"All us Youngs could throw. I used to kill squirrels with a stone when I was a kid, and my granddad once killed a turkey buzzard on the fly with a rock"
About this Quote
The line “All us Youngs could throw” quietly shifts the spotlight from individual genius to lineage. It’s an origin myth that turns talent into inheritance, not luck. That move matters for an athlete whose name became a statistic (the Cy Young Award): he’s reclaiming the human scale behind the legend, before radar guns and biomechanics, when a great pitcher could be imagined as the best thrower in the county.
There’s also a darker subtext modern ears can’t ignore: casual violence toward animals as a marker of toughness. The story depends on that normalization. It signals a time when masculinity and skill were measured in what you could hit, at distance, with whatever you had. For today’s audience, it reads as both authentic and unsettling - which is why it sticks. The quote preserves baseball’s folk roots: America’s pastime narrated like frontier brag.
Quote Details
| Topic | Grandparents |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Young, Cy. (2026, January 17). All us Youngs could throw. I used to kill squirrels with a stone when I was a kid, and my granddad once killed a turkey buzzard on the fly with a rock. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/all-us-youngs-could-throw-i-used-to-kill-44093/
Chicago Style
Young, Cy. "All us Youngs could throw. I used to kill squirrels with a stone when I was a kid, and my granddad once killed a turkey buzzard on the fly with a rock." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/all-us-youngs-could-throw-i-used-to-kill-44093/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"All us Youngs could throw. I used to kill squirrels with a stone when I was a kid, and my granddad once killed a turkey buzzard on the fly with a rock." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/all-us-youngs-could-throw-i-used-to-kill-44093/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.




