This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me.
Interpretation
Perfection is less important than embracing imperfections and celebrating collective identity.
This quote reflects the idea that while perfection may be admirable, it can often feel unattainable and inhuman. It suggests that the joy found in imperfections and the shared experiences of a community can create a deeper connection among individuals, emphasizing that our flaws and struggles are what unite us.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about overcoming challenges together.
Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose; it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance - thrown hard and with precision.
Cub fans, by consensus, are the best in baseball. Year after year, in good times and (mostly) bad, they turn out in vociferous numbers, sustaining themselves with a heavenly ichor that combines loyalty, criticism, cheerfulness, durability, rage, beer and hope, in exquisite proportions.
Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.
Friends of mine said later that they had been riveted by a postgame television close-up of Wade Boggs, sitting alone in the dugout with tears streaming down his face …. I suppose we should all try to find something better or worse to shed tears for than a game, no matter how hard it has been played, but perhaps it is not such a bad thing to see that men can cry at all.
I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.
The ultimate test of a man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
When we try to avoid one fault, we are led to the opposite, unless we be very careful.
The more that you act on your intuition fearlessly, the more your intuition will serve you. Intuition is the ear of the soul.
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
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