Baseball Quotes

======
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, Ball Four, 1970

======
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

======
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

======
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

======
What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game…. There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife’s fidelity and his mother’s respectability. ~George Bernard Shaw

======
When they start the game, they don’t yell, “Work ball.” They say, “Play ball.” ~Willie Stargell, 1981

======
Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball – you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that. ~Nomar Garciaparra

======
I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby

======
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

======
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

======
Every hitter likes fastballs, just like everybody likes ice cream. But you don’t like it when someone’s stuffing it into you by the gallon. That’s what it feels like when Nolan Ryan’s thrown balls by you. ~Reggie Jackson

======
Strikeouts are boring – besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls. More democratic. ~From the movie Bull Durham

======
Say this much for big league baseball – it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America. ~Bruce Catton

======
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain’s free throws. ~Rick Wise, 1974

======
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, quoted in New York Times, 30 April 1961

======
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, quoted in New York Times, 30 April 1961

======
Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster. ~Attributed to both Joe Adcock and Curt Simmons

======
I’ve come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life are good friends and a good bullpen. ~Bob Lemon, 1981

======
No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference. ~Tommy Lasorda

======
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 goddamn plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all. ~Earl Weaver

======
During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball. ~Mickey Mantle, 1970

======
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 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, quoted in New York Times, 9 July 1979

======
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

======
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

======
Baseball is not necessarily an obsessive-compulsive disorder, like washing your hands 100 times a day, but it’s beginning to seem that way. We’re reaching the point where you can be a truly dedicated, state-of-the-art fan or you can have a life. Take your pick. ~Thomas Boswell, Washington Post, 13 April 1990

======
I don’t know why people like the home run so much. A home run is over as soon as it starts…. The triple is the most exciting play of the game. A triple is like meeting a woman who excites you, spending the evening talking and getting more excited, then taking her home. It drags on and on. You’re never sure how it’s going to turn out. ~George Foster, 1978