Baseball Life Quotes & Sayings

Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do
you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove. — Jodi Picoult

I believe the religion of Christ covers the whole man. Why shouldn't a man play baseball or lawn-tennis? ... Don't imagine that you have got to go into a cave to be consecrated, and stay there all your life. Whatever you take up, take it up with all your heart. — Dwight L. Moody

Normally, some people think about 50 as a big moment in life. I kind of think 30 because in your baseball career, 30 was considered on top kind of looking at the end of your career. So I remember thinking about 30 in different ways, but 50 just seems like another step right now. — Cal Ripken Jr.

If someone wants to lead a double life, they will find a way to do it. And they can promise you things until your nerves unfold and you can finally put up your feet. But it can all be a lie. There are no guarantees, even when people mean what they say at the time. People change their minds. People die. And the hurt is as real as a baseball bat. — Stephanie Klein

There are a lot of pitchers in baseball who should celebrate his life and what he did for the game of baseball. — Tommy John

She was so much better than normal life," I say. "She made me better."
Autumn glances over and shakes her head. "Don't. That's not how it works. Nobody makes you be anything. You just are that, whether you like it or not."
She doesn't sound angry, but like she's explaining the world.
"That, then," I say, looking at the empty baseball diamond. "That's what I meant. Just that when I was with her, I was allowed to be better. — Brenna Yovanoff

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.

Hating the Yankees isn't part of my act. It is one of those exquisite times when life and art are in perfect conjunction. — Bill Veeck

It had been one of the biggest landgrabs in the city's history and Bosch knew the story well, having tried all his life to counter his love of baseball and the Dodgers with the ugly story buried beneath the diamond where, as a boy, he watched Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch. It seemed to him that every gleaming success in the city had a dark seam to it somewhere, usually just out of view. — Michael Connelly

Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature. — Robert Redford

Worth. A baseball team, of all things, was at the center of a story about the possibilities - and the limits - of reason in human affairs. Baseball - of all things - was an example of how an unscientific culture responds, or fails to respond, to the scientific method. As I say, I fell in love with a story. The story is about professional baseball and the people who play it. At its center is a man whose life was turned upside down by professional baseball, and who, miraculously, found a way — Michael Lewis

Praise the name of baseball. The word will set captives free. The word will open the eyes of the blind. The word will raise the dead. Have you the word of baseball living inside you? Has the word of baseball become part of you? Do you live it, play it, digest it, forever? Let an old man tell you to make the word of baseball your life. Walk into the world and speak of baseball. Let the word flow through you like water, so that it may quicken the thirst of your fellow man. — W.P. Kinsella

The student body was huge at UT and you had to mature pretty quick, very quick actually. I enjoyed it and it helped me a lot in my life in general - not only in the classroom but on the baseball field as well. — Roger Clemens

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. — Pamela Aares

I would say I was jock. I went to Sierra College. I was a big baseball player. Getting into the MLB was my dream - to become a left-handed pitcher for the Yankees. That's what I was hoping, but life kind of went the other way. — Ryan Guzman

Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That's why they say, "the game is never over until the last man is out." Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game. — W.P. Kinsella

The man on the rock had pitched five outs in the losing game, and had given up two runs on a single. But he'd inherited loaded bases. The story of his life. The story of all our lives. — David James Duncan

If I had admitted my guilt, it would have been the same as putting my head on the chopping block - lifetime ban. Death penalty. I spent my entire life on the baseball fields of America, and I was not going to give up my profession without first seeing some hard evidence ... right or wrong, the punishment didn't fit the crime, so I denied the crime. — Pete Rose

Baseball is the life. — Steve Garvey

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. — Roger Kahn

Troy: Why do we inflict this on ourselves?
Ben: Why? I'll tell you why, 'cause the Red Sox never let you down.
Troy: Huh?
Ben: That's right. I mean - why? Because they haven't won a World Series in a century or so? So what? They're here. Every April, they're here. At 1:05 or at 7:05, there is a game. And if it gets rained out, guess what? They make it up to you. Does anyone else in your life do that? The Red Sox don't get divorced. This is a real family. This is the family that's here for you. — Jimmy Fallon

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed. — Carol Rifka Brunt

I've discovered there is another life besides baseball. You have to be balanced to be a happy person. — Troy Glaus

The questions came ... hurling at him ... like the balls from a baseball pitching machine ... just one after the other without a care or concern of where they went - but he couldn't hit them, he didn't have a baseball bat - he only had a toothpick! — Mallika Nawal

Because of baseball I smelled the rose of life. I wanted to travel, and to have nice clothes. Baseball allowed me to do all those things, and most important, during my time with the Crawfords, it allowed me to become a member of the brotherhood of friendship which will last forever. — Cool Papa Bell

It's always an honor to work with the Twins Community Fund and be a part of all the good that they do. They help people in so many ways. To be part of not only a baseball team, but being a part of something where you're helping people who need help, that's what life is all about really. — Ron Gardenhire

Baseball is a soap opera that plays out day after day, one that a lot of elderly women watch until the characters and the plot becomes a part of their life. She got to enjoy the personal side of the players. They were her kids. The Braves were her family. — Bob Hope

I hope baseball doesn't get to the point where everyone's saying, 'He takes it [steroids]. He takes it. He takes it!' because not all of us do. I've been big my whole life, and I'll always be big. That's all natural. — Adam Dunn

I always thought that there was going to be life after baseball, and so I designed that in my life I would have other interests after baseball that I would be able to step into. And I didn't realize the grip that baseball had on me and on my family. — Nolan Ryan

Baseball needs me because it needs somebody to stir the pot, and I need it because it's my life. It's the means I have to make a little difference in the world. — Hank Aaron

I am convinced that being fully committed to the moment, without any worries about the past or projections into the future, is the best attribute a closer can have. You wonder why the shelf life of so many short relievers is, well, so short? Why guys can be unhittable for a year or two and then disappear? It's because it takes a ton of concentration, and self-belief, to stay in the moment in this way and not let the highs and lows mess with your psyche. — Mariano Rivera

I've only read two books in my life: Baseball Sparkplug and Love Story. — George Brett

You see," Bouton wrote, "you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." Truer words were never written. — John Feinstein

For my children, they spent 15 to 20 years of their life in baseball. And Ruth and I spent so many years of our married life that that was our life. We knew nothing else. — Nolan Ryan

This isn't to play down people who pursue acting ... For me, I do acting just as a fun job. It is a phenomenal job, and I have fun doing it, but I relate more to my martial arts, to my baseball, to my film study. There are more facets to my life that I relate to. — Ryan Potter

Baseball isn't just a game. It's life being played out on a field - a field of dreams - on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all - where men become boys and boys become men, all speaking one universal language without uttering a single word. — Tom Tatum

Baseball was a chapter in my life, and now I'm excited to start another chapter as a hitting coach. — Mark McGwire

The first and last duty of the lover of the game of baseball," Peavine's book began, "whether in the stands or on the field, is the same as that of the lover of life itself: to pay attention to it. When it comes to the position of catcher, as all but fools and shortstops will freely acknowledge, this solemn requirement is doubled. — Michael Chabon

Life is like the baseball season, where even the best team loses at least a third of its games, and even the worst team has its days of brilliance. The goal is not to win every game but to win more than you lose, and if you do that often enough, in the end you may find you have won it all. — Harold S. Kushner

My goal on Earth is not to win a World Series or be the best baseball player who ever lived. That simply is not up to me because I have to wait and see if it is part of the Lord's plan. My goal is to follow the Lord and what he wants me to do so that someday I may enter His kingdom and receive everlasting life. — David Murphy

I had a life-long ambition to be a professional baseball player, but nobody would sign me. — Gerald R. Ford

You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possibly be - in baseball and in life. — Pete Rose

I've been able to do what I love and what I'm passionate about my entire life. I made, you know, an insane amount of money playing baseball. — Curt Schilling

I kind of write about visual art the way Roger Angell writes about baseball, which is to say, you're writing about life: it's a somewhat focused, limited terrain in which you write about everything. — Lawrence Weschler

When he hit it, I knew that it was my ball. But I had to catch it and it seemed like the hardest catch of my life. I said to myself, 'Two hands, just like your dad taught you.' — Darin Erstad

The Golf Hall of Fame is full of players with unusual looking swings. Some of the prettiest swings you've ever seen in your life are made on the far end of the public driving range by guys who couldn't break an egg with a baseball bat. — Peter Jacobsen

The first time I met Crenshaw was about three years ago, right after first grade ended. It was early evening, and my family and I had parked at a rest stop off a highway. I was lying on the grass near a picnic table, gazing up at the stars blinking to life. I heard a noise, a wheels-on-gravel skateboard sound. I sat up on my elbows. Sure enough, a skater on a board was threading his way through the parking lot. I could see right away that he was an unusual guy. He was a black and white kitten. A big one, taller than me. His eyes were the sparkly color of morning grass. He was wearing a black and orange San Francisco Giants baseball cap. He hopped off his board and headed my way. He was standing on two legs just like a human. "Meow," he said. "Meow," I said back, because it seemed polite. — Katherine Applegate

I'm 36 years old, I love my family, I love baseball, and I'm about to become a farmer. But until I heard the voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life. — Ray Kinsella

There was buried in Ruth humanitarianism beyond belief, an intelligence he was never given credit for, a childish desire to be over-virile, living up to credits given his home-run power - and yet a need for intimate affection and respect, and a feverish desire to play baseball, perform, act and live a life he didn't and couldn't take time to understand. — Waite Hoyt

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

And the other was this: the doctor did want to take off my leg because he thought it was necessary. But you must remember boys in those days were raised for two things: work, and then they made their play; and if you couldn't play baseball and box and play football, why, your life was ended. That was in our boyish minds. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Baseball is something more than a game to an American boy; it is his training field for life's work. Destroy his faith in its squareness and honesty and you have destroyed something more; you have planted suspicion of all things in his heart. — Kenesaw Mountain Landis

I never leave a game before the last pitch, because in baseball, as in life and especially politics, you never know what will happen. — Richard M. Nixon

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying. — George Carlin

Baseball shaded my entire outlook on life, because that's how I first saw the world. I looked at everything, even today, through what I learned about the game. Like pacing yourself, focusing yourself, preparing yourself for what you want to do, keeping yourself healthy for the game. I do all that through the eyes of a ballplayer. — Kurt Russell

I'll tell you what's helped me my entire life. I look at baseball as a game. It's something where people can go out, enjoy and have fun. Nothing more. — Harry Caray

The first books I was interested in were all about baseball. But I can't think of one single book that changed my life in any way. — Charles Kuralt

They say I couldn't play football, I was too small. They say I couldn't play basketball, I wasn't tall. They say I couldn't play baseball at all and now everyday of my life, I ball. — Lil' Wayne

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

There is a rare exception of mainstream sports that have a fatality rate. That's motor sports and rodeo, ... football, baseball, basketball, hockey, you make a mistake and you give up a run or some points. In these two sports, if you make a mistake, it could cost you your life. — Don Andrews

That which interests most people leaves me without any interest at all. This includes a list of things such as: social dancing, riding roller coasters, going to zoos, picnics, movies, planetariums, watching tv, baseball games; going to funerals, weddings, parties, basketball games, auto races, poetry readings, museums, rallies, demonstrations, protests, children's plays, adult plays ... I am not interested in beaches, swimming, skiing, Christmas, New Year's, the 4th of July, rock music, world history, space exploration, pet dogs, soccer, cathedrals and great works of Art. How can a man who is interested in almost nothing write about anything? Well, I do. I write and I write about what's left over: a stray dog walking down the street, a wife murdering her husband, the thoughts and feelings of a rapist as he bites into a hamburger sandwich; life in the factory, life in the streets and rooms of the poor and mutilated and the insane, crap like that, I write a lot of crap like that — Charles Bukowski

We ought also to learn, beginning early, that we don't always succeed. A good batting average in baseball is .300; a good batting average in life is a great deal lower than that. Life holds many more defeats than victories for all of us. Shouldn't we get used to this early? We should learn, too, to aim higher than we think we can hit. "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?" What we fail to do today, we, or someone, may do tomorrow. Our failure may pave the way for someone else's success. — Anonymous

In college, I was like most young men, doing what pleased me and looking out mainly for my own interest. I had success in baseball and was very popular in school but all these things, which the world chases after, left me empty and unfulfilled. Through a series of trials and difficult times, the Lord opened my eyes to my sin and what would truly fulfill me. June 9, 2001, I received forgiveness and the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. — Luke Scott

Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer. — Jodi Picoult

I've played for teams that were family-oriented organizations. They made you feel like family. The Yankees are strictly a business. Baseball is your life and everything else is secondary. — Gary Sheffield

My real-life athletic career was not very much. I played Little League baseball. — Dennis Quaid

One of the hardest things in life to accept is a called third strike. — Robert Frost

Baseball is a lot like life. It's a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life. — Ernie Harwell

Vampire in real life aren't like the ones in the movies. They weren't going to be playing baseball in a thunderstorm. — Jacqueline Carey

Some well-meaning folks think if we stop talking about racism, it'll magically disappear, like the smell of an errant fart. But like a fart, people might try to be polite and ignore it, but everyone knows it's there. Avoidance has never been a great tactic in solving any problem. For most situations in life, not addressing what's going wrong only makes matters worse. It's like someone breaks your arm, and the person who slammed the baseball bat into it is saying, 'The only reason it won't heal is because you keep complaining that it hurts.' How about you get me a cast so the bone can set straight again? America does not want to put the effort into providing this cast. This is why we must talk about race, and we must do it openly. — Luvvie Ajayi

I don't know how long we talked about that game the first time my dad showed me the ticket stub. He admitted he hadn't even been sure that he still had it, that he was surprised when he'd been able to find it. But we've spent hours and hours and hours talking about it since. And it's pretty amazing, because that ticket stub sat in a box for two decades - once it let my dad into a stadium to see a baseball game, and then later, it let me into my dad's world, into his past, to learn about the man who taught me to love a game so passionately that it shaped nearly every aspect of my life. — Tucker Elliot

Luke Archer kissed like he played baseball - intently, skillfully, and like he'd spent his whole life practicing for this one moment in time. — Nicole Williams

There is something special about baseball that goes far deeper than being a game. It is the father-son relationship that is built, the life lessons that are taught in the process of playing a game and the ability to overcome not succeeding all of the time and still considering yourself a success. — JohnA Passaro

Baseball's my life. — Justin Verlander

Sometimes I lie awake ay night, and I wonder, "is life like golf or is it more like baseball?" Then a voice comes to me out of the dark that says, "try shuffleboard. — Charles M. Schulz

My life was typical. I played a little Little League baseball. I never wanted for food. I always had shoes. I had a room. There were no great tragedies. There were the typical ups and downs but I wouldn' t say it was at all sad. We were Jewish and living in the suburbs so there was a slightly neurotic bent to it, but I can't point to anything where a boy overcame a tragedy to become a comedian. As my grandmother used to say, 'I can't complain. — Jon Stewart

I went to school, but nobody really noticed me. I just came to school, didn't dress up or anything - just a ghost. I just worked out and went out to the field and went the baseball route. That's how I've always been my whole life. — Bryce Harper

I don't know what you guys say, but at home, life is way different from baseball. — Barry Bonds

If you had a pill that would guarantee a pitcher 20 wins, but might take five years off his life, he'd take it. — Jim Bouton

I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically. — John Madden

Baseball is more than a game. It's like life played out on a field. — Juliana Hatfield

People say I don't have great tools. They say that I can't throw like Ellis Valentine or run like Tim Raines or hit with power like Mike Schmidt. Who can? I make up for it in other ways, by putting out a little bit more. That's my theory, to go through life hustling. In the big leagues, hustle usually means being in the right place at the right time. It means backing up a base. It means backing up your teammate. It means taking that headfirst slide. It means doing everything you can do to win a baseball game. — Pete Rose

I enjoy being out with the fans, I enjoy talking baseball, but to get up and tell my life story ... I'm not comfortable doing that. — Bruce Sutter

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me. — Matt Kemp

A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. — Jim Bouton

I do what I've trained my whole life to do. I watch the ball. I keep my eye on the ball. I never stop watching.
I watch it as it sails past me and lands in the catcher's mitt, a perfect and glorious strike three. — Barry Lyga

She wanted to believe him so much, but fear held her in its grasp more firmly than ever before. And if she made the wrong decision, she would have to live with the result for the rest of her life. That could be a long time and she'd already made one wrong choice regarding marriage and love. What if she made another? She sat there remembering the way he'd been good to her children, the way he'd made love to her that first time, soothing her fears. She remembered how he'd finally begun to teach her the shipping business, the impromptu baseball game with Philip, the picnic in her office, the trip to his family home, and all the little things that made her laugh. From the very first he'd been kind to her, while lying repeatedly regarding the business. The business seemed to be his Achilles' heel and he'd just given it to her. — Sylvia McDaniel

I loved throwing a baseball. It is so important to find something in life you feel crazy about. Because you are so passionate you naturally practice. The hard work that it takes to do something well will come easily. — Jim Abbott

Why did the two most important things in her life have to require her attention at exactly the same time? — Rachel Spangler

I think it's really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to
the beauty of playing baseball. — George W. Bush

I'm not defined by baseball. I'd love for the Hall of Fame to happen, but if it doesn't, my life won't change. I'll still be coaching my boy's games. — Tom Glavine

That's one of the great gifts of this, the greatest of all games, baseball: it allows you, still, to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn't begun to batter optimism. — Mike Barnicle

Young players need to know how to take care of themselves for life after baseball. — Barry Bonds

All the courage and competitiveness of Jackie Robinson affects me to this day. If I patterned my life after anyone it was him, not because he was the first black baseball player in the majors but because he was a hero. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

He wakes! The steel giant wakes! Long, long ago he rose from the sea, with the blood of life streaming from his belly. And then they buried him with thunder ... and ... carrots ... at Stonehenge. But now he wakes again. The Age of Rotten Fish is over; the Age of Steel and Bombs is upon us. And he had come to give us life and strength, to free us form these cells, to restore us once again to baseball and ping pong! Sent by God from the Great Beyond!!! — Ryu Murakami

You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, 'Can't anybody here play this game?' There comes a time in every man's life and I've had plenty of them. — Casey Stengel

In life you are going to make mistakes, you're going to fall down, but it's the getting up that counts. Just like in baseball: you'll get a few hits, but most likely, you'll strike out more than you'll get on base. But don't quit. Find your focus, relax, take a deep breath and give it a good swing — Dave Pelzer

I found out early in life that I could hit a baseball farther than most players, and that's what I tried to do. — Harmon Killebrew

I have played professional baseball for over half my life. From the time I picked up a baseball glove, I did not want to put it down. — Bernie Williams

For many in baseball September is a month of stark contrast with April, when everyone had dared to hope. If baseball is a lot like life, as pundits declare, it is because life is more about losing than winning. — John Thorn