JANE FONDA
Image: agustin.typepad.com
.
SPORTS QUOTES
.
[We pee] right off the bike. #1 is no problem. #2 is a problem. It's a real problem. But it has been attempted... It might have been Greg LeMond [laughs, snorts]. Did I just snort?' -- Lance Armstrong
.
Wade Boggs: When you compare Boston and New York, they're as different as night and day--especially from the viewpoint of a ballplayer. Number one, we don't throw knives at players in Boston. Last year, at Yankee Stadium, someone threw a knife at Wally Joyner, the Angel's first baseman. During the season, the guys in the Red Sox bull pen had darts and batteries thrown at them in Yankee Stadium--we're lucky none of the guys was seriously injured. At Shea Stadium, after the last game of the world series, our team's traveling secretary was hit in the head by a bottle thrown from the upper deck. And then, when the team was leaving, a small mob of Mets fans tried to tip our bus over. Bostonians aren't as violent. Red Sox fans will abuse you verbally rather than try to harm you physically. Boston's a great razz town.
.
"2% shooting percentage? I think [Philadelphia Flyers goalie] Ron Hextall in 1987 didn't he?" -- NHL commentator Glenn Healy on learning that Toronto Maple Leafs winger Jason Blake had scored only two goals in the 2007-2008 season despite ranking 7th in the NHL for shots on net
.
'It's something I'm gonna have to get used to. I might as well adjust to losing.' -- Reggie Bush on the prospect of being drafted by Houston (from USC, where he rarely lost)
.
'Over the next hundred years or so football saw a great many major innovations and refinements that are too boring to even think about. Along the way professional football came into being so that the largest and most violent college players would have a way to earn money other than simply demanding it from innocent civilians.' -- Dave Barry
.
"I played the best round of my life." -- Samuel L. Jackson, after Dunhill Tournament teammate Tiger Woods told him "Follow Me" [on each shot]
.
During a game one day, NFL referee Art Holst threw a flag after a linebacker tackled legendary Jim Brown. "I threw the rag and stopped the clock," Holst recalled, "and told the referee, 'I got #55 on the defense, pulling the facemask, personal foul, 15 yards.'About that time he jumped up -- all 6'6", 260 pounds of him- he looked down at me and said, 'What?' I said, 'Get back in there and play football before I bite your head off!' They're all real good guys and very politely he said, 'If you do, sir, you'll have more brains in your stomach than you have in your head!'"
.
As he approached his 90th birthday, Winston Churchill was asked the secret of longevity. "Sport," he replied. "I never, ever got involved in sport."
.
Super Bowl XXXIX (in 2005) did not start auspiciously for New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. "In pre-game warmup," he later recalled, "we came out one entrance and our bench was across the field. Then when they introduced us, I went across the field, but we came out another entrance! I blew it. I thought there were a lot of [Philadelphia] Eagles guys standing on our sidelines!"
.
'My chair didn't fit me so I hit my head six or seven times. After the match I asked my friend the same question, like, 17 times -- I didn't know I had a concussion.' -- Murderball star Mark Zupan on his introduction to the rough and tumble sport of wheelchair rugby
.
“I can play in the center, on the right, and occasionally on the left side.” -- David Beckham, asked if he was a “volatile” player
.
Wade Boggs: "When you play at night, your pupils dilate much more than they do during the day, when you have to squint to compensate for the sun shining in your eyes. At night, when my pupils are wider, they produce a bigger image on the retina, which allows me to see pitches better... it means a difference of about 40 points in my batting average."
.
"I'd probably have my name taken off my bag, wouldn't have any sponsors, and have my amateur status back!" -- John Daly, asked if he would have 10 major tournament victories if he took the game more seriously
.
'I don't think anyone [in the NFL] goes in [to a tackle] looking to hurt somebody.' -- Ben 'Call me Naive' Roethlisberger
.
"I can't palm a basketball. Shhhhhhh. That's a secret." -- Carmelo Anthony
.
'Boxing's all about getting the job done as quickly as possible, whether it takes 10 or 15 or 20 rounds.' -- Frank Bruno, Boxer
.
"I'm not a win-at-all-costs guy. Winning isn't everything. It's second to breathing." -- George Steinbrenner
.
'F***ing right!' -- Carolina Hurricanes left winger Ray Whitney, hoisting the cup after winning the Stanley Cup in 2006, live on CBC-TV (Canada)
.
'Values like burning as much gas as you can so you can drive around an oval for hours.' -- Jon Stewart after President George W. Bush said in a speech that NASCAR promotes American values
.
While attending one of his son's hockey games one day, Jeff Daniels lost his temper after an opposing player drew several penalties by taking dives. Finally, Daniels stood up and yelled... "It starts with a P and ends with a Y!"
[Daniels found himself surrounded by irate parents, until the end of the game, when he was swarmed by kids asking for autographs.]
.
“Do you understand why I would see that as normal? He wasn’t sitting on a birthday cake.” -- Yankees executive Ray Negron (who "came up with the craziness of the Yankees in the seventies—the ‘Bronx Zoo,’ and Sparky Lyle and all of them sitting on cakes without clothes on") after New Yorker writer Ben McGrath pointed out that Manny Ramirez often walked into the video room naked to study tapes of pitchers
.
'Drug testing is very big in football. This is because football players are Role Models for young people. All you young people out there want to grow up and have enormous necks and get knee operations as often as haircuts. That's why the people in charge of football don't want you to associate it with drugs. They want you to associate it with alcohol.' -- Dave Barry
.
'We're just physically not physical enough.' -- Denny Crum, Louisville basketball coach
.
'I had this basketball hoop hooked up onto my mother's bed and I used to pretend that I was a basketball player and I had this fixation on you [Magic Johnson] and I was gonna be the first female Magic Johnson!' -- Fiona Apple
.
'At the paralympics, it's the sport everone wants to see. 'Cripples beating up on each other? That could be kind of interesting...'' -- Mark Zupan on wheelchair rugby
.
'I just hit it as hard as I can. And if I can find it, I hit it again.' -- golfer John Daly
.
'I think the more noise you make, they know who's boss.' -- 2003 Bassmaster Classic Champion Michael Iaconelli (one of GQ's 10 most hated athletes), asked if his antics (dancing and making noise) made fishing more difficult
.
'It's a Porsche! Sell it and get a hotel room!' -- Mario Cantone, after Kelly Monaco introduced viewers of the 2006 Daytime Emmy Awards to her old Porsche ('a member of my extended family') and revealed that she had once lived in it
.
One day in 1996, Charlie Sheen, envious of friends who had caught foul balls, resolved to catch a home run at Angels Stadium:"I bought 2,700 seats. Me and a couple buddies, and you can see us in the video; we're like stumbling around drunk. It's really embarrassing. Five or six balls hit the wall that night. Not a single home run... The next night I was sitting at home watching the game and four home runs, like, landed in my seat!"
.
"Not gonna say much bad about Canada because the show airs there and everybody's got a hockey stick!" -- Chi McBride
.
After throwing a flag during a game one day, NFL referee Art Holst found himself face to face with irate Oakland Raiders coach John Madden. Holst recalled: "He said, 'Art, what in the world are you doing to us?' I said, 'John it is illegal for that guy to go in motino from the end of that line'... He said, 'Art [whimpering] this is our secret play.' He said, 'It's the only thing we practiced all week!'"
.
'I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.' -- Oscar Wilde on cricket
.
'Depends on how hungover I am.' -- John Daly, asked how he finds the ball in the rough
.
Jane Fonda: 'I read a fascinating book called Fly Fishing Through Midlife Crisis [1993]... and the guy [Howard Raines] says one of the great things about fly fishing is that when you hook the fish there are little neural reactions in the elbows that are like orgasms, and I thought, 'That's why Ted [Ted Turner] likes to fly fish! He wants it from all angles!''
.
'He couldn't bowl a hoop downhill.' -- Fred Trueman on fellow cricket player Ian Botham
.
'By the end of the game I had resurfaced the ice.' -- Steve Carell on drinking a gallon of water before a youth hockey game in which he was the goalie
.
"The most ridiculous [wrestling] idea? Someone suggested hiring hunchbacks. The reasoning was they could never lose a match because their shoulders could never be pinned!" -- WWF chief Vince McMahon
.
"The first thing that crossed my mind was to bite him back." -- Evander Holyfield, after being bitten by Mike Tyson
.
Jeff Daniels: "There's a song [on his album of his comedy songs] called 'Recreational Vehicle' which is kind of a 10-minute song about this RV trip I took with my family. We were going to Cooperstown, New York, for the Baseball Hall Of Fame from Michigan. We stopped at a truck stop and while I was getting recognized gassing up -- I got recognized as Jeff Bridges... I got back into the RV and pulled back onto the highway and had forgotten my wife."
["The next exit was, like, 18 miles down the road."]
.
'I could care less about the Pirates. It's just black and yellow look nice!' -- Patrice O'Neal, after making his entrance on 'Late Night with David Letterman' in a Pittsburgh Pirates shirt
.
'You just like to see white guys get hit with a stick!' -- Jay Leno, after Kevin Eubanks told him bandmate Vicki liked watching hockey
.
'To call [English soccer player Kevin] Keegan a superstar is stretching a point. He's been very, very lucky -- an average player who came into the game when it was short of personalities. He's not fit to lace my boots as a player.' -- George Best
.
'Let's paralyze their resistance with our persistence.' -- legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes
.
'If only faces could talk...' -- sportscaster Pat Summerall during the Super Bowl
Image: cookstown.gov.uk
