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You see, you spend a good piece of your life
gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the
other way around all the time. ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without
even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry
People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll
tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
~Rogers Hornsby
Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three
times out of ten and be considered a good performer. ~Ted Williams
I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal
second base than an automobile. ~Tom Clark
A good cigar is like a beautiful chick with a great body who also
knows the American League box scores. ~M*A*S*H, Klinger, "Bug-Out,"
1976
A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz. ~Humphrey
Bogart
You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have
a lot of little boy in you, too. ~Roy Campanella
No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball,
with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so
cleanly defined. ~Paul Gallico
There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my
family, and baseball. The only problem - once baseball season
starts, I change the order around a bit. ~Al Gallagher, 1971
A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine
innings. ~Earl Wilson
Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up. ~Bob
Lemon
What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are
allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the
game.... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the
batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed
disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's
respectability. ~George Bernard Shaw
I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game.
It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give
them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a
nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to
us. ~Walt Whitman
Baseball is a fun game. It beats working for a living. ~Phil Linz
When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball." They say,
"Play ball." ~Willie Stargell, 1981
Baseball is the only major sport that appears backwards in a mirror.
~George Carlin, Brain Droppings, 1997
Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him
playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position
himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of
it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that.
~Nomar Garciaparra
I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to
go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby
When you're in a slump, it's almost as if you look out at the field
and it's one big glove. ~Vance Law
With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only
sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that
many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in
favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of
anything to say to them. ~Art Hill
That's baseball, and it's my game. Y' know, you take your worries to
the game, and you leave 'em there. You yell like crazy for your
guys. It's good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls
the cops. Pretty girls, lots of 'em. ~Humphrey Bogart
When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go
back. ~Woody Allen
Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball
can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit
anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball. ~Jim
Murray
Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the
other team controls the ball. ~Ken Harrelson, Sports Illustrated, 6
September 1976
Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa. ~Bob
Veale, 1966
Every hitter likes fastballs, just like everybody likes ice cream.
But you don't like it when someone's stuffing it into you by the
gallon. That's what it feels like when Nolan Ryan's thrown balls by
you. ~Reggie Jackson
Strikeouts are boring - besides that, they're fascist. Throw some
ground balls. More democratic. ~From the movie Bull Durham
Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you
see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field? ~Jim
Bouton, 1988
Nolan Ryan is pitching much better now that he has his curve ball
straightened out. ~Joe Garagiola
I don't care how long you've been around, you'll never see it all.
~Bob Lemon, 1977
It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one. ~Chuck
Tanner
Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The
intervals are the tough things. ~Robert Frost
Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the
greatest conversation piece ever invented in America. ~Bruce Catton
The charm of baseball is that, dull as it may be on the field, it is
endlessly fascinating as a rehash. ~Jim Murray
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game
begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms
in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon
as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall
alone. ~A. Bartlett Giamatti, "The Green Fields of the Mind," Yale
Alumni Magazine, November 1977
Watching a spring training game is as exciting as watching a tree
form its annual ring. ~Jerry Izenberg
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt
Chamberlain's free throws. ~Rick Wise, 1974
If a horse can't eat it, I don't want to play on it. ~Dick Allen, on
artificial turf, 1970
A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big-leaguer.
That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues. ~Joe
DiMaggio, quoted in New York Times, 30 April 1961
Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world.
If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't
get you off. ~Bill Veeck
Wives of ballplayers, when they teach their children their prayers,
should instruct them how to say: "God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy,
God bless Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth has upped Daddy's paycheck by fifteen
to forty percent." ~Waite Hoyt
Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak a
sunrise past a rooster. ~Attributed to both Joe Adcock and Curt
Simmons
Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really
appreciated. ~Author Unknown
Ideally, the umpire should combine the integrity of a Supreme Court
judge, the physical agility of an acrobat, the endurance of Job and
the imperturbability of Buddha. ~"The Villains in Blue," Time
magazine, 25 August 1961
I've come to the conclusion that the two most important things in
life are good friends and a good bullpen. ~Bob Lemon, 1981
No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your
games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of
your games. It's the other third that makes the difference. ~Tommy
Lasorda
You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain. ~Leo
Durocher, in New York Times, 16 May 1965
You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just
kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate
and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the
greatest game of them all. ~Earl Weaver
It's no coincidence that female interest in the sport of baseball
has increased greatly since the ballplayers swapped those wonderful
old-time baggy flannel uniforms for leotards. ~Mike Royko
Pro-rated at 500 at-bats a year that means that for two years out of
the fourteen I played, I never even touched the ball. ~Norm Cash, on
his 1,081 strikeouts
During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out
about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a
ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I
played seven years without ever hitting the ball. ~Mickey Mantle,
1970
Sandy's fastball was so fast, some batters would start to swing as
he was on his way to the mound. ~Jim Murray, on Sandy Koufax
I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks in
batting practice. ~Casey Stengel, 1967
Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex,
and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience
about fate, and sober self-esteem. ~Saul Steinberg
The strongest thing that baseball has going for it today are its
yesterdays. ~Lawrence Ritter
The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the
hitter is timid, he has to remind the hitter he's timid. ~Don
Drysdale, quoted in New York Times, 9 July 1979
It ain't like football. You can't make up no trick plays. ~Yogi
Berra
Baseball, to me, is still the national pastime because it is a
summer game. I feel that almost all Americans are summer people,
that summer is what they think of when they think of their
childhood. I think it stirs up an incredible emotion within people.
~Steve Busby, in Washington Post, 8 July 1974
A baseball fan has the digestive apparatus of a billy goat. He can,
and does, devour any set of diamond statistics with insatiable
appetite and then nuzzles hungrily for more. ~Arthur Daley
That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows
returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball. ~Bill
Veeck, 1976
A baseball park is the one place where a man's wife doesn't mind his
getting excited over somebody else's curves. ~Brendan Francis
Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season
with the Chicago Cubs. That's baseball as it should be played - in
God's own sunshine. And that's really living. ~Alvin Dark
Baseball is not necessarily an obsessive-compulsive disorder, like
washing your hands 100 times a day, but it's beginning to seem that
way. We're reaching the point where you can be a truly dedicated,
state-of-the-art fan or you can have a life. Take your pick. ~Thomas
Boswell, Washington Post, 13 April 1990
This is a game to be savored, not gulped. There's time to discuss
everything between pitches or between innings. ~Bill Veeck
A critic once characterized baseball as six minutes of action
crammed into two-and-one-half hours. ~Ray Fitzgerald, in Boston
Glove, 1970
I don't know why people like the home run so much. A home run is
over as soon as it starts.... The triple is the most exciting play
of the game. A triple is like meeting a woman who excites you,
spending the evening talking and getting more excited, then taking
her home. It drags on and on. You're never sure how it's going to
turn out. ~George Foster, 1978
Baseball is a game dominated by vital ghosts; it's a fraternity,
like no other we have of the active and the no longer so, the living
and the dead. ~Richard Gilman
The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love. ~Bryant Gumbel,
1981
There have been only two geniuses in the world. Willie Mays and
Willie Shakespeare. ~Tallulah Bankhead
Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their
mouths like Bordeaux wine. ~Pat Conroy
Don't tell me about the world. Not today. It's springtime and
they're knocking baseball around fields where the grass is damp and
green in the morning and the kids are trying to hit the curve ball.
~Pete Hamill
More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic,
addictive illusion that it can almost be understood. ~Thomas
Boswell, in Inside Sports
Baseball? It's just a game - as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as
complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business
- and sometimes even religion. ~Ernie Harwell, "The Game for All
America," 1955
My dad taught me to switch-hit. He and my grandfather, who was
left-handed, pitched to me everyday after school in the back yard. I
batted lefty against my dad and righty against my granddad. ~Mickey
Mantle
I don't love baseball. I don't love most of today's players. I don't
love the owners. I do love, however, the baseball that is in the
heads of baseball fans. I love the dreams of glory of 10-year-olds,
the reminiscences of 70-year-olds. The greatest baseball arena is in
our heads, what we bring to the games, to the telecasts, to reading
newspaper reports. ~Stan Isaacs, "Diamond-Studded Memories,"
Newsday, 9 April 1990
Baseball is a harbor, a seclusion from failure that really matters,
a playful utopia in which virtuosity can be savored to the third
decimal place of a batting average. ~Mark Kramer
Basketball, hockey and track meets are action heaped upon action,
climax upon climax, until the onlooker's responses become deadened.
Baseball is for the leisurely afternoons of summer and for the
unchanging dreams. ~Roger Kahn
[L]ike those special afternoons in summer when you go to Yankee
Stadium at two o'clock in the afternoon for an eight o'clock game.
It's so big, so empty and so silent that you can almost hear the
sounds that aren't there. ~Ray Miller
Why does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"
when they're already there? ~Larry Anderson
Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and
published every day, like those of a baseball player. ~Author
Unknown
All requests for leave of absence on account of grandmother's
funeral, sore throat, housecleaning, lame back, turning of the
ringer, headaches, brain storm, cousin's wedding, general ailments
or other legitimate excuses must be made out and handed to the boss
not later than 10 a.m. on the morning of the game. ~Traditional gag
notice hung in offices and factories at a time period when all games
were played during daylight hours
Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It's the only way
we can get to shake a bat at a white man without starting a riot.
~Dick Gregory
Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not
going to blow up. ~Sharon Olds, This Sporting Life, 1987
One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with
the man behind him. This department of the game has been allowed to
run down fearfully. ~Robert Benchley
Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don't
think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball
games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. Baseball and cricket
are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess
made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base - in both senses -
greed. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of
the brontosaurus. ~John Fowles
It is well to remember that a Martian observing his first baseball
game would be quite correct in concluding that the last two words of
the National Anthem are: PLAY BALL! ~Herbert H. Paper, in Cincinnati
Enquirer, 2 April 1989
I believe in the Church of Baseball. I tried all the major religions
and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma,
Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms and Isadora Duncan. I know things.
For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are
108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a
chance. ~Ron Shelton, Bull Durham, 1988
The great thing about baseball is that there's a crisis every day. ~Gabe
Paul
I have discovered in twenty years of moving around a ball park, that
the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the
price of the seats. ~Bill Veeck
A game of great charm in the adoption of mathematical measurements
to the timing of human movements, the exactitudes and adjustments of
physical ability to hazardous chance. The speed of the legs, the
dexterity of the body, the grace of the swing, the elusiveness of
the slide - these are the features that make Americans everywhere
forget the last syllable of a man's last name or the pigmentation of
his skin. ~Branch Rickey, May 1960
I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the
ball and started trying to make them hit it. ~Sandy Koufax
Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing. ~Warren Spahn
Don't forget to swing hard, in case you hit the ball. ~Woodie Held
Putting lights in Wrigley Field is like putting aluminum siding on
the Sistine Chapel. ~Roger Simon, 1988
You know it's summertime at Candlestick when the fog rolls in, the
wind kicks up, and you see the center fielder slicing open a caribou
to survive the ninth inning. ~Bob Sarlette
The place was always cold, and I got the feeling that the fans would
have enjoyed baseball more if it had been played with a hockey puck.
~Andre Dawson, on Montreal
A baseball game is twice as much fun if you're seeing it on the
company's time. ~William C. Feather
Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man
has ever come to perfection. ~Red Smith
It ain't nothin' till I call it. ~Bill Klem, umpire
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is
only a hole in Arizona. ~George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of
Baseball, 1990
Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's
losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead. ~Jackie Robinson
Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball
player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him
in. ~Casey Stengel
Baseball is an island of activity amidst a sea of statistics.
~Author Unknown
The greatest feeling in the world is to win a major league game. The
second-greatest feeling is to lose a major league game. ~Chuck
Tanner, quoted in The Sporting News, 15 July 1985
What we have are good gray ballplayers, playing a good gray game and
reading the good gray Wall Street Journal. They have been
brainwashed, dry-cleaned and dehydrated!... Wake up the echoes at
the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a
rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their
plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils....
Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a
better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober. ~Bill Veeck,
The Hustler's Handbook
Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football,
basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine
guns. ~John Leonard, New York Times, 2 November 1975
They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice,
icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be
acute Republicans. ~George F. Will, 1990
Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words. ~Ernie
Harwell, "The Game for All America," 1955
Well, boys, it's a round ball and a round bat and you got to hit the
ball square. ~Joe Schultz, 1969
Pitchers, like poets, are born not made. ~Cy Young
What does a mama bear on the pill have in common with the World
Series? No cubs. ~Harry Caray
You know you're pitching well when the batters look as bad as you do
at the plate. ~Duke Snider, 1975
There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately,
neither of them work. ~Charlie Lau, 1982
It actually giggles at you as it goes by. ~Rick Monday, on Phil
Niekro's knuckleball, quoted in Sports Illustrated, 1 August 1983
The best way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until the ball stops
rolling and then pick it up. ~Bob Uecker
[A knuckleball is] a curve ball that doesn't give a damn. ~Jimmy
Cannon
Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot,
but not everything. ~Toby Harrah, 1983
Reading about baseball is a lot more interesting than reading about
chess, but you have to wonder: Don't any of these guys ever go
fishing? ~Dave Shiflett, quoted in Houston Chronicle, 29 April 1990
I know a man who is a diamond cutter. He mows the lawn at Yankee
Stadium. ~Author Unknown
Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at bat.
Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher's
mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and
pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call
the game and start all over again. ~Jimmy Piersal, on how to diaper
a baby, 1968
To a pitcher, a base hit is the perfect example of negative
feedback. ~Steve Hovley, 1969
It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball's wounds are
self-inflicted. ~Bill Veeck, The Hustler's Handbook
A mystique of history and heritage surrounds the New York Yankees.
It's like the old days revived. We're loved and hated, but always in
larger doses than any other team. We're the only team in any sport
whose name and uniform and insignia are synonymous with their entire
sport all over the world.... the Yankees mean baseball to more
people than all the other teams combined. ~Paul Blair, quoted in
Washington Post, 22 June 1978
Hating the New York Yankees is as American as apple pie, unwed
mothers and cheating on your income tax. ~Mike Royko, 1981
Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in blackjack.
~Adam Morrow, quoted in Bill Simmons, "Letters from the Nation," 20
October 2003
I have observed that baseball is not unlike war, and when you get
right down to it, we batters are the heavy artillery. ~Ty Cobb
Baseball is too much of a sport to be called a business, and too
much of a business to be called a sport. ~Philip Wrigley
Life will always throw you curves, just keep fouling them off... the
right pitch will come, but when it does, be prepared to run the
bases. ~Rick Maksian
Baseball isn't a business, it's more like a disease. ~Walter F.
O'Malley
England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up
with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example.
~Robert Benchley
Baseball is the only game left for people. To play basketball, you
have to be 7 feet 6 inches. To play football, you have to be the
same width. ~Bill Veeck, 1975
Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.
~Joe Garagiola, Baseball is a Funny Game
Don't park in the spaces marked, "Reserved for Umpires." ~John
McSherry
Baseball fans are junkies, and their heroin is the statistic.
~Robert S. Wieder
The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too
many games in between. ~Bill Veeck
Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is
pretty good too. ~Greg, age 8
When Steve and I die, we are going to be buried in the same
cemetery, 60-feet 6-inches apart. ~Tim McCarver, who caught all of
Steve Carlton's games, 1977
What are we at the park for except to win? I'd trip my mother. I'd
help her up, brusher her off, tell her I'm sorry. But mother don't
make it to third. ~Leo Durocher
There ought to be some other means of reckoning quality in this the
best and loveliest of games; the scoreboard is an ass. ~Neville
Cardus, A Fourth Innings with Cardus, 1981
In cricket, as in no other game, a great master may well go back to
the pavilion scoreless.... In no other game does the law of averages
get to work so potently, so mysteriously. ~Neville Cardus, Cardus on
the Ashes, 1989
It's a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan
it's when you discover that your wife left you in May. ~Denis Norden
To have some idea what it's like, stand in the outside lane of a
motorway, get your mate to drive his car at you at 95 mph and wait
until he's 12 yards away, before you decide which way to jump.
~Geoffrey Boycott, 1989, how a cricket batsman feels when facing a
fast bowler
Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep
your foot on first. ~Frederick B. Wilcox
Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they
hit a triple. ~Barry Switzer
Confucious say: "Baseball wrong - man with four balls cannot walk."
~Author Unknown
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Quotations about Baseball