Quote of your career...

Wish it was me taking this call, but it wasn't. Still worth sharing.

A colleague of mine answers a call from a local high school baseball coach. He's trying to take the box score over the phone and asks the coach how many runs his team scored.

Coach replies, "Is a run when someone crosses the plate?"

Another time, covering a HS playoff football game, an assistant coach was just livid with the officials, throws his headset down and yells for everyone to hear, including me standing right by him, "Goddamnit, I can't bend over any farther for these cocksuckers!"

 

Regional state basketball tournament.
Podunk High falls to Hillbilly High 64-62, with Hillbilly outscoring Podunk 17-1 in the third quarter.
The coaches are brought to the interview room and coch of Podunk is a great guy and quote machine.
Kid from a weekly covering Hillbilly asks Podunck coach, "How big a factor was the third quarter when you got outcsored 17-1?"
Podunk coach replies: "You're from one of those Washington think tanks, aren't you?"

 

In a similar vein, I was covering a first-round playoff game a few years back. Screwy first half, with lots of penalties and weird calls. Both coaches talk to the officials at halftime.
But the assistant coach, who had long been rumored to be the man to take over when the veteran head coach retired, walks by me before half, looks at me and says, "I hope that next year, when I am at Bumblefuck, the officials don't screw us over and over again like they do when you have Podunk in front of your uniforms."

 

Covered a juco baseball doubleheader. Bumblefuck split the conference title that year with three other teams, and would have won it outright had they not split two doubleheaders with the seventh place team.

After the home split, the coach is standing outside the dugout, staring at nothing. I ask him a generic question about the second-game beatdown his team gave, and he says, "If we lost that game, I would have climbed that fucking tree out there and hung myself."

Not a great quote, but at the next meeting in Piddletown, a few Piddletown fans were waving nooses throughout the first game and offering the Bumblefuck coach one to use.

 

Bob Feller in the pressroom in Cleveland. I was some still-in-college idiot who did not know what was appropriate and what was not. I was doing a call-in sportstalk radio show for my college radio station at the time as well as writing features for a local paper. I was there, he was there, I saw my opportunity. I asked him if he would answer some questions for a feature and he invited me up to sit next to him. Before I asked him I wrote out a bumper for him to read, promoting my radio show. Asked him, like I was some kind of big shot, "Mr. Feller, would you mind reading this for my talk show?" and handed him the paper. He looked at it, looked at me, said, "I'm not reading that crap for you," wrinkled it up and threw it in the garbage. Then proceeded to tell me to ask away. I kind of stammered and couldn't ask him anything...told him I changed my mind and got the hell outta there. Man, I was a douchebag.

 

I interviewed a softball player who had signed to pitch for a Division II program, even though she had offers from several much larger and better programs. I asked her why she chose the smaller school. She said "_________ has a rodeo team, and I really like cowboys."

I asked her to clarify her answer, just to see if she was kidding, and she gave me the same answer about cowboys.

 

"Nobody believed in us, we shocked the world tonight."

 

I once had a high school basketball coach tell me, "We're the best 1-7 team in the state!"

And I was covering a high school baseball game, and after a team scored two runs on one hit, a walk and three errors, the coach of the team on defense (which ended up winning) said, "That was uglier than tartar sauce on fudge."

Everyone makes a face when I tell 'em that line.

 

Former coach of an area Catholic high school was known for his colorful and oblivious use of words others might find offensive. I never covered any games of his, but I'd heard the stories (editorhoo can fill you in better than I).

However, I did witness the same coach's best non-quote. Here's the situation:
His team won its regular-season finale and needed a rival which had beaten his team earlier in the year to lose to another Catholic team, a rather mediocre one, in the league to give his team a piece of the title.
He'd heard a rumor his rival had lost but didn't know for sure, so saunters into the newsroom and walks up to his former team manager, now a full-timer at the paper, who happens to typing up the box for the game in question.
Coach sees the box and asks, "They really beat 'em?"
Writer, without looking up, answers, "Yeah."
Coach, without saying another word, raises his hands above his head like an official signalling a TD, turns around and marches out of the office.

 

I tell this story over beers from time to time, so this could out me to a few on the board.

A football coach I used to cover never minded taking unsavory characters who could play. One year, he got a shithead wide receiver into school. Surprise, surprise ... they got into an altercation after a few weeks of preseason camp. The kid left practice after a heated confrontation.

The next day, I pulled the coach aside and asked him, "Where's (John Doe)?"

"He's got an ass problem," coach said.

"What? Like hemorrhoids?" I joked.

"No. I kicked his ass, and he didn't like it, so he don't play here no more," coach replied.

"Got an official statement for me?" I asked.

"I don't fucking care," coach replied. "Write, 'Hemorrhoids.'"

"I didn't think those were career-ending," I said.

"His were," coach said with big laugh.

This coach was a quote machine, by far the best I've ever covered.

Among his other gems...

"(John Doe) is failing tennis class. TENNIS CLASS! I knew he was retarded, but shit, who fails tennis class? What did he do, just stand there and shove the racquet up his ass?"

"I would have killed (John Doe) out there today, but then you'd write that I killed him, because you're an asshole, and then I'd go to jail."

"You're the fucking quarterback, (John Doe). You're supposed to be smart, not the dumbest mother fucker out here."

"(John Doe), catch the fucking ball! You're a white receiver!"

I could go on for hours. I miss the hell out of covering that coach.

 

Jesus. John Doe must have really sucked.

 

Not one I took, but a fellow staffer got this from a high school football coach:

"Our offense is about as complicated as a sledgehammer."