FAMOUS BASEBALL QUOTES
Ten Commandments of Success in Baseball
Joe McCarthy, Manager, New York Yankees
Nobody ever became a ballplayer by walking after a ball.
You will never become a .300 hitter unless you take the bat off your shoulder.
An outfielder who throws in back of a runner, is locking the barn after the horse is stolen.
Keep your head up and you may not have to keep it down.
When you start to slide, slide. He who changes his mind may have to change a good leg for a bad one.
Do not alibi on bad hops. Anybody can field the good ones.
Always run them out. You never can tell.
Do not quit.
Do not fight too much with the umpires. You cannot expect them to be as perfect as you are.
A pitcher who hasn’t control hasn’t anything.
"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, Hall of Fame Pitcher
"Baseball was, is, and always will be to me the best game in the world." - Babe Ruth
"Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is." - Bob Feller
"If you're not practicing, somebody else is, somewhere, and he'll be ready to take your job." - Brooks Robinson
"The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely." - Ted Williams
"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
"Hello again, everybody. It's a bee-yooo-tiful day for baseball." - Harry Caray
"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life." -Mickey Mantle
"It's supposed to be fun, the man says 'Play Ball' not 'Work Ball' you know." - Willie "Pops" Stargell
"It's a great day for a ball game; let's play two!" - Ernie Banks, Paul Merrill
"Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical." - Yogi Berra
"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
"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." - Ty Cobb
"A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." - Jim Bouton
"They should move 1st base back a foot to avoid all those close plays" - John Lowenstein
"I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the batter; that the only thing I knew about pitching was that it was hard to hit!" - Tim McCarver (St. Louis Cardinals catcher)
"When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and also join the circus. With the Yankees, I've accomplished both." -Craig Nettles
"I ain't ever had a job. I just always play baseball." -Satchel Paige (Kansas City Monarchs player)
"The only thing worse than a Mets game is a Mets doubleheader." -Casey Stengel on the 1962 Mets
"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
"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
"The only way I'm going to get a gold glove is with a can of spray paint." -Reggie Jackson
"Baseball breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling all the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chilling rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone." -A. Bartlett Giamatti, Former MLB Baseball Commissioner
"If a jury of your peers finds you not guilty, I will reinstate you back into baseball." Kinnesaw Mountain Landis, MLB Commissioner to Shoeless Joe Jackson after the 1919 Black Sox scandal.
"I was the worst hitter ever. I never even broke a bat until last year when I was backing out of the garage." -Lefty Gomez
"I would think I drive most hitting coaches crazy. During one single at-bat I used six different stances on six pitches. Oh yeah, I also struck out. So what do I know?" -John Kruck, Philadelphia Phillies 1B
"People don't know this, but I helped the Cardinals win the pennant. I came down with hepatitis. The trainer injected me with it!" -Bob Uecker
"A man has to have goals - for a day, for a lifetime - and that was mine, to have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.'" – Ted Williams
"There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens." – Tommy Lasorda
"Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets." – Yogi Berra
"Look at misfortune the same way you look at success - Don't Panic! Do you best and forget the consequences." – Walter Alston
"There is but one game and that game is baseball." – John McGraw
"The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all." – Lou Gehrig
"A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide." – Mickey Mantle
"Baseball is our national pastime, that is if you discount political campaigning." -Ronald Reagan
"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 in 1955
"With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them. "
Art Hill in I Don't Care If I Never Come Back
"Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America."
-Bruce Catton, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
"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, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona." -George F. Will
"When he hit it, I knew that it was my ball. But I had to catch it and it seemed like the hardest catch of my life. I said to myself, 'Two hands, just like your dad taught you.'"
-Darin Erstad on catching the final out in Game 7
"Grantland Rice, the great sportswriter once said, 'It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.' Well Grantland Rice can go to hell as far as I'm concerned." -Gene Autry
"What does a mama bear on the pill have in common with the World Series? No cubs." -Harry Caray
"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
"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 in Ball Four
"A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz."
-Humphrey Bogart
"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love." -Bryant Gumbel
"Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose, unless it be to have it assumed that I once pitched a baseball with distinction." -Robert Frost
"You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity...No we must not. You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball."
-Albert Einstein
"It’s still the best game in town because you don’t have to be big to play, and everybody plays. Even your grandmother probably played baseball." -Tommy Lasorda
"Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball." – Mickey Mantle
"God, I just love baseball." - Robert Redford in The Natural (1984)
"I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball." -Pete Rose