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.
