Whiz Kid Quotes

“I took it because, for the moment, I was the best.” (by David S. Burcat)”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“Ben, he is what he is.” Leah shook her head. “No, I’m not worried about you changing him. What worries me is that he will change you.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“No, thanks. I can use the walk. I’m never going to forget this. I don’t have a clue how to thank you.”

“Well, in that case, you’ll have to name your first-born son after me!”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“Ben, what’s important to you? What is it that’s really important to you?” Robin asked. “Isn’t that what ought to guide you?”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“This dry town business, does that mean there are no bars?” Mort asked.

“Yep, that’s why they call this ‘America’s Greatest Family Resort,’” Stan declared. “Of course, if it were my family, they’d be selling martinis from Coke machines and pickled olives from gumball machines.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“London town. What a city! It’s a Dick Whittington’s cat’s meow – correct, corruptible. It purrs, plays the tune of non-violence without the cops and robbers guns. A nicely tuned night-sticked society that has it made because it’s lost the false bigness of empired emptiness. Love this town!” (By David S. Burcat)”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“If I had to summarize the difference between baseball and football, football is about war; baseball is about life. In football you have two armies clashing, over and over again. They keep at it until one side overwhelms the other. Baseball is different. It’s about going out and working hard and having little victories and defeats along the way and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Hopefully you win, but even if you don’t you keep coming back every day. It’s like when you drive a truck, cut hair, sell buttons and zippers, or do advertising. It’s the same thing for all of us. It’s day-in and day-out work, and you hope at the end of the year you’ve won more than you’ve lost. If I want violence all I have to do is open the paper and read about Korea, or close my eyes and think about Okinawa. I get inspired by baseball to come back every day and try harder and if I work as hard as I can, and have a little luck, I get rewarded for it.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“Baseball isn’t about violence. Look, I know it has violence. God must love the catchers. I don't know how they survive a two-hundred-pound base runner sliding into home, cleats first, and many second basemen have been hurt trying to put a man out at second. But that’s not what the game is about. It’s just a part of it, like life.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“The man wore a brown suit and camel-colored overcoat; his wife a red dress under a wool fur-fringed coat. She looked like she had been attractive at one time but, like a peach overripe, her time had passed.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“Is there such a thing as a harmless flirtation?”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“Does that mean you don’t want to come out and play with me today?” said Stan, sniffing. “Go get Debby and the three of us’ll go out tonight. I don’t have a date and you and that cute wife of yours need to get out more. Also, I figured, maybe Debby could fix me up with a nice Jewish girl from the neighborhood. They’re so much hotter than the kishkes I usually date from Harcum College.”

“Okay, first of all, I’m working now. Also, tonight is the beginning of Passover, so I have to go home for dinner with the in-laws. And, it’s shikse, not kishke. A kishke is what you might have for dinner; shikse is more like desert.” Ben winked and laughed, shaking his head.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“Leah sat the book on the table. “Devoirah tells me that you want to be a writer,” she said, using the Yiddish version of Debby’s name. “Is that right? Tell me, what kind of books do you want to write?”

“Modern books, for modern readers.”

“So you want to write books that people will read today and forget tomorrow?”

Ben grabbed his chest. “Ooh. You put a dagger into my heart. That’s not what I mean, just books that will appeal to people alive today, 1950, not a hundred years ago. Of course I’d like them to be durable and lasting, but I want people my age to read them because they want to, not because they have to.”

“Well, if you want them to be lasting, maybe you should read more Tolstoy.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“In February 1950, Clearwater was a town of mythical status in Philly. Everyone that Ben knew was crazy about the Phillies, but no one he knew had been to Clearwater. To them, it was a city, perhaps like Brigadoon, that didn’t really exist, or maybe it did but only for one day every hundred years.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“Ben smiled the kind of smile that a child reserves for his father on special occasions”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“As they carried the bags to the car, Stan looked at the stores and buttoned-up pushcarts. “How long do you suppose all of this can last?”

“How long can what last?”

“I mean Seventh Street and its little specialty shops and pushcarts. It’s a relic, like the Liberty Bell or something like that. They ought to declare it a national monument and preserve it.”

“I don’t get you,” Ben said.

“Look, they’re building houses like crazy out in the suburbs, Lower Merion, Bucks County, even South Jersey for Christ’s sakes. Young people like Mort and Tracy, ten years ago they would’ve bought a row house a couple blocks over, but they can’t wait to leave. When Mort and you and everyone else moves to the ‘burbs, what will be left? Not the pushcarts, the little shops, the people. The stores in the suburban shopping centers are an easy drive from where people are moving and you don’t have to fight for a parking space. They’re building discount department stores, too, and I bet the prices are as good as the stores on Seventh Street, maybe better. I’m telling you, ten years from now you’ll be asking where everyone went. Twenty years from now, you won’t recognize this place. Take a good look. I bet this will all be gone in twenty years.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid

“The Phillies came back on the field, but Ben kept talking. “There’s another thing, too. It has to do with the history, the statistics. The fact that you can compare a player from 1950 to another in 1935 and have a pretty fair idea of how they match up. And don’t forget nostalgia. Every kid who ever threw a baseball with his dad thinks about that every time he picks up a glove and plays catch with his kid or watches the players warming up.”
― Joel Burcat, Whiz Kid