(Sport) is a great window on society, |
[DiMaggio] could see it, and he understood completely where Harry Walker might hit the ball, ... Dominic will tell you that he still wonders if he could have gotten Slaughter at third. And Slaughter told him later, 'I never would have come home if you had been out there.' |
As if he were a man of a certain kind of secular faith, |
He knew that in film there was power, and he was the man working the film, and he knew he was good at it. |
I am made nervous, as someone who works in the same vineyard, by the idea of inventing himself as a fictional character, ... It seems unnecessary. It seems taking a major liberty. And the problem with it is if you invent the fictional character and you take this liberty, then the reader is going to think what other liberties? |
I have no doubt he would have been a huge success no matter what he put his mind to, |
I read that piece and thought, 'I'm getting out of here,' ... I'm getting out of daily journalism because this is a level way above what I and everybody I know has been doing, and I want to try to do something like this. It's a very influential piece. |
I think he was such a magical figure, so compelling a figure, he inevitably drew the interest of very talented writers. |
I think I got very lucky on this, ... The Red Sox players of that team just were particularly pleasant. Ted Williams was larger than life and exuberant and contentious and cantankerous, but great fun to be with. |
I think they were watching the movie 'Patton' when they should have been watching 'The Battle of Algiers' about urban insurgency. I'm a Vietnam-era journalist. I think most journalists were appalled as we moved toward war in Iraq. The worst mistake this administration made was not about weapons of mass destruction. It was the administration's view that we'd be welcomed as the great liberator. |
I think what we tried to do is get a reflection of all the forces that are at play, of the best writing. In the end, we ended up with something that was a pretty good reflection of the changes in society as well. |
I think you always go out and do books based on what you're curious about. |
If you're a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring. |
It was the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman. |
Late in his career, when the L.A. Times started pursuing him in its new incarnation during Watergate, it was one of the great 360-degree turnarounds. |