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.
