George Vecsey Quotes

Both my parents were amateur badminton players. My father is a scientist and wanted me to be a doctor. But my mom was very aggressive and loved badminton. She pushed me right from the age of nine to take up the sport.

I've got no interest in football. My brother's a footballer, too, and I was dragged to the freezing pitch every week as a child. I don't see much glamour in it.

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 don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century.

My dad was a sports writer when I was younger and then he became just a general columnist. But I grew up with him literally getting into brawls with football coaches.

Everything gets thrown off depending on whether the Packers are playing. I grew up in L.A., and we had a terrible quarterback, Roman Gabriel. When I was 11 years old, I fired him, I fired the Rams, and I picked a quarterback I aspired to be. That was Bart Starr. That's how long I've been a Packers fan.

When I was younger, I grew up a Packers fan because my dad played for the Packers. As I got older, I've fallen away from it.

I don't regret writing my book at all. I wrote it for the United supporters to give them a proper insight into what it is like inside the club, and what it is like to be a Manchester United player. I think I did that in an honest way.

In the '60s, I sat with my dad in frozen Wrigley Field at Bears games.

My dad really liked Didier Drogba and there was always a Chelsea game on when I was growing up.

My dad made these dough balls and covered them up with a cloth in front of a gas fire, which was stuck on a wall. They were rising. In my head, I think they were the best rolls I've ever had. If there was a starting point for me, that was it.

I mean, if you told me I would be one of the quarterbacks of the New York Giants when I was 6 years old in kindergarten, I think I'd take that.

I want to play for Central because I love the club. I was raised there and taught football there. Central is where it all began for me.

The Dumas memoirs - which I also discovered when I was a kid - had a big impact on me.

I have said many times that I was a Juventus fan when I was a child.

I lived in Cleveland for a summer when I was 12, and I was a ball boy for the Browns, which few people know.

Apparently, when I was really little, I watched the film version of 'The Secret Garden' and thought it was, like, the best thing ever.

Anybody can be rattled. Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but at the end of the day, he is just a quarterback. It's not like he is God.

I was essentially raised on blues music. My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me.

For 30 years I wrote for newspapers and magazines, wrote books on the Dallas Cowboys' dynasties of the '70s and '90s, wrote about Michael Jordan in Chicago and Barry Bonds in the Bay Area, even wrote columns for ESPN.com from 2004 to 2006.

I was introduced to the game by my father, Tommy, when I was 11.

When I was growing up, I knew a lot about football because I saw some of my grown-up siblings watching football on TV and they supported Manchester United.

First time I sang, I was singing Alicia Keys in the bathroom of my mom's beauty shop. I was six.

The best thing about having a footballer dad is seeing the game up close. You watch him train, then go home and practice what you've seen in the front room, rearranging the furniture.

When I was a little girl, there was this unbelievably cool female bus driver who'd work near us. I remember thinking I'd like to be her when I grew up.