
We fought like heck for every player and every advantage, but we knew we were part of something bigger than ourselves. To me, that is what baseball is all about. I hope it is always what baseball is all about.
