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.
