Years later, while playing rightfield for theChicago White SoxatYankee Stadium, Jackson caught a ball on the warning track, wheeled and threw to third base to nail Mike Gallego, who had assumed, reasonably, that he could advance from second on the long out. This, by the way, was after Jackson had had his left hip socket replaced by metal and polymers. “Who cut that?” Gallego asked third baseman Robin Ventura. “Nobody,” said Ventura.Gallego looked incredulously toward Jackson some 300 feet away.Jackson pointed an invisible pistol back at him and mouthed, “Pow.”
Rick Telander
Awareness certainly of the land itself - of what it can and can’t be made to yield, of what men have done to it and the revenge it has taken for this. But awareness too of wild creatures and plants, and of the ways in which they function with dirt and terrain and climate to shape a whole pattern of livingness, even in tired and diminished places. Even here. Their pattern will exist when I am gone, and with luck even when our civilization is gone. That the comfort to be found in this thought is of a brownish hue, I grant, but being of a sunny disposition I see it as comfort nonetheless in an age woefully short of such reassurance…In their vastly differing ways, things squabble for territory and for mates, pair, produce young, feed, and are themselves fed on in their turn, croaking and whistling and grunting and howling and singing and issuing their other noises, if any, along the way. And all life passes back to the dirt and the water for digestion and renascence, quite simply yet very complexly and without ever reaching and end, thus far at any rate.
Though men in the mass forget the origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful discomfort.
The magic that gleams an instant between Argos and Odysseus is both the recognition of diversity and the need for affection across the illusions of form. It is nature’s cry to homeless, far-wandering, insatiable man: “Do not forget your brethren, nor the green wood from which you sprang. To do so is to invite disaster.”
To an eagle or to an owl or to a rabbit, man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with an innocence peculiar to himself, that they are equally proud of this alleged confraternity. He says, ‘Look at my two noble friends — they are dumb, but they are loyal.’ I have for years suspected that they are only tolerant.
I am not a politician… I only suffer the consequences.
The psychologist, Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches
The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
I decline to accept the end of man… I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
For the future, so far as we can foresee it, it appears to be unquestionable that the activity of the human race will provide the major factor in the environment of almost every evolving organism. Whether they act consciously or unconsciously human initiative and human choice have become the major channels of creative activity on this planet. Inadequately prepared we unquestionably are for the new responsibilities, which with the rapid extension of human control over the productive resources of the world have been, as it were, suddenly thrust upon us. Yet there have in recent times been some signs of a responsible attitude. We have come to expect kindness in the treatment of the domestic animals. We have come to deplore the irreplaceable loss of the species which ignorance and greed have exterminated. The future of some wild animals has occasioned sufficient anxiety for the provision of Parks and Nature Reserves to be the normal policy of civilised peoples. These are signs that we do not feel that ruthless exploitation is good enough.
We classify ourselves into vocations, each of which wields some particular tool, or sells it, or repairs it, or sharpens it, or dispenses advice on how to do so; by such division of labors we avoid responsibility for the misuse of any tool save our own. But there is one vocation—philosophy—which knows that all men, by what they think about and wish for, in effect wield all tools. It knows that men thus determine, by their manner of thinking and wishing, whether it is worthwhile to wield any.
Because the demands on a goalie are mostly mental, it means that for a goalie, the biggest enemy is himself. Not a puck, not an opponent, not a quirk of size or style. Him. The stress and anxiety he feels when he plays, the fear of failing, the fear of being embarrassed, the fear of being physically hurt, all the symptoms of his position, in constant ebb and flow, but never disappearing. The successful goalie understands these neuroses, accepts them, and puts them under control. The unsuccessful goalie is distracted by them, his mind in knots, his body quickly following.
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