haiku/data/etc/fortunes/Sports

A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree. Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
		-- Donald A. Metz
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A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the rough.  Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical phenomena.
		-- Donald A. Metz
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	A boy scout troop went on a hike.  Crossing over a stream, one of the boys dropped his wallet into the water.  Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed the wallet and tossed it to another carp.  Then that carp passed it to another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet back and forth.
	"Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a rare case of carp-to-carp walleting."
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A gambler's biggest thrill is winning a bet. His next biggest thrill is losing a bet.
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A new 'chutist had just jumped from the plane at 10,000 feet, and soon discovered that all his lines were hopelessly tangled.  At about 5,000 feet, still struggling, he noticed someone coming up from the ground at about the same speed as he was going towards the ground.  As they passed each other at 3,000 feet, the 'chutist yells, "HEY! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PARACHUTES?" 
	The reply came, fading towards the end, "NO!  DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT COLEMAN STOVES?"
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A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
		-- Yogi Berra
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A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as "you could blow it in" may be blown in.  This rule does not apply if the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants to make a travesty of the game.
		-- Donald A. Metz
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	A ranger was walking through the forest and encountered a hunter carrying a shotgun and a dead loon.  "What in the world do you think you're doing?  Don't you know that the loon is on the endagered species list?"
	Instead of answering, the hunter showed the ranger his game bag, which contained twelve more loons.
	"Why would you shoot loons?", the ranger asked.
	"Well, my family eats them and I sell the plumage."
	"What's so special about a loon?  What does it taste like?"
	"Oh, somewhere between an American Bald Eagle and a Trumpeter Swan."
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		Accidentally Shot

	Colonel Gray, of Petaluma, came near losing his life a few days ago, in a singular manner.  A gentleman with whom he was hunting attempted to bring down a dove, but instead of doing so put the load of shot through the Colonel's hat.  One shot took effect in his forehead.
		-- Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1861
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"Ain't that something what happened today.  One of us got traded to Kansas City."
		-- Casey Stengel, informing outfielder Bob Cerv he'd
		   been traded.
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All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely than others.
		-- Alan Truscott
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Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
		-- Dave Barry
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Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping."
		-- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
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Anxious after the delay, Gruber doesn't waste any time getting the Koenig [a modified Porsche] up to speed, and almost immediately we are blowing off Alfas, Fiats, and Lancias full of excited Italians.  These people love fast cars.  But they love sport too and no passing encounter goes unchallenged. Nothing serious, just two wheels into your lane as you're bearing down on them at 130-plus -- to see if you're paying attention.
		-- Road & Track article about driving two absurdly fast scars across Europe.
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[Babe] Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching.
		-- Tris Speaker, 1921
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Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.
		-- Yogi Berra in his rookie season.
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Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is my choice for team captain.  Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led off the bottom of the eighth with a walk.  The next hitter banged a hard single to right field.  Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and kept going, sliding safely into third base.
	With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first. Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy took off for second and made it.  Now we had runners at second and third.
	I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy start to take a lead.  All of a sudden, here he comes.  He makes a great slide into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?"  He looks up, and shouts, "Back to second if I can make it."
		-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
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Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers... they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key!
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College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played.  There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity. 
		-- H. L. Mencken
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	COONDOG MEMORY
	(heard in Rutledge, Missouri, about eighteen years ago)

Now, this dog is for sale, and she can not only follow a trail twice as old as the average dog can, but she's got a pretty good memory to boot. For instance, last week this old boy who lives down the road from me, and is forever stinkmouthing my hounds, brought some city fellow around to try out ol' Sis here.  So I turned her out south of the house and she made two or three big swings back and forth across the edge of the woods, set back her head, bayed a couple of times, cut straight through the woods, come to a little clearing, jumped about three foot straight up in the air, run to the other side, and commenced to letting out a racket like she had something treed.  We went over there with our flashlights and shone them up in the tree but couldn't catch no shine offa coon's eyes, and my neighbor sorta indicated that ol' Sis might be a little crazy, `cause she stood right to the tree and kept singing up into it.  So I pulled off my coat and climbed up into the branches, and sure enough, there was a coon skeleton wedged in between a couple of branches about twenty foot up. Now as I was saying, she can follow a pretty old trail, but this fellow was still calling her crazy or touched `cause she had hopped up in the air while she was crossing the clearing, until I reminded him that the Hawkins' had a fence across there about five years back.  Now, this dog is for sale.
		-- News that stayed News: Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly
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Dallas Cowboys Official Schedule

	Sept 14		Pasadena Junior High
	Sept 21		Boy Scout Troop 049
	Sept 28		Blind Academy
	Sept 30		World War I Veterans
	Oct 5		Brownie Scout Troop 041
	Oct 12		Sugarcreek High Cheerleaders
	Oct 26		St. Thomas Boys Choir
	Nov 2		Texas City Vet Clinic
	Nov 9		Korean War Amputees
	Nov 15		VA Hospital Polio Patients
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Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really overwhelming majority of the crowd present.  Abusive and obscene language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
		-- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
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Don't let go of what you've got hold of, until you have hold of something else.
		-- First Rule of Wing Walking
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Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:	Black.

Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black.  According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.
		-- Steve Rubenstein
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Ever feel like life was a game and you had the wrong instruction book?
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Ever feel like you're the head pin on life's bowling alley, and everyone's rolling strikes?
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Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
		-- Snoopy
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Failed Attempts To Break Records
	In September 1978 Mr. Terry Gripton, of Stafford, failed to break the world shouting record by two and a half decibels.  "I am not surprised he failed," his wife said afterwards.  "He's really a very quiet man and doesn't even shout at me."
	In August of the same year Mr. Paul Anthony failed to break the record for continuous organ playing by 387 hours. His attempt at the Golden Fish Fry Restaurant in Manchester ended after 36 hours 10 minutes, when he was accused of disturbing the peace. "People complained I was too noisy," he said.
	In January 1976 Mr. Barry McQueen failed to walk backwards across the Menai Bridge playing the bagpipes.  "It was raining heavily and my drone got waterlogged," he said.
	A TV cameraman thwarted Mr. Bob Specas' attempt to topple 100,000 dominoes at the Manhattan Center, New York on 9 June 1978.  97,500 dominoes had been set up when he dropped his press badge and set them off.
		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
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Flying is the second greatest feeling you can have.  The greatest feeling? Landing...  Landing is the greatest feeling you can have.
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Football builds self-discipline.  What else would induce a spectator to sit out in the open in subfreezing weather?
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Football combines the two worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
		-- George F. Will, "Men At Work:  The Craft of Baseball"
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Football is a game designed to keep coalminers off the streets.
		-- Jimmy Breslin
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Fortune finishes the great quotations, #15

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." And while you're at it, throw in a couple of those Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
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FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL:		#14
	The Baby Ruth candy bar was not named after George Herman "The Babe" Ruth, but after the oldest daughter of President Grover Cleveland.
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From 0 to "what seems to be the problem officer" in 8.3 seconds.
		-- Ad for the new VW Corrado
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George's friend Sam had a dog who could recite the Gettysburg Address.  "Let me buy him from you," pleaded George after a demonstration.
	"Okay," agreed Sam.  "All he knows is that Lincoln speech anyway."
	At his company's Fourth of July picnic, George brought his new pet and announced that the animal could recite the entire Gettysburg Address. No one believed him, and they proceeded to place bets against the dog. George quieted the crowd and said, "Now we'll begin!"  Then he looked at the dog.  The dog looked back.  No sound.  "Come on, boy, do your stuff." Nothing.  A disappointed George took his dog and went home.
	"Why did you embarrass me like that in front of everybody?" George yelled at the dog.  "Do you realize how much money you lost me?"
	"Don't be silly, George," replied the dog.  "Think of the odds we're gonna get on Labor Day."
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Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
		-- Calvin Keegan
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Go directly to jail.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
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Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for its wild horses.  I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any wild horses in person.  In person, they are like enormous hooved rats.  They amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon."
		-- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
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Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
		-- W. C. Fields
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How can you think and hit at the same time?
		-- Yogi Berra
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I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
		-- Chief Justice Earl Warren
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I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.
		-- Frank Deford, sports writer
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I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
		-- Florence Henderson
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I do not care if half the league strikes.  Those who do will encounter quick retribution.  All will be suspended, and I don't care if it wrecks the National League for five years.  This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right to play as another.
		-- Ford Frick, National League President, reacting to a threatened strike by some Cardinal players in 1947 if Jackie Robinson took the field against St. Louis.  The Cardinals backed down and played.
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I guess I've been so wrapped up in playing the game that I never took time enough to figure out where the goal line was -- what it meant to win -- or even how you won.
		-- Cash McCall
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I guess the Little League is even littler than we thought.
		-- D. Cavett
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I just know I'm a better manager when I have Joe DiMaggio in center field.
		-- Casey Stengel
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I like your game but we have to change the rules.
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I never met a man I didn't want to fight.
		-- Lyle Alzado, professional football lineman
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I realize that today you have a number of top female athletes such as Martina Navratilova who can run like deer and bench-press Chevrolet trucks.  But to be brutally frank, women as a group have a long way to go before they reach the level of intensity and dedication to sports that enables men to be such incredible jerks about it.
		-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
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I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that it took seven others to beat him!
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I would be batting the big feller if they wasn't ready with the other one, but a left-hander would be the thing if they wouldn't have knowed it already because there is more things involved than could come up on the road, even after we've been home a long while.
		-- Casey Stengel
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I would rather say that a desire to drive fast sports cars is what sets man apart from the animals.
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I'd rather push my Harley than ride a rice burner.
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I'm a lucky guy, and I'm happy to be with the Yankees.  And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.
		-- Yogi Berra at a dinner in his honor
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I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade.
		-- Golfer Bobby Jones on being told that it was 105 degrees in the shade.
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I've only got 12 cards.
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If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop.  The law of
gravity supercedes the law of golf.
		-- Donald A. Metz
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If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the game right.  If it plays the game right, it will win -- unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?
		-- Sparky Anderson
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If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
		-- Doug Larson
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If swimming is so good for your figure, how come whales look the way they do?
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If you do your best the rest of the way, that takes care of everything. When we get to October 2, we'll add up the wins, and then we'll either all go into the playoffs, or we'll all go home and play golf. Both those things sound pretty good to me.
		-- Sparky Anderson
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If you don't know what game you're playing, don't ask what the score is.
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If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up.  You're the sucker.
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If you want to see card tricks, you have to expect to take cards.
		-- Harry Blackstone
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If you're carrying a torch, put it down.  The Olympics are over.
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In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries.  Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression.  In America we call it golf.
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In Brooklyn, we had such great pennant races, it made the World Series just something that came later.
		-- Walter O'Malley, Dodgers owner
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It gets late early out there.
		-- Yogi Berra
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It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another -- but which one?  Differences are crucial.
		-- Lazarus Long
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It's like deja vu all over again.
		-- Yogi Berra
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It's not whether you win or lose but how you played the game.
		-- Grantland Rice
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It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you look playing the game.
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Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
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Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee:

(1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this 	   force is technically termed "car suck").

(2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"

(3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly proportional to the cost of hitting it.  For instance, a Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy.

(4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you in the head and knock you silly.
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Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
		-- Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"
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Life is a game of bridge -- and you've just been finessed.
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Life is a game.  In order to have a game, something has to be more important than something else.  If what already is, is more important than what isn't, the game is over.  So, life is a game in which what isn't, is more important than what is.  Let the good times roll.
		-- Werner Erhard
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Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
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Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game.  You want us to pay income taxes, too?
		-- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
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Love means nothing to a tennis player.
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Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history, dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first primitive umpire.

What inner force drove this first athlete?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
		-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
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MARTA SAYS THE INTERESTING thing about fly-fishing is that it's two lives connected by a thin strand.

Come on, Marta, grow up.
		-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
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MARTA WAS WATCHING THE FOOTBALL GAME with me when she said, "You know most of these sports are based on the idea of one group protecting its territory from invasion by another group."

"Yeah," I said, trying not to laugh.  Girls are funny.
		-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
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	Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills. Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."
	[So is that punchline.]
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Most people's favorite way to end a game is by winning.
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My first baseman is George "Catfish" Metkovich from our 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates team, which lost 112 games.  After a terrible series against the New York Giants, in which our center fielder made three throwing errors and let two balls get through his legs, manager Billy Meyer pleaded, "Can somebody think of something to help us win a game?"
	"I'd like to make a suggestion," Metkovich said.  "On any ball hit to center field, let's just let it roll to see if it might go foul."
		-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
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My way of joking is to tell the truth.  That's the funniest joke in the world.
		-- Muhammad Ali
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Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
		-- '76 Olympics
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Never play pool with anyone named "Fats".
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NEWS FLASH!!
Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West German pole-vault champion.
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Nothing increases your golf score like witnesses.
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Now there's three things you can do in a baseball game: you can win or you can lose or it can rain.
		-- Casey Stengel
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"Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the dog] is good for almost every kind of game.  He went duck hunting one time and did real well at it.  Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but, you know, farm ducks.  And it got Don Carlos all mixed up.  Since the ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something.  So one morning last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and buried them."  "What do you mean, buried them?"  "Oh, he didn't hurt them. He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth and put them in the holes.  Then he covered them up with mud except for their heads.  He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for another one when Tony found him.  We talked about it for a long time.  Papa said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't know how to build a cage he put them in holes.  He's a smart dog."
		-- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning"
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On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment -- halftime.
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Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem.  You see, during a portion of Beethovan's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around.  So, to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the page of the score before the bass cue.  As the basses grew more and more inebriated, two of them fell asleep.  The conductor grew quite nervous (he was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth; the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out.
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One thought driven home is better than three left on base.
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One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
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Our [softball] team usually puts the other woman at second base, where the maximum possible number of males can get there on short notice to help out in case of emergency.  As far as I can tell, our second basewoman is a pretty good baseball player, better than I am, anyway, but there's no way to know for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male comes barging over from, say, right field, to deal with it.  She's been on the team for three seasons now, but the males still don't trust her.  They know, deep in their souls, that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she probably would elect to save the infant's life, without ever considering whether there were men on base.
		-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
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P-K4
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Pedro Guerrero was playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984 when he made the comment that earns him a place in my Hall of Fame.  Second baseman Steve Sax was having trouble making his throws.  Other players were diving, screaming, signaling for a fair catch.  At the same time, Guerrero, at third, was making a few plays that weren't exactly soothing to manager Tom Lasorda's stomach.  Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous motivational meetings and zeroed in on Guerrero: "How can you play third base like that?  You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball. What is it?"
	"I'm only thinking about two things," Guerrero said.  "First, `I hope they don't hit the ball to me.'"  The players snickered, and even Lasorda had to fight off a laugh.  "Second, `I hope they don't hit the ball to Sax.'"
		-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
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Repel them.  Repel them.  Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
		-- Indiana University football cheer
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Reporter:   "What would you do if you found a million dollars?"
Yogi Berra: "If the guy was poor, I would give it back."
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Rick:	"How can you close me up?  On what grounds?"
Renault: "I'm shocked!  Shocked!  To find that gambling is going on here."
Croupier (handing money to Renault): "Your winnings, sir."
Renault:"Oh.  Thank you very much."
		-- Casablanca
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Rube Walker: "Hey, Yogi, what time is it?"
Yogi Berra:  "You mean now?"
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Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching.  Working once a week, he might have lasted a long time and become a great star.
		-- Tris Speaker, commenting on Babe Ruth's plan to change from being a pitcher to an outfielder. 
		Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
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Sailing is fun, but scrubbing the decks is aardvark.
		-- Heard on Noahs' ark
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San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city.  I don't mean the people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy.  When they boo you, you know they mean *you*.  Music, that's what it is to me. One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo.
		-- George Halas, professional football coach
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Several years ago, an international chess tournament was being held in a swank hotel in New York.  Most of the major stars of the chess world were there, and after a grueling day of chess, the players and their entourages retired to the lobby of the hotel for a little refreshment.  In the lobby, some players got into a heated argument about who was the brightest, the fastest, and the best chess player in the world.  The argument got quite loud, as various players claimed that honor.  At that point, a security guard in the lobby turned to another guard and commented, "If there's anything I just can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."
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Show me a good loser in professional sports and I'll show you an idiot. Show me a good sportsman and I'll show you a player I'm looking to trade.
		-- Leo Durocher
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So I'm ugly.  So what?  I never saw anyone hit with his face.
		-- Yogi Berra
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Son, someday a man is going to walk up to you with a deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken.  And he is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Ace of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ears. But son, do not bet this man, for you will end up with a ear full of cider.
		-- Sky Masterson's Father
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Support Bingo, keep Grandma off the streets.
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Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
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Ten of the meanest cons in the state pen met in the corner of the yard to shoot some craps.  The stakes were enormous, the tension palpable.
	When his turn came to shoot, Dutsky nervously plunked down his entire wad, shook the dice and rolled.  A smile crossed his face as a seven showed up, but it quickly changed to horror as third die slipped out of his sleeve and fell to the ground with the two others.  No one said a word.  Finally, Killer Lucci picked up the third die, put it in his pocket and handed the others to Dutsky.
	"Roll 'em," Lucci said.  "Your point is thirteen."
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Texas A&M football coach Jackie Sherrill went to the office of the Dean of Academics because he was concerned about his players' mental abilities. "My players are just too stupid for me to deal with them", he told the unbelieving dean.  At this point, one of his players happened to enter the dean's office.  "Let me show you what I mean", said Sherrill, and he told the player to run over to his office to see if he was in.  "OK, Coach", the player replied, and was off.  "See what I mean?" Sherrill asked. "Yeah", replied the dean.  "He could have just picked up this phone and called you from here."
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That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball.
		-- Bill Veeck
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The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water.  Eager to show off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his next hunting trip.  Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the duck and returned it to his master.
	"Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
	"Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."
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The Fastest Defeat In Chess
	The big name for us in the world of chess is Gibaud, a French chess master.  
	In Paris during 1924 he was beaten after only four moves by a Monsieur Lazard.  Happily for posterity, the moves are recorded and so chess enthusiasts may reconstruct this magnificent collapse in the comfort of their own homes.
	Lazard was black and Gibaud white:
	1: P-Q4, Kt-KB3
	2: Kt-Q2, P-K4
	3: PxP, Kt-Kt5
	4: P-K6, Kt-K6
	White then resigns on realizing that a fifth move would involve either a Q-KR5 check or the loss of his queen.
		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
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The fellow sat down at a bar, ordered a drink and asked the bartender if he wanted to hear a dumb-jock joke.
	"Hey, buddy," the bartender replied, "you see those two guys next to you?  They used to be with the Chicago Bears.  The two dudes behind you made the U.S. Olympic wrestling team.  And for you information, I used to play
center at Notre Dame."
	"Forget it," the customer said.  "I don't want to explain it five times."
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The most serious doubt that has been thrown on the authenticity of the biblical miracles is the fact that most of the witnesses in regard to them were fishermen.
		-- Arthur Binstead
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THE OLD POOL SHOOTER had won many a game in his life. But now it was time to hang up the cue. When he did, all the other cues came crashing go the floor.

"Sorry," he said with a smile.
		-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
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The one sure way to make a lazy man look respectable is to put a fishing rod in his hand.
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	The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball... You've got to start way down, at the bottom, when you're six or seven years old. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen.  You've got to let it grow up with you, and if you're successful and you try hard enough, you're bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now.
		-- Babe Ruth, in his 1948 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium
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The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter.  The batter swang and missed.  The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected.  He hit a high fly right to the center fielder.  The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
		-- Dizzy Dean
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The real problem with hunting elephants is carrying the decoys.
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The surest way to remain a winner is to win once, and then not play any more.
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The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall.  Philbin is said to make up for no talent by cheating well.  Says Philbin of his decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
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The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil.
		-- Heywood Broun
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The whole of life is futile unless you consider it as a sporting proposition.
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There's a couple of million dollars worth of baseball talent on the loose, ready for the big leagues, yet unsigned by any major league.  There are pitchers who would win 20 games a season ... and outfielders [who] could hit .350, infielders who could win recognition as stars, and there's at least one catcher who at this writing is probably superior to Bill Dickey, Josh Gibson.  Only one thing is keeping them out of the big leagues, the pigmentation of their skin.  They happen to be colored.
		-- Shirley Povich, 1941
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They also surf who only stand on waves.
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To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit, call it the target.
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Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
		-- Finlay Peter Dunne, "Mr. Dooley's Philosophy"
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Two brothers, Mort and Bill, like to sail.  While Bill has a great deal of experience, he certainly isn't the rigger Mort is.
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Two golfers were being held up as the twosome of women in front of them whiffed shots, hunted for lost balls and stood over putts for what seemed like hours.
	"I'll ask if we can play through," Bill said as he strode toward the women.  Twenty yards from the green, however, he turned on his heel and went back to where his companion was waiting.
	"Can't do it," he explained, sheepishly.  "One of them's my wife and the other's my mistress!"
	"I'll ask," said Jim.  He started off, only to turn and come back before reaching the green.
	"What's wrong?" Bill asked.
	"Small world, isn't it?"
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We was playin' the Homestead Grays in the city of Pitchburgh.  Josh [Gibson] comes up in the last of the ninth with a man on and us a run behind.  Well, he hit one.  The Grays waited around and waited around, but finally the empire rules it ain't comin' down.  So we win.  The next day, we was disputin' the Grays in Philadelphia when here come a ball outta the sky right in the glove of the Grays' center fielder.  The empire made the only possible call. "You're out, boy!" he says to Josh.  "Yesterday, in Pitchburgh."
		-- Satchel Paige
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When he got in trouble in the ring, [Ali] imagined a door swung open and inside he could see neon, orange, and green lights blinking, and bats blowing trumpets and alligators blowing trombones, and he could hear snakes screaming.  Weird masks and actors' clothes hung on the wall, and if he stepped across the sill and reached for them, he knew that he was committing himself to destruction.
		-- George Plimpton
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When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again.  The fans with the cigars and the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in the street and foreign presidents.  It's goin' to be back to the fighter who comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says he's in shape.  Old hat.  I was the onliest boxer in history people asked questions like a senator.
		-- Muhammad Ali
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When in doubt, lead trump.
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Winning isn't everything, but losing isn't anything.
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Winning isn't everything.  It's the only thing.
		-- Vince Lombardi
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Woman:      "Is Yoo-Hoo hyphenated?"
Yogi Berra: "No, ma'am, its not even carbonated."