Yankee Quotes

After they remodeled Yankee Stadium I didn't feel that the ghosts were there anymore. It just wasn't the same. ~ Mickey Mantle

Oh you kissed the soul of a rebel
In a Yankee girl
You got to me
I heard you callin' 'round the world
From your back roads
Tennessee ~ Shawn Colvin

Student today don't mean na', but in a Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the Fall of Arbenz, by the Stoning of Nixon, by the Guerrillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs - in a Latin America already a year and half into the Decade of the Guerrilla - a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a vibrating quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. ~ Junot Diaz

Whiteness is not a culture. There is Irish culture and Italian culture and American culture - the latter, as Albert Murray pointed out, a mixture of the Yankee, the Indian, and the Negro (with a pinch of ethnic salt); there is youth culture and drug culture and queer culture; but there is no such thing as white culture. Whiteness has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with social position. It is nothing but a reflection of privilege, and exists for no reason other than to defend it. Without the privileges attached to it, the white race would not exist, and the white skin would have no more social significance than big feet. ~ Noel Ignatiev

We just want to win. That's the bottom line. I think a lot of times people may become content with one championship or a little bit of success, but we don't really reflect on what we've done in the past. We focus on the present. ~ Derek Jeter

It's great to be young and a Yankee! ~ Waite Hoyt

When I watched the Twin Towers fall, I said aloud to my naked friend, "There go our civil liberties." A few months later I called George Carlin and we were chatting about America's reaction to the attack. I told him my thoughts. He excused himself, put down the phone, and went and got his journal. As the Twin Towers fell, he had written, "There go our civil rights." I was so proud to have had a similar thought at a similar time to a genius. We were sad to be right. To react to an attack on our freedom with less freedom seems so deeply un-American. What ever happened to Yankee Doodle Dandy and "fuck you in the fucking neck"? ~ Penn Jillette

It was a death struggle every day being a Yankee you either won or you lost. There was no second place. Half of us were nuts by the end of a season. ~ Jerry Coleman

In the building I live in on Park Avenue there are ten people who could buy the Yankees, but none of them could hit the ball out of Yankee Stadium. ~ Reggie Jackson

I'd like to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee. ~ Joe DiMaggio

I remember one game when I pitched in Yankee Stadium and gave up five runs in the first inning. It would have been easy to quit, but I shut 'em out the rest of the way, and we came back and won the game. ~ Hal Newhouser

Derek Jeter has been a great representative of what the Yankees have stood for over the years. He has been a team player who has only cared about winning. He has also been a fine example both on and off the field over his long tenure as a Yankee. It has been a real pleasure to manage him and play alongside him. ~ Joe Girardi

New England clam chowder, made as it should be, is a dish to preach about, to chant praises and sing hymns and burn incense before. [ ... ] It is as American as the Stars and Stripes, as patriotic as the national Anthem. It is Yankee Doodle in a kettle. ~ Joseph C. Lincoln

If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism. ~ Fidel Castro

Sometimes she'd go a whole day without thinking of him or missing him. Why not? She had quite a full life, and really, he'd often been hard to deal with and hard to live with. A project, the Yankee oldtimers like her very own Dad might have said. And then sometimes a day would come, a gray one (or a sunny one) when she missed him so fiercely she felt empty, not a woman at all anymore but just a dead tree filled with cold November blow. She felt like that now, felt like hollering his name and hollering him home, and her heart turned sick with the thought of the years ahead and she wondered what good love was if it came to this, to even ten seconds of feeling like this. ~ Stephen King

I've always been a daydreamer. When the other kids were playing, I was listening to the roar at Yankee Stadium - I was always attracted to the roar of the crowd. ~ Sean Combs

I love being a Yankee, and it's hard not to. It's a special place to play. ~ Mark Teixeira

He was a regular Yankee from New England. The Yankees are noted for making the most cruel overseers. ~ William Wells Brown

Who--Whoo--Whoop! Who'll come gouge with me? Who'll come bite with me? Rowff--Yough--Snort--YAHOO! In the name of the great Jehova and the Continental Congress, I have passed the Rubicon--swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish, I'm in fer a fight, I'll go my death on a fight, and with a firm reliance on the pertection of divine protestants, a fight I must have, or else I'll have to be salted down to save me from spilin'! You hear me over thar, you washed-up varmints? This is the hope of the world talkin' to you! I am Sam Slick the Yankee Peddler…. ~ Robert Coover

One thing led to another. That was the only way to explain how Arnold Brinkman, who considered both professional sports and young children unjustifiable, had ended up at Yankee Stadium with a nine-year-old boy. ~ Jacob M. Appel

There you go, changing the subject. That means you are sweet on one of them. Which one is it? I'm going to guess the Yankee. You two bicker too much to actually dislike each other."
"Ren!"
"So, its the foreign fox?"
"Stop! I'm serious. It's important! ~ Alys Arden

Down our way we're always had a theory that the Civil War was not brought on by Secession of Slavery or the State's Rights issue. These matters contributed to the quarrel, but there is a deeper reason. It was bought on by some Yankee coming down south and putting nutmeg in a julep. So our folks up and left the Union flat. ~ Irvin S. Cobb

Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits - 25 hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points. There's six months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - you get a ground ball with eyes, you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week ... and you're in Yankee Stadium. ~ Crash Davis

Here's the thing: I had never been to Boston, my whole life. Probably because I'm a Yankee fan. ~ Dash Mihok

Whether or not anybody had invented the category in his lifetime, Babe Ruth was surely the Greatest Living Yankee almost immediately upon lofting home runs at the Polo Grounds, allowing the Yankees to build their own palace across the Harlem River. ~ George Vecsey

Once when the Yankee's Lou Pinella was batting he questioned a Palermo strike call. Pinella demanded, "Where was that pitch at?" Palermo told him that a man wearing Yankee pinstripes in front of 30,000 people should not end a sentence with a preposition. So Pinella, no dummy, said, "OK, where was that pitch at, asshole?" ~ George Will

But how nice it would be to know that some good Yankee woman - And there must be SOME good Yankee women. I don't care what people say, they can't all be bad! How nice it would be to know that they pulled weeds off our men's graves and brought flowers to them, even if they were enemies. If Charlie were dead in the North it would comfort me to know that someone - And I don't care what you ladies think of me," her voice broke again, "I will withdraw from both clubs and I'll - I'll pull up every weed off every Yankee's grave I can find and I'll plant flowers, too - and - I just dare anyone to stop me! ~ Margaret Mitchell

I think the good Lord is a Yankee. ~ Mariano Rivera

He'd lived for those letters, he remembered. He'd imagined meeting and marrying Miss Sarah Matthews, and bringing his bride up to meet his friend at Beaumont Hall. But the visit was not to be - Jeff died, despite Nolan's care and desperate prayers, and once he was gone, there was no real reason for Nolan to remain at Beaumont Hall. The "Spinsters' Club" had invited him and a couple other candidates to come for Founders' Day. He'd ridden southward, knowing Sarah Matthews would be as beautiful in person as she was interesting in her letters, and hoping she would not hate him because he was a Yankee. ~ Laurie Kingery

All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese, and for the Chinese it is the Japanese. For the Hindu it is the Moslem; for the North Pacific tribes it was the Chinook; in Latin America and in the American South it is the Yankee. In Uganda it is the East Indians and Pakistanis. In French Quebec it is the English. In Spain the Catalans are "the Jews of Spain". On Crete it is the Turks, and in Turkey it is the Armenians. Lawrence Durrell says that when he lived in Crete he was friends with the Greeks, but that when he wanted to buy some land they sent him to a Turk, saying that a Turk was what you needed for a trade, though of course he couldn't be trusted.
This figure who is good with money but a little tricky is always treated as a foreigner even if his family has been around for centuries. Often he actually is a foreigner, of course. He is invited in when the nation needs trade and he is driven out - or murdered - when nationalism begins to flourish: the Chinese out of Vietnam in 1978, the Japanese out of China in 1949, the Jankees out of South America and Iran, the East Indians out of Uganda under Idi Amin, and the Armenians out of Turkey in 1915-16. The outsider is always used as a catalyst to arouse nationalism, and when times are hard he will always be its victim as well. ~ Lewis Hyde

Quite a few vampires, especially the elders, regarded those who creep through graveyard shadows in batwing capes and fingerless black gloves as an Edinburgh gentleman might look upon a Yankee with a single Scots grandparent who swathes himself in kilts and tartan sashes, prefaces every remark with quotes from Burns or Scott and affects a fondness for bagpipes and haggis. ~ Kim Newman

The way he talked sounded part Yankee, part foreign, like one of those friendly Irish policeman in the old movies: Ouch, mind you! ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg.
- Lieutenant General James Longstreet to General Robert E. Lee after the initial Confederate victories on day one of the Battle of Gettysburg. ~ Michael Shaara

In spite of the Puritan-Yankee equation of virtue with well-being, Negroes had excellent reasons for doubting that money was made or kept by any very striking adherence to the Christian virtues; it certainly did not work that way for black Christians. ~ James Baldwin

Yankee Stadium, it's like everything else in this country. In Europe, they save all their old buildings for history. Here, we just tear them all down. ~ Bob Feller

I've set the vast majority of my books in New England because that's where I live. I love this part of the country the gentle hills, the lush forests, the cycles of the seasons, the ocean, the quiet lakes and rivers that spread across the region. And, then of course, there's that Yankee spirit, which is a combination of optimism and responsibility, rugged individualism and a strong sense of community. I consider myself and my characters very lucky to live in New England. ~ Judith Arnold

I know how to read people. When you grow up in a rough environment, you have to have a sixth sense. ~ Daddy Yankee

The door opened. A guy came in. Busy, bustling, sixty-something, medium size, a gray suit, a tight waistband, a warm and friendly face. Pink and round. Lots of energy, and the start of a smile. A guy who got things done, with a lot of charm. Like a salesman. Something complicated. Like a financial instrument, or a Rolls-Royce automobile. "I'm sorry," the guy said. To Sinclair only. "I didn't know you had company." American. An old-time Yankee accent. No one spoke. Then Sinclair said, "Excuse me. Sergeant Frances Neagley and Major Jack Reacher, U.S. Army, meet Mr. Rob Bishop, CIA head of station at the Hamburg consulate." "I just did a drive-by," Bishop said. "On the parallel street. The kid's bedroom. The lamp has moved in the window. ~ Lee Child

Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods. ~ Alice Hoffman

Yankee caps pop up all over the world, not as a statement of loyalty to that team, but as a symbol of - what? Winning 27 so-called World Series? Much of the world doesn't even play that sport. ~ George Vecsey

Tucker, you tell that girl when I offer to have a brandy with a Yankee, that Yankee better drink. ~ Nora Roberts

Remarkable trait in the American Character is the union, not very infrequent, of Yankee cleverness with spiritualism. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it. ~ Josh Billings

Thus we come to the problem of determining what the poem is 'about.' Charles Altieri notes that '[a]n expression of the self can be one that is intended, the self's act, or one that is symptomatic, the act of a self not in control of what it manifests'(24) In 'Yankee Doodle,' and to a lesser extent in '$$$$$$," the interesting aspects of the poem are not 'the intended expression of the self.' The lack of explicitness is not suggestive in any positive sense because we feel that were things to be spelled out, this would weaken, not strengthen, the narrator's case by revealing the unacknowledged irrationality at the root of it. ~ Russell Harrison

I know only two tunes. One of them is 'Yankee Doodle' the other isn't. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

That flag's not just the emblem of being a racist asshole, a club to which your daddy probably belongs happily. But it's also the Confederate flag. The one carried by Southerners to say to the Yankees - that's your daddy, a Yankee - 'Don't tread on me or I'll pop a musket ball up your ass.' Northerners driving around with the Dixie flag is like a Jew wearing a 'Go Hitler!' baseball cap." Jonesy's ~ Chuck Wendig

The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives. ~ Henry A. Wallace

No," I said. "You're not a Yankee imperialist?" she prodded. "Certainly not," I told her. "I come from Ireland." "Holland," she said, frowning. "No, ~ Valerie Hemingway

He cannot hold his wine; he has no head for it. Why, on no more than three glasses, for I absolutely poured him out no more, he was on the point of singing Yankee Doodle. Yankee Doodle, in a King's ship, upon my sacred honour! ~ Patrick O'Brian

I have never yet gotten entirely over the feeling that a Yankee, on account of his peculiar teachings and bringing-up, is far inferior to the better class of Southern people. I do not believe the world ever saw or will ever again see, unless the millennium comes, such high state of civilization and culture and exalted virtue as was the Southern states prior to the war. I have yet to find one Yankee, thought I do not say there are none, who, when the money test is made, will not for his own interest do some small or little thing, and often mean thing, if it is to his advantage to do so.

Writing as I now do after the lapse of nearly 40 years (and years do soften, and old age ought to) one may somewhat judge my feeling about the Yankees when the war ended. ~ George Benjamin West

Even though I was never a Yankee fan until I put on the uniform, when you think about the deep history of this organization, you always knew what the Yankees represented. ~ Joe Torre

I've kicked at Notre Dame the past four years, I've been in frigid cold weather, snow. I've kicked at Yankee Stadium in December, so whatever is thrown at me I'm able to do. ~ Kyle Brindza

And I've been trying everything I can think of since to make up for it - short of tattooing her name on my ass and streaking across Yankee Stadium.
I was saving that for next week. ~ Emma Chase

The profilers' plan to coax me out of the woods resembled a comedy skit. During their search of my Cane Creek trailer, the feds had found dozens of books on the Civil War. And interviews with my friends confirmed that I was a bona fide Civil War buff. The profilers looked at all this Civil War "stimuli" and concluded that my hiding in the mountains was a form of role-playing. Starring in my own Civil War fantasy, I was a lone rebel fighting for the Lost Cause, and the task force was a Yankee army out to capture me. To talk On August 16, the task force pulled out of the woods while Bo and his rebels went in. They had to look the part, so the FBI profilers dressed them in white hats with the word "REBEL" stenciled in red letters across the front; and around their neck each rebel wore a Confederate flag bandanna.me into surrendering, they needed some of my rebel comrades to convince me that
the war was over and it was time to lay down my arms. Colonel Gritz and his crew were assigned the role of my rebel comrades. They were there to "rescue" me from the Yankee horde.

Bo's band of rebels pitched camp down in Tusquitee, north of the town of Hayesville. Beginning at Bob Allison Campground – the place where I'd abandoned Nordmann's truck – they worked their way west into the Tusquitee Mountains. They walked the trails, blowing whistles and yelling "Eric, we're here with Bo Gritz to save you." They searched for a week.

I lost it when I heard on the radio th ~ Eric Rudolph

I'm proud to be a New York Yankee. ~ Jacoby Ellsbury

YANKY GO HOME Pero llevame contigo YANKEE GO HOME But take me with you... ~ Nicanor Parra

Cameron Indoor Stadium is a special place in sports and there's really nothing else out there quite like it. Anytime I'm inside Cameron, I've got memories. Cameron is like Yankee Stadium or the old Boston Garden. ~ Grant Hill

The thing that means the most to me is being remembered as a Yankee, because that's what I've always wanted to be, was to be a Yankee. ~ Derek Jeter

I was always the shame of the family - the one Yankee who was actually born in the North. ~ Randy Harrison

Indoors, the evening gets you'd say festive, with Maxine riding Horst for the better part of an hour, not that it's anybody's business of course, and coming a number of times, at last fiercely in sync with Horst, not long after which, owing to some extrasensory cue from the television, whose mute feature has been engaged, they surface from their post-orgy daze in time to witness Derek Jeter's clutch tenth-inning homer and another trademark Yankee win. "Yes!" Horst beginning to scream in delighted disbelief. "And it better be Keanu Reeves in the biopic! ~ Thomas Pynchon

She didn't want to handle him. She didn't want anything to do with him - this man with his cold, intense eyes and clipped speech, this stranger, this Yankee. He made her feel like a rabbit facing a cobra: terrified, but fascinated at the same time. He tried to hide his ruthlessness behind smooth, cosmopolitan manners, but Evie had no doubts about the real nature of the man.

He wanted her. He intended to have her. And he wouldn't care if he destroyed her in the taking. ~ Linda Howard

No, I'm saying those Yankees are messing things up again. No respectable Southern woman would ever say a girl was Rosewell's 'power mower.' For heaven's sake. That's ridiculous. But those Yankees have tin ears. On language alone we should have won the war." She looked at us. "The woman called that floozy his paramour. But some Yankee messed it up. Paramour. Power mower. You hear the difference?" Wally glanced at me. She was ~ Sibella Giorello

Our aim is to establish El Cartel as not just another tequila but part of the club and party lifestyle. There are several songs where I mention the brand name, and a lot of these party songs go hand in hand with the concept of Cartel Tequila. ~ Daddy Yankee

... There was something regal about her. She carried herself like she was wearing pink moire. And that powerless complexion glowed. Watching her, it came to me that she must have some Yankee strength that didn't need frippery. ~ Ann Rinaldi

The history of [Mariano] Rivera is pretty unbelievable. And even if you're not a Yankee or a baseball fan, you have to appreciate the tradition. He gets respect from Boston fans and Phillies fans, and I love tradition. ~ Andrea Tantaros

Here's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years:
You stand in the middle of the field.
You look around to be sure that no one is going to hear you.
You breathe in a couple of times to get as much air in your chest as you can.
You stretch your neck up like the Great Esquimaux Curlew.
You imagine that it's Game Seven of the World Series and it's the bottom of the ninth and Joe Pepitone is rounding third base and the throw is coming in and the catcher has his glove up waiting for the ball and Joe Pepitone is probably going to be out and the game will be over and the Yankees will lose.
Then you let out your shriek, because that's how everyone in Yankee Stadium would be shrieking right then.
That's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years. And you keep doing it over and over again until all the birds in Marysville have flown away. ~ Gary D. Schmidt

Gilbert: How Clark Gable turn every women's head so? Foolish young English girls would see a movie star in every GI with the same Yankee-doodle voice. Glamour in US privates named Jed, Buck or Chip, with their easy-come-by-gifts and Uncle Sam sweet-talk. Dreamboats in hooligans from Delaware or Arizona with fingernails that still carried soil from home, and eyes that crossed with any attempt at reading. Heart-throbs from men like those in the tea-shop, who dated their very close relatives and knew cattle as their mental equal. ~ Andrea Levy

One night, alone in her Dogtown bed, Judy finally admitted to herself that she had been in love with Cornelius. "In love" precisely as it was described in the novels and poems she had read with Martha; love as a kind of sweet madness that colored everything. Judy had been shocked that strangers across the ocean could describe the workings of her Yankee heart: the preoccupation and yearning, the soaring happiness and keen appreciation of a man's hidden qualities, the sublime meeting of souls. And yet, there was never a mention of the sort of union she'd shared with Cornelius, the longing and fulfillment of the flesh, that could transform two bodies into one. ~ Anita Diamant

Putting the Yankee uniform on every day. ~ Joe DiMaggio

The Greatest Living Yankee is Whitey Ford, who came out of Aviation High School, which was then in Manhattan, and helped pitch the Yankees to victory in the 1950 World Series when he was 21. ~ George Vecsey

You look at all the great players that they've had and the potential of playing in Yankee Stadium. ~ Nick Johnson

I'm happy to be with this organization, and I hope to retire as a Yankee. ~ CC Sabathia

Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver. ~ Mary Karr

Riker tells Data to just get on with it already, so Data says Ferengi are like Yankee traders from 18th-century America. This indicates that, in the 24th century, the traditional practice of using 600-year-old comparisons is still in vogue, like when you're stuck in traffic on the freeway, and say, Man, this is just like Vasco de Gama trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope! ~ Wil Wheaton

I always appreciated the ex-players. Being a Yankee, you get spoiled. Old-Timers Day, all these guys coming back, spring training, being around them, you get a chance to get to know them. So I always think you learn a lot by listening. ~ Derek Jeter

The Yankee is one who, if he once gets his teeth set on a thing, all creation can't make him let go. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I belong a Yankee. I'm really happy that I got the chance to sign a good contract, and really happy that I got the chance to stay with the Yankees. Going elsewhere, I was going to hear the offers, but the Yankees made it really tough. ~ Jorge Posada

They just didn't make them like that anymore. Nowadays she was lucky to get some mild flirtation from some leather-faced NRA lobbyist. Forget about doggy-style on an eighteenth-century canopied bed by a certified KGB agent who said things like beg for it my little Yankee poodle. ~ Magnus Flyte

It was now the fall of 1956, and nine years after entering Georgia Military Academy as a scrawny "Yankee" from Ohio, I was now considered a "southerner," enrolling at one of the North's most elite institutions. ~ Ted Turner

Calypso Blues"

Wa oh oh, wa oh oh
Wa oh wa oh wa oh way
Wa oh oh, wa oh oh
Wa oh wa oh wa oh way

Sittin' by de ocean
Me heart, she feel so sad,
Sittin' by de ocean,
Me heart, she feel so sad
Don't got de money
To take me back to Trinidad.

Fine calypso woman,
She cook me shrimp and rice,
Fine calypso woman,
She cook me shrimp and rice
These Yankee hot dogs
Don't treat me stomach very nice.

In Trinidad, one dollar buy
Papaya juice, banana pie,
Six coconut, one female goat,
An' plenty fish to fill de boat.
One bushel bread, one barrel wine,
An' all de town, she come to dine.
But here is bad, one dollar buy
Cup of coffee, ham on rye.

Me throat she sick from necktie,
Me feet hurt from shoes.
Me pocket full of empty,
I got Calypso blues.

She need to, bubble like perculatah'
She come from Trinidad so winin' in her nature
Never can't I assess a reps until failure
Tell her if she stops she needs fe fly Air Jamaica
Anytime she land she nah go feel like no stranger
Carry us beyond we similar in behavior
Them no understand our customs and we flavor
Need a natty dred to be the new care taker, lord!

These Yankee girl give me big scare,
Is black de root, is blond de hair.
Her eyelash false, her face is paint,
And pads are where de girl she ain't!
< ~ Nat King Cole

Every once in a while, someone would call me a foreigner or a Yankee, or whatever. In the United States, someone might say something, like how kids do, to point out that you're different. That would come as a surprise to me. As you get old, you either get defensive about it or you accept it and you reach out, because you realize the world's full of people like that. ~ Viggo Mortensen

A determined Yankee book drummer once told a Southerner that 'a set of books on scientific agriculture' would teach him to 'farm twice as good as you do.' To which the Southerner replied: 'Hell, son, I don't farm half as good as I know how now. ~ Grady McWhiney

When my Yankee career is over I'll play anywhere, but I'm positive that I'll never find a team quite like the Yankees. ~ Bernie Williams

Getting your education is an advantage you have. ~ Daddy Yankee

The word "Yankee" itself, I was informed, came from that simplest of Dutch names - Jan. ~ Joseph O'Neill

I was known as a Yankee killer. My best year against them was 1953. I beat them five times and shut them out four times. You just played a little harder against them. ~ Mel Parnell

Funnel

The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost-new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died. The children honored their
separate arts; two became moderately famous,
three married and fattened their delicate share
of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was
a concert pianist. She had a notable career
and wore cropped hair and walked like a man,
or so I heard when prying a childhood car
into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan.
One died a pinafore child, she stays her five
years forever. And here is one that wrote-
I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive
words and scratch out my short marginal notes
and finger my accounts.
back from that great-grandfather I have come
to tidy a country graveyard for his sake,
to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun
and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake.
I like best to think of that Bunyan man
slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale
for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan
of culture to do it big. On this same scale
he built seven arking houses and they still stand.
One, five stories up, straight up like a square
box, still dominates its coastal edge of land.
It is rented cheap in the summer musted air
to sneaker-footed families who pad through
its ro ~ Anne Sexton

It is recorded that during the long winter after the Battle of Fredericksburg, when the two rival armies were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, with the boys on the opposing picket posts daily swapping coffee for tobacco and comparing notes on their generals, their rations, and other matters, and with each camp in full sight and hearing of the other, one evening massed Union bands came down to the river bank to play all of the old songs, plus the more rousing tunes like "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." Northerners and Southerners, the soldiers sang those songs or sat and listened to them, massed in their thousands on the hillsides, while the darkness came down to fill the river valley and the light of the campfires glinted off the black water. Finally the Southerners called across, "Now play some of ours," so without pause the Yankee bands swung into "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Maryland, My Maryland," and then at last the massed bands played "Home, Sweet Home," and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both armies went to bed. A few weeks later they were tearing each other apart in the lonely thickets around Chancellorsville. ~ Bruce Catton

5. Unfair to Animals 6. Unfair to Muledom THE HALF-PENNANT PORCH Finley was obsessed with the Yankees and attributed their success to the short distance to the right field fence in Yankee Stadium. He believed sluggers who batted left-handed, like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris, had an unfair advantage. The fence was the sole reason the Yankees were winners. Before the 1964 season, Finley sought to create his own advantage. He moved his right field fence so that it was 296 feet from home plate and called it his "Pennant Porch." The commissioner forced Finley to change it to 325 feet. ~ Josh Ostergaard

What if I told you that you were a hundred percent wrong?'
'Wow,' she said. 'You are good. Talk about not being the bad guy in your own movie. 'You are a hundred percent wrong,' she repeated, with a horrendous, over-the-top-Yankee-fied imitation of his barely-there drawl. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

It's one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you're boozing with Yankee writers in Martha's Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It's something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed's drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can't go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you
they're not, don't flatter yourself, they couldn't care less
but because once you're in orbit and you return to Reed's drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha's Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon. ~ Walker Percy

This is the derivation of that old Yankee proverb that if you can sell a book, you can move sixty tons of weaponry three hundred miles in winter ~ Sarah Vowell

The great thing about being a Yankee is that youre always a Yankee. ~ Derek Jeter

When you go hard your nays become yays. Yankee stadium with Jays and Kanyes. ~ Nicki Minaj

Porter Rockwell was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of very narrow perceptions, intense convictions, and changeless tenacity. In his build he was a gladiator; in his humor a Yankee lumberman; in his memory a Bourbon; in his vengeance an Indian. A strange mixture, only to be found on the American continent ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

I've been able to do a lot of things in the movies. I've been able to run with the buffalo, you know. I've been able to pitch a perfect game in Yankee Stadium. I've been in the bathtub with Susan Sarandon. I've had a lot of chances to do a lot of things. I enjoy sports, but I enjoy sports so much to the point that I wouldn't do the movie unless I thought it had a chance to be good. ~ Kevin Costner

I know a man who is a diamond cutter. He mows the lawn at Yankee Stadium. ~ Henny Youngman

When I take the mound in Yankee Stadium I feel like my stuff is going to be better than ever. ~ Andy Pettitte

Yankee Stadium is a mistake: Not mine - the Giants'. ~ Jacob Ruppert

I would rather be the tail of a lion than the head of a mouse. ~ Daddy Yankee