Daily Inspiration Quote by Harry Reasoner

Baseball doesn not just tolerate numbers; it bakes them in. Harry Reasoner frames that truth with a domestic metaphor so cozy it almost smuggles the argument past you: statistics are not the filling, not the fruit, not even the tradition. Theyre the crust the engineered, practiced layer that turns raw ingredients into the thing people recognize and crave.

The intent is slyly corrective. Reasoner was a broadcast journalist in an era when sports coverage was shifting from story-first color to data-laced authority. By comparing stats to Mom's apple pie, he grants them instant legitimacy without sounding like a scold. If you love baseball, he implies, you already love stats, even if you pretend you dont. Thats the subtext: nostalgia is doing the PR work for quantification.

The phrase "flaky crust" matters. Its craft, not sentiment. Flakiness takes technique, timing, and a bit of obsession exactly the kind of fussy, iterative care that stat-keeping embodies. Reasoner nods to the nerds (scorekeepers, sabermetric precursors) while keeping the tone accessible to the casual fan. He also hints at baseballs particular brand of American self-mythology: the game sells itself as pastoral and timeless, yet it runs on bookkeeping, comparison, and argument. The quote works because it captures baseball's central paradox: a sport that feels like memory, and operates like math.