Top Highlights

• Only a psychological freak could approach a 100-mph fastball aimed not all that far from his head with total confidence.
• Inside a batter’s box, during a baseball game, Billy was no longer able to be himself. Billy was built to move: inside a batter’s box he had to be perfectly still. Inside a batter’s box he experienced a kind of claustrophobia. The batter’s box was a cage designed to crush his spirit.
• “Managers tend to pick a strategy that is least likely to fail rather than pick a strategy that is most efficient,” said Palmer. “The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.”
• Before he found a publisher, James had four readers he considered “celebrities.” They were:   Norman Mailer Baseball writer Dan Okrent William Goldman, the screenwriter (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) The guy who played “Squiggy” on the TV sitcom Laverne & Shirley
• In 1980 a group of friends, led by Sports Illustrated writer Dan Okrent, met at La Rotisserie Française, a restaurant in Manhattan, and created what became known, to the confusion of a nation, as Rotisserie Baseball.