"In his prime he stood six feet tall, weighed 190 pounds and there was a fluidity to his frame you seldom see, among such sinews. His black hair was thick and tightly curled. His face was strong and smooth. He had the look of a young indomitable centurion. Others came out, thousands of others, long before the formal competition started, to watch the warm-up throws. You could hear gasps at Ebbets Field and sometimes, an hour before game time, bursts of applause. I cannot imagine Carl Furillo in his prime as anything other than a ballplayer. Right field in Brooklyn was his destiny." "The Emperor of Right Field." Roger Kahn. "The Reading Rifle." "Quite simply, Furillo was a great player. Some write about his arm, the human cannon. He was not the man you'd first ask to join you in a casual game of catch. Or how he played the right-field wall at Ebbets Field. That wall, a mystery of dead spots, bounces, angles and planes, was a wonder of baseball before the dream-destroyers wrecked it. Furillo never attended high school. Plane geometry remained a mystery to him. But he knew every angle, every carom. The way Furillo played the wall describes an art form." Sammy Kahn, New York Times. "We hated the Giants. We just hated the uniform." Carl Furillo. After hitting a pair of home run's against the Giants, pitcher Sheldon Jones, hit Furillo in the head with a pitch just above the ear. Furillo was carried off the field on a stretcher. Doctors said there was no concussion. That night Sheldon Jones visited Furillo in the hospital and told him that Mgr. Leo Durocher, now manager with the Giants, had ordered him to hit Carl Furillo. 1950. The Duke of Flatbush comin' to help!

"The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase." Yogi Berra, asked about a recent vacation.