so good, so funny, that people who didn't even like sports read him; this collection of his best columns of the previous twenty years shows why. His inexhaustible talent and limitless range are on full display here: from the perplexities of tennis scoring ("a game in which love counts for nothing, deuces are wild, and the scoring system was invented by Lewis Carroll") and baseball rules ("the infield fly rule is about as simple as calligraphy. It might as well be a Japanese naval code.") to Murray's Laws ("The way to make a line move faster is to join the other one.") and many of his colorful profiles ("Richard Petty has climbed in more windows than 50 car thieves ... he wasn't born, he was assembled and modified.") His striking images, evocative prose, and hyperbolic one-liners made Jim Murray the most quotable, and the most celebrated, sports columnist of the twentieth century.

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