Quotes & Sayings About Ball Games

I could always throw the ball pretty well and I worked pretty hard at learning how to play the game. But I didn't consider it work as a kid, since I just loved playing baseball. — Jim Abbott

When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball." They say, "Play ball." — Willie Stargell

The students appeared to be ten or eleven. They were playing some trust game where the students would fall from things and be caught, or get wrapped up in a bag and dragged around and then released.
-I have never understood these games, said Loring. I don't know why you would want to make children more trusting. That is their principle fault to begin with. — Jesse Ball

Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat. — Tallulah Bankhead

We are a team. We share the ball, we share the game, we share the worries. — Bill Shankly

If [the Packers] can protect Aaron Rodgers and allow him to throw the ball down the field this game will not even be a contest. But if they do not, and Minnesota can come in here and run the football, we are going to have ourselves a good game tonight. — Marshall Faulk

That's the name of the game ... pleasing the customer. If we ever lose sight of that fact, we've lost the ball game. — Ray Kroc

I think I need to spend some time with safari but what arrests my attention are salient, sadomasochism, saccadic, and salad days. I think I will go learn more about coral only to learn a lot more about corollary and counterturn and coffin nail. I go from magnificence to means to marquee to maniac to distyle, ductile, hindsight, shell game, veronica, yardstick, ball field, magpie, variegated, and close shave. — Dara Wier

Today's Little Leaguers, and there are millions of them each year, pick up how to hit and throw and field just by watching games on TV. By the time they're out of high school, the good ones are almost ready to play professional ball. — Mickey Mantle

You play all your life and train all your life and then you are not playing. It's not easy to deal with. But you can't roll up in a ball and hope it goes away. You have to take it on the chin and train hard and be prepared to play. We all know the game changes in an instant and anything can happen so you have to keep the hope that comes your way. — Shay Given

Pot is a better drug than alcohol. I'll prove it to you. You're at a ball game or a concert, and someone's really violent and agressive and obnoxious, are they drunk or are they smoking pot? — Bill Hicks

I have a feeling that when you're on the cover, they supe up all your abilities in the game to a pretty high level. I'm excited to see what that equates to, like if I can throw the ball 100 yards in the air or something. — Drew Brees

I was a kid who loved to play games. Any kind of game, any kind of ball. Give me a baseball, give me a basketball, give me something I can bounce and throw. — Terry Bradshaw

Most ball games are lost, not won. — Casey Stengel

Eating's going to be a whole new ball game. I may even have to buy a new pair of trousers. — Lester Piggott

I cannot consider fighting in competitive Manly Fun any more than I can consider pitting my running, swimming or climbing body against other bodies. Nothing, then, or now, arouses me or will ever arouse me from a perfect disinterest in ball games. — Hal Porter

The ball is round, the game is long. — Bjorn Borg

She crawled into her bed and curled into a tiny ball. She was suddenly aware of how small the space was that she was occupying compared to the largeness of the world. With a heavy pain in her chest she closed her eyes. She no longer resisted sleep for she knew that her dreadful nightmares were unavoidable. It was about time she got used to them. She held onto the image of Will's face as long as she could, desperately hoping that some of his goodness would carry on into the night. — Julia Barkey

Of course managers win ball games. — Walter Alston

Golf is a stupid game. You tee up this little ball, really this tiny ball. Then you hit it, try to find it, hit it. And the goal is to get it into a little hole placed in a hard spot. — Juli Inkster

I've found is that by doing stand-up, I've actually learned how to combat depression. I don't have clinical, but I've definitely had my bouts with it. I just figured out that it's a choice. You're in control of your brain. When your brain is sending you bad information or bad thoughts, you can decide to go to the gym, or write a new joke - or if you're on the road, go to a ball game ... something that's going to get the blood going. Or you can let those thoughts take you right down the rabbit hole. — Bill Burr

You should've thought of that before becoming a fireman."
"Thought!" he said. "Was I given a choice? I was raised to think the best thing in the world is not to read. The best thing is television and radio and ball games and a home I can't afford and, Good Lord, now, only now I realize what I've done. My grandfather and father were firemen. Walking in my sleep I followed them. — Ray Bradbury

I think it's all a coincidence. I've pitched some poor games here and got a no-decision. But just give me the ball. I don't care where I pitch. — Jamie Moyer

Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots - but you have to play the ball where it lies. — Bobby Jones

I threw the opening pitch at a Blue Jays game, and after the pitch, the mascot asked me if I wanted him to sign the game ball, which I thought was funny. What would he write? "Best Wishes, Some Guy in a Bird Suit"?" — Ken Jennings

People think I played 10 years. I played 68 ball games. — Gale Sayers

Stevie Wonder used to come the ball games and they would have a guy sitting with him. And the guy would be holding on to his arm, telling him what's going on, and he would say, "Hey, the big chocolate guy just put down a thunder dunk. The chocolate guy with another monster dunk." And Stevie Wonder actually gave me the nickname Chocolate Thunder. — Darryl Dawkins

They were childless - Dan Needham suggested that their sexual roles might be so "reversed" as to make childbearing difficult - and their attendance at Little League games was marked by a constant disapproval of the sport: that little girls were not allowed to play in the Little League was an example of sexual stereotyping that exercised the Dowlings' humorlessness and fury. Should they have a daughter, they warned, she would play in the Little League. They were a couple with a theme - sadly, it was their only theme, and a small theme, and they overplayed it, but a young couple with such a burning mission was quite interesting to the generally slow, accepting types who were more typical in Gravesend. Mr. Chickering, our fat coach and manager, lived in dread of the day the Dowlings might produce a daughter. Mr. Chickering was of the old school - he believed that only boys should play baseball, and that girls should watch them play, or else play soft-ball. — John Irving

I'd rather play in the major leagues and have some bad games than play consistently good ball in the minors. — Simon Sinek

I'd like to think I did well. I'd like to think that, if I had a must-win game, the guys I played with would want me to have the ball. But no, I don't think I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. — Curt Schilling

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

Yelling doesn't win ball games. It doesn't put any points on the scoreboard. And I don't think words win ball games all the time. Players do. Preparation does. — Jerry Tarkanian

'Madden' is all about speed, and the Falcons have it on both sides of the ball. I love playing sports games. I played my PlayStation so much, I pretty much wore it out. — Carl Crawford

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

It's easy to keep score at a football game because it's just how many times you get the ball over the goal. But, when you ask an audience to tell us how many times the invisible ball got over the invisible goal, and they go, "Well, it was 46," they're just making it up. So, if you're listening to that, as though you're actually listening to the score of a football game, you're misleading yourself. — Gus Van Sant

I would probably be a linebacker today. I wouldn't be carrying the ball 20 or 25 times a game. — Bronko Nagurski

I try to anticipate the ball well. That's something that's helped me since when I was a kid. Just learning to anticipate and read the game well. That's helped me. When I moved over to Spain and I was 15 I was playing with big guys who were 22 years to 28 years old and I was 15 so I couldn't beat them with power. I had to beat them with touch shots and variety and anticipation and all of those things. I learned a lot when I was over there. — Andy Murray

I've been watching Messi for some time now, and his ability to decide games and keep possession of the ball is amazing. — Kobe Bryant

It's really hard to perfect one aspect of your kicking game when you're spending some of your time kicking with a holder, some of your time kicking off a tee, and some of your time drop-kicking the ball. To be able to concentrate just on my punting responsibilities will do wonders for me. — Pat McAfee

I am not ashamed to admit that in the games against Barcelona I spent a lot of the time just hoping he would take up positions as far away from me as possible. Elusive is the word that immediately springs to mind when I think about Messi's style of play. You think you have an eye on him and then - blink - he has gone, only to reappear somewhere else in space, with the ball. — Paul Scholes

Children must receive music instruction as naturally as food, with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game, and this must happen from the beginning of their lives. — Leonard Bernstein

We have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. — Donald Trump

She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath, and then you can hear a pin drop, and I'm feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it's not me, that it's not me, that it's not me.
Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not me.
It's Primrose Everdeen. — Suzanne Collins

It is the best of all games for me. It frequently escapes from the pattern of sport and assumes the form of a virile ballet. It is purer than any dance because the actions of the players are not governed by music or crowded into a formula by a director. The movement is natural and unrehearsed and controlled only by the unexpected flight of the ball. — Jimmy Cannon

I scored a touchdown on the first reception I made in the NFL and spiked the ball. The instant I did, I felt horrible and couldn't wait for the game to end so I could call Coach Bryant and apologize. He said he didn't even notice, but I never spiked the ball again. — Ozzie Newsome

Flashing Lights In My Mind
Going Back to The Time
Playing Games in the Street
Kicking Balls with My Feet
Theres a Numb in my toes
Standing close to the edge
Theres a ball of my clothes at the end of your bed
As I feel myself fall
Make a joke of it all — One Direction

Golf is more exacting than racing, cards, speculation, or matrimony. In almost all other games you pit yourself against a mortal foe; in golf it is yourself against the world: no human being stays your progress as you drive your ball over the face of the globe. — Arnold Haultain

Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all. — Dr. Seuss

Movies are a whole different ball-game, now. It's much more of a business - very scientific. — Sylvester Stallone

I really don't care much about baseball, or looking at ball games, major or minor. All my interest in baseball is in its statistics. — Ernest Lanigan

You may be asking yourself at this very moment, Why isn't Stormie's husband writing this book? The answer is simple. He's just like you. He is a busy man, with places to go, people to see, work to do, a family to support, food to eat, a life to live, golf to play, ball games to watch, channels to flip, and a chronic lack of patience when it comes to writing. It's not that he doesn't pray. — Stormie O'martian

In real life I'm not the character I play in my films. I'm reasonably competent, I work very hard, I'm disciplined, I lead a very middle class life. I work in the mornings, I have lunch, I practise my clarinet, I go to the movies, I eat out in restaurants or watch ball games on television or at the ball games. — Woody Allen

Giving advice is like playing pinball: only by pushing and pulling can you encourage the ball to go in a new direction and increase your score. But too much pushing and pulling can cause a tilt and stop the game. — Chip R. Bell

To hear that you're doing something that other people are enjoying, it's a fun game. It's like hitting a tennis ball over the net, and somebody hits it back. That's what it feels like with the fans. It feels like someone else is participating in my creation, and it's quite incredible. — Kristin Bauer Van Straten

Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes. — Hayley Mills

Steph is scary. I've never seen anyone who can shoot the ball off the dribble like him. He got it going in 4th. Every game is different. — LeBron James

I'm still no good at ball-and-stick games. If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke. — Neil Peart

Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don't think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base - in both senses - greed. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of the brontosaurus. — John Fowles

By these pleasures it is permitted to relax the mind with play, in turmoils of the mind, or when our labors are light, or in great tension, or as a method of passing the time. A reliable witness is Cicero, when he says (De Oratore, 2): 'men who are accustomed to hard daily toil, when by reason of the weather they are kept from their work, betake themselves to playing with a ball, or with knucklebones or with dice, or they may also contrive for themselves some new game at their leisure.' — Gerolamo Cardano

Right from the beginning, I have been a Tiger fan and nothing else," Max Lapides said this summer. "Other men can happily go to ball games wherever they happen to find themselves - not me. My interest is the Tigers. They are the sun, and all the twenty-three other teams are satellites. — Roger Angell

Outside, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters. — Aldous Huxley

Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?' 'It ain't hardly legal if you don't. — Edna Ferber

Nothing makes a pitcher feel more secure than the sight of his teammates circling the bases during a ball game. — Jim Brosnan

Vic Wertz once hit a ball rather famously that was later described as such: 'It would have been a home run in any other park - including Yellowstone.' Instead, he's remembered as the guy who got robbed by Willie Mays' spectacular catch during the 1954 World Series between the Indians and the Giants, a play that remains one of the game's all-time greatest defensive efforts. What people often forget about Wertz is that his greatest battle wasn't that one at bat, and that one out never defined his career. He was stricken with polio in 1955, and after 74 games his season was over and his career was hanging in the balance. 'The Catch' by Willie Mays couldn't keep him down, and neither could polio - he came back in 1956, and despite playing in only 136 games he belted 32 home runs with 106 RBIs. — Tucker Elliot

Being an entrepreneur, everyone needs to hear a personal anecdote from you once in a while or see you go out of your way to make someone's day. Maybe it's time for a party at your house to unwind, or an afternoon off with the team to attend the ball game. — Martin Zwilling

I'm only interested in winning ball games and I can't be worrying about whether the sun's out or the moon's out. — Jim Frey

And so the game went on in this manner, a throng of children playing keep-away from a bowling ball tossed back and forth between two plump ogres. The air filled with shrieks and cheers and shouts of laughter as daring players thrilled at the sport. That is, all but the few poor souls knocked flat and captured. No laughter rose from behind bars because those in the birdcage knew what was in store. They would soon be lunch for a couple of hungry ogres.
Now you might be thinking - didn't Gavin call it fun when he was swallowed by a wolf earlier? And didn't he tell that raven-haired girl it doesn't hurt to be swallowed whole by a bear? All true, all true. But here's a secret you might not know.
Ogres chew their food.
Luckily, it's only the first bite that stings. — Richelle E. Goodrich

As of right now, I have no desire. I've watched several games and played pickup ball thinking I'd have the feeling I'd like to get back, but I didn't have that feeling. I don't really miss the game. — Antonio Davis

One of the more bizarre games I played as a kid was something called 'kill the man.' It was a cross between football and rugby, which found the person carrying the ball a target of some hungry tacklers. I still don't know why we enjoyed the game because it was impossible to win. — Chuck Todd

One time I dropped a fly ball in Milwaukee and, after the game, the writers asked me what happened. I told them, 'Well, I was looking up and a UFO flew right across. It was weird. I never saw anything like that in my life.' Man, I was only joking and they wrote it up and put it in the paper. — Jesse Barfield

As a quarterback, you try to manage the game. It's not just throwing the ball. You have to manage the running game and getting out of bad situations and there are a lot of things to it. That's what I'm trying to do. — Eli Manning

There's only one ball game for any writer, and it's to keep you turning the pages. That's the whole ball game. That's what I have to do. — Mike Lupica

The ball is round so that the game can change direction — Sepp Herberger

Go on daddy-daughter dates and father-and-sons' outings with your children. As a family, go on campouts and picnics, to ball games and recitals, to school programs, and so forth. Having Dad there makes all the difference. — Ezra Taft Benson

The reason people like to watch ball games is because they don't really know exactly what's going to happen from moment to moment. That's why you watch the entire thing. — Isaac Mizrahi

I have the opportunity to control what happens in a game. I'll have the ball in my hand, and only I know what I'm going to do with it. — Clinton Portis

American business can out-think, out-work, out-perform any nation in the world. But we can't beat the competition if we don't get in the ball game. — George H. W. Bush

The problem with art is, it's not like the game of golf where you put the ball in the hole. There's no umpire; there's no judge. There are no rules. It's one of its problems. But it's also one of the great things about art. It becomes a question of what lasts. — Richard Prince

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. — Thomas Jefferson

What makes this game so delightful is that when both teams get the ball they are attacking their opponents goal. — Jimmy Hill

About a minute-and-a-half to go. He goes on a down-and-in pass. As soon as he caught it, I really puffed him, and his head snapped and the ball flew, and Chuck Weber fell on it. I clenched my fist, I turned around, and I closed my eyes and I said, 'This f-in game is over.' — Chuck Bednarik

Many of us enjoy going to ball games and watching them on television. I am no exception. I love to watch a good athletic contest. If we spend excessive time with sporting events, however, we may neglect things that are much more important. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

He reminds me of Michael Jordan. "You look and they have similar games where they want to lead their team to victory, no matter if they have to shoot the ball every time or if they have to rebound or pass, they're going to find a way to win." I've always said that Kobe Bryant is the best scorer in our game today and he's definitely proving himself. — LeBron James

I think the Americans don't understand that this is a complicated new ball game. People everywhere have seen that a few determined people who were not scared to die can create a huge upheaval within a major superpower. — Imran Khan

The ball is an essential part of the game. — Johan Cruijff

Hitting a golf ball and putting have nothing in common. They're two different games. You work all your life to perfect a repeating swing that will get you to the greens, and then you have to try to do something that is totally unrelated. There shouldn't be any cups, just flag sticks. And then the man who hit the most fairways and greens and got closest to the pins would be the tournament winner. — Ben Hogan

I should curl up in a ball and cry. Instead i think about everything in the whole entire world that makes me angry - There is a lot, oh, there is a lot - and I start singing Justin Bieber at the top of my lungs. — Kiersten White

No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. — Emily St. John Mandel

The no-hitter was the highlight of my career. The specialness of it, I didn't know how lasting it would be when it happened. Everywhere I go, people talk about that game, how exciting it was. That makes me very proud. I'm awfully happy that a ball didn't bloop in somewhere. — Jim Abbott

You know, you can try and plan [filming] as much as you want, but you get there on game day and you get thrown a curve ball, I guess, hey, the game plan goes out the window. You've got to adapt. — Michael B. Jordan

Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. — Thomas Jefferson

I approach football like a street-ball game, like I'm playing with the fellas in the yard. — Simeon Rice

In the closing seconds of every game, I want the ball in my hands for the last shot - not in anybody else's, not in anybody else's in the world. — Larry Bird

It's like you came to a controversy and a ball game breaks out. — Matt Keough

I've just discovered the secret of golf. You can't play a really hot game unless you're so miserable that you don't worry over your shots. Take the case of a chip shot, for instance. If you're really wretched, you don't care where the ball is going and so you don't raise your head to see. Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at the top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro? — P.G. Wodehouse

I'm mad at him, too, for being out late. But I'm not mad enough to take a chance on losing a ball game and possibly the pennant. — Casey Stengel

Usually when we lose a game is because we turn the ball over or not play well enough and usually it is the turnover thing. We have to take care of the ball. It is starts with me and not turning it over. — Ben Roethlisberger

The game has changed since the '70s as more coaches have looked at ways to make it tougher on defenses. But I'm glad my career turned out the way it did - I would have never gotten a chance to learn the defensive side of the ball. — Tony Dungy

Fame is a funny thing. I like doing normal things. I like going to fairs. I like going to ball games. I like going to Disney World or a big field on the Fourth of July and having picnics with friends. The problem is you're either worried you're going to be recognized, or you're thankful you're not. It's always there. — Chris Evans

Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to. — Sherry Turkle