Selected sports quotes

1. Layeth the smacketh down.

2. Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire.

3. I'm opposed to any sport that reduces the coefficient of friction between me and the ground.

4. I think the best part of being gay is when you're done [with sex], you could turn over and talk about football.

5. Of the nine red cards this season we probably deserved half of them.

6. As a coach you can influence the diet of your players. You can point out what is wrong.

7. I started racing go-karts. And I love karts. It's the most breath taking sport in the world. More than F1, indeed, I used to like it most.

8. It's important that the drivers stay together, because in difficult moments we have each other. If we are not together the financial and political interests of the organisers and constructors come to the fore.

9. I don't know driving in another way which isn't risky. Each one has to improve himself. Each driver has its limit. My limit is a little bit further than other's.

10. It's going to be a season with lots of accidents, and I'll risk saying that we'll be lucky if something really serious doesn't happen.

11. The danger sensation is exciting. The challenge is to find new dangers.

12. You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

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

14. What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did.

15. 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.

16. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.

17. All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

18. 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.

19. Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

20. Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.

21. 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.

22. After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind), I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry.

23. Drugs are very much a part of professional sports today, but when you think about it, golf is the only sport where the players aren't penalized for being on grass.

24. If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.

25. People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.

26. There was open collusion between the Russian players. They agreed ahead of time to draw the games they played against each other. Every time they drew they gave each other half a point.

27. My goal is the same as every year - to not hurt myself.

28. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

29. I now realize that the small hills you see on ski slopes are formed around the bodies of forty-seven-year-olds who tried to learn snowboarding.

30. College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.

31. Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.

32. Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

33. It's a great day for a ball game; let's play two!

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

35. I like my players to be married and in debt. That's the way you motivate them.

36. The Cubs are due in sixty-two.

37. The riches of the game are in the thrills, not the money.

38. Baseball is a game played by idiots for morons.

39. Bowling is not a sport because you have to rent the shoes.

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

41. I just made a shot at the buzzer. Three points to go into half-time. Me - 3. You - 0.

42. I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.

43. I once admitted-to my shame- That football was a brutal game. Because She hates it.

44. 47. I need 47 energy.

45. 'Is this Groundhog Day?'

46. 'The bitch is back!'

47. 'Whaddya think now?!'

48. Ayrton Senna was an extraordinary racing driver. His skills, craft, subtlety and courage were of such magnitude that he dwarfed his generation of drivers.

49. The only real game - I think - in the world is baseball.

50. I'd give a year of my life if I could hit a homerun on opening day of this great new park.

51. 'Liverpool wouldn't be the club it is today without Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley and the players who played there. When I first went there it was a typical Second Division ground and look at it now!'

52. 'If Shankly was the Anfield foreman, Paisley was the brickie, ready to build an empire with his own hands.'

53. Clay is so young and has been misled by the wrong people... He might as well have joined the Ku Klux Klan.

54. The wind always seems to blow against catchers when they are running.

55. Fishing is a jerk at one end of a line waiting for a jerk at the other end of a line.

56. A batsman given to run-stealing need not open his mouth to gain the reputation of a wit.

57. I would like a bat with the words WHAT A ROTTEN WICKET-KEEPER stamped in large letters on the back of it.

58. Your BOY, _______

59. I have him on fantasy

60. You tell 'em hard on.

61. Fate ginnastica e non medicina. Abbandonate i libri e datevi all'ippica.

62. We got a good win today. I'm going to be there offensively, there's no question in my mind. But it feels good to contribute in some other way.

63. 'I'm excited (after hitting for the cycle), but I guess it hasn't hit me yet. I'm only the second Mariner to do it and the other is Jay Buhner, who can't run.'

64. 'Why do people sing Take Me Out to The Ballgame when they're already there?'

65. 'I'd rather have a Gold Glove (Award) than a Silver Slugger (Award). Defense is so much more of a team game, and one of my goals this year was to make fewer than 25 errors.'

66. 'Alex is one person, and as it's been shown in New York, one person can't win a championship. He couldn't do it here. He can't do it there. You have to have a team, and you've got to have pitching.' --Rangers owner Tom Hicks, December 24, 2006 [2]

67. There are several differences between a footballl game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also there are more injuries at a football game.

68. 'Head Head Head Head Head!!'

69. 'Not now, I'm wrestling!!' (Said to head during a match on his early run on WWF)

70. Monday, n. In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.

71. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.

72. 'Some folks call tennis a rich people's sport or a white person's game. I guess I started too early because I just thought it was something fun to do. Later, I discovered there was a lot of work to being good in tennis. You've got to make a lot of sacrifices and spend a lot of time if you really want to achieve with this sport, or in any sport, or in anything truly worthwhile.'

73. 'When I took the match point, all the years, all the effort, all the support I had received over the years came together. It's a long way from Brook Field to Wimbledon.'

74. 'I don't want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments,' he once said. 'That's no contribution to society. That [tennis] was purely selfish; that was for me.'

75. all sports are time control demonstrations...

76. A manager uses a relief pitcher like a six shooter -- he fires until it's empty, then takes the gun and throws it at the villain.

77. Natural grass is a wonderful thing for little bugs and sinker-ball pitchers.

78. Our fielders have to catch a lot of balls, or at least deflect them to someone who can.

79. The only active sport I will follow is polo - and most of the work is done by the pony. (1965)

80. If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats? (1996)

81. But in Britain we don't win many gold medals at the Olympics, because we've chosen not to. It's a political statement. 'cause we hate our national anthem. Because it's 'God Save the Queen' you see. God save the queen. Now, the queen lives in a very big house with barbed wire outside and people with guns in front of that. That's one saved fucking queen, I tell you.

82. If Rio Ferdinand is worth ?120,000 a week, Cannavaro is worth a hundred million a day.

83. Cannavaro is having a fantastic World Cup. He is without question the strongest defender at this tournament and the absolute number one in the world.

84. 'Pain is temporary, glory...lasts forever!'

85. 'If I had been born ugly, you would never have heard of Pele.'

86. [When Michael Parkinson asked how soon before kick-off George had made love:] 'Half time!'

87. [On Paul Gascoigne:] 'I once said Gazza's IQ was less than his shirt number and he asked me: 'What's an IQ?''

88. [On the infamous Battle of the Buffet between Manchester United and Arsenal players:] 'That's what children do - throw food. That's not fighting. We were real men. We'd have chinned them.'

89. 'Boss, I think I've found you a genius.' (The telegram sent to Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby by talent scout Bob Bishop, who discovered a 15-year-old Best playing for Cregagh Boys' Club.)

90. 'He's not George Best, but then again, no-one is.' (Commentator Clive Tyldesley.)

91. 'The closest I got to him was when we shook hands at the end of the game.' (Northampton Town player Roy Fairfax, who had been marking Best when he scored six goals in an 8-2 FA Cup win for Man Utd in 1970.)

92. 'Shellito was taken off suffering from twisted blood!' (United team-mate Pat Crerand after Best had given Chelsea full-back Ken Shellito a torrid time.)

93. 'He was able to use either foot - sometimes he seemed to have six.' (Sir Matt Busby)

94. 'After his first training session in heaven, George Best, from his favourite right wing, turned the head of God who was filling in at left-back. I would love him to save me a place in his team, George Best that is, not God.' (Eric Cantona has pays tribute to the late George Best)

95. 'George Best invented rock 'n' roll football' (Former France and Juventus midfield great Michel Platini)

96. 'From the second best player in the world' (On a signed football left as tribute to George Best by Pele)

97. The pat on the back, the arm around the shoulder, the praise for what was done right and the sympathetic nod for what wasn't are as much a part of golf as life itself.

98. I watch a lot of baseball on the radio.

99. To carry a rabbit's foot is a sign that you are a good shot- or have a friend that is.

100. It is hard to tell where the MCC ends and the Church of England begins.