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Slump ? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hittin.
--Yogi Berra
We're supposed to be perfect our first day on the
job and then show constant improvement.
--Ed Vargo, major league baseball umpire
Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical
--Yogi Berra
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 is a man on base
--Dave Barry
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
Don't pick on your sister when she's holding a
baseball bat.
--Joel, 10
Advice from Kids
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is
shining bright; The band is playing somewhere; and
somewhere hearts are light; And somewhere men are
laughing; and little children shout; But there is
no joy in Mudville- great Casey has struck out.
--Ernest Lawrence Thayer
Casey at the Bat
Baseball players are smarter than football
players. How often do you see a baseball team
penalised for too many players on the field
--Jim Boulton
Hitting is 50% above the shoulders.
--Ted Williams
You owe it to yourself to be the best you can
possible be - in baseball and in life.
--Pete Rose
I never thought home runs were all that exciting.
I still think the triple is the most exciting
thing in baseball. To me, a triple is like a guy
taking the ball on his 1-yard line and running 99
yards for a touchdown.
--Hank Aaron
I used to love to come to the ballpark. Now I hate
it. Every day becomes a little tougher because of
all this. Writers, tape recorders, microphones,
cameras, questions and more questions. Roger Maris
lost his hair the season he hit sixty-one. I still
have all my hair, but when it's over, I'm going
home to Mobile and fish for a long time.
--Hank Aaron
as he closed in on Babe Ruth's career home run record
Mickey meant an awful lot to me. He was a
tremendous athlete. People didn't understand him
the way they should have. He played 10 years on
one leg. But more than that, he was a tremendous
person.
--Hank Aaron
on Mickey Mantle
Looking at the ball going over the fence isn't
going to help.
--Hank Aaron
I had just turned 20, and Jackie told me the only
way to be successful at anything was to go out and
do it. He said baseball was a game you played
every day, not once a week.
--Hank Aaron
on Jackie Robinson
The pitcher has got only a ball. I've got a bat.
So the percentage of weapons is in my favor and I
let the fellow with the ball do the fretting.
--Hank Aaron
He's been very talkative. But it is usually under
oath.
--Sandy Alderson
Oakland A's GM, on Albert Belle
Some plays just come out of me, just on instincts.
I'll make a play and wonder, How did I do that?
--Roberto Alomar
Baltimore
It can be life or death in the fire service and it
definitely felt like life and death on the
ballfield.
--Allen Anderson
on training to become a firefighter
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.
--Garret Anderson
(Anaheim Angels, OF), on Joe Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak, after Anderson's streak ended at 28 games.
You're only young once, but you can be immature
forever
--Larry Andersen
relief pitcher
Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal in design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose: it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance-thrown hard and with precision. Its feel and heft are the beginning of the sport's critical dimensions; if it were a fraction of an inch larger or smaller, a few centigrams heavier or lighter, the game of baseball would be utterly different.
Hold a baseball in your hand ... Feel the ball, turn it over in your hand; hold it across the seam
or the other way, with the seam just to the side
of your middle finger. Speculation stirs. You want
to get outdoors and throw this spare and sensual
object to somebody or, at the very least, watch
somebody else throw it. The game has begun.
--Roger Angell
in Five Seasons
The press box at Wrigley Field in Chicago is an extended narrow shed, two rows deep, that is precariously bolted to the iron rafters just underneath the park's second deck. To gain access, one must climb a steeply angled ramp and clamber down a little starboard companionway, guarded at its foot by a uniformed minion and then proceed giddily along a catwalk that hangs directly above the tiered, circling rows of seats and spectators behind home plate.
Seen from this vantage point, the preoccupied fans
below sometimes suggest a huddled, uncomplaining
horde of immigrants stuffed into steerage on some
endless voyage toward better luck-not an
inappropriate image if we remind ourselves that
this famous rustbucket, the good ship Cubbie, last
dropped anchor in the shining harbor of the World
Series in 1945 .
--Roger Angell
in Fortuity
This is a linear sport. Something happens and then something else happens, and then the next man comes up and digs in at the plate. Here's the pitch, and here, after a pause, is the next. There's time to write it down in your scorecard or notebook, and then perhaps to look about and reflect on what's starting to happen out there now. It's not much like the swirl and blur of hockey and basketball, or the highway crashes of the NFL.
Baseball is the writer's game, and its train of
thought, we come to sense, is a shuttle, carrying
us constantly forward to the next pitch or inning,
or the sudden double into the left-field corner,
but we keep hold of the other half of our ticket,
for the return trip on the same line. We
anticipate happily, and, coming home, reenter an
old landscape brightened with fresh colors.
Baseball games and plays and mannerisms-the angle
of a cap-fade stubbornly and come to mind
unbidden, putting us back in some particular park
on that special October afternoon or June evening.
The players are as young as ever, and we, perhaps
not entirely old.
--Roger Angell
in Once More Around the Park
Cub fans, by consensus, are the best in baseball.
Year after year, in good times and (mostly) bad,
they turn out in vociferous numbers, sustaining
themselves with a heavenly ichor that combines
loyalty, criticism, cheerfulness, durability,
rage, beer and hope, in exquisite proportions.
--Roger Angell
in Season Ticket
Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all
you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting,
keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time.
You remain forever young.
--Roger Angell
Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like
trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.
--Joe Adcock
When we played softball, I'd steal 2nd base, feel
guilty and go back.
--Woody Allen
I'm beginning to see Brooks [Robinson] in my
sleep. If I dropped a paper plate, he'd pick it up
on one hop and throw me out at first.
--Sparky Anderson
He's such a big, strong guy he should love that
porch. He's got power enough to hit home runs in
any park, including Yellowstone.
--Sparky Anderson
on Willie Stargell batting in Tiger Stadium in the 1971 All Star game.
That's why I don't talk. Because I talk too much.
--Joquin Andujar
There's one word that describes baseball -- 'You
never know.'
--Joquin Andujar
He's like an amusement-park ride - Even for guys
who play.
--Ruben Amaro
on Mark McGwire
"Baseball is dull only to dull minds." Red Barber, announcer
"I remember one game I got five hits and stole five bases, but none of it was written down because they forgot to bring the scorebook to the game that day." - James "Cool Papa" Bell, Homestead Grays OF
"They say I was born too soon. I say the doors were opened too late."
James "Cool Papa" Bell
"Jimmy Connors plays two tennis matches and winds
up with $850,000, and
Muhammad Ali fights for one bout and winds up with
five million bucks. Me, I
play
190 games--if you count exhibitions -- and I'm
overpaid!"
--Johnny Bench
"I was thinking of making a comeback until I
pulled a muscle - vacuuming."
--
Johnny Bench, on how he felt about Charlton Fisk
breaking his record for
career
home runs by a catcher.
"An ardent supporter of the home town team should
go to a game prepared to
take offense, no matter what happens."
--Robert
Benchley
"In batting practice, I don't think I hit one ball
hard. It was frustrating,
that bat was no good."
--Dante Bichette, Colorado
Rockies OF, after Bichette
hit for the cycle after flinging into the stands
the bat he was using for
batting practice
"I didn't get over 1300 walks without knowing the
strike zone."
--Wade
Boggs, on being ejected for the first time in the
17th year of his career for arguing a called third strike
"That's the nicest thing a returning player could
ever ask for. It shows how
classy the New York Fans are. It gave me a warm
feeling inside."
--Wade
Boggs,
on the standing ovation he received on his first
return to Yankee Stadium
(6-3-98)
"This is nothing. I've got nine writers standing
here. McGwire had 200 writers when he had 30 home runs."
--Barry Bonds
(SF Giants OF), on being the first player to hit 400 home runs and steal 400 bases.
"A lot of long relievers are ashamed to tell their parents what they do. The only nice thing about it is that you get to wear a uniform like everbody else." - Jim Bouton, NY Yankees pitcher
"The older they get, the better they were when
they were younger."
--Jim
Bouton, on Old Timers Days.
Note: Jim Bouton was invited to return to Yankee
Stadium on July 26, 1998
for his first Old Timers Game after 30 years.
There were bad feelings for
many
years after Jim wrote a book revealing that
ballplayers weren't the angels
that everybody had expected.
"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
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,
NY Yankees
"If I stay healthy, I have a chance to collect
three thousand hits and one
thousand errors."
--George Brett, Kansas City
Royals 3B
"Yeah, he's in pain except between the first and
ninth innings."
--Dave
Bristol (Reds' manager), on Sandy Koufax and his
elbow pains that forced him
into
early retirement.
"Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad and I'll
show you a guy you can beat
every time."
--St. Louis' Lou Brock
"No one wants to hear about the labor pains, they
just want to see the
baby."
--Lou Brock
"In high school I took a little English, some
science, some hubcaps and some
wheel covers."
--William James Gates Brown
(Detroit Tigers OF)
When asked if his curve was helped by the absence
of an index finger,
Mordecai Brown replied, "To know for sure, I'd
have to throw with a normal
hand, and
I've never tried it."
--Mordecai "Three-Finger"
Brown
"I can't conceive of either team winning a single game."
--Warren Brown
(Chicago writer), when asked for a prediction as
to the outcome of the 1945
World
Series between the Cubs and the Tigers and an
obvious reference to the
wartime look of both teams.
"I can sit in a ballpark after a game and love
looking at the field.
Everybody's gone, and the ballpark is empty, and
I'll sit there. I sit there
and think,
'Is this as close to heaven as I'm going to get?'
Or, 'If I get to heaven,
will there be baseball?"
--Kim Braatz-Voisard,
Silver Bullets' center
fielder,
1997
"Jackie was the greatest competitor I ever saw. He
didn't win. He
triumphed."
--Ralph Branca, Dodger pitcher, 1947
Don Baylor, New York Yankees DH, on Billy Martin
and his predecessor Yogi
Berra: "Playing for Yogi is like playing for your
father; playing for Billy
is
like playing for your father-in-law."
--Don Baylor
Dale Berra, Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop and son of noted linguist Yogi Berra, "The only thing my father & I have in common is that our similarities are different."
"You mix two jiggers of scotch to one jigger of
Metrecal. So far I've lost
five pounds and my driver's license."
--Rocky
Bridges, minor league manager,
on his new diet drink
"The players are too serious. They don't have any fun any more. They come to camp with a financial adviser and they read the stock market page before the sports pages. They concern themselves with statistics rather than simply playing the game and enjoying it for what it is." - Rocky Bridges, from The Sporting News, December 12, 1970
"It's a good thing I stayed in Cincinnati for four
years -- It took me that
long to learn how to spell it."
--Rocky Bridges
"Coaching third with a pitcher on base is like
being a member of a bomb
disposal squad. The thing could blow up in your
face at any moment."
--Rocky
Bridges
"You know when you've got it made? When you get your name in the crossword
puzzles."
--Rocky Bridges
"I prefer fast food."
--Rocky Bridges, on why he
won't eat snails
"No little boy in the hospital asked me to hit
one, I didn't promise it to
my kid for his birthday, and my wife will be too
shocked to appreciate it. I
hit it for me."
--Rocky Bridges, after hitting his
first home run in two
seasons
"The more I played with them, the more I found
that no one could take a
joke - my batting average."
--Rocky Bridges, on
his two seasons with the
Dodgers
and his .237 batting average
"Coaching third with a pitcher on base is like
being a member of a bomb
disposal squad. The thing could blow up in your
face at any moment."
--Rocky
Bridges
"The trouble with having a wired jaw is that you
can never tell when you're
sleepy. You can't yawn."
--Rocky Bridges
On Jose Gonzalez changing his name to Jose Uribe:
"He was definitely the
player to be named later."
--Rocky Bridges
"Kids today are looking for idols, but sometimes
they look too far... They
don't have to look any farther than their home
because those are the people
that
love you. They are the real heroes."
--Bobby
Bonilla
"Every member of our baseball team at West Point
became a general: this
proves the value of team sports."
--Gen. Omar
Bradley
"They can hollar at the uniform all they want, but
when they hollar at the
man wearing the uniform, they're in trouble."
--
Umpire Joe Brinkman
"Nobody's gone after Reds with this much vigor
since Joe McCarthy."
--Jeff
Blair of the Montreal Gazette, on the Expos' Shane
Andrews, who hit .471
(16-for-34)
with six homers and 21 RBI against Cincinnati in
August 1996
"The best place to catch a baseball hit by (Mark)
McGwire is definitely not
within the confines of the playing field, or
sometimes even the ballpark.
Other players dial '1' for long distance. McGwire has to
ask for an international
operator."
--Thomas Boswell, writing in the
Washington Post
"Last year [1986], in 415 at bats, he had 27
homers and 80 steals. That's 40
home runs and 120 steals for a full year. [...]
This year [1987], in 93 at
bats, he's hitting .409 with those 12 homers, 27
RBI, 28 runs and 13 steals.
For a full year, that projects to ... well, it
doesn't project to anything.
It's nonsense. More than 70 home runs, 170 RBI,
180 runs, 80 steals. Wayne
Gretzky stats for baseball."
--Thomas Boswell on
Eric Davis
"Baseball is religion without the mischief."
--
Thomas Boswell
"This is a tough park for a hitter when the air
conditioning is blowing
in."
--Bob Boone on the Astrodome in Houston
"There have been only two geniuses in the world:
Willie Mays and Willie
Shakespeare."
--Tallulah Bankhead, Actress
(1903-1968)
"Expansion's coming up (in 1998), pitching is thin
and I'm left-handed."
--
Former pitcher Tom Browning, who is eyeing a
comeback after retiring last
spring
when he was unable to make the Royals' pitching
staff
"I was hoping we'd be opening at Joe Robbie
Stadium against Elmer Milktoast
and the Gigiville nine. But unfortunately, it's
Bobby Cox and the world
champion
Atlanta Braves in Atlanta."
--Florida Marlins
manager John Boles on his
managerial debut
"This is the type of thing that as a kid you dream
about. Something I've
done in my backyard a hundred times. And you never
know if you're going to
get
the opportunity to do it."
--Scott Brosius (NY
Yankees 3B) on hitting the
game winning home run in Game 3 of the 1998 World
Series. Brosius went on to
win the 1998 World Series MVP.
"There were only two Bash Brothers (Mark McGwire
and Jose Canseco), and
one's in Boston now. Maybe I can be a Bash
Stepchild."
--Oakland's Scott
Brosius,
who has 10 homers, after suggestions he's ready to
become a Bash Brother.
"It's hard to win when you can't keep the ball in
the ballpark. I don't
think they could hit more home runs if you told
them what was coming. I
don't think
they could hit any more if it was batting
practice."
--Dusty Baker (SF
Giants manager), on the Giants giving up 24 home
runs in one seven game
stretch.
"The only people I ever felt intimidated by in my
whole life were Bob Gibson
and my Daddy."
--Dusty Baker
"For five years in the minor leagues, I wore the same underwear and still hit .250, so no, I don't believe in that stuff." - Dusty Baker, on stuperstitions
"I'm tired of it. I don't want to hear about it
anymore."
--Bill Buckner
"I get tired of hearing my ballplayers bellyache
all the time. They should
sit in the press box sometime and watch themselves
play."
--San Diego Padres
president Buzzie Bavasi, 1973
"How can a guy win a game if you don't give him
any runs?"
--Robert "Bo"
Belinsky, after losing a game 15-0
"Everybody in the park knows he is going to run,
and he makes it anyway."
--
Larry Bowa, on Lou Brock
"He seemed to have an obligation to hit."
--Lou
Brock, on Pete Rose
"Why Mr. Summers, don't you know that the spitter
has been outlawed for
years? How would I ever learn to throw one?"
--
Thomas Jefferson Davis
Bridges, to
plate umpire Bill Summers, after being accused of
throwing the spitter
"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."
--David Bristol,
Milwaukee Brewers manager
"I threw about 90% fastballs and sliders, 50%
fastballs and 50 %
sliders...I'm starting to sound like Mickey
Rivers."
--John Butcher
"I exploit the greed of all hitters."
--Lew
Burdette
"Let them think I throw it. That gives me an edge because it is another
pitch they have to worry about."
--Lew Burdette,
on throwing the spitball
"They were starting to hit the dry side of the
ball."
--Lew Burdette, on
when he knew it was time to retire
"It's designed to break your heart. The game
begins in the spring, when
everything is new again, and it blossoms in the
summer, filling the
afternoons and
evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains
comes, it stops, and leaves
you to face the fall alone."
--A Bartlett
Giamatti, Comissioner of Baseball,
1989.
"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, Hall of Famer
Hello again, everybody. It's a bee-yooo-tiful day
for baseball.
--Harry
Caray
That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on the ball. -Bill Veeck, 1976
"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
"Baseball to me is still the national pastime because it is a summer game. I feel that almost all Americans are summer people, that summer is what they think of when they think of their childhood. I think it stirs up an incredible emotion within people." - Steve Busby
"You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you." - Roy Campanella
"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
"If I were playing third base and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I'd trip her. Oh, I'd pick her up and brush her off and say, 'Sorry Mom, but nobody beats me." -- Leo Durocher
"The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely." -- Ted Williams
"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)
"Trying to hit him (Phil Niekro) was like trying
to eat Jell-O with
chopsticks."
--Bobby Murcer, Yankees outfielder
"Why certainly I'd like to have that fellow who
hits a home run every time
at bat, who strikes out every opposing batter when
he's pitching, who throws
strikes to any base or the plate when he's playing
outfield and who's always
thinking about two innings ahead just what he'll
do to baffle the other
team.
Any manager would want a guy like that playing for
him. The only trouble is
to get him to put down his cup of beer and come
down out of the stands and
do those things."
--Danny Murtaugh, manager
"I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to keep playing baseball." - Pete Rose
"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
"The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews." - Sandy Koufax
"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
"When we lost I couldn't sleep at night. When we win I can't sleep at night. But when you win, you wake up feeling better." - Joe Torre
"A baseball club is part of the chemistry of the city. A game isn't just an athletic contest. It's a picnic, a kind of town meeting." - Michael Burke
"Baseball reflected the language of America, and spiced it, too. Presidents, politicians, executives, generals and parents touched all the bases regularly so that nobody would be out in left field or caught off the base in the greater pursuits of life. If you did it right, you hit a grand slam home run; if not you struck out." - Joseph Durso
"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
All I want out of life, is that when I walk down
the street folks will say, "There goes the
greatest hitter that ever lived."
--Ted Williams
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
Life is like a baseball game. When you think a
fastball is coming, You gotta be ready to hit the
curve.
-
--Jaja Q
If a man can beat you, walk him.
--Leroy (Satchel) Paige
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