Baseball Quotes

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip

The walk-off win provides one of baseball’s most thrilling outbursts, launching a couple dozen tense teammates out of the dugout into a frenzied mosh pit of elation.

A brick is a biographical film in which a young orphan brick from the wrong side of the track grows up to be one of the most important bricks in all brick kind, as it is now quite literally the cornerstone of one of America’s greatest ballparks.(Fenway)

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.

God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration.

No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference.

They say some of my stars drink whiskey. But I have found that the ones who drink milkshakes don't win many ball games.

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

Babe Ruth

Baseball is to our everyday experience what poetry often is to common speech — a slightly elevated and concentrated form.

Italian-Americans in New York had not been in much of a flag-waving mood prior to DiMaggio's arrival. By the All-Star break, the rookie had established himself as a wonderful player (.358, 10HR, 60 RBIs), fully justifying the acclaim. But Gehrig was even better (.399, 20 HR, 61 RBIs). He was leading the league in nearly every category, including invisibility.

Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it's still being made all over the place, all the time.

Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking. [Dick Cramer]

The reporter asked, "why did you play so hard.""Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who'd never seen my play before, and might never see me again"-Joe DiMaggio

Baseball, of all sports, and maybe of all human endeavors, has no room for cynicism.

Howard Frank Mosher

On the surface, there is something peculiar about turning a portion of one's happiness over to a collection of ballplayers, and perhaps more peculiar still is concerning oneself about ball games played decades before one's birth.

Tom Swift

One of the supreme paradoxes of baseball, and all sports, is that the harder you try to throw a pitch or hit a ball or accomplish something, the smaller your chances are for success. You get the best results not when you apply superhuman effort but when you let the game flow organically and allow yourself to be fully present. You'll often hear scouts say of a great prospect, "The game comes slow to him." It mean the prospect is skilled and poised enough to let the game unfold in its own time, paying no attention to the angst or urgency or doubt, funnelling all awareness to the athletic task at hand.

You didn't play baseball that well with two hands. How do you think you're going to make it with one? "If you're just going to tell me what I can't do, you can leave.

Only one person can own any plate at a time. It belongs to the pitcher, or it belongs to the batter, Aiken, but not to both. You understand.

Allan Dare Pearce

For several years Quinn had been having the same conversations with this man, whose name he did not know. Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. During the season, it was always the most recent game. They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them.

Sometimes, in a tight game with runners on, digging in at short, ready to break with the ball, a peace I'd never felt before would paralyze the diamond. For a moment of eternal stillness I felt as if I were cocked at the very heart of the Midwest.

I see great things in baseball.

The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of sport.

That's why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century--the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports.

I've never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.

I've fallen in love with baseball.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing t

David Halberstam

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.

And it started out fun. We were chattering enthusiastically, flipping between CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. But as the evening wore on, and the numbers rolled in, it got quieter, and I found myself becoming intensely depressed. Why was I putting myself through this? The issues I’ve devoted my life to have become so marginalized by the coverage that they have no possible relevance to me. I can’t even blame the media — people simply don’t care about alternate-party politics. And why should they? I’m so far in the minority that my activism is a joke, a punchline that stopped being funny years ago. It goes beyond rooting for the underdog. It’s not rooting for the Giants: it’s more like, say, rooting for the Twins. But during the Super Bowl.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.

As history of any kind will tell us, when human beings get an opportunity to express their individual selves, a few selves will go completely over the top.

ESPN, is having the ability to foretell future outcomes in sports.

Anthony Liccione

Deep down, it's all baseball, no matter what kind of geometrical shape you play it with.

Vernon D. Burns

That's what happens when you're thirty-seven years old: you do the things you always did but the result is somehow different.

Real ballplayers pass the stuffing by rolling it up in a ball and batting it across the table with a turkey leg.

Baseball was a safe bet. Baseball also didn't have a girlfriend. Then again, baseball didn't have big brown eyes or show a little hint of cleavage under its uniforms. Decisions, decisions.

Rachel Spangler

If mankind was playing a baseball game, he would still be choosing his lineup after the game was over.

Anthony T.Hincks

Athletes are born winners, there not born loosers, and the sooner you understand this, the faster you can take on a winning attitude and become sucessful in life.

Charles R. Sledge Jr.

Why do we remember the Boys of Summer? We remember because we were young when they were, of course. But more, we remember because we feel the ache of guilt and regret. While they were running, jumping, leaping, we were slouched behind typewriters, smoking and drinking, pretending to some mystic communion with men we didn't really know or like. Men from ghettos we didn't dare visit, or rural farms we passed at sixty miles an hour. Loving what they did on the field, we could forget how superior we felt towards them the rest of the time. By cheering them on we proved we had nothing to do with the injustices that kept their lives separate from ours. There's nothing sordid or false about the Boys of Summer. Only our memories smell like sweaty jockstraps.

It is unlikely that we will hit a home run anytime soon but if we are unable to get rid of offensive sports team nicknames, we will strike out.

DiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams.

David Halberstam

Practice hard,Train hard,work hard and Play harder.

Alcurtis Turner

They play, said the old man. Every week the anglos play a game to celebrate who they are. He stopped, raised his cane and fanned the air. One of them whacks it, then sets off like it was a trip around the world, to every one of the bases out there, you know the anglos have bases all over the world, right? Well the one who whacked it runs from one to the next while the others keep taking swings to distract their enemies, and if he doesn't get caught he makes it home and his people welcome him with open arms and cheering.

He speaks in that strange sports talk, telling me about the start of the new season and asks if I follow baseball.tNo. I really don’t.tHe assures me if I stay in town long enough I will become a baseball fan. It’s a requirement of living in St. Louis. Everyone is a Cardinal’s fan.t“Loyal,” he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town.

Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?

Four out of five doctors prescribe baseball for whatever ails you. The fifth guy is a quack.

Worrying about things you can't control is a waste both on the baseball field and in life.

No, I would not say that assault with a baseball bat constitutes "justice being done.

Being a parent is like being a catcher. You gotta handle whatever is thrown your way.

Who’s winning?”“I don’t have a f*cking clue nor do I f*cking care.”Echo’s head ticks back.“Back off, Beth.” I cross the room, drop a kiss on the curve of Echo’s neck and whisper in her ear, “She’d rip me to pieces, too, right now. She’s a b*tch when the Yankees play.”Her eyebrows rise. “Is she a Red Sox fan?”Isaiah chuckles and we both throw him a glare, but he doesn’t notice as he’s absorbed in a car manual.“Beth hates baseball.”Echo’s eyes dart from Beth to the television to me then she waves her hand in the air for an explanation.“She watches,” I explain. “Yankees only. It’s what she does and there are some things we don’t question about each other.”“Just the Yankees?” Echo whispers.“Just the Yankees,” I repeat.“And she hates baseball?”“With a passion.”“That’s...” Echo says in a hushed tone. “That’s messed up.

Perhaps crossing the barriers of time has freed me.

I guess somethings turned out too sad even to be explained with a bases-loaded strikeout.

This girl owns me, whether she realizes it or not. I'm a slave to her will.

His lips are against my ear and I feel the warmth of his body surrounding me, caging me in, comforting me.

This kiss was different from the first one under the olive tree. That one had been unplanned, she was pretty sure. This kiss had intention and hunger branded all over it. It was like one of those kisses you read about in fairy tales—but Alana had never imagined that such a kiss could cause bone-trembling shivers as well as bliss. She’d never considered the downside of the awakening kiss, of how the princess felt when the hero tore through the thorns or scaled the tower and speared heat and sex and life-changing energy into the princess’s world.

He’s letting me see the real him, something he doesn’t allow a lot of people to see.

My heart starts to pound as he gets closer and closer to the stands, never taking his eyes off me.

A soft moan escapes me, making him smile even more. He's too good at this.

I’m frozen in place as his eyes rake over me.

Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else.

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