Quote of the Day | December 28, 2007: Something Very Like Art

From Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, 1968:

As the season progressed, we found we enjoyed each other so much that we decided, quite tacitly, to stand the entire game. Had we moved into the empty seats, we would have had to split up, one here, two or three there, wherever the seats were available. So we braved the wind at our backs, our noses ran, we had large laughs---that laughter haunts me still---and sometimes, at those moments when the play on the field seemed astonishingly perfect, we just fell quiet. That was the most memorable picture of all.

We were Wops and Polacks and Irishmen out of Flatbush, along with one mad dreamer out of the cold, cow country up yonder, and though we may not have had the background, or the education, to weep at Prince Hamlet's death, we had all tried enough times to pass and kick a ball, we had on our separate rock-strewn sandlots taken enough lumps and bruises, to know that we were viewing something truly fine, something that only comes with years of toil, something very like art.