I really wanted to write a book [99: Stories of the Game] on the tradition and history of the league, where kids can pick it up and read it and learn things and say, "Geez, I didn't know that. That's pretty cool."
Baseball isn't statistics, it's Joe DiMaggio rounding second base.
The Blood of Heroes is surely the best account to date, one that presents plenty of new insights while acting as a corrective-or at least an alternative viewpoint-to previous accounts....Donovan combines that vital blend of authoritative scholarship with the vivid writing necessary to make an oft-told tale seem fresh.
You watch guys talk about football, and you think that maybe it's really easy, and it's really not. Yeah, we've got the expertise because we played, but how you put that into a 30-, 45-second take and educate and entertain someone that's watching?
The NBA is fairy tale and real life mixed together.
After watching 'Dangal,' I called my writer and told him that I wanted to do a sports film for Punjab because no sports movies have been ever made in Punjab.
It's hard to explain, but it's a beautiful thing to watch in wrestling when someone loses in the exact perfect way.
The whole idea is to propose an immersive experience. When you watch tennis, you watch from the outside, you're far from the court, the camera is far away and the whole story is about two persons hitting a tennis ball and trying to win.
I love sport, so I'd love to do more stories if I can that deal with sport maybe. Other characters, actually the real guy is so interesting why would you want to get anyone to play them?
I wanted to make a film that wouldn't just appeal to Formula One fans. That's what the great sports documentaries do - 'Hoop Dreams,' 'When We Were Kings' - they're human dramas first, sport second, if at all.
Right before I left ESPN, someone suggested doing a NFL story in the spring. The person was laughed out of the room.
If I ever get the chance to do a football movie, that would be a dream come true.
My real heroes have always been sportswriters.
I do think that sports is really rich dramatically that, and this is kind of a self-serving thing to say, but I wonder why there aren't more, better sports novels.
There's so much information out there. There are written biographies of Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, there are interviews, and we have had the benefit of meeting these players. There's a physical and psychological aspect, and combining these two is what will help '83' connect with the millenials and cricket lovers.
