Nice Guys Finish Last
In a July 6, 1946, interview with Red Barber, Durocher had been commenting on the common belief at the time that if a team's players got along well, they would naturally play better than teams with difficult or irascible players; noting some of the players on the Giants who had reputations as personable individuals, notably Mel Ott, he observed that they were all "nice guys", but would nonetheless finish last (while his Dodgers were in first place), summing up his argument with, "Nice guys; finish last." Durocher later noted that the remark was quoted accurately in the published interview, but came to take on a different meaning when some incorrectly thought he meant that such a team would finish last because it included "nice guys", when in fact he had meant that there was no correlation (and in fact, saw it more as an ironic situation) between the personalities on a team and their level of play. (See 1966 Chicago Cubs, below.) Thus the quote "Nice guys finish last" has long been attributed to Durocher, including an entry in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Many historians assert, however, that the famous four words never were actually uttered by Durocher; the quotation as it is remembered actually came from headline writers distilling Durocher's quote that "The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place, not in this dugout" into a pithy soundbite.
Read more about this topic: Leo Durocher
Famous quotes containing the words finish last, nice, guys and/or finish:
“Take a look at them. All nice guys. They’ll finish last. Nice guys. Finish last.”
—Leo Durocher (1906–1991)
“When you gonna get married, Marty? You should be ashamed of yourself. All your brothers and sisters, younger than you, they get married and got the children. I meet your mother in the produce store. She say to me “Eh, you know a nice girl for my boy Marty?” What’s the matter with you? That’s no way!”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“An accurate charting of the American woman’s progress through history might look more like a corkscrew tilted slightly to one side, its loops inching closer to the line of freedom with the passage of time—but like a mathematical curve approaching infinity, never touching its goal. . . . Each time, the spiral turns her back just short of the finish line.”
—Susan Faludi (20th century)