找到一個集錦，不過裡面有些是重複的
大家就包容些吧 :P
I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second
base than an automobile.
-Tom Clark
A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.
-Humphrey Bogart
You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have
a lot of little boy in you, too.
-Roy Campanella
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even
considering if there are men on base.
-Dave Barry
People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell
you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
-Rogers Hornsby
Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three
times out of ten and be considered a good performer.
-Ted Williams
No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball,
with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so
cleanly defined.
-Paul Gallico
There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my family,
and baseball. The only problem - once baseball season starts, I change
the order around a bit.
-Al Gallagher, 1971
A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine
innings.
-Earl Wilson
Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.
-Bob Lemon
Baseball is a fun game. It beats working for a living.
-Phil Linz
When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball." They say,
"Play ball."
-Willie Stargell, 1981
I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to
go chase it.
-Rogers Hornsby
When you're in a slump, it's almost as if you look out at the field
and it's one big glove.
-Vance Law
When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go
back.
-Woody Allen
Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball
can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere
you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.
-Jim Murray
Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the
other team controls the ball.
-Ken Harrelson, Sports Illustrated, 6 September 1976
Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you
see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?
-Jim Bouton, 1988
Nolan Ryan is pitching much better now that he has his curve ball
straightened out.
-Joe Garagiola
It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one.
-Chuck Tanner
Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The
intervals are the tough things.
-Robert Frost
The charm of baseball is that, dull as it may be on the field, it is
endlessly fascinating as a rehash.
-Jim Murray
If a horse can't eat it, I don't want to play on it.
-Dick Allen, on artificial turf, 1970
A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big-leaguer. That's
why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues.
-Joe DiMaggio,
Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world.
If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get
you off.
-Bill Veeck
Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really
appreciated.
-Author Unknown
I've come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life
are good friends and a good bullpen.
-Bob Lemon, 1981
You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain.
-Leo Durocher, in New York Times, 16 May 1965
Pro-rated at 500 at-bats a year that means that for two years out of
the fourteen I played, I never even touched the ball.
-Norm Cash, on his 1,081 strikeouts
Sandy's fastball was so fast, some batters would start to swing as he
was on his way to the mound.
-Jim Murray, on Sandy Koufax
I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks in batting
practice.
-Casey Stengel, 1967
The strongest thing that baseball has going for it today are its
yesterdays.
-Lawrence Ritter
The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the hitter
is timid, he has to remind the hitter he's timid.
-Don Drysdale
It ain't like football. You can't make up no trick plays.
-Yogi Berra
A baseball fan has the digestive apparatus of a billy goat. He can,
and does, devour any set of diamond statistics with insatiable appetite
and then nuzzles hungrily for more.
-Arthur Daley
That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows
returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball.
-Bill Veeck, 1976
A baseball park is the one place where a man's wife doesn't mind his
getting excited over somebody else's curves.
-Brendan Francis
Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season
with the Chicago Cubs. That's baseball as it should be played - in God's
own sunshine. And that's really living.
-Alvin Dark
This is a game to be savored, not gulped. There's time to discuss
everything between pitches or between innings.
-Bill Veeck
A critic once characterized baseball as six minutes of action crammed
into two-and-one-half hours.
-Ray Fitzgerald, in Boston Glove, 1970
The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love.
-Bryant Gumbel, 1981
There have been only two geniuses in the world. Willie Mays and
Willie Shakespeare.
-Tallulah Bankhead
Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their
mouths like Bordeaux wine.
-Pat Conroy
More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic,
addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.
-Thomas Boswell
Baseball? It's just a game - as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as
complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business -
and sometimes even religion.
-Ernie Harwell,
Why does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"
when they're already there?
-Larry Anderson
Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published
every day, like those of a baseball player.
-Author Unknown
Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going
to blow up.
-Sharon Olds,
One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with the
man behind him. This department of the game has been allowed to run
down fearfully.
-Robert Benchley
The great thing about baseball is that there's a crisis every day.
-Gabe Paul
I have discovered in twenty years of moving around a ball park, that
the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the
price of the seats.
-Bill Veeck
I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the
ball and started trying to make them hit it.
-Sandy Koufax
Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.
-Warren Spahn
Don't forget to swing hard, in case you hit the ball.
-Woodie Held
Putting lights in Wrigley Field is like putting aluminum siding on the
Sistine Chapel.
-Roger Simon, 1988
A baseball game is twice as much fun if you're seeing it on the
company's time.
-William C. Feather
Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man
has ever come to perfection.
-Red Smith
It ain't nothin' till I call it.
-Bill Klem, umpire
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is
only a hole in Arizona.
-George F. Will
Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing;
nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead.
-Jackie Robinson
Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player.
It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.
-Casey Stengel
Baseball is an island of activity amidst a sea of statistics.
-Author Unknown
The greatest feeling in the world is to win a major league game.
The second-greatest feeling is to lose a major league game.
-Chuck Tanner
They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice,
icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be
acute Republicans.
-George F. Will
Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words.
-Ernie Harwell
Well, boys, it's a round ball and a round bat and you got to hit the
ball square. -Joe Schultz,
Pitchers, like poets, are born not made. -Cy Young
What does a mama bear on the pill have in common with the World Series?
No cubs.
-Harry Caray
You know you're pitching well when the batters look as bad as you do
at the plate.
-Duke Snider
There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately,
neither of them work.
-Charlie Lau
It actually giggles at you as it goes by.
-Rick Monday, on Phil Niekro's knuckleball
The best way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until the ball stops
rolling and then pick it up.
-Bob Uecker
[A knuckleball is] a curve ball that doesn't give a damn.
-Jimmy Cannon
Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but
not everything.
-Toby Harrah, 1983
I know a man who is a diamond cutter. He mows the lawn at Yankee
Stadium.
-Author Unknown
To a pitcher, a base hit is the perfect example of negative feedback.
-Steve Hovley, 1969
It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball's wounds are
self-inflicted.
-Bill Veeck,
Hating the New York Yankees is as American as apple pie, unwed
mothers and cheating on your income tax.
-Mike Royko
Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in blackjack.
-Adam Morrow
I have observed that baseball is not unlike war, and when you get
right down to it, we batters are the heavy artillery.
-Ty Cobb
Baseball is too much of a sport to be called a business, and too much
of a business to be called a sport.
-Philip Wrigley
Baseball isn't a business, it's more like a disease.
-Walter F. O'Malley
Baseball is the only game left for people. To play basketball, you
have to be 7 feet 6 inches. To play football, you have to be the same
width.
-Bill Veeck
Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.
-Joe Garagiola
Don't park in the spaces marked, "Reserved for Umpires."
-John McSherry
Baseball fans are junkies, and their heroin is the statistic.
-Robert S. Wieder
The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too
many games in between.
-Bill Veeck
Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty
good too.
-Greg, age 8
When Steve and I die, we are going to be buried in the same cemetery,
60-feet 6-inches apart.
-Tim McCarver, who caught all of Steve Carlton's games, 1977
What are we at the park for except to win? I'd trip my mother. I'd
help her up, brusher her off, tell her I'm sorry. But mother don't
make it to third.
-Leo Durocher
Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they
hit a triple.
-Barry Switzer
"Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world."
-Babe Ruth
"There are three things the average man thinks he can do better than
anybody else: build a fire, run a hotel, and manage a baseball team."
-Rocky Bridges
"You can't hit what you can't see."
-Walter Johnson
"Losing streaks are funny. If you lose at the beginning, you got off
to a bad start. If you lose in the middle of the season, you're in a
slump. If you lose at the end, you're choking."
-Gene Mauch, Phillies manager
"The best thing about being a Yankee is getting to watch Reggie Jackson
play every day. The worst thing about being a Yankee? Getting to watch
Reggie Jackson play every day."
-Graig Nettles
"One reason I never called balks is that I never understood the rule."
-Ron Luciano, umpire
"If you're not having fun in baseball, you miss the point of everything."
-Chris Chambliss
"You don't face Ryan without your rest. He's the only guy I go against
that makes me go to bed before midnight."
-Reggie Jackson
"My high salary for one season was forty-six thousand dollars and a
Cadillac. If I were to get paid a million, I'd feel that I should sweep
out the stadium every night after I finished playing the game."
-Duke Snider
"Throwing people out of a game is like learning to ride a bicycle -
once you get the hang of it, it can be a lot of fun."
-Ron Luciano, umpire
"The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology."
-Bernard Malamud, author
"It's a strange business, all jeers and no cheers."
-Tom Gorman, National League umpire
"There'll be two buses leaving the hotel for the park tomorrow. The
two o'clock bus will be for those of you who need a little extra work.
The empty bus will leave at five o'clock."
-Dave Bristol, manager
"The hitter asks the owner to give him a big raise so he can go
somewhere he's never been, and the owner says, 'You mean third base.'"
-Henny Youngman, comedian
"Pitching is the art of instilling fear."
-Sandy Koufax
"It's worth remembering, that under Steinbrenner we tend to operate
on the theory that no one is unsignable. "
-anonymous Yankee Scout
"Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and
certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on."
-Peter Ueberroth, commissioner
"Say it ain't so, Joe."
-Anonymous, (a little boy who pleaded with Joe Jackson after the
airing of the 1920 'Black Sox' scandal)
"WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE THE STADIUM PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS"
-sign held by a fan at Wrigley Field in Chicago at the end of the
first complete night game
"Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as
baseball."
-Mickey Mantle
"I'm working on a new pitch. It's called a strike."
-Jim Kern
"You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you
go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're
a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen."
-Joe DiMaggio
"I never slept when I lost. I'd see the sun come up without ever
having closed my eyes. I'd see those base hits over and over and
they'd drive me crazy."
-Robin Roberts
"Spring is the time of year when the ground thaws, trees bud, the
income tax falls due - and everybody wins the pennant."
-Jim Murray, sportswriter
"I don't want them to forget Ruth. I just want them to remember me!"
-Hank Aaron
"You can shake a dozen glove men out of a tree, but the bat separates
the men from the boys."
-Dale Long
"To say 'Babe Ruth' is to say 'Baseball. '"
-Will Harridge
"I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold
it too tightly, you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it."
-Tommy Lasorda
"A ballplayer has two reputations, one with the other players and one
with the fans. The first is based on ability. The second the
newspapers give him."
-Johnny Evers
"The main idea is to win."
-John J. McGraw, manager
"I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity."
-Bill Veeck, baseball executive
"Umpire's heaven is a place where he works third base every game.
Home is where the heartache is."
-Ron Luciano, umpire
"Your bat is your life. It's your weapon. You don't want to go into
battle with anything that feels less than perfect."
-Lou Brock
"You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball,
and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the
time."
-Jim Bouton
"I love baseball. It's given me everything I have. Look, there are
only about six hundred major leaguers in the country. You have to
feel special."
-Thurman Munson
"I've never taken batting practice against him and I never will.
I have a family to think of."
-Bob Watson (on teammate J.R. Richard)
"Every season has its peaks and valleys. What you have to try to do
is eliminate the Grand Canyon."
-Andy Van Slyke
"The only mistake I made in my whole baseball career was hitting .361
that one year (1961), because ever since then people have expected me
to keep on doing it."
-Norm Cash
"I was pitching on all adrenaline... and challenging them. I was
throwing the ball right down the heart of the plate."
-Roger Clemens, on striking out 20 batters in a nine-inning game
"When you're going good it doesn't get any better than being in
New York. But when you're going bad, it doesn't get any worse."
-Davey Johnson, manager
"Catching a fly ball is a pleasure. But knowing what to do with it
after you catch it is a business."
-Tommy Henrich
"Carlton does not pitch to the hitter, he pitches through him. The
batter hardly exists for Steve. He's playing an elevated game of
catch."
-Tim McCarver
"One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with
the man behind him. This department has been allowed to run down
fearfully."
-Robert Benchley, author
"I was the worst hitter ever. I never even broke a bat until last
year. That was backing out of the garage."
-Lefty Gomez
"You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living but you gotta have
a lot of little boy in you, too."
-Roy Campanella
"I am the best in baseball... I create an excitement in a ballpark
when I walk on the field." -Reggie Jackson
"I wanted to be a big league baseball player so I could see my
picture on a bubble gum card."
-Al Ferrara
"Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the
squibbers go for base hits. It's an unfair game."
-Rod Kanehl
"There were times last year when people looked at the scoreboard and
thought my batting average was the temperature."
-Buck Martinez, on his . 162 performance
"Maybe I'm not a great man, but I damn well want to break the record."
-Roger Maris
"If I had my career to play over, one thing I'd do differently is
swing more. Those 1,200 walks I got - nobody remembers them."
-Pee Wee Reese
"One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a
while you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have
to, reach down and prove something."
-Nolan Ryan
"Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you
see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?"
-Jim Bouton
"No matter how many errors you make, no matter how many times you
strike out, keep hustling. That way you'll at least look like a
ballplayer."
-Tony Kubek, Sr. , to his son, Yankee rookie Tony Kubek, Jr.
"There are only five things you can do in baseball - run, throw, catch,
hit and hit with power."
-Leo Durocher, manager
"The difference between relief pitching when I did it and today is
simple: there's too much of it. It's one of those cases where more is
not necessarily better."
-Bob Feller
"The only people I ever felt intimidated by in my whole life were Bob
Gibson and my daddy."
-Dusty Baker
"On any given day...come out to the ballpark and you'll see something
different."
-Ferd Borsch, sportswriter
"I was not successful as a ballplayer, as it was a game of skill."
-Casey Stengal
"I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give."
-Roberto Clemente
"Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, age don't
matter."
-Satchel Paige
"The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong
bullpen."
-Bob Lemon
"The new definition of a heathen is a man who has never played
baseball."
-Elbert Hubbard, author
"I'm no different from anybody else with two arms, two legs, and
forty-two hundred hits."
-Pete Rose
"Baseball players who are first into the dining room are usually last
in the averages."
-Jimmy Cannon
"The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from
the guys who are undecided."
-Casey Stengel
"It helps a pitcher to be exposed to the enemy camp."
-Al Downing, pitcher (on why he rooms with batters while traveling)
"Why pitch nine innings when you can get just as famous pitching two?"
-reliever Sparky Lyle
"Swing at the strikes."
-Yogi Berra
"Fans don't boo nobodies."
-Reggie Jackson
"Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical."
-Yogi Berra
"Back then, if you had a sore arm the only people concerned were you
and your wife. Now, it's you, your wife, your agent, your investment
counselor, your stockbroker, and your publisher."
-Jim Bouton
"You must have an alibi to show why you lost. If you haven't one, you
must fake one. Your self-confidence must be maintained."
-Christy Mathewson
"Trying to throw a fastball by Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the
sun past a rooster."
-Curt Simmons
"I don't like to sound egotistical, but every time I stepped to the
plate with a bat in my hands, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the
pitcher."
-Rogers Hornsby
"Baseball is the only thing besides the paper clip that hasn't
changed."
-Bill Veeck, baseball executive
"Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three
times out of ten and be considered a good performer."
-Ted Williams
"If Satch and I were pitching on the same team, we'd clinch the
pennant by July 4 and go fishing until World Series time."
-Dizzy Dean, on Satchel Paige
"Winning makes you happy all day."
-Jimmy Wynn
"There never is any set way to pitch to a great hitter. If there were,
he'd be hitting . 220."
-Don Drysdale
"Sometimes I would do just the opposite of what George wanted me to
do, because I won't let anyone tell me how to manage. If I'm going
down the tube, I'm going to do it my way."
-Billy Martin
"I never look back. I love baseball and you have to be patient and
take the good with the bad. After all, it's only a game."
-Tom Yawkey, baseball executive
"Some people give their bodies to science; I give mine to baseball."
-Ron Hunt, on being hit by a record 243 pitches during his career
"One of my goals in life was to be surrounded by unpretentious, rich
young men. Then I bought the Braves and I was surrounded by
twenty-five of them."
-Ted Turner, owner
"Baseball is dull only to dull minds." -Red Smith, sportswriter
"There should be a new way to record standings in this league: one
column for wins, one for losses and one for gifts."
-Gene Mauch, manager
"If he were playing in New York, there'd be a 5'8 statue of him in
Times Square."
-Andy MacPhail, GM, on Kirby Puckett
"The best thing about baseball is that you can do something about
yesterday tomorrow."
-Manny Trillo
"I couldn't see well enough to play when I was a boy, so they gave me
a special job - they made me the umpire."
-Harry S. Truman, thirty-third president of the United States
"They say you have to be good to be lucky, but I think you have to be
lucky to be good."
-Rico Carty
"I would have jumped off a tall building. But the way I'm batting,
I wouldn't have hit the ground."
-Phil Garner, describing a slump
"The ball is smaller, the planets are in line, the hole in the ozone
layer is bigger, and so is Juan Gonzalez."
-Terry Mulholland, on why more home runs are being hit these days
"Do they leave it there during games?"
-Bill Lee, upon first seeing Fenway's 37-foot-high left-field wall
"Managing is getting paid for home runs someone else hits."
-Casey Stengel, manager
"When you win, you eat better, sleep better, and your beer tastes
better. And your wife looks like Gina Lollobrigida."
-Johnny Pesky, manager
"The only way I'm going to win a Gold Glove is with a can of spray
paint."
-Reggie Jackson, on his fielding skills
"I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I
toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation."
-Satchel Paige
"The last time Willie Mays dropped a pop fly he had a rattle in one
hand and a bonnet on his head."
-Jim Murray, sportswriter
"The highlight of your season is taking the team picture, knowing that
the trading deadline has passed and you're part of the club."
-Joe Garagiola
"Houston used to be an R&R town - rest and relaxation. It's still an
R&R town - Ryan and Richard - but that's not exactly rest and
relaxation."
-Larry Bowa, on Nolan Ryan and J.R. Richard
"Trying to hit him is like trying to eat Jell-O with chopsticks."
-Bobby Murcer, on knuckleballer Phil Niekro
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the
lesson afterward." -Vernon Law
"If my uniform doesn't get dirty, I haven't done anything in the
baseball game."
-Rickey Henderson
"If I'm going to be struck out, that's the way to go. It may sound
strange, but I actually enjoyed that. It was like a surgeon's knife -
quick and painless."
Reggie Smith, on being stuck out by Nolan Ryan
"Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie."
-Harry Reasoner, journalist
"Putting lights in Wrigley Field is like putting aluminum siding on
the Sistine Chapel."
-Roger Simon, columnist
"It's the only occupation where a man has to be perfect the first day
on the job and then improve over the years."
-Ed Runge, umpire
"In order to be an outstanding basestealer, you have to eliminate the
fear of failure. It's like being a safecracker. You can't be down
there on your knees turning around every second to see if somebody's
looking."
-Maury Wills
"Trying to hit him was like trying to drink coffee with a fork."
-Willie Stargell
"Most coaches remain anonymous until they screw up. If a third base
coach goes the entire season without being interviewed after a game,
it means he had a perfect season."
-Jay Johnstone
"I know, but I had a better year than Hoover."
-Babe Ruth, Yankees outfielder, in response to a reporter's statement
that Babe Ruth's 1930 salary of $80,000 was higher than the president's
salary of $75,000
"A good groundskeeper can help you win a dozen games a year. He is the
tenth man in the lineup."
-Lou Boudreau, manager
"Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more
afraid of him than he is of the pitcher."
-Ty Cobb
"An umpire is like a woman. He makes quick decisions, never reverses
them, and doesn't think you're safe when you're out."
-Larry Goetz, umpire
"Every player, in his secret heart, wants to manage someday. Every fan,
in the privacy of his mind, already does."
-Leonard Koppett, author
"Is baseball a business? If it isn't, General Motors is a sport."
-Jim Murray, sportswriter
"You know what Rogers Hornsby told me forty-five years ago? It was the
best batting advice I ever got. 'Get a good ball to hit.'"
-Ted Williams
"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to
go chase it."
-Rogers Hornsby
"Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense the
other team controls the ball."
-Ken Harrelson
"I always wanted to be a player, but I never had the talent to make
the big leagues. So I did the next best thing: I bought a team."
-Charlie Finley, owner
"I put my whole heart and soul into baseball, then, one day, it was all
over. When you leave baseball you leave part of your childhood behind."
-Sandy Vance
"I felt like my bubble-gum card collection had come to life."
-James Garner, actor, on speaking at a sports celebrity dinner
"Not true at all. Vaseline is manufactured right here in the United States."
-Don Sutton, on rumors that the had used a 'foreign substance'
on the ball
"The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and
then pick it up." -Bob Uecker
"It's pitching, hitting, and defense that wins. Any two can win. All
three make you unbeatable."
-Joe Garagiola
"The only way to prove you're a good sport is to lose."
-Ernie Banks
"I don't want to get to know the other guys too well. I might like
them, and then I might not want to throw at them."
-Sal Maglie
"Above anything else, I hate to lose."
-Jackie Robinson
"Baseball is the only game you can see on the radio."
-Phil Hersh
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game."
-Grantland Rice, sportswriter
"He has a weakness for doubles."
-Bobo Newsom, Senators pitcher, on Joe DiMaggio's hitting
"It's a mere moment in a man's life between the all-star game and an
oldtimer's game."
-Vin Scully, broadcaster
"They give you a round bat and they throw you a round ball. And they
tell you to hit it square."
-Willie Stargell
"It gets late early out there."
-Yogi Berra, on sun glare at Yankee Stadium
"I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to keep playing baseball."
-Pete Rose
"There are close to 11 million unemployed and half of them are
New York Yankee managers."
-Johnny Carson, comedian
"He can speak in 12 languages but can't hit in any of them."
-criticism of Moe Berg, major league catcher, scholar, and
American spy
"The hardest thing is not making the big leagues. Rather, it is
staying in the big leagues."
-Pete Rose
"I like my players to be married and in debt. That's the way to
motivate them."
-Ernie Banks
"Baseball was one hundred percent of my life."
-Ty Cobb
"What difference does the uniform make? You don't hit with it."
-Yogi Berra, manager
"The best qualification a coach can have is being the manager's
drinking buddy."
-Jim Bouton
"All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a
double-header."
-George F. Will
"When you're in a slump, it's almost as if you look out at the field
and it's one big glove."
-Vance Law
"A slump starts in your head and winds up in your stomach. You know
that eventually it will happen, and you begin to worry about it.
Then you know you're in one. And it makes you sick."
- Billy Williams
"I'm throwing twice as hard as I ever did. It's just not getting there
as fast."
- Lefty Gomez
"If I had to name the number one asset you could have for any sport,
I'd say speed. In baseball, all a guy with speed has to do is make
contact."
-Ron Fairly
"I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I
like to live as big as I can."
-Babe Ruth
"Been in this game a hundred years, but I see new ways to lose 'em I
never knew existed before."
-Casey Stengel, manager
"The game is supposed to be fun. If you have a bad day, don't worry
about it. You can't expect to get a hit every game."
-Yogi Berra
"All coaches religiously carry fungo bats in the spring to ward off
suggestions that they are not working."
-Jim Brosnan
"Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa."
-Casey Stengel, manager
"All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the
baselines run uphill."
-Babe Ruth
"I don't want to embarrass any other catcher by comparing him with
Johnny Bench."
-Sparky Anderson, manager, on Johnny Bench
"I knew it would ruin my arm. But one year of 25-7 is worth five of 15-15."
-Steve Stone, Orioles pitcher, on his Cy Young season
"Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing;
nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead."
-Jackie Robinson
"You can't win them all."
-Connie Mack
"I took the two most expensive aspirins in history."
-Wally Pipp, on sitting out a game with a headache, allowing Lou
Gehrig into the Yankees lineup
"Isn't it amazing that we're worth so much on the trading block and
worth so little when we talk salary with the general manager?" -Jim Kern
"Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The
intervals are the tough things."
-Robert Frost, poet
"The good Lord was kind to me. He gave me a strong body, a good right
arm, and a weak mind." -Dizzy Dean
"I've heard of guys going 0 for 15, or 0 for 25, but I was 0 for July."
-Bob Aspromonte
"Cobb lived off the field as though he wished to live forever. He
lived on the field as though it was his last day."
-Branch Rickey, baseball executive, on Ty Cobb
"I wish I had 10 pitchers with Bo Belinsky's stuff and none with his
head."
-Gene Mauch, manager
"The guy with the biggest stomach will be the first to take off his
shirt at a baseball game."
-Glenn Dickey, author
"Our earned-run average looks like the national debt."
-Charlie Fox, manager
"Better make it four. I don't think I can eat eight."
-Yogi Berra, when asked if he wanted his pizza cut into four or
eight slices
"There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last
time. I owe him my best."
-Joe DiMaggio
"Any umpire who claims he has never missed a play is . . . well,
an umpire."
-Ron Luciano, umpire"
"When you're 21, you're a prospect. When you're 30, you're a suspect."
-Jim McGlothin
"Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a
successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution."
-Hank Aaron
"This winter I'm working out every day, throwing at a wall. I'm 11-0
against the wall."
-Jim Bouton
"Going to bed with a woman never hurt a ball player. It's staying up
all night looking for them that does you in."
-Casey Stengel
"Throw strikes. Home plate don't move."
-Satchel Paige
"I found a delivery in my flaw."
-Dan 'Sinkerballer' Quisenberry
"Base stealing for me is another sport all by itself. It's a game
within a game. I'm the mouse and the cats are trying to trap me."
-Maury Wills
"Baseball isn't keeping up with science. Satellites are sending accurate
signals from outer space to earth, but coaches still have trouble
transmitting signals from third base to home."
-Ellis Clary
"The pitcher has got only a ball. I've got a bat. So the percentage in
weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the
fretting."
-Hank Aaron
"Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it."
-Bill Terry
"How hard is hitting? You ever walk into a pitch-black room full of
furniture that you've never been in before and try to walk through it
without bumping into anything? Well, it's harder than that."
-Ted Kluszewski
"I can never understand why anybody leaves the game early to beat the
traffic. The purpose of baseball is to keep you from caring if you beat
the traffic."
-Bill Vaughan, columnist
"There was always Joe DiMaggio. If we had him, we could have won. But
the Yankees had him, and he murdered everybody, including us."
-Joe Cronin
"Pitching is just an illusion. You're dealing with a man's eyes. Make
him think he's getting one thing and give him another and you've got
him."
-Alvin Jackson, pitching coach
"It ain't bragging if you can do it."
-Dizzy Dean
"He had such a beautiful swing, he even looked good striking out."
-Mark Koenig, on Babe Ruth
"I'm just a ballplayer with one ambition, and that is to give all I've
got to help my ball club win. I've never played any other way."
-Joe DiMaggio
"You can't tell how much spirit a team has until it starts losing."
-Rocky Colavito
"Batting practice is the time to stand around in the outfield and tell
each other stories."
-Jim Bouton
"If Ben Franklin played shortstop here and made an error, they'd
probably boo him for a week, too."
-Russ Hodges, broadcaster, on Phillies fans
"The beauty and joy of baseball is not having to explain it."
-Chuck Shriver, publicist
"Ruth made a grave mistake when he gave up pitching. Working once a week,
he might have lasted a long time and become a great star."
-Tris Speaker, on Babe Ruth becoming a outfielder
"Sliding headfirst is the safest way to get to the next base, I think.
And the fastest. You don't lose your momentum . . . and there's one more
important reason I slide headfirst. It gets my picture in the paper."
-Pete Rose
"One day you can throw tomatoes through brick walls. The next day you
can't dent a pane of glass with a rock. It hurts but you hang on,
hoping it'll come back. Oh, well, it's a helluva ride, the one on
the way up."
-Dean Chance
"I'd rather hit home runs. You don't have to run as hard."
-Dave Kingman
"If I knew exactly what I know now and had it to do over, I'd be a
switch hitter. No telling what I could have done."
-Hank Aaron
"I was never nervous when I had the ball, but when I let it go I was
scared to death."
-Lefty Gomez
"Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man
has ever come to perfection."
-Red Smith, sportswriter
"All baseball fans are provincial. They don't want the best team to win.
They want their team to win."
-Art Hill, author
"He'd give you the shirt off his back. Of course, he'd call a press
conference to announce it."
- Jim 'Catfish' Hunter, on Reggie Jackson
"A pitcher needs two pitches - one they're looking for and one to
cross 'em up."
-Warren Spahn
"A baseball manager is a necessary evil."
-Sparky Anderson, manager
"The space between the white lines - that's my office. That's where
I conduct my business."
-Early Wynn
"You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and if that isn't
enough in the second half you give what's left."
-Yogi Berra
"There are only two places in this league. First place and no place."
-Tom Seaver
"Any minute, any day, some players may break a long-standing record.
That's one of the fascinations about the game - the unexpected suprises."
-Connie Mack, manager
"There isn't enough mustard in the world to cover that hot dog."
-Darold Knowles, on Reggie Jackson
"Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part."
-Mickey Mantle
"He's so good, I even worry about him in the winter."
-Ted Williams, on Bob Lemon
"When we win, I'm so happy I eat a lot. When we lose, I'm so depressed,
I eat a lot. When we're rained out, I'm so disappointed I eat a lot."
-Tommy Lasorda,
"People don't blink when Paul Newman gets paid millions to make a movie,
or Frank Sinatra to sing. Why not a ballplayer? It's like a lot of other
professions. The money is just there."
-Ray Boone
"Talent always beats experience. Because by the time you get experience,
the talent's gone."
-Pat Corrales
"I didn't come to New York to be a star. I brought my star with me."
Reggie Jackson, on arriving in New York in 1977
"Most pitchers are too smart to manage."
-Jim Palmer
"Baseball is the only game in America for normal people. To play
basketball, you have to be seven-feet-six. To play football, you have
to have the same width."
-Bill Veeck
"I never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes."
-Leo Durocher
"There is but one game, and that game is baseball."
-John J. McGraw
"Baseball can build you up to the sky one day and the next day you
have to climb a stepladder to look up to a snake."
-Johnny Pesky
"Nothing makes a pitcher feel more secure than the sight of his
teammates circling the bases during a ball game."
-Jim Brosnan
"I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the
ball and started trying to make them hit it."
-Sandy Koufax
"This team, it all flows from me. I've got to keep it going. I'm the
straw that stirs the drink."
-Reggie Jackson
"You're trying your damnedest, you strike out and they boo you. I act
like it doesn't bother me, like I don't hear anything the fans say,
but the truth is I hear every word of it and it kills me."
-Mike Schmidt
"I talked to the ball a lot of times in my career. I yelled, 'Go foul. Go
foul.'"
-Lefty Gomez
"When Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, he and all the space
scientists were puzzled by an unidentifiable white object. I knew
immediately what it was. That was a home run ball hit off me in 1937
by Jimmie Foxx."
-Lefty Gomez
"If I stay healthy, I have a chance to collect three thousand hits
and one thousand errors."
-George Brett
"No one goes there anymore. It is too crowded."
-Yogi Berra
"It's like deja vu all over again."
-Yogi Berra
"You can observe a lot by watching."
-Yogi Berra
"Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?"
-Yogi Berra,
"He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious."
-Yogi Berra
"We made too many wrong mistakes."
Yogi Berra, on losing the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates
"See that fella over there? He's 20 years old. In 10 years, he's got
a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he's 20 years old,
too. In 10 years he's got a chance to be 30."
-Casey Stengel
"They say some of my stars drink whiskey. But I have found that the
ones who drink milkshakes don't win many ballgames."
-Casey Stengel
"I broke in with four hits and the writers promptly decided they had
seen the new Ty Cobb. It took me only a few days to correct that
impression."
-Casey Stengel,
"I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out
with no picture."
-Bob Uecker
"When I came up to bat with three men on and two outs in the ninth,
I looked in the other team's dugout and they were already in street
clothes."
-Bob Uecker
"All right, everybody line up alphabetically according to your height."
-Casey Stengel