It's not enough to hate your enemy. You have to understand how the two of you bring each other to deep completion. (Prologue, p.. 51)

Except no one seems sure it's a joke. We're painting these old planes as a celebration in a way but how do we know for sure the crisis is really over? Is the breakup of the USSR really happening? Or is the whole thing a plot to trick the West? (Part I, Chapter 1, p. 81)

That's where the Polo Grounds stood, west by southwest, and I imagined the field and the players, the crisp blues and elysian greens on that great somber-skied day—great and terrible, a day now gone to black and white in the file fade of memory. (Part 1, Chapter 7, pp. 133-134)

"The home run that won the pennant," Cotter says softly, a little reluctantly, because it is such an astounding thing...