Quotes about baseball

(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action

You can talk about teamwork on a baseball team, but I'll tell you, it takes teamwork when you have 2,900 men stationed on the U.S.S. Alabama in the South Pacific.

I have written some poetry and two prose books about baseball, but if I had been a rich man, I probably would not have written many of the magazine essays that I have had to do. But, needing to write magazine essays to support myself, I looked to things that I cared about and wanted to write about, and certainly baseball was one of them.

The NBA Schedule was made up by one man, Eddie Gottlieb, who had owned the Philadelphia Warriors. Eddie had a Buddha-like body and a crinkly smile, and because he had also been an owner in baseball's old Negro leagues, he was known as the Mogul.

The thing I like about baseball is that it's one-on-one. You stand up there alone, and if you make a mistake, it's your mistake. If you hit a home run, it's your home run.

Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. 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.

Baseball is like driving, it's the one who gets home safely that counts.

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.

The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal.

I think that baseball as a whole, I am a huge romantic when it comes to the history and the stats and the numbers the stories behind it, so I would consider myself a pretty big fan.

Beside her, she can feel each breath he draws. How is it possible to be so close to a person and still not know what you are to each other? With baseball, it's simple. There's no mystery to what happens on the field because everything has a label -- full count, earned run, perfect game -- and there's a certain amount of comfort in this terminology. There's no room for confusion and Ryan wishes now that everything could be so straightforward. But then Nick pulls her closer, and she rests her head

If you don't think too good, don't think too much.

The thing I write will be the thing I write.

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'", March 25, 2007.)

Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!

There was a time we laughed at the old guys up on the hill. The ones who graduated a couple of years before us, and who would hang around the school and the ballpark still, and would sit on the hoods of their cars and tell us how when they were seniors they did it better, faster, and further. We laughed, because we were still doing it, and all they could do was talk. If our goals were not met, there was next year, but it never occurred to us that one day there would not be a next year, and that

Well, did anything interesting happen today?' [my father] would begin. And even before the daily question was completed I had eagerly launched into my narrative of every play, and almost every pitch, of that afternoon's contest. It never crossed my mind to wonder if, at the close of a day's work, he might find my lengthy account the least bit tedious. For there was mastery as well as pleasure in our nightly ritual. Through my knowledge, I commanded my father's undivided attention, the sign of hi

Sometimes a strikeout means that the slugger’s girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstop’s baby daughter has a pain in her head that won’t go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers don’t ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wife’s breast. Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives we

The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation.

How soon do you think it is? Time will tell me. When it's autumn, the leaves fall. When the time comes, I'll know it. [Responding to a question about when he will start throwing his slider in his attempt to comeback from a career-ending stroke.]

You have intellect, and courage, and command. Play your own game, and don't worry about what anyone else is doing. That is what's going to give you a shot at making it. Comparing yourself to anyone else will just drive you crazy.

That's sounds right. Another $5,000 went to dress up the Little League park where he had played so many games. Seems like he paid off the MORTAGE on his parents' home, which wasn't that much.

New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi.

You’re not going to always hit a home run in life. You’re going to strike out! You’re going to walk to the dugout of life, frustrated, while spectators chirp your name in judgment. They’re afraid to even get on the field, and you know it. The fact that you get back up there, unafraid, going after that next home run, makes you the person you are.

If there was magic in this world, it happened within sight of the three bases and home plate. All the gems in my world that decorated the walls and floors of dragons' lairs, the sword hilts of privileged princes, and crowns worn by emperors and kings, were nothing compared to the beauty and splendor of the diamond in Wrigley Stadium. It wasn't just a yard with dirt, chalk lines, bases, and a small hill in its center. Wrigley was a field of dreams. Dreams of eternal glory for the men who ran to t

Champions never sleep, the eternal spirit keep them alert and awake.

It is not over. Champions extend their limits and make things happen.

I've got a Don Baylor," J.T. said."California sucks this year."Ralph snickered. "I wouldn't use a Baylor card to scrape dog shit off the street.

The sheer quantity of brain power that hurled itself voluntarily and quixotically into the search for new baseball knowledge was either exhilarating or depressing, depending on how you felt about baseball. The same intellectual resources might have cured the common cold, or put a man on Pluto.

Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear -- and doubt.

Everyone has the fire, but the champions know when to ignite the spark.

I used to think Romeo and Juliet was the greatest love story ever written. But now that I’m middle-aged, I know better. Oh, Romeo certainly thinks he loves his Juliet. Driven by hormones, he unquestionably lusts for her. But if he loves her, it’s a shallow love. You want proof?” Cagney didn’t wait for Dr. Victor to say yay or nay.“Soon after meeting her for the first time, he realizes he forgot to ask her for her name. Can true love be founded upon such shallow acquaintance? I don’t think so. An

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.

He has the body of a professional athlete, chiseled to perfection in all the right places.

And so, my beloved Kermit, my dear little Hussein, at the moment America changed forever, your father was wandering an ICBM-denuded watseland, nervously monitoring his radiation level, armed only with a baseball bat, a 10mm pistol, and six rounds of ammunition, in search of a vicious gang of mohawked marauders who were 100 percent bad news and totally had to be dealth with. Trust Daddy on this one.

Men go to the ballpark with an assumed knowledge and interest, whereas women need to constantly demonstrate how much they know and care.

Real ballplayers pass the stuffing by rolling it up in a ball and batting it across the table with a turkey leg.

That's what happens when you're thirty-seven years old: you do the things you always did but the result is somehow different.

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

Italian-Americans in New York had not been in much of a flag-waving mood prior to DiMaggio's arrival. By the All-Star break, the rookie had established himself as a wonderful player (.358, 10HR, 60 RBIs), fully justifying the acclaim. But Gehrig was even better (.399, 20 HR, 61 RBIs). He was leading the league in nearly every category, including invisibility.

Baseball is to our everyday experience what poetry often is to common speech — a slightly elevated and concentrated form.

Deep down, it's all baseball, no matter what kind of geometrical shape you play it with.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing t

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.

I've never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.

I've fallen in love with baseball.

Sometimes, in a tight game with runners on, digging in at short, ready to break with the ball, a peace I'd never felt before would paralyze the diamond. For a moment of eternal stillness I felt as if I were cocked at the very heart of the Midwest.

I see great things in baseball.

The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of sport.

That's why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century--the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports.

For several years Quinn had been having the same conversations with this man, whose name he did not know. Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. During the season, it was always the most recent game. They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them.

Only one person can own any plate at a time. It belongs to the pitcher, or it belongs to the batter, Aiken, but not to both. You understand.

One of the supreme paradoxes of baseball, and all sports, is that the harder you try to throw a pitch or hit a ball or accomplish something, the smaller your chances are for success. You get the best results not when you apply superhuman effort but when you let the game flow organically and allow yourself to be fully present. You'll often hear scouts say of a great prospect, "The game comes slow to him." It mean the prospect is skilled and poised enough to let the game unfold in its own time, pa

You didn't play baseball that well with two hands. How do you think you're going to make it with one? "If you're just going to tell me what I can't do, you can leave.

The reporter asked, "why did you play so hard.""Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who'd never seen my play before, and might never see me again"-Joe DiMaggio

Baseball, of all sports, and maybe of all human endeavors, has no room for cynicism.

On the surface, there is something peculiar about turning a portion of one's happiness over to a collection of ballplayers, and perhaps more peculiar still is concerning oneself about ball games played decades before one's birth.

Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it's still being made all over the place, all the time.

Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking. [Dick Cramer]

You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.

And it started out fun. We were chattering enthusiastically, flipping between CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. But as the evening wore on, and the numbers rolled in, it got quieter, and I found myself becoming intensely depressed. Why was I putting myself through this? The issues I’ve devoted my life to have become so marginalized by the coverage that they have no possible relevance to me. I can’t even blame the media — people simply don’t care about alternate-party politics. And why should they? I’m s

ESPN, is having the ability to foretell future outcomes in sports.

As history of any kind will tell us, when human beings get an opportunity to express their individual selves, a few selves will go completely over the top.

After Jackie Robinson the most important black in baseball history is Reggie Jackson, I really mean that.

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.

Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.

I am the best in baseball.

I had a client who was a professional baseball player once, and he would go to clubs and dance for seven, eight, nine hours at a time. He wouldn't drink, he wouldn't take drugs - he just danced because he had so much physical energy; he was this amazing athlete.

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.

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and five the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.

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.

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.

Hats have been my thing pretty much my whole life but finance has not. I would go to the corner store and buy really cheap baseball style caps and wear those to school.

No one intuitively understands quantum mechanics because all of our experience involves a world of classical phenomena where, for example, a baseball thrown from pitcher to catcher seems to take just one path, the one described by Newton's laws of motion. Yet at a microscopic level, the universe behaves quite differently.

Going out and playing football or baseball with the boys, when I was a tomboy, was a great way to learn about winning and losing, and most girls didn't have that experience.

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.

This is something I've wanted to do my whole life is play baseball, and I think just the opportunity to put on a big-league uniform every day is just... you know, people dream of it, but not everybody gets to do it. I'm thankful every day I get to do it.

The Atlanta Braves are really all that our children know about this crazy baseball life, and we are so thankful for this upbringing for them.

I'm very thankful to the Yankees and to Major League Baseball for allowing me to play this game.

There's a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, 'I remember when 'all right' was two words.'

I am convinced that God wanted me to be a baseball player.

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 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.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality - we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Athletes and musicians make astronomical amounts of money. People get paid $100 million to throw a baseball! Shouldn't we all take less and pass some of that money onto others? Think about firefighters, teachers and policemen. We should celebrate people that are intellectually smart and trying to make this world a better place.

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.

I could have played another year, but I would have been playing for the money, and baseball deserves better than that.

Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie.

My mom, she wasn't like a baseball mother who knew everything about the game. She just wanted me to be happy with what I was doing.

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.'

I don't care about the internal political system of the United States. I want to be a friend of United States, of its baseball, its institutions, its rock and roll, its workers, and its technology because we need it. I want to be friends of the Arab people, of the Persian people, of the Asian people.

Yeah, I miss it. You don't just break off a friendship you've had with a sport, and with all those you've met all over the country. We've got some friends, some very close friends, and you just sit back and think how fortunate you were having a career like that. And, actually, there's nothing in the game of baseball that hasn't happened to me.

It's such a beautiful sport, with no politics involved, no color, no class. Only as a youngster can you play and as a pro can you win. The game has kept me young, involved and excited and for me to be up here with gems of baseball.

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.

It's a funny business. I kind of compare it to baseball. I'm always looking for a home run.

Kids need role models, whether it's baseball players, actors or musicians: people to bring a little positive light into their hearts and minds. We need to be a little kinder to those people because it's not easy being that role model, looked upon as something we are all incapable of being - too perfect.

When you're an expert in a subject, you can retain new factoids on your favorite topic easily. This only works for the subjects you're truly passionate about, though. Baseball fans can reel off stats for their favorite players, then space out on their own birthday.

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.