Some Favorite Lines

(Some because they're so good and some because they're so bad)

• Television:
  
  
  
  • I've seen variations of this credited to FSU Head Coach Bobby Bowden, so perhaps what I heard wasn't original. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, I was watching a college football game, and on one play a running back was faced with several defensive linemen roughly the size of Mack trucks. He lowered his head and plowed into them.
    
    Announcer #1: "Wow! He doesn't know the meaning of the word 'fear.'"
    
    Announcer #2: "Yeah, well I've seen his grade point average and he doesn't know the meaning of a lot of words."
    
    
  • I couldn't stand Howard Cosell, and watched him only on programs I "just had" to see. In my humble opinion he was phony as a three dollar bill, but I have to give him credit for this one.
    
    In the late 1960s or early 1970s, a USC football game was on TV and Cosell was in the broadcast booth. In running down the rosters before the game, he came to O. J. Simpson and said, "This is a young man with a serious character defect."
    
    I believe the reference was to the reputation Simpson had acquired for beating up girlfriends, a habit that police reports would lead one to believe he has not shed.
    
    
  • On being asked his opinion of the singing act, Joe Frazier and the Knockouts: "Joe Frazier can't sing, but who's gonna tell him?" - Muhammad Ali
    
    
  • Chris Schenkel, covering a golf tournament: "Joyce Kilmer must have had this in mind when she wrote Trees."
    
  
  
• Books:
  
  
  
  • "Shut up he explained." - The Young Immigrants, Ring Lardner
    
    
  • ". . . the spiritual home of Russia, where one of the three surviving seminaries continues the hapless production of a dozen priests per year, like eyedropping holy water into Hell." Inveighing We Will Go - William F. Buckley Jr (the quote refers to visiting Zagorsk during the time of the Soviet Union)
  
  
• Movies:
  
  
  
  • The Outlaw Josey Wales
    "I didn't surrender either but they got my horse and made him surrender. They got him pulling a plow up in Kansas, I bet." - Lone Watie (Chief Dan George)
    
    
  • Young Frankenstein
    "What hump?" - Igor (Marty Feldman)
    
    
  • The Lion in Winter
    "Give me a little peace." - Henry II (Peter O'Toole)
    "A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought." - Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn)
    
    
  • The Princess Bride
    "Have fun storming the castle." - Miracle Max (Billy Crystal)
    (Added October 18, 2008)
    
    
  • Becket
    "Sheathe your sword, Morville, before you impale your soul upon it." - Thomas à Becket (Richard Burton)
    (Added March 16, 2009)
  
  
• Songs:
  
  
  
  • "When rain has hung the leaves with tears"
    Catch the Wind, Donovan
    
    
  • "Once I said I wanted you, I don't remember why"
    How Do You Do? Mouth and MacNeal
    
    
  • "Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies and everyone goes"
    Brother Love's Travelin' Salvation Show, Neil Diamond
    
    
  • "Your friends, Baby, they treat you like a guest"
    Somebody to Love, Jefferson Airplane
    
    
  • "You're my pride and joy et cet'ra"
    Elenore, The Turtles
    
    
  • "You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road, stinkin' to high Heaven"
    Dead Skunk (In the Middle of the Road), Loudon Wainwright III
    
    
  • "Floating face down in that dirty old river"
    Patches, Dickey Lee
    
    
  • "Who'll take the lady with the skinny legs?"
    Skinny Legs and All, Joe Tex
    
    
  • "And no one heard at all, not even the chair"
    I Am . . . I Said, Neil Diamond
    
    
  • "Pain in my head, there's bugs in my bed, my pants are so old that they shine"
    Bottle of Wine, The Fireballs
    
    
  • "Sometimes all I need is the air that I breathe and to love you"
    The Air That I Breathe, The Hollies

The Fight

In 1985, my friend Jeff and I decided to go to Las Vegas for the Marvin Hagler - Tommy Hearns fight. Tickets were $600, and well in advance I called Caesars Palace and reserved two of them.

A couple of weeks before the fight, the results of some lab tests came back and Jeff's doctor told Jeff he had leukemia and only a short time to live. Jeff and all around him were devastated, and Jeff was in no emotional state to go to the fight.

I thought about the extra ticket and called my father. He had been a fight fan for more than fifty years, this could be the fight of the century, and Hagler was from my father's home town, Brockton, Massachusetts. My father lived in New Hampshire and I in the Chicago area.

I explained to him about the extra ticket and told him I could think of no better use for it than to take him to the fight. "I'll fly you first class to Las Vegas and back. Call it your birthday present."

"I don't think so Donnie. I'm not much for traveling any more." I was flabbergasted. I knew he had never seen a fight this big in person and that he thought Hagler walked on water. But I couldn't talk him into it, and he suggested that I call my brother Billy.

I did, but he wasn't home. A moment or two later the phone rang, and it was my father saying he had changed his mind. (Good thing Billy wasn't home, huh?)

In the event, he flew from Boston to Dallas and thence to Las Vegas. I picked him up at the airport and we took a cab to the Flamingo - I had waited too long and even the Chicago Caesars office could do nothing for me in the way of rooms at Caesars.

Dad had never been to Las Vegas and I showed him around. My gambling made him nervous and he only watched a few minutes of it. He found "his" game at the slot machines, and won several hundred dollars during the trip.

So . . . on the big day we walked over to Caesars Palace for the fight, or actually for the preliminaries, which were unremarkable. The seats were about half full when we got there and we had no trouble finding ours. People trickled in during the prelims, and soon the place was jammed. From time to time someone "special" would arrive and the announcer would inform us of it: Robert Goulet and Olivia Newton-John came as a couple, I believe; Jose Suleiman, the head of the World Boxing Council, arrived and was roundly booed; John and Bo Derek arrived (Bo Derek never did anything for me in her movies, dressed or undressed, but in person she was the loveliest creature I had ever seen); and by far the biggest ovation was for Muhammad Ali when he arrived. Lots of people were introduced in the ring, eventually including the referee, Richard Steele, and the fighters.

I was astonished by the money being bet around us. People who were strangers to each other were making five and ten thousand dollar bets and giving the money to third party strangers to hold. My impression was that the Detroit (Hearns) contingent outnumbered the Hagler contingent. Personally, I thought it was about an even matchup. Dad was utterly confident about Hagler's chances, but it was difficult for me to guess how much of that was due to Hagler being my father's home town boy.

The fight got underway and the pace was furious from the opening bell. Neither was attempting to box. Each was set on creaming the other, with Hagler, the shorter man, determined to get his head on Hearns' chest and make it a street fight. Hearns hit Hagler with a tremendous right. It stopped Hagler only for a second and then he moved toward Hearns again, throwing punches. Hearns had thrown and landed his very best shot and it hadn't been enough. We were less than halfway through the first round and only Hearns' die-hard fans still thought he would win. But the excitement certainly was not over. They continued fighting at a frenzied pace until the bell.

The second round was almost as intense as the first, and in the third round Steele stopped the fight for a moment to have the doctor look at a pretty good cut on Hagler's forehead, probably caused by that Hearns right in the first round. My father muttered something to the effect that he wouldn't be able to stand it if the fight were stopped for a cut.

The fight continued and Hagler knocked Hearns out in that third round. Later, the first round was voted the best first round of the century by sportswriters.

We flew back together as far as Chicago and the plane and my dad continued to Boston. He later made and framed a collage consisting of magazine pictures, newspaper articles, and his plane ticket and fight ticket, with a typewritten note about his "birthday present." He's gone now, and I have the collage and eventually I will get around to adding my fight ticket to it.

Oh, and Jeff did not have leukemia. His lab results and someone else's had somehow been mixed up. Sheesh.