Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [123]
There aren’t any empty lots left, so the city kids are all over at the blacktop behind the school shooting baskets.
A sign of the problem shows in the makeup of major league baseball teams. Fewer than 18 percent of major league baseball players are black. In pro basketball, 72 percent of the players are black.
—When we were kids, we used to cut the cover off old golf balls and unwind the rubber string underneath. Someone spoiled our fun by saying a golf ball might explode if you cut into it, so we stopped playing with them.
—I don’t resent the players’ salaries being so high. What I resent is the price of a hot dog or a beer at the stadium.
—I’d rather play tennis indoors on a rainy day than outdoors on a sunny day.
—It’s a mystery to me why there are no black jockeys.
—I love to watch a football game on television, but it’s nowhere near as good as being there. If you’re at the game, you watch what you want
In full Giants regalia, after a 60 Minutes spot on his favorite team
to watch. At home in front of the TV screen, you watch what someone else chooses to show you.
—Players for the home team ought not be allowed to encourage the crowd to drown out the opposing quarterback’s voice when he’s trying to call signals.
—It’s surprising that so many cities and towns have enough open land left for golf courses. I should think members of most golf clubs would have voted to sell the land to developers. That’s what I think of golf club members.
—I was thinking of taking steroids but I wouldn’t know what to do with a lot of muscles if I had them.
—Sometimes when I’m watching a game, I hope a team wins so much that you’d think it really mattered.
—Sports announcers usually work in pairs and none of them seem to be clear in their own minds about whether they’re talking to each other or to us.
—Some games are better on television than others. It makes a big difference how interesting the waiting time is between the action. There’s a lot of time when nothing’s going on in both football and baseball, but serious fans enjoy anticipating what their team’s going to do next. The waiting time isn’t dull.
Hockey is the worst sport on television and there’s no waiting time.
That’s partly true of basketball too, but there’s so much scoring you can enjoy thinking about whether your team can catch up.
If you think hockey is a bad sport for television, try listening to it on radio sometime.
—A lot of men turn to the sports pages of their paper first, but that doesn’t mean they think sports are the most important thing in the paper.
“Happy Holiday” Doesn’t Do It
The following things are true about Christmas:
—Sometimes it’s joyous and merry but it’s never easy.
—Old weather records do not substantiate the suggestion, given by
today’s Christmas cards, showing scenes from old-fashioned Christmases, that it used to snow more than it does now. Horses did not dash through the snow pulling sleighs on the way to grandmother’s house any more a hundred years ago than cars do now. It almost never snows on Christmas even in northern parts of the country and if it does, the
“Happy Holiday” Doesn’t Do It 277
snow is wet and slushy and not conducive to horses pulling sleighs through it.
—It’s a sign of the new sensitivity to political correctness that, more and more, the greeting “Happy Holidays” is replacing “Merry Christmas.” Most Jews I know accept “Merry Christmas” in the spirit in which it was intended without adding any heavy religious baggage to it. Most atheists or agnostics I know use “Merry Christmas.”
—I never get over feeling bad about tearing open a beautifully wrapped present. It takes ten seconds to destroy a work of art that took someone ten minutes to accomplish.
—Someone in the family is always better at wrapping than anyone else. My sister stays up in the back bedroom in our house and we all deliver presents to her to be wrapped as if she was the