Baseball famous quotes
04-24-2025
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It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
There's nothing bad that accrues from baseball.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
There are a lot of people who know me who can't understand for the life of them why I would got to work on something as unserious as baseball. If they only knew.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is a sad end if a sorry episode. One of the game's greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts. There is absolutely no deal for reinstatement.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
All play aspires to the condition of paradise...through play in all its forms...we hope to achieve a state that our larger Greco-Roman, Judeo- Christian culture has always known was lost. Where it exists, we do not know, although we always have envisioned it as a garden...always as removed, as an enclosed green place...Paradise is an ancient dream...It is a dream of ourselves as better than we are, back to what we were.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels - Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges - is in our own self-interest. That's where the pool of talent is - and also of fans.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America's most privileged version of the level field.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
Baseball has undergone and absorbed a whole set of dislocations.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.
-- Abel Ferrara -
I don't know what drives me to succeed. I know I want to always do the best I can.I guess I was maybe in little league baseball as far as I wanted to be good at that. But school, I certainly wasn't the best at that.
-- Adam Sandler -
I love the flow of the game. There's a certain fluidity to basketball. I don't enjoy watching baseball or football in the same way.
-- Adam Yauch -
Baseball should be the only thing on an eight year old boy's mind.
-- Aidan Quinn -
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 -
Was Ty Cobb psychotic throughout his playing career? The answer is yes.
-- Al Stump -
It is decidedly not true that "nice guys finish last," as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.
-- Alan Greenspan -
I didnt really grow up a comic book fanatic. I was a big baseball player, and my passion in life, in third grade, was collecting baseball cards. That was my childhood thing.
-- Alan Ritchson -
Baseball is part of America's plot, part of America's mysterious, underlying design-the plot in which we all conspire and collude, the plot of the story of our national life.
-- Albert Allen Bartlett -
Baseball gives ... a growing boy self-poise and self-reliance. Baseball is a man maker.
-- Albert Goodwill Spalding -
The genius of our institutions is democratic - baseball is a democratic game.
-- Albert Goodwill Spalding -
Baseball is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness, American Dash, Discipline, Determination, American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm, American Pluck, Persistency, Performance, American Spirit, Sagacity, Success, American Vim, Vigor, Virility.
-- Albert Goodwill Spalding -
I play to represent God, something bigger than baseball.
-- Albert Pujols -
I try to spend as much time as possible with God and my family. That's more important than anything I'm doing in baseball.
-- Albert Pujols -
People ask me if I believe how quickly my career has taken off. I just tell them that Jesus Christ is my strength. God has blessed me and I will continue to do my best for him. That is more important than anything I could ever do in baseball.
-- Albert Pujols -
I learned to play (baseball) on the streets in the Dominican Republic when I was 8 yrs old.
-- Albert Pujols -
Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.
-- Albert Pujols -
Baseball is sunshine, green grass, fathers and sons, our rural past.
-- Albert Theodore Powers -
I'm just worried about winning baseball. I'm only worried about what I can do to help the team win. It's about improving in every facet of the game. I think that's everyone's goals. Whatever we can do to help the team win is what we'll do. I think Andy has done a great job of coming in and helping our offense. AD is getting those pitchers ready. Coach Mainieri is going to coach up some wins this year. We are very excited and working on every facet of the game.
-- Alex Bregman -
I don't think I've changed very much. I think I'm the same kid that I was when I got here. When I came here all I wanted to do was win games. I wanted to play baseball for LSU and be the ultimate team player. That's all I want to do. If we don't end up being the last team to win the game at the end of the year then I won't be happy. That's all I'm worried about this year.
-- Alex Bregman -
I'm a terrible singer. I feel lucky to play baseball. You can't be gifted in everything.
-- Alex Rodriguez -
I've never felt overmatched on the baseball field. I've always been in a very strong, dominant position. And I felt that if I did my work as I've done since I was, you know, a rookie back in Seattle, I didn't have a problem competing at any level. So, no.
-- Alex Rodriguez -
I truly believe my job starts the minute I leave the baseball field. Going out and catching ground balls and hitting, that's a job, and that's what I've wanted to do ever since I was a kid. But when you think about leaving that field, that's when the job and the demands really start. In New York, Seattle, every city. The community, the media, business stuff. You have to stay on a narrow path.
-- Alex Rodriguez -
It is hard to ignore that is reality. But, at the same time, it still comes down to sound baseball decisions, farm systems and then execution on the field by the players. There are a lot of components to that (other) than just saying it is the highest salary.
-- Alex Rodriguez -
You should never wear a baseball cap when working in close quarters in the attic: You never see that beam above you!
-- Alex Trebek -
Finally learning his baseball history, on the topic of Hank Aaron and his home run record
-- Alfonso Soriano -
Men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them particularly unfit for the task of government....Man's place is in the armory.
-- Alice Duer Miller -
Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a Communist.
-- Alvin Dark -
Friendships are forgotten when the game begins.
-- Alvin Dark -
Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season with the Chicago Cubs. That's baseball as it should be played - in God's own sunshine. And that's really living.
-- Alvin Dark -
There are surprisingly few real students of the game in baseball; partly because everybody, my eighty-three year old grandmother included, thinks they learned all there was to know about it at puberty. Baseball is very beguiling that way.
-- Alvin Dark -
Baseball represents family. It represents my childhood.
-- Alyssa Milano -
Baseball is my escape. The sights, the sounds, the way the park smells. There is truly no place I would rather be than at a game.
-- Alyssa Milano -
The beautiful thing about baseball is that anything can happen. It's like life in that way. As soon as you think you have it all figured out, something happens that makes you realize - you know nothing. The only thing that's guaranteed is that it will be an exciting ride.
-- Alyssa Milano -
The place was always cold, and I got the feeling that the fans would have enjoyed baseball more if it had been played with a hockey puck.
-- Andre Dawson -
Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.
-- Andy Rooney -
I have an Alka-Seltzer bat. You know-plop, plop, fizz, fizz, when the pitcher sees me walking up there he says, 'Oh, what a relief it is'.
-- Andy Van Slyke -
Who says there's an unemployment problem in this country? Just take the five percent unemployed and give them a baseball stat to follow.
-- Andy Van Slyke -
I don't care what you do - baseball or politics - George W. Bush is always going to be compared to his father. I just want it to be an easy answer in 50 years - Who was the better player, me, or my kids? I want it to be my kids.
-- Andy Van Slyke -
You bet being funny helps accomplish things. I've always maintained that people don't realize how many brain cells it takes to be funny. And politics ought to be fun -- after baseball it's our next favorite national pastime.
-- Ann Richards -
Little by little, in telling Sam all these details, I got to see the bigger point of baseball, that it can give us back ourselves. We’re a crowd animal, a highly gregarious, communicative species, but the culture and the age and all the fear that fills our days have put almost everyone into little boxes, each of us all alone. But baseball, if we love it, gives us back our place in the crowd. It restores us.
-- Anne Lamott -
It's as if Japanese men, all to aware that deep inside they'd like to stomp Tokyo flat, breathe fire, and do truly terrible and disgusting things to women, have built themselves the most beautiful of prisons for their rampaging ids. Instead of indulging their fantasies, they focus on food, or landscaping, or the perfect cup of tea -- or a single slab of o-toro tuna -- letting themselves go only at baseball games and office parties.
-- Anthony Bourdain -
Consider developing your whole self with the same raw focus and intensity that you develop a particular skill set. Get focused. Go out, have adventures. Run, jump, skin your knee, fall in love, root loudly for the away team at a baseball game, barely escape a crash of stampeding rhinos, live to see another day. Experience things big and small. Go for a walk. The world is full of wonders.
-- Anthony Holden -
If real Satanism were allowed the kind of television time that Christianity has now, the kind of drawing out and patience that interviewers give sports figures, or the kind of coverage that a baseball game gets, Christianity would be completely eliminated in a few short months. If people were allowed to see the complete, unbiased truth, even for 60 minutes, it would be too dangerous. There would be no comparison.
-- Anton Szandor LaVey -
It baseball is an American institution and more lasting than some marriages, war, Supreme Court decisions and even major depressions
-- Art Rust, Jr. -
You can't win them all but you can try.
-- Babe Didrikson Zaharias -
The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration.
-- Babe Didrikson Zaharias -
Before I was ever in my teens, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. My goal was to be the greatest athlete that ever lived.
-- Babe Didrikson Zaharias -
If you win through bad sportsmanship that's no real victory.
-- Babe Didrikson Zaharias -
Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.
-- Babe Ruth -
Don't let the fear of striking out hold you back.
-- Babe Ruth -
I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.
-- Babe Ruth -
Love the game of baseball and baseball will love you.
-- Babe Ruth -
I said I'm going to hit the next one right over the flagpole. God must have been with me.
-- Babe Ruth -
How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.
-- Babe Ruth -
Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.
-- Babe Ruth -
All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.
-- Babe Ruth -
If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.
-- Babe Ruth -
Baseball is the greatest game in the world and deserves the best you can give it.
-- Babe Ruth -
All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except it looked good.
-- Babe Ruth -
I thank heaven we have had baseball in this world... the kids... our national pastime.
-- Babe Ruth -
Aw, everybody knows that game, the day I hit the homer off ole Charlie Root there in Wrigley Field, the day October first, the third game of that thirty-two World Series. But right now I want to settle all arguments. I didn't exactly point to any spot, like the flagpole. Anyway, I didn't mean to, I just sorta waved at the whole fence, but that was foolish enough. All I wanted to do was give that thing a ride... outta the park... anywhere.
-- Babe Ruth -
If I'd just tried for them dinky singles I could've batted around .600.
-- Babe Ruth -
Don't be afraid to take advice. There's always something new to learn.
-- Babe Ruth -
As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher's mound. It was as if I'd been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.
-- Babe Ruth -
I won't be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat.
-- Babe Ruth -
A man ought to get all he can earn. A man who knows he's making money for other people ought to get some of the profit he brings in. Don't make any difference if it's baseball or a bank or a vaudeville show. It's business, I tell you. There ain't no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.
-- Babe Ruth -
What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did.
-- Babe Ruth -
I don't give a damn about any actors. What good will John Barrymore do you with the bases loaded and two down in a tight ball game. Either I get the money (more than Barrymore), or I don't play!
-- Babe Ruth -
I've never heard a crowd boo a homer, but I've heard plenty of boos after a strikeout.
-- Babe Ruth -
I hear the cheers when they roared and the jeers when they echoed.
-- Babe Ruth -
The only real game, I think, in the world is baseball.
-- Babe Ruth -
I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun.
-- Babe Ruth -
Don't ever forget two things I'm going to tell you. One, don't believe everything that's written about you. Two, don't pick up too many checks.
-- Babe Ruth -
Gee, its lonesome in the outfield. It's hard to keep awake with nothing to do.
-- Babe Ruth -
You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth - that means the boys. And after you've been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.
-- Babe Ruth -
If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. I have the same violent temper my father and older brother had. Both died of injuries from street fights in Baltimore, fights begun by flare-ups of their tempers.
-- Babe Ruth -
What I am, what I have, what I am going to leave behind me - all this I owe to the game of baseball.
-- Babe Ruth -
To my sick little pal. I will try to knock you another homer, maybe two today.
-- Babe Ruth -
I'd give a year of my life if I could hit a homerun on opening day of this great new park.
-- Babe Ruth -
Reading isn't good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn't hit home runs. So I gave up reading.
-- Babe Ruth
