I can enjoy an Arsenal-Chelsea match without having to worry about getting exclusive quotes afterwards from one of the participants as he makes his way to his Bentley. I was never very good at steaming up to someone and engaging them in conversation like that.

Steve Rushin

Categorized in : Way Worry Bentley

My first interview at SI, I sat in silence next to Guy LaFleur for five minutes on the New York Rangers team bus until he finally broke the ice. Those early interviews, every one of them was like a terrible first date.

Steve Rushin

ice team new-york

Moms are as relenless as the tides. They don`t just drive as to practice, they drive us to greatness

Steve Rushin

mom mother son

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.

Steve Rushin

nhl hockey style

You can be writing every day. When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.

Steve Rushin

goes-on stories writing

I've always had an irrational fear - it's really not an irrational fear, I think - whenever I've been standing at a urinal at a bar, or Giants Stadium or Yankee Stadium. You've got a bunch of drunks behind you, often in a hostile, adrenalized environment like a football game. What's to prevent the guy behind me from slamming my head into the porcelain wall in front of me?

Steve Rushin

wall football thinking

By the age of 18, the average American has witnessed 200,000 acts of violence on television, most of them occurring during Game 1 of an NHL playoff series.

Steve Rushin

nhl hockey games

I never learned the secret handshake. That may be one of the reasons I've grown to love English soccer.

Steve Rushin

secret may soccer

I had almost nothing published until I had something published in Sports Illustrated. I started there as a fact-checker two weeks after I got out of college and was there for almost 20 years.

Steve Rushin

college sports years

As life speeds by, nostalgia has a shorter pregnancy. Games still in progress are given the straight-to-sepia status of "Instant Classics" no matter how oxymoronic that phrase appears.

Steve Rushin

progress games pregnancy

Summer runs out the way a centerfielder runs out of real estate - slowly at first, then all at once.

Steve Rushin

real summer running

Happy 110th birthday to Frank Zamboni, who left us in 1988 but still resurfaces periodically.

Steve Rushin

frank left stills

Quitting has always been the worst possible thing you can do in sports. It's downright un-American.

Steve Rushin

you always worst sports

If you've never quit anything, you really ought to try. And if at first you don't succeed, try again.

Steve Rushin

never try you succeed

Golf balls are sweet: dimpled and sometimes even smiling.

Steve Rushin

smiling golf sweet sometimes

Baseball consists of a million threads of dullness, on a loom of ennui, woven into a tapestry of tedium.

Steve Rushin

million tapestry woven baseball

In 2007, Prince performed at the halftime of the Super Bowl. The stage in Miami was wreathed in purple light, and it poured during his performance, so that he played 'Purple Rain' in a purple rain.

Steve Rushin

performance stage light rain

In any other context, 'icing' is a great and exciting word: The proverbial icing on the cake, for instance, is a bonus - a wonderful thing on top of another wonderful thing. But in hockey, icing merely results in the referee's raising his right hand, as if swearing an oath to the deity of downtime.

Steve Rushin

great hockey cake results

I'd watch the news with my dad, and he'd quietly mock the anchors. An anchorman might say, 'Police are searching for...' and my dad would say in the anchorman's voice, 'the man who gave me this haircut.' This was in the real Ron Burgundy '70s. And I would laugh and start doing it myself.

Steve Rushin

laugh myself me man

A great presidential address - Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Truman's Farewell Address, Kennedy's Inaugural Address - has the power to inspire.

Steve Rushin

great farewell power inspire

If you own face paint and a bulb horn and you're not a circus clown, you might be uncool.

Steve Rushin

face own you clown