Quote of your career...

From Hugh Durham, Georgia basketball coach, at his weekly press conference talking about a losing streak: "It is not how good you play when you are playing good, it is about how good you play when you are playing bad. And we can play bad as good as anyone in the country."
Then, with reporters' heads spinning, he continued:
"It is like the actress Linda Evans. Some days she looks good. Some days she looks bad. But even on the days she looks bad she still looks pretty good."

 

Awesome thread.

 

Joe O'Brien at Idaho State after a particularly frustrating loss: "You know, my dad, he never went to college, and all he wanted was for me to become a pharmacist. I didn't listen, and sometimes, if you don't listen to your parents, you end up paying for it for years. I imagine pharmacists don't have nights like this too often."

 

Rookie league baseball team blew yet another lead when the relievers were awful for the umpteenth time. Rookie reporter goes up to manager Hub Kittle, an old-time baseball guy.
Reporter: Gee, Hub, your relievers weren't very effective.
Kittle: They were about as effective as a dry c---.

 

Again, I'm just a young guy, but in my few years at a weekly, I've got a few I'll remember.

First from my beat of the large area high school's football team, which I'll call Hometown. Their coach, a longtime head coach at several different schools, has given some good quotes over the years.

During an away game in a big city a good distance from Hometown, the coach and I met for a postgame interview by the home team's student section. Hometown had gotten an 18-7 win over the Big City school. I just started off with a general softball of, "What did you feel were some advantages your team had tonight." Hometown coach was looking at the rest of the Big City's students as they left the section.

"Look at those girls," Hometown coach said and pointed for me to turn around. I turned and looked, and saw several high school girls wearing volleyball-style short, athletic shorts and tight tops. "No wonder (Big City) didn't win tonight. If my guys had those type of girls sitting in the front row behind them at our home games, they'd be distracted too. Of course, they don't have to worry about that -- we don't have anyone at Hometown that looks that good."

His second gem comes from another away game that Hometown won 28-21. In that game, Hometown had a 21-0 fourth quarter lead and saw it dissolve in 5 minutes to a 21-21 tie. On the kickoff after the opponent tied the score, though, Hometown's star RB fielded the kickoff and ran about 80 yards, breaking five tackles, to score and get the lead back.

After the game during the postgame interview at midfield, the Hometown coach caught that hero RB walking off the field, called him over, took a $5 dollar bill out of his shorts and shook hands with the star RB and gave him that $5 in the handshake. "Buy yourself a burger tonight," the coach said.

As the star RB walked away, the coach turned back to me and said, "He deserves more than that... though I'd be afraid to see what he'd buy with that kind of money. It'd probably wouldn't be legal."

By the way, neither ever got printed.

 

My first year in the business, I covered one of the area's juco football teams who got curb-stomped by their archrivals, another school in our area.

I went up to the coach of the losing team and made a generic comment on the order of, "pretty tough night, huh?"

His answer, in about as thick a Southern accent as you can imagine: "Yeah, we didn't play worth a sheee-it."

 

Walked into a high school basketball team's pre-practice study hall to interview the coach for a preseason story. When asked what his biggest concern was for the year, the coach looked around at guys goofing off during his study hall and said, "Keeping them eligible."

Couldn't use it, of course. But he was dead serious.

 

A player from Europe came over and played high school/AAU basketball in the U.S. for two years. He was then heavily recruited and picked the school I was covering over a couple of big names.

I called him and asked him why he chose the local school.

"I don't know anything about it there. I'm going there because my AAU coach told me to."

I'm guessing that only scratched the surface of his recruitment.

 

I can't give the exact quote, but when I was covering the Patriots in the late '80s and the team was bankrupt, in four different lawsuits, for sale to anyone who was solvent and possibly leaving town, owner Billy Sullivan called me into his office and asked if, perchance, HE had been the anonymous source I quoted in one of my financial stories.
I didn't have the heart to tell him "I never reveal a source." I just said "no." After a long silence while I searched for where my eyeballs had rolled to.

 

Local high school team getting a bit of a reputation this season for fading in the second half. tonight it happens again as they were up 21-10 at half and end up losing 22-21 on a touchdown with 8 seconds left that capped off a 99 yard drive.
Afterward, coach gives us this:
"I don't have any answers. If you do, you can write 'em in the newspaper and I'll read 'em tomorrow. They might help us win a ballgame."

 

I remember the room being dead silent when Pedro Martinez was giving his mango tree quote after Game Two of the 2004 ALCS. After he was done, the next guy to ask a question said something like "That's the greatest answer I've ever heard," which, while fawning and not something I'd ever want to say, was also completely true. Everyone there recognized we were in the presence of greatness. That was a few weeks after he called the Yankees his daddy. Quite a fucking run for Pedro.

My favorite quotes came from "celebrities" at Shea Stadium. Tim Robbins was there once just watching batting practice--no airs, nothing more than a field credential around his neck, just watching from the backstop. I decided, what the fuck, my favorite movie of his ISN'T Bull Durham, which I figure automatically makes me different than the rest. I nodded to him, he nodded back and I said "Just wanted to tell you I really enjoyed 'Arlington Road.'"

"Thanks a lot," he says.

"Most un-Hollywood ending I ever saw," I said.

Without missing a beat, he says "The box office receipts agreed with you."

A year or two later, Kevin Nealon was there taking BP for no apparent reason. Afterward, the writers surrounded him for no apparent reason. Someone asks why he was taking BP.

"I'm making a baseball movie just like Billy Crystal," Nealon says. "'69.'"