Baseball Quotes

Today I am the greatest of all time.

I get tired of hearing my ballplayers bellyache all the time. They should sit in the press box sometime and watch themselves play.

This is Rickey calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play baseball.

I don't do stuff to be a star. I do it because I feel it's important for kids, African American kids, to see an African American face that plays baseball.

There is but one game and that game is baseball.

It was the baseball fantasy of a lifetime - to be able to sit on the bench with all those professional athletes. I got to take my son along because I wasn't sure I would be able to play with them.

A team of giants needs giant pitchers who throw good ideas but every pitcher needs an outstanding catcher. Without giant catchers, the ideas of the giant pitchers may eventually disappear.

Baseball is our national pastime, that is if you discount political campaigning.

In 1961, when Maris broke Babe Ruth's record, he wasn't intentionally walked once. Mickey batted after Roger, and nobody was going to put a man on base with Mantle coming up to the plate.

I've never left a game before it ended. You never know when there could be a big turnaround in the game.

I know a doctor who can give you a shot and you'll get over that cold you've got and get better in a day.

It's a pretty sure thing that the player's bat is what speaks loudest when it's contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word.

The sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons.

They don't know who I was or that I played baseball.

Don't call 'em dogs. Dogs are loyal and they run after balls.

I love to play baseball. I'm a baseball player. I've always been a baseball player. I'm still a baseball player. That's who I am.

Hating the Yankees isn't part of my act. It is one of those exquisite times when life and art are in perfect conjunction.

When a baseball player makes an error, it goes into the record and is published. How many of us could stand this sort of daily scrutiny?

One of the duties of a baseball fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him.

Baseball reveals character; golf exposes it.

How can I play baseball if I'm stupid? If I was stupid I wouldn't have pitched in the World Series. I'd be playing ball in Mexico or Yugoslavia or on Pluto.

Having Willie Stargell on your ball club is like having a diamond ring on your finger.

It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one.

Baseball was my first sport. I wish I would have stayed with it.

He was our symbol of baseball at a time when the game meant something to us that perhaps it no longer does.

I started skating and I kind of liked it because I could run circles around the guys that wouldn't pick me to play baseball.

Cuba wants to get rid of a dictator, and baseball needs a dictator.

I wanted so badly to play in the park across the street because the kids were playing baseball and football but I had to record.

There is no room in baseball for a clown.

I had to will my way through that game. Sometimes, it takes more than talent or more than a 95-mile-an-hour fastball. You have to will it.

Baseball player. Yeah, that was my dream before acting, or alongside acting.

One year I hit .291 and had to take a salary cut. If you hit .291 today, you'd own the franchise.

My dad and I, we used to play baseball. I was the catcher. Which I liked. Until one day, I saw this game on TV, and I said, Hang on, how come their catcher doesn't have his hands tied to his ankles?

I have gone from a player who thought he would spend his whole career with one organization to a player who's been with three organizations in a week. It's like rotisserie baseball.

I was only halfway to the record and it seemed like it took me a long time. I feel like that one will never be broken. That record will never be touched.

If people got hit on the head by a baseball bat every week, pretty soon they would invent reasons why getting hit on the head with a baseball bat was a good thing.

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.

The first books I was interested in were all about baseball. But I can't think of one single book that changed my life in any way.

It takes time to get the whole package. Freshmen can't be seniors.

I believe in the Rip Van Winkle theory—that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark, and understand baseball perfectly.

Beethoven can't really be great because his picture isn't on a bubble gum card.

Despite reforms in steroid control, serious problems still occur in and out of baseball.

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

I think everybody has something that takes them away or makes them happier. To some people it's baseball or sports or knitting or the movies.

Baseball life is a tough life on the family.

Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature.

Gaylord Perry and Willie McCovey should know each other like a book. They've been ex-teammates for years now.

Playing baseball is not real life. It's a fantasy world... It's a dream come true.

If you managed a baseball team, would you listen more closely to the team accountant or the director of player personnel?

This is a great thing that's happening in baseball. We don't know if it will ever happen again.