The impregnability of his stonewall defense rested on his ability to reach the ball, and then throw it. Now he could move less well; now he was not c… - Arnold Hano

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The impregnability of his stonewall defense rested on his ability to reach the ball, and then throw it. Now he could move less well; now he was not coming up with the ball with that "perfect technique" Eddie Brannick had once admired, his body beautifully balanced, the ball directly in front of him. Now it was a movement full of desperate lunges. Fortunately he had his great arm, so even off-balance, he was throwing out runners, and each time he'd throw—though it had happened hundreds of prior times—the fans at the Polo Grounds, or elsewhere around the league, would gasp at the low blur that streaked across the diamond, dead on target. But he had more than a powerful arm. He had courage. And on he played, in pain and out.

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About Arnold Hano

Arnold Philip Hano ((March 2, 1922 – October 24, 2021) was an American editor, novelist, biographer and journalist, best known for his non-fiction work, A Day in the Bleachers, a critically acclaimed eyewitness account of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, centered around its pivotal play, Willie Mays' famous catch and throw.

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Alternative Names: Gil Dodge Matthew Gant Ad Gordon Mike Heller
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Additional quotes by Arnold Hano

He's not really a difficult interview. You just have to catch the essence and rhythm of what he's saying. I'd ask him how baseball has changed over the past 25 years and he'd start telling me about his life as a dental student in Kansas City.

McGraw was an improviser, a teacher. He brought much to the game that keeps baseball fresh and suspenseful today—the hit-and-run play, the steal, the squeeze play, the uses of the bunt and the defenses against it. He helped turn the game into a thing of fluid beauty, infielders charging the plate or roaming far from their bases, outfielders moving with each pitch, racing in for base hits before them, backing each other in the outfield, entering the infield itself on rundown plays. Yet when the game changed radically, with the introduction of the livelier baseball, McGraw naturally shifted to a power emphasis, founding his team about such men as George Kelly, Bill Terry, Mel Ott. He knew, too, that the old pitching style of permitting a man to hit a deadened ball because it would then be caught in the big fields had to be changed, and his staffs led the league year after year in strikeouts, in earned-runs.

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All the great people and great things in life are failures. It is in doing what we cannot do but must try to do that humans rise to their exalted fulfillment. Maglie had tried to do with an old man’s arm and back what a young man might not have been able to do as well. Of such failures is greatness made.

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