Sports

See Also: BASEBALL, BOXING AND WRESTLING, FOOTBALL, GOLF

1. Batted the [tennis] ball away like an irritating gnat —Rita Mae Brown
2. An American winning the French bicycle race is like a Frenchman winning most valuable baseball player —Chris Wallace commenting on Greg Le Mond’s winning of Tour De France race, NBC-TV, July 26, 1986
3. Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned —Izaak Walton
4. The [tennis] ball knifes right onto the face of the strings and stays there like a piece of cheese —Ron Carlson
5. Basketball is like poetry in motion —Jim Valvano, North Carolina State coach, 1987
6. Bathers hop across the waves agilely, aimlessly, like fleas —Malcolm Cowley
7. Coaching is like a monkey on a stick. You pass the same fellows on the way down as you pass on the way up —Steve Owen, New York Giants football coach
8. [A swimmer] floated on her back [in water] like a pink air mattress —Will Weaver
9. Having the America’s Cup yacht race in San Diego instead of Newport is like going to Mardi Gras in Pittsburgh —Rhode Island Representative St. Germaine, Wall Street Journal, February 5, 1987
10. Hockey players are like mules. They have no fear of punishment and no hope of rewards —Emory Jones, general manager of the St. Louis Arena, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 26, 1963
11. Holds a siren yellow tennis ball up in front of her, like the torch on the Statue of Liberty, and hits it with a combination of force and grace —Daphne Merkin
12. If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out —George Brett, Cincinnati Royals third baseman, Sports Illustrated, June 23, 1986
13. I saw more sails biting the wind than I’ve ever seen before; it was like sailing through the mouth of a shark —Jean Lamuniere, September 15, 1986
14. Legs [bicycling] pumping like wheels —Murray Bail
15. Little Pat played [tennis] … like a weekly wound up machine —John Updike
16. Records fell like ripe apples on a windy day —E. B. White
17. The reel was screaming … humming like a telegraph wire in a sixty-mile gale —Arthur Train
18. The skaters [on the Ranger hockey team] … perform like an electrocardiogram readout —Craig Wolff, New York Times, September 8, 1986

    Wolffs simile alluded to the team’s impersonal performance.

19. Sports is like a war without killing —Ted Turner, baseball team owner
20. Swim like a cannonball —Tony Ardizzone
21. (I can) swim like a duck —William Shakespeare
22. Swimming the English Channel, it was like swimming in dishwater —Sandra Blewett, long distance swimmer, The Evening Standard, August 21, 1979
23. Tearing through the water like a seal —Rosamond Lehmann
24. Tennis is like a lawsuit; you can always be surprised by what happens on the other side of the court —Anon
25. Their arms were so high on the follow-through it looked like a mass ascension of Mount Everest —Archie Oldham

    The simile, taken from a basketball story, The Zealots of Cranston Tech, describes a team of players all shooting for basket together.

26. The undulant fly line coiled out over the pond like a fleeing serpent —Robert Traver
27. Violent exercise is like a cold bath. You think it does you good because you feel better when you stop it —Robert Quillen
28. (Bicycling children) wheeled like swallows through luminous, lemon-coloured air —Julia O’Faolain
29. Working out the [fishing] line at his feet, like a cowboy coiling a rope —Robert Traver
30. You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it —Izaak Walton