Words matter. These are the best Baseball Quotes from famous people such as Matt Kemp, Bill James, Christine Pelosi, Cal Ripken, Jr., Jimmy Fallon, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I never want to sit out. I want to play baseball games.
Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason – because some people like them. It’s the same with baseball statistics.
Baseball calls it a curve ball for a reason: you just don’t know where some pitches will land. Your ace could get injured. Your golden glover could err. Your team could sit through a rain delay. Your manager could get ejected. Your bench must be broad and deep enough to overcome.
Your job as a baseball player is to come to the park ready to play every day, and the manager, it’s his job to make those decisions about who plays.
There couldn’t have been a better Hollywood ending for us. It’s beyond baseball. It’s rooting for your family.
Baseball is a game of race, creed, and color. The race is to first base. The creed is the rules of the game. The color? Well, the home team wears white uniforms, and the visiting team wears gray.
Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.
If you’re giving me tickets to the football game, baseball game or hockey game, I’m taking the tickets to the hockey game. For me, it’s by far the most fun sport to go and watch live and be part of. I just don’t know why it doesn’t translate as well on TV.
I was playing little league baseball when Bruce Jenner was winning the gold, but I don’t think I was really paying attention at that time. It wasn’t until 1980 – I think I was 12 years old – that I thought, ‘Wow that’s what I want to do. I want to be on the Olympic team.’
When I was a little boy, my dream was to play baseball and leave Cuba.
There is but one game and that game is baseball.
I’ve been playing baseball since I was 5 or 6 years old. I’ve been on a schedule, pretty much, since I was in eighth, ninth grade. I look forward to not doing that.
That’s what I love about acting. There’s never a set role. You can be a firefighter, you can be a baseball player, you can be whatever you want in the acting world. I think I’ve found my calling.
The nice thing about baseball is that all of the possible outcomes are known – it’s not quite as messy as the real world. That makes the game an excellent playground for probability.
Your body is not made to throw like we throw. That’s why you see softball pitchers pitching two or three games a day. It’s a natural movement in softball. In baseball it’s not a natural movement.
I want to be part of Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame, but I don’t want to be part of the kind of Hall of Fame that’s based on voters’ beliefs and assumptions.
I was taking hitting clinics every chance I got. I really worked on it. It was just fun to be given that invitation from the director to make the baseball as good as we can.
Despite the situation in Cuba, I had a chance to play on the national team; and compared to other baseball players and other people in Cuba, I had the opportunity to live at a level that was not very high class but in the middle.
My kids have played soccer and baseball and basketball, and the parents who come to games are always saying and doing things that are just wildly inappropriate.
In baseball, you can do something poorly and still get credit. A pitcher could throw a bad ball, the batter hit a screaming line drive, and an outfielder make a fantastic diving catch. Yet, when you look at historical databases, 80% of the time when a ball is struck with that trajectory and velocity, it is a hit.
Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game.
I think baseball – the baseball genre – is this mitt, to use a double pun there, to catch a whole bunch of themes.
I guess my thermometer for my baseball fever is still a goose bump.
As a youngster, I played in Little League, Pony League, and all sorts of amateur baseball programs growing up.
Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it’s called the free market. That’s how most people’s salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.
Everything I learned about the game of baseball, I learned from my dad.
If you could equate the amount of time and effort put in mentally and physically into succeeding on the baseball field and measured it by the dirt on your uniform, mine would have been black.
I love playing baseball, and I always promised myself, if I had the chance, that I would work as hard as I could to be the best player I could possibly be.
I just played at a club in L.A. called the Baked Potato. It fits like 90 people. It’s like playing somewhere in a basement in, like, Indiana or somewhere where all your friends show up. It’s really fun and there’s a very different energy to that than to play to 50,000 at a Tokyo baseball stadium.
I had started law school at Florida State University as a part-timer. I would go two quarters, and they allowed me to drop out to play baseball, and then I’d get readmitted in September. I was convinced I was going to be a lawyer and was using my baseball salary to pay my way through school.
Baseball is an individual game, but it should never be a personal game.
If I walked back into the booth in the year 2025, I don’t think it would have changed much. I think baseball would be played and managed pretty much the same as it is today. It’s a great survivor.
The first thing to know about playing baseball in Michigan is, Michigan’s really cold.
The modern era of Cape Cod baseball dawned in 1963 when the league became a showcase for the collegiate elite.
I am the best in baseball.
America brought us the baseball cap; it’s one of my favorite hats.
The perception is that baseball’s players’ union is protecting players to use steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing drugs.
When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.
I always liked the defensive part of baseball.
Normally, some people think about 50 as a big moment in life. I kind of think 30 because in your baseball career, 30 was considered on top kind of looking at the end of your career. So I remember thinking about 30 in different ways, but 50 just seems like another step right now.
Perhaps the truest axiom in baseball is that the toughest thing to do is repeat.
Baseball is a game of tradition. It lives, in large measure, on its past.
Maintain ‘baseball cards’ and/or ‘believability matrixes’ for your people. Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.
The Negro League had some of the best players in history. Satchel Paige was probably one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball, and many believe catcher Josh Gibson was a better hitter than Babe Ruth.
Baseball is the favorite American sport because it’s so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it.
In baseball you hit your home run over the right-field fence, the left-field fence, the center-field fence. Nobody cares. In golf everything has got to be right over second base.
Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch, and then dashing off to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals. That’s baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, ‘I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.’
When I was a kid, I was always an athlete. I played a lot of sports. I played football, basketball, baseball and soccer.
People who think they know what they are talking about when they talk about baseball include the announcers and all of the sports press – no matter how much evidence you present them to the contrary they will continue to think that what they think is right.
And I found out, the other part of it is that I found out and in my desire to life successfully, that baseball fit very well into my life. It’s been a great teacher, trainer, mentor and you’ll see what I mean in the next few minutes that I have to speak.
The fact I’m blind has been a great help to my career. If I’d been sighted I’d have played baseball and got into trouble like all other kids on my block.
I had an addiction to play baseball.
I knew how to read box scores and who the baseball heroes were before I had ever seen or even heard much of a game.
Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.
I am old enough to remember every Red Sox season since 1975. Baseball is long. Baseball takes forever. It’s day in, day out, for six solid months – seven if you’re lucky. Winning is always fun.
I love the MLB app, because I’m a pretty obsessed baseball fan.
Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.
I love to be in the ballpark. I love to just go in and enjoy a great baseball game, a great pitchers’ duel.
I’d rather be a good person off the field than a good baseball player on the field.
I found myself in a race with Mother Nature to play as much baseball as I could before she forced me to stop.
When I’m not at work, I put deep conditioner in my hair and wear a baseball cap. I’ll just roll around on the off-days with goop in my hair, and then just rinse it out.
I’m not devastated over a baseball game. If somebody came to me and said, ‘Your wife is terminally ill.’ Or, if my kids and wife get on a plane and I got a call that said, ‘Something happened with the plane,’ that’s devastating.
At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.
Baseball, while you’re doing it, you think it’s going to last forever.
Baseball is all about pitching, and we know we have to improve our pitching.
How do you find a buried city in a vast landscape? Finding it randomly would be the equivalent of locating a needle in a haystack, blindfolded, wearing baseball mitts.
And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball’s profitability by ‘running the game like a business.’
The Red Sox are the local scapegoats. It’s hard enough to play baseball without being the local scapegoat too.
There’s a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That’s baseball.
Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.
Baseball has long been a national pastime that many Americans have cherished.
Baseball life is a tough life on the family.
I enjoy my solo career because I get to play smaller places like clubs and theaters, and the interaction with the audience is much higher quality. It also sounds better than a baseball stadium. Everybody has a good seat, and I don’t have to play a specific part like I do in the Eagles.
The game is just, everybody talks about baseball, but I really think football probably has a little bit more American feeling than anything.
I think that baseball games are like soap operas. If you watch five in a row, you know enough to get hooked.
I did ‘Kidulthood’ and ‘Adulthood,’ and that’s what people wanted and expect me to always do. They want me to do ‘hood films and be the guy swinging baseball bats and saying ‘Yo Blood’ and beating up others in the street.
Now, you tell me, if I have a day off during the baseball season, where do you think I’ll spend it? The ballpark. I still love it. Always have, always will.
The number one priority is playing baseball. There are so many people in New York trying to get you to do this and get you to do that, which is fine, but you have to take care of yourself.
I bet on baseball in 1987 and 1988.
They say in baseball, your little flaws will stick with you from the start. It’s just how you can maintain and minimize them.
Cricket is basically baseball on valium.
Baseball is more than a game to me, it’s a religion.
Bunting is usually a waste of time. The – generally, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, bunt is the only play in baseball that both sides applaud. The – if the home team bunts, you get a base. The home team applauds because they get an out, and the other team applauds because they get a base. So what does that tell you?
In the glory days of Orioles, when I was a newbie baseball writer for the Post, the roster of talkers was as good as the everyday lineup. Singy – Ken Singleton – Flanny, and Cakes – the underwear spokesman Jim Palmer – were my go-to guys, occupying stalls along one wall of the shabby chic clubhouse.
I listen to NPR and baseball games when I’m in my car. I mean, exclusively NPR and baseball games, and that’s it, as far as the radio.
Baseball is a little bigger gamble than most, and the stakes are pretty high.
There are many kids in and out of baseball who think that just because they have some natural talent, they have the world by the tail.
I loved being on the set of ‘Field of Dreams’ because I hung out with the baseball players all day, played cards, flirted with Ray Liotta, and had a ball.
I don’t like American football. I think it’s boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It’s played on a diamond.
Just as the common law derives from ancient precedents – judges’ decisions – rather than statutes, baseball’s codes are the game’s distilled mores. Their unchanged purpose is to show respect for opponents and the game. In baseball, as in the remainder of life, the most important rules are unwritten. But not unenforced.
To me, baseball has always been a reflection of life. Like life, it adjusts. It survives everything.
I go from my room to the ballpark and play baseball. I try to keep it simple.
After Jackie Robinson the most important black in baseball history is Reggie Jackson, I really mean that.
Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.
The vast majority of people who watch baseball can properly call 95% of all plays that happen on the field. My job is to teach you how to call the other 5%.
It’s a wonderful feeling to be a bridge to the past and to unite generations. The sport of baseball does that, and I am just a part of it.
I was a very good baseball player and football player as a kid.
I went to school every day, like everyone else, and I played baseball for my high school team. I was a part of a lot of different activities outside of school.
Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.
My dad was my coach in baseball and early on in basketball, so playing baseball was something we always did.
I had an opportunity to play baseball in college, but I just didn’t want to go to school. I started focusing on my music and it was game over!
I always wanted to do a baseball book; I love baseball. The problem is that a very large part of my following is in non-baseball playing countries.
The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.
Football has end zones and goal posts; basketball has the hoop, and hockey the goal cage. Baseball is the only game with an imaginary box: the strike zone, which the umpire determines at his own discretion.
On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.
Baseball is a lot like life. It’s a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life.
That’s what I love about baseball, that it gives the opportunity for every single guy to develop and play the game. There’s not a rule that you have to be 6 foot or you have to be real strong to play baseball or to become a good player.
I’m truly passionate about basketball. I’m not as passionate about baseball as I am about basketball, but I watch baseball and I watch football. I love sports in general.
I’m just a seasonal guy. Basketball, football, baseball, boxing, golf. Give it to me all the time.
You know, I’m from Boston, and in Boston, you are born with a baseball bat in your hand.
Babe Ruth didn’t become her father until 18 months after he married her mother, Claire, on April 17, 1929, Opening Day of the baseball season. Julia was 12 years old.
It’s a weird scene. You win a few baseball games and all of a sudden you’re surrounded by reporters and TV men with cameras asking you about Vietnam and race relations.
Always wanted to be a Major League player. Loved baseball. Followed it. Loved to play. Plus, I could always hit.
I don’t know what you guys say, but at home, life is way different from baseball.
I bet on the game of baseball and I bet on my team, even the mistakes I made, I have to take a different look at someone betting against their own team… that’s throwing the game.
I’d never even been to Wrigley Field. I never even enjoyed baseball that much, but I loved being there, the crowd was lovely, and they all sang with me!
Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.
I had the pleasure, as Robin said, to live a childhood dream as many young Americans and Puerto Rican children live that play youth baseball. And I feel honored and very thankful for that opportunity.
I kind of grew up with high goals for myself; I intended to play pro baseball. Growing up in Texas, Hollywood isn’t much of a reality.
Baseball hasn’t been the national pastime for many years now – no sport is. The national pastime, like it or not, is watching television.
Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.
I went to a Christian all-boys’ college one time to pick up my buddies so we could go play baseball, and I just remember walking through the halls, and there’s all these crucified Jesuses. It’s scary.
Whatever I contributed to the unique morale of the Cardinals was part of this growth, and so, of course, was my decision to have it out in public with the owners of organized baseball.
Close don’t count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.
I never ride just to ride. I ride to catch a fox. I play baseball to make the team.
Making the Hall of Fame, would it be something that’s gratifying because of what I’ve sacrificed? Sure. Baseball has been a big part of our lives. We’ve sacrificed our bodies. It’s the way we made our living.
Humanity is the keystone that holds nations and men together. When that collapses, the whole structure crumbles. This is as true of baseball teams as any other pursuit in life.
I have to play baseball to make me happy. I have to be an athlete. But when it’s all said and done, I’ll be a normal father. A normal-type house man.
Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.
There’s something magical about a home run. It almost violates the space of the stadium. It’s a game of the imagination in some ways. Baseball.
Don’t try to tell Namath’s people on First Avenue about Babe Ruth, because they don’t even know the name. In fact, with the young, you can forget all of baseball. The sport is gone. But if you ever have seen Ruth, and then you see Namath, you know there is very little difference.
I always played sports when I was young. I played football and baseball for eight years. I loved football.
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another’s.
My mom wanted me to play baseball. She didn’t want me to play basketball.
I’m a sports-watcher. I played football and baseball, coached baseball. So I watch those things.
I was a baseball fan myself, I wanted to play baseball.
I’m a baseball freak.
Dominicans, Nicaraguans, and even the already highly skilled Cubans greatly improved their baseball skills when occupied by U.S. troops. The only acceptable resistance to a hated American presence was to try to beat them in baseball games.
The game of baseball is better when the Dodgers are playing well, just like when the Yankees are playing well, or the Cubs, the Phillies, the big-name teams.
If you watch the history of baseball, teams come back, and sometimes they could have come back, but they give in or give up.
I had a lot of fun playing football and basketball, but deep down, the chess match or cat-and-mouse game between the pitcher and batter in baseball really drew me in. It’s a thinking man’s game, and for me, nothing can compare to that.
Baseball is this intense subculture that actually doesn’t speak very much for the larger culture.
So you have to be more mentally focused in baseball.
I love sharing my knowledge of hitting with others. Now coaches and players at all levels can learn my systematic approach to hitting a baseball with more consistency, mental strength and accuracy.
All these fifty-year-old guys wearing baseball caps and shorts and acting like children. It winds me up. Men don’t have to take responsibility anymore. Most of the guys I know would punch me on the nose for saying this, but maybe we do have to bring back conscription.
I grew up in New York City, where we played highly unorganized sports: stick ball, stoop ball, and the occasional game of baseball with no adult supervision.
When you see Major League Baseball putting academies in other countries, obviously that throws up a red flag. You wonder why they ain’t going up in our neighborhood. Bottom line, what I see, I talk about… I see it over and over. If anybody can show me I’m wrong, then show me.
When I was growing up, there weren’t any Little Leagues in the city. Parents worked all the time. They didn’t have time to take their kids out to play baseball and football.
I was a baseball player at North Central High School in Spokane, Washington even though I was all-city in basketball, even when I signed a letter of intent to play quarterback at Washington State.
I have gone from a player who thought he would spend his whole career with one organization to a player who’s been with three organizations in a week. It’s like rotisserie baseball.
They say baseball is a slow game. It sure doesn’t seem that way when you’re in the dugout. You think you have it figured out, but things come up quick.
Baseball represents family. It represents my childhood.
By the 1880s, baseball was entrenched in the Cape’s sandy soil. Semipro teams, commonplace before World War I, were organized into the first Cape Cod League in 1923 – Orleans joined the four original teams five years later. By 1940, the league had foundered on financial shoals and disbanded.
I always thought that it was kind of silly that a baseball card could be worth so much money.
I couldn’t ask for better teammates, and the Pirate fans are the greatest in baseball.
In life, so many things are taken for granted, but one thing I can honestly say is that I took every day, enjoyed the game of putting on that uniform and playing the great game of baseball.
I didn’t understand anything about playing baseball. I started playing, and it was enjoyable. Most of my life, I played with older people on my team, in my league. I learned a lot about life. Every day in my life, I learned something new from somebody.
When I was 16, I’d been cast in ‘Fast Food Nation.’ And while I was playing in a charity baseball game, I ended up breaking my arm about a week before filming was starting.
There’s a lot to be said for going to baseball games for a living.
Even though I play a professional sport now, I love college baseball.
I had a job on college campus. I lost that job, but on my way home I heard an inner voice that said go out for the baseball team. I was a walk-on, and I was actually petrified as a walk-on because you’re not an athlete.
Baseball does become slow sometimes. It’s totally unnecessary. The – you can play baseball fast. You can play it slow, and for some reason, we have chosen to play it slow, you know, which is unfortunate, but nothing you can do about.
I’m no different than others with cancer. I just happen to play professional baseball. I’m part of those statistics that cancer has touched as well.
I played baseball in college, and then I went to Russia to study acting and played some pro ball over there.
I lived the baseball life as a kid, with my dad in it. And I lived the baseball life as an adult, because I was in it. When I retired, I wanted the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible and home-based for my kids.
I love baseball – ‘Moneyball’ was my favorite book when I was 13.
A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That’s baseball.
I enjoy baseball more than anything and would like to be involved with it forever, but the reality is your survival is determined by how well you compete, not by your fondness for the game.
Hey, it’s been a great ride for me, a great life. Everything I have I owe to baseball. Baseball owes me nothin’. Ain’t nobody has to give me nothin’. I would be embarrassed if I had a day somewhere. I don’t want no day. I want friends, to live my life the way I wanna live it.
I don’t think there’s any player that’s more talented than Alex Rodriguez. He cares very deeply about doing well. Baseball is his life. He puts a lot of pressure on himself.
As a member of Congress, I’m often reminded that in baseball, as in diplomacy, you have to know when to hit, when to run, and when to show grace.
Whenever I wasn’t watching the planes, I was playing community baseball, football, or something like that.
With one decision, Judge Sotomayor changed the entire dispute. Her ruling rescued the 1995 baseball season and forced the parties to resume real negotiations.
You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth. That means the boys. And after you’ve been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.
My dream was to play football for the Oakland Raiders. But my mother thought I would get hurt playing football, so she chose baseball for me. I guess moms do know best.
Is it in the best interest of baseball to sell beer in the ninth inning? Probably not. The rule has got to be more clearly defined. And then some process should be set up where the judge is not also the appeals judge.
I was born to hit a baseball. I can hit a baseball.
I probably follow all sports a little bit. I like hockey quite a bit. I like football. I like college basketball when it gets down to March Madness. I like baseball. I enjoy them all. I watch them all.
That was real baseball. We weren’t playing for money. They gave us Mickey Mouse watches that ran backwards.
A baseball swing is a very finely tuned instrument. It is repetition, and more repetition, then a little more after that.
You can’t get real happy or real depressed when you play baseball. Baseball is a great sport in that it offers a player a lot of opportunities for atonement.
I think it puts baseball back on the map as a sport. It’s America’s pastime and just look at everyone coming out to the ballpark. It has been an exciting year.
Baseball was one-hundred percent of my life.
In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.
If you’re going to play at all, you’re out to win. Baseball, board games, playing Jeopardy, I hate to lose.
I was late to the Knicks. My dad was a big fan. But I first started watching baseball; I became a Red Sox fan. My dad was a Mets fan. I wanted to have my own team and league.
Everything I have, I owe to baseball and the Dodgers.
As we all know, Cooperstown is the home of baseball. One of the many duties of the home plate umpire is to make sure that the runner touches home. Well, if you’re a true baseball fan, you need to visit Cooperstown. This is home.
It really came down to deciding between baseball and soccer. Soccer won out because I enjoyed it more.
Babe Ruth made a baseball fan of me. I used to go to Yankee Stadium just to see him come to bat.
I don’t think baseball owes colored people anything. I don’t think colored people owe baseball anything, either.
I always wanted to be a major-league baseball player.
You can’t be afraid to make errors! You can’t be afraid to be naked before the crowd, because no one can ever master the game of baseball, or conquer it. You can only challenge it.
I did make a choice when I got away from baseball to be there to get my kids off to college.
Our economics are not baseball’s economics. Our game is not baseball’s game. Our owners are not baseball’s owners, with one or two exceptions. Our union is not baseball’s union. What we do has to be crafted and suited to address hockey, to address the NHL, to address our 30 teams and our 700-plus players.
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.
And when I retired, trust me, not only did Nolan Ryan, but the entire Ryan family had withdrawals from baseball. And it was tough.
Baseball’s what I do.
I haven’t had the time to say, ‘I’m retiring.’ But baseball says, ‘You’re retired.’
Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?
Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.
I love the game of baseball.
In baseball you have individual responsibility, and if you fail it, you get an error. But at the same time, your focus is on the common goal of the team to win. This is part of what resonates with people about baseball. This is how they would like society to work.
Free agency screws everybody’s allegiances up. Whether it be football, baseball, hockey, basketball, whatever it may be. It’s really hard.
I tried golf for a while, but I wasn’t very good at it, so I didn’t play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically.
The student body was huge at UT and you had to mature pretty quick, very quick actually. I enjoyed it and it helped me a lot in my life in general – not only in the classroom but on the baseball field as well.
I was hitting .360 when I was diagnosed. I didn’t forget how to play while I was recovering. I don’t know if the cancer is gone for good. I don’t think anyone ever knows, but no one is going to steal my joy for as along as I’m able to play baseball.
Richard Schiff is a really good baseball player. It’s surprising because he looks exhausted.
Writing is frustration – it’s daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It’s just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.
I was not broadcasting St. Louis Cardinals baseball because I was accomplished. I was broadcasting baseball at 21 years old because I was Jack Buck’s son. I had a billion advantages.
In baseball, you’re always moving people around.
For my children, they spent 15 to 20 years of their life in baseball. And Ruth and I spent so many years of our married life that that was our life. We knew nothing else.
Baseball and malaria keep coming back.
I don’t play fantasy baseball anymore now because it’s too much work, and I feel like I have to hold myself up to such a high standard. I’m pretty serious about my fantasy football, though.
I really love the togetherness in baseball. That’s a real true love.
Major League Baseball has always recognized the influence that our stars can have on the youth of America. As such, we are concerned that recent revelations and allegations of steroid use have been sending a terrible message to young people.
I don’t know where the loyalty lies in baseball. You really don’t have to protect each other much, unless there’s like a bench-clearing brawl. In hockey, it’s important that they look out for each other.
Yes, we’ve seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling – baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail.
In baseball, you can hit 40 home runs on a single-A-league team and never get paid a thing. But in a hedge fund, you get paid on your batting average. So you go to the worst league you can find, where there’s the least competition.
You know one little way in which baseball changes us? We don’t even think twice about Japanese names anymore. You know what I mean?
When I was in baseball and you went into the clubhouse, you didn’t see ball players with curling irons.
The triple is the most exciting play in baseball. Home runs win a lot of games, but I never understood why fans are so obsessed with them.
Baseball always gets credit for the foundational part of masculinity – the father thing. The eternal game of backyard catch, ‘Field of Dreams’, the Ripkens, the Griffeys, the Bondses, so on. But football is the real paternal game, because it’s a conveyor belt of father figures, in the form of coaches.
The beautiful thing about baseball is that anything can happen. It’s like life in that way. As soon as you think you have it all figured out, something happens that makes you realize – you know nothing. The only thing that’s guaranteed is that it will be an exciting ride.
One reason outfielders don’t have stronger arms might be they don’t practice as much as we did. Most teams today don’t take outfield practice. Another reason is baseball has to compete with other sports now – basketball, football, soccer – for the better athletes that might have more skills and stronger arms.
I’ve been wanting to do a book about baseball for the longest time, and nobody will let me do it. It’s the one thing from America I really miss.
The more that Japanese players go to the big leagues to play and succeed, the more that will serve to inspire young kids in Japan to want to become baseball players when they grow up.
Baseball is like cricket, and I grew up in a country where they had cricket. So I understand cricket, soccer and basketball. I played basketball at the club level and a little bit in college, so that’s why I’m a basketball fanatic.
No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.
If it weren’t for baseball, many kids wouldn’t know what a millionaire looked like.
Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.
As a junior in high school, I had some injury problems with my arm and shoulder from baseball, so I didn’t play quarterback as a junior. I played a little wide receiver, linebacker, and safety.
My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn’t pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn… If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year’s time.
People were not ready to accept me as a baseball player. The easiest part of that whole thing, chasing the Babe’s record, was playing the game itself. The hardest thing was after the game was over, dealing with the press. They could never understand.
I just want to play baseball.
I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.
You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.
In baseball, there’s always the next day.
Historically, baseball has used the 60-yard dash to measure speed. In the most trivial way, this makes sense. This measurement, however, doesn’t tell us much about baseball speed.
I see great things in baseball. It’s our game – the American game.
Even if my father wasn’t speaking to me, he would never, ever miss a baseball game.
Some of my finest memories are from my time at the University of Texas. College baseball, I love it.
I kept thinking, ‘this must be the coolest job – I’d like to be a professional baseball player.’ They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was.
I’ve always wanted to be the best in the world as a baseball player, so when I started to think about opening a business, it was with that mindset.
I’m not like a 90-mph fastball kind of guy, but I can hit 70 on radar gun. I hit 70 one time on a radar guy at one of those pitch-and-throw kind of things. I have a pretty good arm for somebody who’s not a baseball player.
Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played – skiing, baseball, fishing – there is no greater example than golf, because you’re playing against yourself and nature.
Hitting a baseball well, as in cricket, is a very rare skill. One of most difficult things to do in the world to do, hitting a ball coming at you at ninety miles an hour with a round bat. Wonderful to watch.
There’s a lot of things more than baseball that I want to do.
Where I’m from, Bastrop, Louisiana, you played football, basketball, and baseball; you ran track – and that was about it.
One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it’s a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can’t when it’s close.
I was a momma’s boy. I didn’t get anything from Dad, except my body and baseball knowledge. The only time I spent with him was at the ballpark.
I love baseball. The game allowed me the influence to impact kids in a positive way. This gives me a chance to talk to some social issues.
Baseball needs more superstars.
I have observed that baseball is not unlike a war, and when you come right down to it, we batters are the heavy artillery.
I’m married to football, baseball is my girlfriend.
John Henry Lloyd is the man I gave the credit to for polishing my skills. He taught me how to play third base and how to protect myself. John taught me more baseball than anyone else.
I live in L.A., so I go to basketball games. But I love baseball.
Baseball would be a quite remarkable activity if it was the one place in the world where your co-workers didn’t have any impact on how productive you were. But in fact, baseball is a high-stress occupation, and those sort of stress-inducing activities… just have a huge impact on how the team functions, I think.
The great thing about baseball is when you’re done, you’ll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I’ll tell them I had amnesia.
I love what I do. I’m appreciative and I’m still competitive. I still love baseball, but it doesn’t consume me. If I can’t do it anymore, then I go home and do something else. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just the end of your career.
Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.
Even though my dad was a manager in the minor leagues, I still traveled around with him and saw it from the field out. Now, as an owner, you’re kind of looking from the whole baseball activity from outside in, from a fan’s perspective.
Honestly, I’m on the road so much that I never really get a chance to go to baseball games.
I was a professional baseball player from the time I was drafted out of high school in 1981 until the time I retired in 2003.
If newspapers were a baseball team, they would be the Mets – without the hope for those folks at the very pinnacle of the financial food chain – who average nearly $24 million a year in income – ‘next year.’
The interesting thing is that it seems like George W. Bush would have been happy being the president of anything. He could have been president of Major League Baseball.
I love the game of baseball.
Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn’t, and they ain’t eating.
The baseball held was my fantasy of what life offered.
Again, like I said, I went out to play the game of baseball because I love to play it. I did it right. I did it the right way. I worked hard doing it.
Baseball for me was instinctive, born within me, given to me as a gift from God.
My dad told me, ‘If you’re going to go out there and play baseball, or you’re going to play basketball or football, work hard at it no matter what. I want you to have fun with your buddies, but you have to put in the time because this is your craft.’ He didn’t just want me to be good. He pushed me to that next level.
Hey, I’m just looking for an excuse to retire so I can play summer league baseball, go coach my nephews, play pickup basketball. I’ve always had that ability to move on to the next thing.
And my father didn’t have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time they didn’t have black quarterbacks, and I don’t think I could have made it in basketball, because I was only 5′ 11″. So I just picked baseball.
It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.
I think it’s particularly stupid that filmmakers have traditionally said, ‘Yeah, I like baseball, but the movie’s not going to be about the intricacies of the game.’ I mean, you wouldn’t cast an overweight guy with stubble if you were doing a ballet film.
I played Little League baseball, but I also played basketball. Basketball was my primary sport. When you play basketball seriously, a lot of times, through the summer season, you continue playing. So that replaced me playing baseball.
I played baseball my entire life, up through college and everything, so working out and being physically active was always a huge part of my life. I’ll spend at least a couple of hours in the gym a day.
There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all.
Trip Hawkins – and this was the early 1980s – was saying there’s going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they’re going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.
Baseball is not a sport you can achieve individually.
I grew up in Westlake Villiage, a suburb of L.A. There was a guy there who was a fighter and was like, ‘I’ll teach you to box.’ I started a little bit of boxing, then it crossed over into jiu-jitsu. I was into it for a little while, but then I started doing basketball, baseball, team sports.
It’s a sensitive thing, playing major league baseball.
I wasn’t ever good enough to be on the baseball team and that sort of stuff.
Baseball is a man maker.
A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.
There is nothing I will miss about Japanese baseball. Off the field, I will miss my dog.
Since I was in high school, I wanted to play professional football and professional baseball, be a two-sport star.
If I didn’t make it in baseball, I won’t have made it workin’. I didn’t like to work.
I’m a football guy. Baseball, I enjoy it at playoff time.
I went through baseball as ‘a player to be named later.’
That’s one of the great gifts of this, the greatest of all games, baseball: it allows you, still, to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn’t begun to batter optimism.
Baseball is more than a game. It’s like life played out on a field.
I grew up on 23, country music highway, which is a stretch of road where Ricky Skaggs and Dwight Yoakam and Loretta Lynn played. Driving up and down that on the way to school – to baseball games, to anywhere – you see all these signs commemorating these artists. It was a point of pride for my area growing up.
It really gets into your system. All baseball players have this internal clock around February when it starts to kick in and the juices start to flow. I think underestimated how much I was going to miss it.
Honestly, I’m not a big fan of baseball.
As a kid, before I could play music, I remember baseball being the one thing that could always make me happy.
There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.
Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football, basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns.
If you’re playing baseball and thinking about managing, you’re crazy. You’d be better off thinking about being an owner.
My baseball career was a long, long initiation into a single secret: At the heart of all things is love.
No former player has owned a team in baseball.
Anyone interested in becoming a professional umpire and becoming eligible to work in the minor leagues must attend one of the two umpire schools sanctioned by Major League Baseball.
I was acting when I was playing baseball.
I came up in 1941 and I played against men who played in the 1930s. I stayed until 1963 playing against men who will be playing in the 1970s. So I think I can feel qualified to say that baseball really was a great game, and baseball is really a great game, and baseball will always be a great game.
Baseball is called ‘America’s Pastime,’ but you could argue WWE and wrestling is very similar. We’ve been around since the carnival days. People want to be entertained. It’s obviously two different sports, but everyone appreciates the athleticism of another sport.
Also I’m a part of the people that I’ve worked with in baseball that have been so great to me, Mr. Earl Mann of Atlanta, who gave me my first baseball broadcasting job.
I think that when people join clubs as simple as a sorority or a fraternity, a football team, a baseball team, it’s just – you want to be in a group. You want to be around people, you want to be with people.
I knew I wasn’t a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn’t want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.
I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.
I’d love to stay in baseball, but I won’t beg. I’d love to work with young umpires. I think I could teach them, help them develop. I can spot flaws, help them get over the hump. You’re striving for perfection every game, yet you never achieve it. If baseball wants me, I’m available.
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.
I’m among the first girls ever to play Little League baseball, and to my knowledge, the very first in western Illinois. It was 1976, and I was a nine-year-old tomboy whose older brothers had played.
When I was a kid, I have two dreams. I want to be a baseball player. Hometown, Hiroshima, has a Japanese baseball franchise team called Hiroshima Carps. You know, and then I want to be a sushi chef. I want to make own restaurant – sushi restaurant.
Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom’s apple pie.
Baseball is like driving, it’s the one who gets home safely that counts.
I also developed an interest in sports, and played in informal games at a nearby school yard where the neighborhood children met to play touch football, baseball, basketball and occasionally, ice hockey.
I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There’s great truth in that.
I am through with baseball forever. I have my farm and my home and enough to take care of me, so why should I work and worry any longer?
Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules – which say that you can play while you’re appealing – I don’t see what anyone would be in arms about.
You should have seen Willie Wells play shortstop: as good as Ozzie Smith and a better hitter. How I wish people could have seen Ray Dandridge play third base, as good as Brooks Robinson and Craig Nettles and all of those. He was bowlegged; a train might go through there, but not a baseball.
For me, baseball is more comparable to chess than it is to hockey.
Growing up, I looked up to major league baseball players, and now these young women have amazing, incredible women all across the board, from swimming to gymnastics to softball to basketball.
We used to play baseball back in that field and keep an eye out for the bulls.
Willie Mays was the best baseball player I ever saw. He could do anything.
I’ve had a good time here in baseball. I love baseball. That’s why I’m still around.
That’s your dream, to play professional baseball. When you get the opportunity like that, getting drafted – especially by Oakland, a California team, pretty close to home – it was tempting. At the time, I just didn’t think I was ready or mature enough mentally or physically to start pro ball.
I’d like to think a baseball picture is somewhere in my future.
I was born to play baseball.
I belong to an improv group, I play cello, I have these phases – fencing, tae kwon do, baseball, ice hockey, boogie boarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter.
I talked to a few schools about playing football, but I had already pretty much made my mind up. I fell in love with baseball at a young age, and I knew that that’s what I wanted to do.
Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile.
I think we have our sports within our own culture that are huge with baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Those are the sports in America that we grow up with and soccer isn’t really there yet.
I was a baseball player and a football player at Stanford, so I didn’t play a lot of golf in college. I really started playing a lot after I turned pro and I had some time in the off-season.
I am amused by cricket because it seems to take longer than baseball and I like that. It seems like a sport I could have made up it – it takes several days to play and everyone wears sweaters. I can’t confess to knowing what’s going on at all.
That’s what makes baseball the best. Nothing matters but winning.
It was the baseball fantasy of a lifetime – to be able to sit on the bench with all those professional athletes. I got to take my son along because I wasn’t sure I would be able to play with them.
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it’s business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don’t love what you’re doing and you can’t give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You’ll be an old man before you know it.
I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don’t think it didn’t happen because I was a woman, but because sports movie don’t sell internationally.
Young players need to know how to take care of themselves for life after baseball.
Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?
If you rush in and out of the clubhouse, you rush in and out of baseball.
Major league baseball has asked its players to stop tossing baseballs into the stands during games, because they say fans fight over them and they get hurt. In fact, the Florida Marlins said that’s why they never hit any home runs. It’s a safety issue.
Everyone thinks I’m this jock of a woman, but I didn’t play any sports. I didn’t even let my kids play baseball because I was afraid they were going to get hit by balls.
I come from a city like St. Louis, where they consider themselves great baseball fans.
Hockey is no longer a big four. It’s football, basketball, baseball and soccer. Now, I’m not talking MLS. I’m talking COPA, World Cup, men’s, women’s, MLS, youth… and there’s a lot of reasons for it.
In baseball, I was a pitcher, which I hated because there was no action there.
I have an older son, Josh, and growing up, he just didn’t care that much for baseball. And that was fine. But Chaddie, he always wanted to go to the ballpark. He just kind of took to it right away.
One of the first lessons he or she learns is that in baseball anything, absolutely anything, can happen. Just two days ago as I write this, something happened that had never happened in baseball before.
In America, we have three major sports – baseball, football and basketball. They get the most coverage. Then there’s things like golf which mop up most of what is left. But track and field? We are way at the bottom of the totem pole.
Whether you want to or not, you do serve as a role model. People will always put more faith in baseball players than anyone else.
Baseball gets better for whatever reason.
In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way.
Did I collect baseball cards? I’ve got 10 books full of plastic in my mother’s house. All the Upper Decks, the Fleers, the Fleer Ultras. My grandfather brought me to the trade shows. I collected Marvel cards, too.
In baseball, you can’t kill the clock. You’ve got to give the other man his chance. That’s why this is the greatest game.
In baseball, it doesn’t matter if you’re tall, skinny, fat, whatever. If you really have talent and you really love to play, I feel like you can make it.
I played baseball, and that’s pretty much it. Basketball came late, this was, basketball was the sport that I tried to master, I kind of mastered baseball, so basketball was one of those things where I wanted to master this game, so that’s why I probably play it the way I do.
There’s nothing like Opening Day. There’s nothing like the start of a new season. I started playing baseball when I was seven years old and quit playing when I was 40, so it’s kind of in my blood.
There are three things you can do in a baseball game. You can win, or you can lose, or it can rain.
Five days after the Tsarnaev brothers blew up Boston’s most sacred event, and just 24 hours after one brother was killed and the other was caught, everyone decided that it was OK to play baseball at Fenway again. The game happened on a Saturday afternoon, preceded by an emotional ceremony and many prayers.
I took a huge risk leaving baseball, because I was predicted to play in the big leagues. I’m kind of a prototypical second baseman.
I started skating and I kind of liked it because I could run circles around the guys that wouldn’t pick me to play baseball.
The math works. Over the course of a season, there’s some predictability to baseball. When you play 162 games, you eliminate a lot of random outcomes. There’s so much data that you can predict: individual players’ performances and also the odds that certain strategies will pay off.
I used to play baseball with Jake Owen when I was a kid.
I think more than anything, just putting in perspective what this baseball thing means and understanding that it is a gift and I didn’t do anything to deserve that and realizing that if we continue to look to God to guide our path, you never know what could happen.
I have been a fan all my life, but now I have been out of football for over 10 years, and out of baseball for a little over six years and I don’t go to games.
When the Japanese occupied Korea in the early 20th century, they brought their passion for baseball with them, and the game swiftly surpassed basketball and soccer as the nation’s pre-eminent sport.
As I look out there and see the culture of baseball, a lot of blacks and Latins, it’s given me a lot of joy to know that Jackie started that. If Jackie hadn’t come in ’47, me and Ron Santo wouldn’t have played in Double-A and all those years in the big leagues.
If you spend any time in Washington you’ll find nerds. What happens is most of them sublimate their fixations with comics, or baseball cards, or 1960s British comedies to policy minutiae and political arcana. But, like Christians in ancient Rome, you can still spot them if you know the signals.
I found out early in life that I could hit a baseball farther than most players, and that’s what I tried to do.
A lot of older parents worry about being older parents. I hear people say, ‘I don’t want to be too old to play baseball with my son.’ They worry that their kids will be embarrassed by their parents’ age.
The sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons.
If you don’t like the way the Atlanta Braves are playing then you don’t like baseball.
You need to have camaraderie in the clubhouse. Wherever you’re working, be it a baseball team or at a business, you want to walk in there and say, ‘Geez, it’s great to be at work. Let’s go get ’em,’ as opposed to walking in there knowing there’s going to be a commotion.
Baseball is not a lot of statistics to me. It’s blood and tears.
I don’t believe there’s a baseball job that I couldn’t take care of.
When I took the job as the manager of the Olympic team, I didn’t take it because I was a Dodger. I did it because I was an American, and I wanted to bring that gold medal where it belongs in baseball, the United States. And that’s exactly what our team did.
It’s very warm there, so we were outdoors all the time. The local people had programs for us year-round, where as kids we had the opportunity to play football, basketball, baseball, track and field – we just went from one sport to the next, year-round.
Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.
God knows I gave my best in baseball at all times and no man on earth can truthfully judge me otherwise.
I love sports. I’ve played basketball, baseball, soccer, tennis, track and field growing up.
The best example of how impossible it will be for Major League Baseball to crack down on steroids is the fact that baseball and the media are still talking about the problem as ‘steroids.’
The great trouble with baseball today is that most of the players are in the game for the money and that’s it, not for the love of it, the excitement of it, the thrill of it.
I’m proud to be here as a man that has played first base more than anybody in the game of baseball.
Before the Beatles, America was musically a very conservative country. You can see film footage of people at a baseball game, they all had hats and ties on, and the women were dressed up like they were going to church. That was the America that I started getting interested in musically.
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.
I got scars on my face that tell some kind of story. I’m looking in the mirror, and I got one scar that’s really two scars – half from a baseball bat and half from playing football in college. I’ll tell you, though, after a while, your face gets so wrinkled up you can hardly see them.
Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out.
Baseball is a tongue-tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball!
I had a great time with baseball growing up. I was lucky to grow up with it and to learn.
I never gave up as a player, and I won’t give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it’s the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.
Whenever I think of baseball, the first name that comes to mind is Babe Ruth. What the Babe was to baseball, Shula is to football coaching. There are certain figures in sports who are larger than the games they play or coach, and Don Shula is one of those.
Awards mean a lot, but they don’t say it all. The people in baseball mean more to me than statistics.
It was a terrible day for baseball, it was a worse day for Congress.
I played baseball because I could make more money doing that than I could doing anything else.
I’m always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me.
Baseball has better opening days and All-Star Games than the N.F.L. does. Ours stink.
The ups and downs, that’s baseball life. That’s what I live for, play for.
I think everybody has something that takes them away or makes them happier. To some people it’s baseball or sports or knitting or the movies.
Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking.
I wasn’t really serious about acting – I was serious about baseball.
Growing up, I actually wanted to be a professional baseball player instead of a radio DJ. Believe it or not.
Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
There are more people killed with baseball bats and hammers than are killed with guns.
Basketball’s eras are defined by teams – Celtics, Lakers, Bulls – and baseball’s epochs are defined by players – Ruth, Robinson, Mantle – but with football, it’s the sideline strategists, the nutty professors and top coated Lears.
I knew that I was a gay boy fairly early; what was interesting to me was that my mother didn’t know. She made me play baseball – I had no desire to do that. I said, ‘Mom, I don’t like direct sunlight, I don’t like bugs, I don’t like grass, and I’d rather be in the house playing with your fabric samples.’
In this game of baseball, you live by the sword and die by it. You hit and get hit. Remember that.
I have goals and ambitions, and I see myself as a lifelong baseball student. I have certain philosophies that I’d like to test at some point at the big league level. The job of manager appeals to me, a coach appeals to me, at a different time frame.
I knew at a young age, whether I was playing baseball or hockey or lacrosse, that my teammates were counting on me, whether it be to strike the last batter out in a baseball game or score a big goal in a hockey game.
Cold weather probably played a bigger role in bringing back the hat, but sadly, the hat common to New Jersey guidos, South Carolina rednecks, Idaho potato farmers and Los Angeles gang bangers is the ubiquitous ‘tractor hat,’ which is derived from the cheap baseball style cap with the adjustable plastic tab.
I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.
In an individual sport, yes, you have to win titles. Baseball’s different. But basketball, hockey? One person can control the tempo of a game, can completely alter the momentum of a series. There’s a lot of great individual talent.
I always loved music, I just never thought of it as a career. Baseball was always my thing.
I always thought that there was going to be life after baseball, and so I designed that in my life I would have other interests after baseball that I would be able to step into. And I didn’t realize the grip that baseball had on me and on my family.
I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.
In ’83, we went over to Amsterdam. I just remember people saying, ‘Baseball’s just starting over here. They’re learning how to play the game of baseball.’
Growing up, I looked up to major league baseball players, and now these young women have amazing, incredible women all across the board, from swimming to gymnastics to softball to basketball. It is incredible how far women have come and women in sports have come.
Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate.
In regards to steroids, I think we’re all to blame, all of baseball. I never realized how far-reaching this problem has been.
I heard that in the United States the level of baseball was the highest in the world. So it was only natural that I would want to go there, as a baseball player.
I don’t think Hank Greenberg thought of himself as the first Jewish baseball player – he was a baseball player who happened to be Jewish. I’m an artist who happens to be Latin.
I’m going to go back to the Bay Area, this is my thing, and I’m just going to open my own school of baseball. Find a facility, find a place and just teach kids. That’s what I want to do.
In baseball you train the whole body, except for the hip and eyes.
If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it’s good. I’m not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don’t cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don’t stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you’ll never see it again.
I’ve done literally everything there is to do on a baseball field as a pitcher.
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game – and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.
Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.
I was a professional athlete, the best baseball player in the world at one point.
Individual statistics, plate time and everything tend to come, but the most enjoyment I get out of baseball is actually winning.
The thing that kept me from going to the next level was, I really didn’t have an out-pitch. My story in baseball could have been a lot different if that’s all I focused on.
When I started playing the game of baseball, the more I played and the better numbers I got, the more I started thinking about the Hall of Fame. But I never thought I had a chance to be there.
I’m a terrible singer. I feel lucky to play baseball. You can’t be gifted in everything.
Right now I like baseball, hockey and tennis players. And horseback riders.
The crack of the bat, the sound of baseballs thumping into gloves, the infield chatter are like birdsong to the baseball starved.
I think that baseball is still the most entertaining game because it’s the simplest to watch.
People know more about baseball players’ contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children’s lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, ‘Do you want to bring a child into this world?’ That’s pretty dire.
In baseball, you’ve got to keep working.
Every time I sit with our general manager at a baseball game, and there’s number-cruncher and statistician guy – I’m sitting around – they start talking about stuff, and I say, ‘What’s that? I’ve never heard of that one before.’
There is nothing like Ruth ever existed in this game of baseball. I remember we were playing the White Sox in Boston in 1919, and he hit a home run off Lefty Williams over the left-field fence in the ninth inning and won the game. It was majestic. It soared.
It’s tempting, because as one senator said to me, ‘We know if we invite baseball down, we’ll draw a crowd’.
I don’t want everybody to just see the baseball side of me.
The baseball establishment is permissive about revelry.
The worst drivers are women in people carriers, men in white vans and anyone in a baseball cap. That’s just about everyone.
That’s what it’s all about – postseason baseball.
I know a baseball star who wouldn’t report the theft of his wife’s credit cards because the thief spends less than she does.
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.
My whole life, baseball was my first love. I was gonna go play college, but during my senior year I tore my ACL, and college kind of faded away with their offer, which I understand, obviously. That was a dark time in my life.
Two hours is about as long as any American can wait for the close of a baseball game, or anything else for that matter.
To give you an idea what it feels like to be going in with some of the best baseball players of all-time, I mean it is fantastic. I have to say this about them, there are so many of these guys up here that were my role models, people I looked up to, people I wanted to be like.
Sadly, this problem of steroid use is not isolated to baseball.
When you’re mad at someone, it’s probably best not to break his arm with a baseball bat.
I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and my dad was a basketball coach. Thanks to him, I have excellent fundamentals in both basketball and baseball.
The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.
No, I’ve never played baseball in my life.
I played baseball in college but I didn’t identify with the jocks, I was in my own little world .
You shouldn’t have any betting in the locker room at all, whether it’s baseball or it’s horses. You can’t beat the horses. You can’t beat any kind of gambling because they have the odds.
Sleep is huge. That’s your biggest way of recovering. In baseball, it’s such a hard sleep schedule during the season, but you try to do the best you can. Because you can take all the protein drinks, you can do all these things, but your recovery is your sleep.
Baseball is a team game but, at the same time, it’s a very lonely game: unlike in soccer or basketball, where players roam around, in baseball everyone has their little plot of the field to tend. When the action comes to you, the spotlight is on you but no one can help you.
If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.
As a kid, I grew up on a farm in Florida, and I did what most little kids do. I played a little baseball, did a few other things like that, but I always had the sense of being an outsider, and it wasn’t until I saw pictures in the magazines that a couple other guys skate, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s for me,’ you know?
I’m not an athlete, I’m a baseball player.
The great thing about baseball is there’s a crisis every day.
Baseball is the life.
I do something that I don’t think anyone else does. I warm up before a game. Baseball and basketball players warm up, so why shouldn’t the announcer warm up?
I’m not much interested in sport just as sport. I wouldn’t be interested in making a golf film or baseball or fishing film.
What I’d really like to give a try is cricket, because I grew up playing American baseball.
I was a hyper kid, so I didn’t want to play baseball and wait for the ball to come to me. I wanted to play a sport where I could go get the ball.
Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.
I’m forever a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. Apparently I’ve picked the worst baseball team in the world.
There are no war stories. I ended up a bombardier, but I never got overseas. And it wasn’t because I was playing baseball either. It was just a series of things that went on.
There are several insights at the heart of the A’s system that I think are wonderful for baseball. One, that it’s a team game. That no one player is going to make that much of a difference to your team, so for god’s sake don’t go blow a quarter of your budget on one guy.
We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels – Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges – is in our own self-interest. That’s where the pool of talent is – and also of fans.
Believe it or not, I worked four summers in college as a sports writer covering baseball for a parks and rec department in Bayonne, N.J.
I felt like the world of baseball in 1919 was much closer to what A-ball would be now – guys riding buses, there’s no training staff, and there’s a lot of paranoia.
When I think about athletes, probably my favorite guest of all time among baseball players was Ted Williams.
Baseball just a came as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.
Most movies suck, even the independent ones. Hollywood is like baseball: Hit three good ones out of 10 and you’re a Hall of Famer.
I’ve got five grandkids. They play baseball, they play football, they play basketball. I go to all the games. You always have that urge to say something when you’re watching them. But I’ve learned to keep it to myself. I’ve blurted out some things and embarrassed myself.
I remember wearing the big oversized baseball and basketball jerseys and Timbaland boots. I was a tomboy growing up. I recently caught a picture of myself, and I was like, ‘God! What was I thinking about?’
Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.
Baseball is what we were, and football is what we have become.
Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.
Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.
Really, it’s not harder to train for them because once baseball starts you play everyday almost.
Baseball people, and that includes myself, are slow to change and accept new ideas. I remember that it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms.
A producer wouldn’t think of making a film about ballet dancers without using real dancers, but they will cast actors who have never held a bat in baseball films.
Kids don’t learn the fundamentals of baseball at the games anymore.
I don’t know that I’ve ever looked at baseball like a purely casual fan. That’s just realistic when you grow up with it putting food on your table, and with it taking your dad out of town.
I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S.
I keep telling myself, don’t get cocky. Give your services to the press and the media, be nice to the kids, throw a baseball into the stands once in a while.
I could have played another year, but I would have been playing for the money, and baseball deserves better than that.
You look around baseball and when things go south, that type of fan apathy happens.
Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it’s about love, integrity, and respect.
Through SCP Auctions, the Garvey family will also continue to share our great love for baseball by donating time and dollars to youth baseball programs.
I miss baseball.
I always get very calm with baseball.
Ultimately, baseball is just a game. It’s not so much how you play, but how you represent him why you’re playing.
It’s fun; baseball’s fun.
You can go up in the air and everything is gone. You know, you don’t think about baseball. You don’t think about anything. It’s just something that takes you away from everyday life. I love being in a plane and looking down to see traffic on the freeway.
I’m an expert in baseball and I don’t even have a job. I’m an expert, more so than a lot of people out there. It should be my career until I’m dead. I should be one of the instructors. I think I’ve earned it.
I love to play baseball. I’m a baseball player. I’ve always been a baseball player. I’m still a baseball player. That’s who I am.
Obviously, being a diehard Mets fan, my passion is a given, but I also love playing baseball. I hadn’t been able to participate since high school, when the game became a little too fast for me.
What you have to remember is that baseball isn’t a week or a month but a season – and a season is a long time.
Why are baseball managers the only coaches who dress up like the players?
I like baseball. I think that’s the main thing. I enjoy playing the game.
I grew up with baseball; I played in Little League and went to games with my dad. But I, as I grew up, became more of a basketball fanatic than a baseball one.
Baseball has been very good to me.
My motive, and I will make it clear and look you in the eyes, is to attack major league baseball. That’s my motive.
I’m not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things – not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them.
As American as an apple is and as American as baseball is, they don’t go together. You can’t be chewing an apple at a baseball game. You’ve got to let go of the diet that day.
My first and only experience in baseball, the coach signed me up; he didn’t tell me there’s a thing called the curveball. I didn’t know that. So the ball’s coming at me and I start backing out, and then it broke inside. And the umpire says, ‘Strike one!’ And I’m saying, ‘How is that a strike? It almost hit me!’
If you’ve ever been around a group of actors, you’ve noticed, no doubt, that they can talk of nothing else under the sun but acting. It’s exactly the same way with baseball players. Your heart must be in your work.
Baseball was socially relevant, and so was my rebellion against it.
My kid was a great baseball player. I thought I had it made. Front-row seats at Yankee Stadium. Then he turned sixteen and wanted to be a rapper.
Well, my favorite sport as a kid was clearly baseball.
There are only five things you can do in baseball – run, throw, catch, hit and hit with power.
Baseball has all the money.
We are fortunate and blessed to have a partner of Harvey Schiller’s stature, who shares our vision for the future of the Dodgers, the city of Los Angeles and our great baseball fans throughout the world.
Wrigley, beyond its status as a baseball icon, has an undeniable positive energy all its own, which penetrates all who enter its gates.
