FUNNY SPORTS QUOTES \ Source: holdingwilley.com

Cricket Quotes

The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey.
- Brian Johnston, BBC


Yorkshire 232 all out, Hutton ill - I'm sorry, Hutton 111.
- John Snagge, BBC News


Ray Illingworth has just relieved himself at the pavilion end.
- Brian Johnston, BBC Radio

 
Welcome to Worcester where you've just missed seeing Barry Richards hitting one of Basil D'Oliveira's balls clean out of the
ground.
- Brian Johnston, BBC Radio

 
He's usually a good puller - but he couldn't get it up that time.
- Richie Benaud, Channel 9

 
If you go in with two fast bowlers and one breaks down, you're left two short.
- Bob Massie, ABC Radio

 
This game will be over any time from now.
- Alan McGilvray, ABC Radio

 
It is important for Pakistan to take wickets if they are going to make big inroads into this Australian batting line-up.
- Max Walker, Channel 9

 
Glenn McGrath joins Craig McDermott and Paul Reiffel in a three-ponged prace attack.
- Tim Gavel, ABC News

 
In the back of Hughes' mind must be the thought that he will dance down the piss and mitch one.
- Tony Greig, Channel 9

 
It's been very slow and dull day, but it hasn't been boring. It's been a good, entertaining day's cricket.
- Tony Benneworth, ABC Radio

 
It was close for Zaheer, Lawson threw his hands in the air and Marsh threw his head in the air.
- Jack Potter, 3UZ

 
Laird has been brought in to stand in the corner of the circle.
- Richie Benaud, Channel 9

 
Chappell just stood on his feet and smashed it to the boundary.
- Jim Maxwell, ABC Radio

 
On the first day, Logie decided to chance his arm and it came off.
- Trevor Bailey, Radio 3

 
He didn't quite manage to get his leg over.
- Jonathan Agnew, after Botham had spun around off balance and tried to step over the wicket unsuccessfully, BBC


Lloyd's talking to his SLIPers.
- Channel 9 commentator.

 
Marshall's bowling with his head.
- ABC commentator.

 
The sight of Bright holds no fright for Wright.
- Jim Maxwell

and the riposte

That's right!
- Norm O'Neil

 
And Jajeda is dijappointed...Jadeja is ji..da..I'll come again, Jajeda..okay Jadeja looks downcast.
- Tony Greig on Channel 9.


His throw went absolutely nowhere near where it was going
- Richie Benaud


Even Downton couldn't get down high enough for that
- Richie Benaud


That slow motion doesn't show how fast the ball was traveling.
- Richie Benaud


There were no scores below single figures
- Richie Benaud


Fast bowlers are quick. Just watch this -- admittedly it is in slow motion
- Ian Chappell.


It is now possible they can get the impossible score they first thought possible
 - Christopher Martin-Jenkins.


It would be unprintable on television
- Geoff Boycott


If England lose now, they will be leaving the field with their heads between their legs!
- Geoff Boycott


That was a tremendous six. The ball was still in the air as it went over the boundary.
- Fred Trueman


Then there was that dark horse with the golden arm, Mudassar Nazar.
- Trevor Bailey


David Boon is now completely clean-shaven, except for his moustache.
- Graham Dawson
 

The black cloud is coming from the direction the wind is blowing. Now the wind is coming from where the black cloud is!
- Raymond Illingworth


He is a very dangerous bowler. Innocuous, if you like.
- England coach David Lloyd discussing Chris Harris


The Queen's Park Oval -- as its name suggests, absolutely round!
- Tony Cozier


His feet were a long way away from his body!
- Ravi Shastri


You rejoin us at a very appropriate time -- Ray Illingworth has just relieved himself at the pavilion end!
- Brian Johnston


The lights are shining quite darkly
- Henry Blofeld


It is a catch he would have held 99 times out of one thousand.
- Henry Blofeld


It is a full house at the Eden Gardens. Today, Calcutta is celebrating the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi!
- Henry Blofeld


Cricket is basically baseball on valium.
- Robin Williams, American actor
 

Cricket needs brightening up a bit. My solution is to let the players drink at the beginning of the game, not after. It always works in our picnic matches.
- Paul Hogan, Australian actor


I don't know what these fellows are doing, but whatever they are doing, they sure are doing it well.
- Pete Sampras on watching Lara and Ambrose at Lord's.

 
Cricket is a game which the British, not being a spiritual people, had to invent in order to have some concept of eternity.
- Lord Maycroft


Many continentals think life is a game, the English think cricket is a game.
- George Mikes How to be an Alien


Personally, I have always looked upon cricket as organised loafing.
-William Temple. Archbishop of Canterbury 1926.


Q: Do you feel that the selectors and yourself have been vindicated by the result?

A: I don't think the press are vindictive. They can write what they want.
- Mike Gatting, ITV

 
I think we are all slightly down in the dumps after another loss. We may be in the wrong sign...Venus may be in the wrong juxtaposition with somewhere else.
- Ted Dexter, explaining away England's seventh successive Test loss, to Australia at Lord's, 1993

 
There was a slight interruption there for athletics.
- Richie Benaud, referring to a streaker at Lord's, BBC TV

 
Say, when do they begin?
- Grouch Marx, watching a cricket match at Lord's


It's funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan, it's when you realise that your wife left you in May.
- Denis Norden, British television writer and compere

 
Playing against a team with Ian Chappell as a captain turns cricket match into gang warfare.
- Mike Brearley, 1980

 
Is there any sex in it?
- Peter Sellers, as a psychiatrist upon first learning about cricket in What's New Pussycat, 1965

 
Q: Darryl, who are your favourite actors?
Cullinan: Dustin Hoffman and some Aussie bowlers in the act of appealing.

 
Q: What's your favourite animal?
Steve Waugh: Merv Hughes.

---

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FUNNY SPORTS QUOTES \ Source: thehockeynews.com

HOCKEY QUOTES

Gordie Howe reveals what career advice he gave to Sidney Crosby


Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby skates at practice at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Sunday, May 25, 2008.



DETROIT - Gordie Howe, who was such a great player in his day that he was christened Mr. Hockey, had some simple words of advice when he spoke with Sidney Crosby.

"I sat down and talked to him for a little while and I was impressed because he could stare a hole through you," said Howe, who is 80 now. "There's not a word goes by he doesn't connect with.
"When he was leaving, I said, 'Do me one favour and don't change anything. Just be the kid you are, the player you are.'

"I met him and I've seen him play. Unless you put two guys on him, he'll kill you in a game. Don't worry about him. He's going to be successful in the long run. Everywhere you look you see Crosby's picture, and it's earned."

Howe told this story during an interview before he and a handful of his teammates from Detroit's championship dynasty of the 1950s were guests of honour at an NHL banquet Sunday night.
A prolific scorer, and a tough-as-nails competitor as well, Howe was the league's all-time leading scorer until Wayne Gretzky came along. He's watching with some envy as the current edition of the Red Wings skates in the championship series.

"I'd love to be on the team with the money they're paying now," he said with a grin.
He wouldn't love being sent to the penalty box under the enforcement of obstruction fouls that is much more strict today than in his era.

"Just touching a guy with a stick, that's ridiculous," he said of some of the penalties he sees called.

Diners stood to applaud as Howe, Red Kelly, who also is 80, Ted Lindsay, who is 82, Alex Delvecchio, practically a kid at age 76, and the others entered the dining hall.

"When you get to my age, you almost believe there'll be a sickness somewhere along the line," Howe said. "You just keep your fingers crossed and hope everybody can come next time.

"You go home and all of a sudden the doctor is knocking at your door. There is illness when you get old and (retired athletes) are subject to it like everybody else."

Lindsay recalled travelling by train in the old six-team NHL.

"In those days, we never spoke to players on the other team," he said. "If I was in Maple Leaf Gardens and I came out on College Street and there was a Toronto Maple Leafs player, you'd cross the street.

"In Montreal, we'd catch a train at 11:10 after a game and as long as there were no fights you'd catch the 11:10. We always hoped when the Canadiens were on that train that in Toronto on Sunday morning they'd put the diner between the two sleeping cars because I didn't want to walk through the car and have to look at all those stupid Frenchmen, and likewise they didn't want to look at us stupid Englishmen or whatever we were, you know.

"It always worked out that if the dining car was between, it worked out very well."
Lindsay attempted unsuccessfully to form the first players' association. Management disapproval eventually led to his trade to Chicago.

"I had a Red Wing tattooed on my backside and over my heart but I'd still do the same thing today as much as it changed my life," he said.

A big difference between the NHL of today and way back when is that players are full-time athletes now, while in the old days players found other jobs during the off-season and didn't train all summer.

"From the last game of the season, we never touched skates again until training camp in September," Delvecchio said. "The team kept all the equipment and the skates.

"We had nothing unless we bought skates and we couldn't afford them. We had a lot of great hockey players at the time, but in today's game the athletes are much more conditioned. Maybe we had a few more finesse moves than they do now but they're better athletes now."

Howe said the Red Wings teams of the 1950s developed a togetherness that started with weekly Friday night parties initiated by teammate Sid Abel.

"That togetherness gave us a solid base," Howe said.

Lindsay recalled great rivalries with the Canadiens and reinterated his respect for Montreal star Maurice (Rocket) Richard.

"Rocket Richard from the blue-line on in is still the greatest hockey player who has ever played in the world," Lindsay said. "I don't care if they play hockey for 100 years, nobody will ever be better than The Rocket.

"He was phenomenal. Tremendous strength in the upper body. When he came across that blue-line, if he had the puck on his stick, he was going to get a shot on goal."

Kelly was the first winner of the Norris Trophy as best defenceman. He moved to centre and won more championships with Toronto. He donned a helmet in the mid-1960s - the only player in the NHL to wear one at the time.

"I'd had three concussions and the doc said, 'Red, you'd better wear a helmet,"' Kelly said. "I didn't like it. (Opponents) would whack me on the head because I was wearing a helmet. They didn't have great helmets in those days and it pressed against my temples."

Kelly was on a title team with the Leafs in 1964. He couldn't celebrate the night of the Stanley Cup-clinching win because he also was a member of parliament at the time, and had to be in Ottawa at 2 p.m. the next day because the minority government of Lester Pearson needed all members in attendance for a crucial vote.

The late Harold Ballard, who would become owner of the Leafs and at that time was a Leafs executive, took the Stanley Cup and two bottles of champagne to Kelly's home. Photos were taken, including one of Kelly's newly-arrived son, Conn, sitting in the bowl atop the trophy.

"He had a smile on his face," Kelly recalled. "He did the whole load in the Cup, the whole load.
"When my kids see players drinking champagne out of the Cup, now they all roar. They all have a great laugh."

FUNNY SPORTS QUOTES \ Source: sfgate.com

Image: i29.photobucket.com

BILL WALSH, NFL COACH EXTRAORDINAIRE

AMERICAN FOOTBALL QUOTES

Weird ways and times of a football icon
Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Bill Walsh was weird.

He didn't have a normal bone in his body.

It wasn't just his playbook. Walsh's general thinking process was so far outside the box, the box was a $30 cab ride away.

The West Coast offense was weird. And effective, although opposing coaches would have found a way to stop Walsh's crazy dink 'n' dunk attack had he given them another decade or so.

"Before the West Coast (offense)," says Mike Shumann, a wide receiver on Walsh's first 49ers team, "teams would stretch the field vertically. Now we're out there running shallow crossing patterns, the linebackers are looking at our wide receivers, going, 'Where'd he come from?' They'd be so surprised, they'd reach out and try to grab you."

Before Walsh, nothing said football tradition like the daily test of manhood known as dehydration. Walsh watched his 49ers work in the 100-degree heat of training camp and had a weird idea: water.

While other coaches and NFL decision-makers were congratulating themselves on being racially colorblind in the coach-hiring process, Walsh noticed that being colorblind meant being blind to the fact that all the colors were white. He also observed that talk was extremely cheap, so he instituted a program to give black coaches real access to NFL jobs.

He was the rare coach who could mix up his pitches. Walsh had fastballs, curves and change-ups. One minute he's Vince Lombardi, fire and brimstone and bad words. Next minute he's prancing through the locker room wearing football shoes and black tights with a wide-receiver towel tucked in the front, lampooning the ultra-tidy Jerry Rice.

To warn his players about the dangers of night life before a road trip to Los Angeles, Walsh introduced them to a pimp, a prostitute and a drug dealer, played, in full costume, by assistant coaches Bob McKittrick, Sam Wyche and Ray Rhodes.

I missed covering the 49ers in the Walsh era, but I got to know him later, and it was always a treat to talk to the guy. He couldn't help himself from giving you amazing insights and titillating bits of info.

I went away from the sports world for a few years, then I returned to sportswriting duty, and the very day that happened, before anyone knew about that little change, I got a phone message from Walsh.

Whenever a coach or player phones a writer at home, you're either in deep doo-doo or they dialed your number by mistake. I get more unsolicited phone calls from sitting U.S. Presidents than I get from athletes or coaches. I probably hadn't spoken to Walsh since a few years earlier when, in print, I called him a "weasel."

"I was just thinking you should get back to writing about sports," Walsh said, and added some compliments.

If he was working some suck-up agenda, I never figured what it was, because for all he knew I would never have cause to write about him again.

It was just typical Walsh weirdness. When Shumann landed a post-NFL job as a TV sportscaster, Walsh phoned after Shumann's first show and said, "You looked good on TV, Mike, but quit shaking your head so much."

Genius is in the details. If Walsh noticed his players sitting in the same little groups every day at lunch, he would make it known that it was time to mix it up, socially. You're either a team or you're not.

Dying of leukemia is probably not the best ways to be ushered out of the Big Stadium, but dying the way he did allowed Walsh to spend his last couple of years truly appreciating his friendships. His strength would come and go, but his life was a fairly constant interaction with his old players and friends, over long lunches and at his bedside.

There were a lot of stories, a lot of laughs, and every session would end with Walsh saying, "I love you." One recent day Walsh huddled with Al Davis and John Madden. How would you like to harness the weird creative vibes in that room?

Walsh was notorious - and feared - for cutting his great players before they were ready to retire. Before Jerry Rice's last season with the 49ers Walsh told him, "It's time for you to move on."

Same deal with Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott and many others. The players now say Walsh wanted to get his men out of the game a year too soon, rather than a year too late and busted up beyond repair. Ruthlessness or compassion? Maybe both.

So if Walsh was taken away from us too soon, nobody would understand that better than he.

FUNNY SPORTS QUOTES \ Source: star-telegram.com

BASEBALL HUMOR

Minor leaguer traded for 10 baseball bats in Texas

McALLEN, Texas -- During three years in the low minors, John Odom never really made a name for himself until he got traded for a bunch of bats.

"I don't really care," he said Friday. "It'll make a better story if I make it to the big leagues."

For now, Odom is headed to the Laredo Broncos of the United League. They got him Tuesday from the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League for a most unlikely price: 10 Prairie Sticks Maple Bats, double-dipped black, 34-inch, C243 style.

"They just wanted some bats, good bats - maple bats," Broncos general manager Jose Melendez said.

According to the Prairie Sticks Web site, their maple bats retail for $69 each, discounted to $65.50 for purchases of six to 11 bats.

The Canadian team signed Odom about a month ago, but couldn't get the 26-year-old righty into the country. It seems Odom had a "minor" but unspecified criminal record that wasn't revealed to immigration officials before they scanned his passport, Vipers president Peter Young said.

Odom said the charge stemmed from a fight when he was 17. Although he thought it had been expunged from his record, it popped up during immigration.

Originally from Atlanta, Odom was drafted late by the San Francisco Giants in 2003. He pitched 38 games in Class A from 2004-06 and was released by the organization this spring.

The bat trade wasn't the first time Calgary came up with some creative dealmaking. The Vipers once tried to acquire a pitcher for 1,500 blue seats when they were renovating their stadium, Young said.

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