John Thorn Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Player, Treasure

  John Thorn (1995). “Baseball: our game”, Penguin Books

  15 Copy quote

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

  John Thorn

  Play, Joy, Humans

  45 Copy quote

• It says, I think, that at root that we're children, or we'd like to be. And the best of us each keep as much of that childhood with us as we grow into adulthood, as we can muster... And even after we're past the point of being able to play the game with any skill, if we love it, then it's like Peter Pan - we remain boys forever, we don't die.

  John Thorn

  Children, Boys, Past

  7 Copy quote

• More fundamentally, it is a dream that does not die with the onset of manhood: the dream is to play endlessly, past the time when you are called home for dinner, past the time of doing chores, past the time when your body betrays you past time itself.

  John Thorn

  Dream, Home, Past

  7 Copy quote

• One of the first lessons he or she learns is that in baseball anything, absolutely anything, can happen. Just two days ago as I write this, something happened that had never happened in baseball before.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Writing, Two

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Powerful, Past

  8 Copy quote

• I'd just like to see - in writing about baseball - more energy and better craft, minus statistical bludgeoning and invective.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Writing, Energy

  Source: bleacherreport.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Hands, Data, Experts

  Source: bleacherreport.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Pride, Men, Bags

  8 Copy quote

• Whatever else I do before finally I go to my grave, I hope it will not be looking after young people.

  John Thorn

  People, Graves, Young

  7 Copy quote

• I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.

  John Thorn

  Anecdotes, Form

  Source: bleacherreport.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Player, Awards, Pay

  9 Copy quote

• Distant replay morphs into instant replay, and future replay cannot be far off.

  John Thorn

  Instant Replay, Instant, Replay

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Dream, Stars, Boys

  10 Copy quote

• Although the world proved not yet ready for the brotherhood of baseball, that would be only a matter of time, baseball magnates believed.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Brotherhood, Would Be

  4 Copy quote

• Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death.

  John Thorn

  Retirement, Reality, Play

  4 Copy quote

• For many in baseball September is a month of stark contrast with April, when everyone had dared to hope. If baseball is a lot like life, as pundits declare, it is because life is more about losing than winning.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Winning, Months

  7 Copy quote

• Donning a glove for a backyard toss, or watching a ball game, or just reflecting upon our baseball days, we are players again, forever young.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Player, Games

  8 Copy quote

• Pursuing employment or climatic relief, we live in voluntary exile from our extended families and our longer past, but in an involuntary exile from ourselves and our own past.

  John Thorn

  Past, Relief, Employment

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Inspirational, Basketball, Football

  26 Copy quote

• But baseball bounced back in the next decade to reclaim its place as the national pastime: new heroes, spirited competition, and booming prosperity gave birth to dreams of expansion, both within the major leagues and around the world.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Dream, Hero

  9 Copy quote

• In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Team, Years

  8 Copy quote

• And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Running, Player

  7 Copy quote

• Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Fall, Player

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Thorn

  Baseball, Dream, Lucky

  8 Copy quote

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