"You can't stop him! You can only hope to contain him!"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 10/20/06, Bapopik at aol.com <Bapopik at aol.com> wrote:
> I heard the old "You can't stop him! You can only hope to contain him!"  used
> again in a sports context. It's such a cliche that it's now used in  jest,
> such as when a seldom used bench player makes an  unexpected contribution.
> ...
> I can't recall who started this sports cliche. Is it in Fred's book?

It used to be a favorite catchphrase of Dan Patrick on ESPN's
SportsCenter. Whether he originated it I can't say.

Wikiquote attributes it to Patrick:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/SportsCenter#Dan_Patrick


--Ben Zimmer

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