Living is the trick

It's the birthday of my favorite sportswriter not from Murfreesboro TN, Walter "Red" Smith. He said:

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” 

And

“Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man has ever come to perfection.” 

And

“Dying is no big deal; the least of us will manage it. Living is the trick.” 

And thanks to Mr. Keillor's Almanac I also learned this morning that a poem called "Once" concludes:

"And time is short. You have to live it."

My favorite Murfreesboro writer, of course, is Grantland Rice. His birthplace is memorialized at the corner of Spring and College, right on my daily commute to school.

“For when the One Great Scorer comes To mark against your name, He writes - not that you won or lost -

But HOW you played the Game."