Roger Kahn

Nouns and verbs carry writing.

Is that the minds last, soundless, dying cry? Who will remember? There is no rustling of old crowds as my long, wrenching, joyous voyage ended, only the question, "Who will remember?"

At a point of life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams.

Defeat, particularly dramatic defeat, confirms our worst impression of ourselves.

What did it matter, Babe Ruth or Jersey Joe Stripp? If vector analysis was beyond me, I could still watch a ball game.

Surely these fine athletes, those boys of summer, have found their measure of ruin.

The time seems simpler than today, but mostly because the past always seems simpler when its wars are done.

The world is never again as it was before anyone you love has ever died; never so innocent, never so fixed, never so gentle, never so pliant to your will. But these are afterthoughts. Generations vie and the young recover swiftly, or believe they do.

That morning began with wind and hairy clouds. It was late March and the day rose brisk and uncertain, with gusts suggesting January and flashes of sun promising June. In every way, a season of change had come.

He bore the burden of a pioneer and the weight made him strong. If one can be certain of anything in baseball, it is that we shall not look upon his like again.

It was a fine thing to be a newspaperman and I very much wanted to be a good one.

Baseball skill relates inversely to age. The older a man gets, the better a ball player he was when young, according to the watery eye of memory.

One did not go to Ebbets Field for sociology. Exciting baseball was the attraction, and a wonder of the sociological Brooklyn Dodgers was the excitement of their play.

At carefree times in early boyhood I chose to believe that life was a kind of ball game, but with a mix of years and perception I learned better.

I wonder if anyone always knows-you, me, Jackie Robinson, even Robert Frost-that we will cross to Safety. Or is it rather that when we are There, we think we always knew?