Quote of the Day (Daniel Radcliffe, on Being Quoted Harry Potter Lines)

“The bad thing about Harry Potter being quoted to me is that it has now been long enough [i.e., 15 years this July since the last movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2] that unless it is a really easy quote to remember, I’ve probably forgotten the context or who said it. So sometimes Harry Potter fans will come up to me and say something, and I will look at them blankly. I can see them look disappointed, and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry.’”—English film and stage actor Daniel Radcliffe quoted by Lane Florsheim, “My Monday Morning: Daniel Radcliffe,” WSJ. Magazine (the magazine of The Wall Street Journal), Issue 170 (Spring 2026)

Quote of the Day (Richard Price, on Fans, The Crimson Tide, and Contact Sports)

“In our dissociated culture—despite whatever grace, glory and beauty they evoke in the best teams and players—contact sports serve two functions: They allay boredom, divert people from thinking about the dreariness of their lives; and they help people channel their rage. You can go to a revival in Selma on Friday or you can scream your lungs out in Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. The bottom line at both is transference of a lot of anger into a socially acceptable outlet….As coach Karl Marx once said, football is the opiate of the people.” —Novelist-screenwriter Richard Price, “Bear Bryant’s Miracles,” originally published in Playboy, October 1979, reprinted in Football: Great Writing About the National Sport, edited by John Schulian (2014)

This post is dedicated to two especially enthusiastic Crimson Tide fans: my friend Bridget and her husband Jim—both of whom, I am sure, disagree vehemently with Mr. Price’s contention in this quote.

The image accompanying this post, of University of Alabama football fans wearing crimson and white with the name of the football team on their garments (at the annual spring practice scrimmage game called “A-Day”), was taken on Apr. 17, 2010, by Carol M. Highsmith.

Quote of the Day (Roger Angell, on Pro Sports Teams and Their Fans)

“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives.” —Baseball writer and chief New Yorker fiction editor Roger Angell (1920-2022), Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion (1977)

I took the image accompanying this post at a night game at Yankee Stadium in late August 2014. That season, the Bronx Bombers finished second in the American League East, with their worst record since 1992.

But fans like me came out that night because we knew this would be one of our final opportunities to see “The Captain,” Derek Jeter, in the last of his 20 seasons as a Hall of Famer with the Yankees.

Professional sports have grown even more “commercially exploitative” in the half-century since Roger Angell wrote the above. The miracle is that they still retain such a powerful hold on their fan base.

It just goes to show that, in its imperviousness to reason, rooting for one’s favorite team is a form of faith. With baseball resuming following the All-Star break, teams still in the hunt for the postseason hope to reward those fans in their staunch belief.

Quote of the Day (Stephen A. Smith, on How ‘‘The Sports Fan Cannot Be Taught’)

“I’m the kind of person that [says]: ‘This is what I said. Deal with it.’ [Former First Take on-air colleague Max Kellerman] was the kind of person that’s trying to convince you to side with him. One time I said to him, ‘You’re a boxing aficionado, ain’t you?’ He said, ‘Absolutely’ I said, ‘You know boxing better than anybody, right?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Your friends that you grew up with, don’t they argue with you about boxing?’ He said, ‘Absolutely.’ I said, ‘Why do you think that is?’ I said, ‘The sports fan cannot be taught.’ They don’t want to learn from you. They want to hear whether you do or do not agree with them and why. Which is another reason I don’t allow them to debate me. Because I’m like, there’s no convincing you! You’re going to feel what you’re going to feel. So watch the show, deduce your opinions and be on your way.”—ESPN sports media personality Stephen A. Smith quoted by David Marchese, “Talk: Stephen A. Smith Sees Arguing As A Part of His Life: ‘I’m Under No Obligation to Tell You What the Hell You Want to Hear,’” The New York Times Magazine, Apr. 23, 2023

The image of Stephen A. Smith accompanying this post was taken Jan. 21, 2021, at a Q and A at The Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin.

Quote of the Day (Robert Morley, on Why ‘Americans Make the Best Fans’)

“Americans make the best fans, perhaps because they always seem to have time on their hands. The native young pound along behind, thrust a cigarette into one’s hand, and are off back to the shop. Worst of all are the temporarily incapacitated who demand you sign the plaster on the fractured limb. I find it well nigh impossible to scratch on plaster of Paris, yet others seem to manage.”—English stage and screen actor (and longtime fixture in British Airways commercials) Robert Morley (1908-1992), The Best of Robert Morley (1981)

Quote of the Day (Gay Talese, on an Earlier Yankee Hero and His Fans)

“The banners had been held by hundreds of young boys whose dreams had been fulfilled so often by [Mickey] Mantle, but also seated in the grandstands were older men, paunchy and balding, in whose middle-aged minds [Joe] DiMaggio was still vivid and invincible, and some of them remembered how one month before, during a pregame exhibition at Old-timers' Day in Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio had hit a pitch into the left-field seats, and suddenly thousands of people had jumped wildly to their feet, joyously screaming—the great DiMaggio had returned, they were young again, it was yesterday.”—Gay Talese, " 'Joe,' Said Marilyn Monroe, Just Back from Korea, 'You Never Heard Such Cheering.' 'Yes I Have,' Joe DiMaggio Answered," Esquire, July 1966