62 Baseball Quotes

I didn't mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

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.

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.

Awards mean a lot, but they don't say it all. The people in baseball mean more to me than statistics.

Baseball is a game played by idiots for morons.

If the Cincinnati Reds were really the first major league baseball team, who did they play?

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.

I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation.

I've said it once and I'll say it a a hundred times, I'm forty-four years old.

One time I snuck a ball on with me and when I went to winding up, I threw one of them balls to first and one to second. I was so smooth I picked off both runners and fanned the batter without that ump or the other team even knowing it.

The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal.

When a batter swings and I see his knees move, I can tell just what his weaknesses are then I just put the ball where I know he can't hit it.

If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win-unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?

After all, there's only one aswer to be made to the young fellow who is asking constantly for advice as to how to hit. The answer is: 'Pick out a good one and sock it!'

Baseball is the only major sport that appears backward in a mirror.

I use my single windup, my double windup, my triple windup, my hesitation windup, my no windup. I also use my step-n-pitch-it, my submariner, my sidearmer, and my bat dodger. Man's got to do what he's got to do.

There never was a man on Earth who pitched as much as me. But the more I pitched, the stronger my arm would get.

'Baseball is a simple game. If you have good players and if you keep them in the right frame of mind then the manager is a success.'

'He's (Jose Canseco) built like a Greek goddess.'

'If I ever find a pitcher who has heat, a good curve, and a slider, I might seriously consider marrying him, or at least proposing.'

'If I hear Bowie Kuhn say just once more he's doing something for the betterment of baseball, I'm going to throw-up.'

'Problem with (John) Wockenfuss getting on base is that it takes three doubles to score him.'

Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.

I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?

Pitching always beats batting -- and vice-versa.

Slump? I ain't in no slump! I just ain't hitting.

My pitching philosophy is simple; you gotta keep the ball off the fat part of the bat.

The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with at stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum. (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.)

I bleed Dodger blue and when I die, I'm going to the big Dodger in the sky. [1]

My theory of hitting was just to watch the ball as it came in and hit it. [2]

'When we win, I'm so happy I eat a lot. When we lose, I'm so depressed, I eat a lot. When we're rained out, I'm so disappointed I eat a lot.' [3]

Yes, he's a prick, but he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit!

I said: 'Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!' He was hilarious: 'That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well - it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere - belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.'

I see great things in baseball, It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism, tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set, repair those losses and be a blessing to us.