Jane Leavy Quotes

Waffle House is my childhood thing. We used to go there on Sundays or weekends every now and then with my family. It's just good, Southern, home-cooked food, and that's what I love.

I was born and raised in the Bronx and my grandfather and my brother Garry were huge Yankees fans. One of my first memories is of them listening to a game on the radio and screaming at the radio. My brother would cry when they lost, and when I was really little, I didn't know why he was crying.

I didn't leave home until 27. I was an only child raised in Philadelphia by my mother and grandmother. My grandmother controlled the stove. She made a lot of potato meals - mashed potato, potato souffle, potato pancakes. When we didn't have electricity, we ate romantically by candlelight.

I was a Yankee fan in Brooklyn because my father was a Yankee fan. And my father was required to live in Brooklyn with my mother's family, who were all Dodger fans. So he was surrounded by Dodger fans. He was a Yankee fan. So his revenge was to make me a Yankee fan.

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

Dad played with me a great deal, as dads should do, and our chief sport was baseball. He bought me a hardball when I was three years old, and he used to sit in a rocker on the front porch while I sat on the grass in the yard, and we'd play catch by the hour.

I was thrilled one year when I was younger when not only did my brothers get hockey sticks for Christmas - but I did too!

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.

I've taken my boys to the house I grew up in. Taken them to the site of Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers used to play. They go to all the Dodger games, and they play Little League ball. I have infused them with New York spirit.

On the morning of Thanksgiving, I would wake up to the home smelling of all good things, wafting upstairs to my room. I would set the table with the fancy silverware and china and hope that my parents and grandmother wouldn't have the annual Thanksgiving fight about Richard Nixon.

The only music we ever listened to out in the piney woods was Roy Acuff and the Grand Ole Opry. That was the only night of the week I was allowed to lay in the middle of the bed with Mama and Daddy, just long enough to hear Roy Acuff sing; then I had to go back to bed.

I did have a very advanced grandmother, my mother's mother, who wanted to buy me a camera. My parents wouldn't let her. Eventually she won, and I got a camera in about 1948, a Voigtlander.

Baseball represents family. It represents my childhood.

I had a great childhood, a very close-knit family. We were all overweight, and we had good times eating together, I imagine.

My mother would give my brothers and me a pile of catalogues and let us pick what we wanted for Christmas.

My mother was not the cook in the family. My dad was. I'd watch him behind the grill, and I said, 'If I ever make it and have enough money, I'm going to make sure I dine in the best restaurants.'

I have the biggest sweet tooth! You name it, I will eat it. My all-time favorite is my mother's butter cake. Every time I go home, my mom will already have the cake made because I love it so much. This makes my siblings mad because they think she favors me. I don't care because she probably does!

I confess that as a young boy, Sunday was not my favorite day. Grandfather shut down the action. We didn't have any transportation. We couldn't drive the car. He wouldn't even let us start the motor. We couldn't ride the horses, or the steers, or the sheep.

Mom and Dad would stay in bed on Sunday morning, but the kids would have to go to church.

I played Little League for one year. That was it. Then my mother realized I liked books and threatened my father. I owe her forever for that.

I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

When she was too young to resist, or even to understand, I turned my daughter into a lifelong, rabid Yankees fan.

I remember, as a kid, I loved kimchi. It wasn't weird to me at all because it was in our house all the time. There was never a second when a huge jar wasn't in our refrigerator. I remember bringing it to school, and that just did not go over well at all.

Harvey and I grew up in Queens, N.Y. My brother and I shared a room for 18 years until we went away to college. When we were kids, after our father said, 'Lights out,' he also exclaimed, 'No more talking. Time for sleep.' But we'd stay up late, arguing over statistics, who the best center fielder was - Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle.

I grew up in a family with five kids.