Where Nobody Knows Your Name Quotes

“You see,” Bouton wrote, “you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” Truer words were never written.”
― John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

“Managing games comes second. Managing people comes first.”
― John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

“Matt Swierad has been broadcasting minor-league baseball for twenty-three years—ever since he graduated from Jacksonville University with a degree in history. He spent seven years in the Class A South Atlantic League before landing the job in Charlotte in 1998. He was only thirty-one at the time and was on the path he wanted to be to get to the major leagues. Seven years later, Swierad was still in Charlotte and beginning to wonder if the major leagues were just a pipe dream. Then came an unexpected—if temporary—opportunity. Jerry Coleman, who had been doing play-by-play for the San Diego Padres forever, was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Padres needed someone to fill in for the three games that Coleman would miss during Hall of Fame weekend and put out a notice that anyone interested in the three-day job could send in an application. Swierad almost didn’t bother. “I figured there was no chance, that someone who had an in with someone out there would probably get it,” he said. “My wife finally convinced me that I should at least give it a shot.” The Knights were in Buffalo on a long road trip and had gotten to the hotel early one morning to find that they couldn’t check into their rooms right away—a frequent occurrence of Triple-A travel. When they finally got in their rooms, Swierad walked over to a nearby food court to get some lunch.”
― John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

“League before landing the job in Charlotte in 1998. He was only thirty”
― John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

“The term in baseball nowadays is a “walk-off home run.” It didn’t exist until Kirk Gibson hit his famous pinch-hit home run off Dennis Eckersley in game one of the 1988 World Series and Eckersley referred to it as “a walk-off,” meaning, quite simply, that when someone does what Gibson did to him in that game, there’s nothing left to do except walk off the mound into the dugout and then into the clubhouse.”
― John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

“Fifteen minutes in the majors means you’re a great baseball player,” said Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland—who never got his fifteen minutes above the Triple-A level. “People just can’t understand how good you have to be to get there at all.”
― John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball

“so-and-so is using?’ You just knew. I never held it against anyone. It was one of those things where you knew they were just trying to keep their jobs, extend their careers. I guess I didn’t”
― John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball