Joe Posnanski Quotes & Sayings

Perhaps more than any other sport, golf focuses pressure on the player. There are no time constraints, as there are in other sports. Your competitors are not allowed to hinder you, as they are in other sports. The pressure originates in yourself; it builds from doubts. A two-foot putt on the practice green doesn't spark many doubts. A two-foot putt to win a bet or a tournament or a Masters is another thing entirely. — Joe Posnanski

How good is Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel anyway? ... to me, Daniel's brilliance has nothing to do with the big numbers he puts up more or less every week. Howie Long once gave a great explanation of what it was like to get beat by quarterback legend Joe Montana. He said it was like getting knocked out in a pillow fight. You never felt the blow. And you were all kinds of mad afterward. That's as good as any description of Daniel ... So what does Daniel do? Something right. On every play. In chess, grandmasters will tell you that it's the most innocuous-looking moves that are deadliest. — Joe Posnanski

Every day I make predictions that don't come anywhere close to the mark. — Joe Posnanski

Joe Paterno was a well-educated man, and he was also a man from a different time. — Joe Posnanski

I always say that, to me, it starts with reading. This is something I tell high school kids, college kids, people trying to get into the business, that it's just so much about reading. Read, read, read. So much of everything else falls into place when you just do a ton of reading. — Joe Posnanski

There's an old line that goes like this: An optimist is usually happy. And a pessimist is usually right. Maybe so. But which would you rather be, anyway? — Joe Posnanski

Joe Paterno would end every game by gathering the players and reciting the Lord's Prayer. He loved it - not so much for religious reasons but for the words. Look. The Lord's Prayer uses the words "us" and "we" and "our." It doesn't use the word "I" or "me" or "mine." Paterno understood. It's a team prayer. — Joe Posnanski

When it comes to golf, Scottish people are famously reserved, undemonstrative, difficult to impress. Golf is like church in Scotland, church like golf. — Joe Posnanski

The fun of the Super Bowl is the week leading into it; once it's actually played, the story dies down very, very quickly. — Joe Posnanski

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, I believed - completely, wholeheartedly, without reservation or pause - that the Cleveland Indians were named to honor a Native American ballplayer named Louis Sockalexis, who played for Cleveland in the late 19th Century. — Joe Posnanski

I never argue with people who say baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn't. And that's what makes it great. — Joe Posnanski

Being wrong on facts, that's something you have a real responsibility to correct. But being wrong in the fun sports way is part of the interplay. — Joe Posnanski

Every time you write anything, at least half your readers are going to disagree with you. A big part of sports writing is how you respond to that tension. — Joe Posnanski

Son, in this life, you don't ever walk by a red dress. — Joe Posnanski

When you live around a working-class environment, you see what sports means to people. You see that it's the escape over the weekend. you see how they build their lives around it. People sort of want to get away from their lives. — Joe Posnanski

You can't be afraid to lose!" he shouted with a jolt of force, and he pointed at me. "You will not win all the time in life. Sometimes the other team's gonna lick ya. But you have to believe you will win. You know who wins in this world? I don't care if it's football or politics or business. The bold people win. The audacious people. People who are afraid to lose, they beat themselves. They lose before they ever get started. They have their excuses before the game is even played. — Joe Posnanski

Golfers, even the best golfers, tend to think simple thoughts. It is a misconception many of us have about successful people, in all fields, from the best writers to surgeons to physicists, that they are lost in complications, pondering thoughts that would stagger our minds. At times, that's probably true, but much of what successful people think about is relentlessly simple, building blocks that lead to the complex things. — Joe Posnanski