Quotes & Sayings About Baseball Players

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere. While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, have to get out there in front of people, writer who tend to be shy, get to stay at home and still be public. — Anne Lamott

Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail. — John Thorn

Do you know the nicest thing about looking at pictures of a 1950's baseball park? The only people wearing baseball caps are the players. — George Carlin

Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on. — Peter Ueberroth

I think one of the most difficult things for anyone who's played baseball is to accept the fact that maybe the players today are playing just as well as ever. — Ralph Kiner

All I can say is I've been reading the lips of bleeped-out words, angry baseball players, and stoned-out rock stars on awards shows for years and it's been hilarious. Everyone is always asking me what the bleeped-out parts are saying. — Marlee Matlin

It is dangerous to spring to obvious conclusions about baseball or, for that matter, ball players. Baseball is not an obvious game. — Roger Kahn

Moneyball. As the character played
by Jonah Hill argues convincingly to Brad Pitt's character,
baseball teams often overpay for young, untested talent or big
name players because they don't know how else to set an accurate price. — Grewal

Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules - which say that you can play while you're appealing - I don't see what anyone would be in arms about. — Pete Rose

I didn't run from the situation. I didn't hide the ordeal from the reporters like the sissy baseball players. I fought it head-on ... We dealt with it. It's over. And now we're moving on. — James Toney

Each kid got a small allowance for helping with the harvests, and Kiernan would always head straight to the tobacco shop. Not for cigarettes. At first, he even threw the cigarettes away, but later he'd save them and sell them to the older kids to get enough money for another pack.
Kiernan didn't want the smokes. He wanted the baseball cards.
When we got back to the Farm, Kiernan would sketch out a baseball diamond in the dirt and we'd stage games with the players from the cards he collected. — Rysa Walker

As much as we disliked the Yankees, fans and players alike, they were good for baseball. They consistently unsuccessful teams like the Browns, Senators, and A's paid a lot of their bills with those big crowds that poured through the gates when the Yankees came to town. — Bob Feller

Even with the benefit of steroids most modern players still couldn't hit as many home runs as Babe Ruth hit on hotdogs. — Bill Bryson

It really gets into your system. All baseball players have this internal clock around February when it starts to kick in and the juices start to flow. I think underestimated how much I was going to miss it. — David Cone

The more that Japanese players go to the big leagues to play and succeed, the more that will serve to inspire young kids in Japan to want to become baseball players when they grow up. — Ichiro Suzuki

Some coaches believed they could judge a player's performance simply by watching it. In this they were deeply mistaken. The naked eye was an inadequate tool for learning what you needed to know to evaluate baseball players and baseball games. Think about it. One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks. The difference between a good hitter and an average hitter is simply not visible-it is a matter of record — Michael Lewis

It's not in baseball's interest or the players' interest to be taking this stance. It's the people's game. — Fay Vincent

A good professional athlete must have the love of a little boy. And the good players feel the kind of love for the game that they did when they were Little Leaguers. — Tom Seaver

For instance, a new kind of rich person named John Henry bought the Florida Marlins in January 1999. Most baseball owners were either heirs, or empire builders of one sort or another, or both. Henry had made his money in the intelligent end of the financial markets. He had an instinctive feel for the way statistical analysis could turn up inefficiencies in human affairs. Inefficiencies in the financial markets had made Henry a billionaire - and he saw some familiar idiocies in the market for baseball players. — Anonymous

Whatever America needs, the world will supply. Cocaine? Colombia steps to the plate. Shortage of farmworkers, corn detasselers? Thank God for Mexico. Baseball players? Viva Dominica. Need more interns? India, Philippines zindabad!" I — Abraham Verghese

The great thing about baseball players, from the point of view of personal hygiene, is how seldom they break a sweat. — Michael Lewis

My buddies and I wrote letters to hundreds of pofessional players, asking for autographed photos. Occasionally one responded, and to get a photo in th email was a reason to strut. — John Grisham

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

Normal relations, never. We should never forget what has happened to the people in Cuba for forty years. All baseball cares about is getting players out of Cuba. It doesn't care about the suffering, just money. The Orioles shouldn't have gone to Cuba. This is a free county, but that's the way I feel. — Luis Tiant

It's no secret what's going on in baseball. At least half the players are using steroids. — Ken Caminiti

I heard Bob Weinstein actually likened actors to baseball players. You work for a while then all of a sudden you go through a dry spell. — Michael Cera

Baseball is just a game. But like religion, it has rituals. I need rituals. I need traditions. I need something to believe in, whether I worship in a church or a stadium. I believe in the Yankees and then divorced them and came all the way back to believing in them again, and what I have learned, if anything, is this: My belief, my faith, transcends individual players and is deeper than the outcome of any game, any season. It is unshakable. — Jane Heller

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

People say baseball players should go out and have fun. No way. To me, baseball is pressure, I always feel it. This is work. The fun is afterwards, when you shake hands. — Dennis Eckersley

The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health
congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher. — Calvin Trillin

However, more important to all of that: the players played the game as a true team. There are many teams in baseball, but not all play as a team. Many merely play as a group of talented athletes, which is a huge difference over the course of a long season. — Michael Delaware

Everybody used to say that baseball players can't dress and athletes can't dress. You know, a lot of athletes now are trying to prove everybody wrong, though there are some athletes that try too hard and try to do over-the-top things. But me, I try to be simple and just make whatever I'm wearing look good. — Matt Kemp

Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players. — James Surowiecki

And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.' — John Thorn

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

I find that rock climbing is the finest, most healthiest sport in the whole world. It is much healthier than most; look at baseball, where 10 000 sit on their ass to watch a handful of players — John Salathe

To Replogle, the players were victims. The owners poured out a stream of pious, pompous verbiage about how pure they were. The gamblers said nothing, kept themselves hidden, protected themselves - and when they said anything, it was strictly for cash, with immunity, no less. But the ballplayers didn't even know enough to call a lawyer. They only knew how to play baseball. — Eliot Asinof

Basketball's eras are defined by teams - Celtics, Lakers, Bulls - and baseball's epochs are defined by players - Ruth, Robinson, Mantle - but with football, it's the sideline strategists, the nutty professors and top coated Lears. — J.R. Moehringer

We're baseball players. We don't need guys telling us, 'Hey, you need to hurry. Hey, you need to do this. Hey, you need to step up.' We are professionals, we can do that without anybody telling us. I'm OK with it, but we need to do it on our own. — Bengie Molina

Baseball players practice, runners practice, so how can you practice being funny? You get up onstage. You train as an improviser, playing make-believe, using the vernacular of improvisation, saying 'yes and' to other people's ideas, making statements. — Ali Farahnakian

Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, wrote in the New York Times in February 2009, The virus that infected professional baseball in the 1990s, the use of statistics to find new and better ways to value players and strategies, has found its way into every major sport. Not just basketball and football, but also soccer and cricket and rugby and, for all I know, snooker and darts - — Anonymous

Give me five players like Robinson and a pitcher and I'll beat any nine-man team in baseball. — Chuck Dressen

Major League Baseball's labor negotiations involve two paradoxes. The players' union's primary objective is to protect the revenues of a very few very rich owners - principally, the Yankees'. The owners' primary objective is a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. The union believes that unconstrained spending by the richest three teams pulls up all payrolls. Most owners believe that baseball's problems
competitive imbalance, the parlous financial conditions of many clubs
result from large and growing disparities of what are mistakenly treated as 'local' revenues. — George Will

Baseball is known for superstitious players and cursed teams - and at the root of every curse there's a story. Boston's curse was to trade Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Cubs fans claim a billy goat is responsible for their futility. And Cleveland's curse? The club struggled after its Pennant-winning 1954 season, but it was rich with optimism just two years later as an onslaught of new talent promised to lift the club once more to the ranks of baseball's elite - and by 1959 the club was contending for the Pennant again. And then GM Frank Lane traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers and cursed everything. — Tucker Elliot

Commenting on baseball players who test positive for steroids: It?s an announced test, so you not only failed the steroid test, you failed the IQ test. — Bob Costas

A baseball manager recognizes a nonphysical talent, hustle, as an essential gift of great players and great teams. It is the characteristic of running faster than necessary, moving sooner than necessary, trying harder than necessary. It is essential for great programming teams, too. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

When you're an expert in a subject, you can retain new factoids on your favorite topic easily. This only works for the subjects you're truly passionate about, though. Baseball fans can reel off stats for their favorite players, then space out on their own birthday. — Clive Thompson

I've seen the growth of this game in this country, the stadiums that were built, the great European players that have come and the great American players who've been created. Americans want to be number one at everything. And they are at baseball, football, basketball. Soccer is growing fast, and I want to be a part of that. — David Beckham

Despite the situation in Cuba, I had a chance to play on the national team; and compared to other baseball players and other people in Cuba, I had the opportunity to live at a level that was not very high class but in the middle. — Yoenis Cespedes

I developed a term that is used in the game right now called sacking a quarterback. Sacking a quarterback is just like you devastate a city or you cream a multitude of people. I mean it's just like you put all the offensive players in one bag and I just take a baseball bat and beat on the bag. — Deacon Jones

A lot of students just don't understand what's out there," she told me, shaking her head. "You have the kids who plan on being baseball players but don't even play on the high school team because the coach is mean to them. — J.D. Vance

It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay. — Raymond Chandler

There was but one question he left unasked, and it vibrated between his lines: if gross miscalculations of a person's value could occur on a baseball field, before a live audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in other lines of work? If professional baseball players could be over- or under valued, who couldn't? — Michael Lewis

I love you.
How much?
More than the ocean is large.
More than a shark loves human limbs.
More than Gavin loves his reflection.
More than baseball players love steroids.
More than chocolate, more than wine and way, way more than anchovies.
More than yesterday, but less than tomorrow.
...
How much? I type.
This much. It's his voice. — Courtney Cole

Baseball's time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the way the game was played in our youth and in our fathers' youth, and even back then ... there must have been the same feeling that time could be stopped. — Roger Angell

I couldn't have done it without my players. — Casey Stengel

Baseball players have such a bad rap of, like, 'We don't work out or we're not strong or this or that.' Guys work so hard in baseball, it's incredible. But people don't know that. — Bryce Harper

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

Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain. — Pierre Trudeau

Free agency changed the baseball landscape in many ways. It created more opportunities for players, but it also meant increasingly fewer players would spend an entire career playing for one franchise - and that's especially true for players capable of becoming "legends," the ones in such demand on the free agent market. — Tucker Elliot

One-third of all professional baseball players come from Latin America, and Sosa is following role models such as the late Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rican, from whom he adopted the No. 21. Now he is a model for others. — Bill Dedman

[In hockey] I was a goon, just protecting the better players. I've always been a better baseball player. — Eric Gagne

If you've ever been around a group of actors, you've noticed, no doubt, that they can talk of nothing else under the sun but acting. It's exactly the same way with baseball players. Your heart must be in your work. — Christy Mathewson

People know more about baseball players' contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children's lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, 'Do you want to bring a child into this world?' That's pretty dire. — Jackson Browne

Baseball is a team game but, at the same time, it's a very lonely game: unlike in soccer or basketball, where players roam around, in baseball everyone has their little plot of the field to tend. When the action comes to you, the spotlight is on you but no one can help you. — Chad Harbach

The perception is that baseball's players' union is protecting players to use steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing drugs. — Jim Bunning

I do something that I don't think anyone else does. I warm up before a game. Baseball and basketball players warm up, so why shouldn't the announcer warm up? — Chick Hearn

Because the players knew that if Billy asked them to jump off a roof, he'd jump off with them. — Mickey Mantle

It will revolutionize baseball. It will open a new area of alibis for the players. — Gabe Paul

Baseball outfits went through their gaudy period during the disco '70's, when the White Sox looked like softball players and the Athletics looked like 'Saturday Night Fever' personified. — George Vecsey

I love baseball. I love watching baseball. As a broadcaster, I get to watch the best 700 players put on the uniform year after year. That, to me, is exciting. — Bert Blyleven

Catholics speak, like baseball players, in the coded language of gesture. Sure, the Roman Catholic Church is an abomination to man and a disgrace to God, but it comes with a highly structured Mass, several sacred pilgrimages, the oldest songs, the most impressive architecture, and a whole bunch of things to do whenever you enter the church. Taken all together, they make you one with your brother. — Joshua Ferris

It took time for the church to come to terms with the ignominy of the cross. Church fathers forbade its depiction in art until the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine ... Now, though, the symbol is everywhere: artists beat gold into the shape of the Roman execution device, baseball players cross themselves before batting, and cancy confectioners even make chocolate crosses for the faithful to eat during Holy Week. Strange as it may seem, Christianity has become a religion of the cross
the gallows, the electric chair, the gas chamber, in modern terms. — Philip Yancey

Right now I like baseball, hockey and tennis players. And horseback riders. — Martina Hingis

A coach's main job is to reawaken a spirit in which the players can blend together effortlessly. — Phil Jackson

After a play in the field Casey would turn (to the players on the bench) and say 'What did he do wrong?' or 'You're better than that guy.' Either way, he'd keep them from getting stale. — Mickey Mantle

Owners, the way they blackballed me from baseball, the way they used me, in a sense, and then the way they wanted to send a signal to the other players, saying, you know, we're going to get Jose Canseco out of the game. This is a cue or a message for you other guys to stop using steroids because the owners lost total control of the steroid use. — Jose Canseco

In Hollywood, for me, it's all about the movie stars and the singers. Baseball players don't draw too much attention; we're low key. I'm good with faces and sometimes bad with names, but I'll walk up to somebody if I know who they are ... show them some love. — Matt Kemp

Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young. Sitting in the stands, we sense this, if only dimly. The players below us - Mays, DiMaggio, Ruth, Snodgrass - swim and blur in memory, the ball floats over to Terry Turner, and the end of this game may never come. — Roger Angell

It strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Wheaties was the big sponsor in those days (1940s). They sponsored almost all the baseball games in the majors and the minors. That was a lot of Wheaties. I think there were twenty-four boxes in a case and some of these guys were hitting twenty-five and thirty home runs a season. We had a dog in those days named Blue Grass and the players used to give us their Wheaties for him. Blue Grass loved Wheaties and so did I. — Ernie Harwell

When I was a kid, my parents were very careful about who was "acceptable" as my heroes if you will, because they didn't want me being influenced by athletes who lacked morals. Cal Ripken and Dale Murphy were at the top of my mom's list of players she felt were good role models, so of course I was a diehard fan of both those guys. — Tucker Elliot

Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure. — John Thorn

You walk into the locker room, and you see players with their ripping muscles and stomachs you could wash your clothes in. — Jerry Coleman

Baseball is a lot like the Army, there aren't many individuals. About the only difference is that baseball players get to stay in nice hotels instead of barracks. — Bill Lee

The only reason baseball's numerical touchstones have any significance is that most players - even the game's greats - peter out just barely before they reach them. — Stephen Rodrick

Also unfortunately, Congress is far too busy asking if baseball players are really as strong as they seem and trying to choke bankers with wads of cash to grant more funds to such trifling matters as the avoidance of space bullets, so they won't give NASA the money — Robert Brockway

I would love to see as many of the black players as possible in today's Major League Baseball make every effort to go to the Negro Leagues Museum and get a first-hand view of how it all started. — Ferguson Jenkins

It's the spirit of Dominicans coming out and the pride that we have in our music and our baseball players. Dominicans love two things: politics and baseball. When we're not talking politics, we're talking baseball. — Jose Peralta

It would have been unthinkable for anyone on the block not to know the names of the players, their batting averages, and the win-loss record of the pitchers. We knew who they were playing on a given day, where they were playing, who was pitching, and how many games out of first place they might be. We also knew as much information about their personal lives as the baseball cards we flipped and traded provided. Most of our contact with the Dodgers came through the radio and TV play-by-play commentary of Red Barber and Vin Scully, who were as familiar to us as the players. Ebbets — Bernie Sanders

When I was in baseball and you went into the clubhouse, you didn't see ball players with curling irons. — Red Barber

If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. — George Carlin

More than any other games, baseball gives its players space - both physical and emotional - in which to define themselves. — John Eskow

If you seriously aspire to be a manager in the big leagues, there is a baseball 'book' that one must learn. Alongside that book, you must practice Spanish. Of 25 players on each roster, sometimes there are between eight and 15 players who speak Spanish. — Tony La Russa

Major league baseball has asked its players to stop tossing baseballs into the stands during games, because they say fans fight over them and they get hurt. In fact, the Florida Marlins said that's why they never hit any home runs. It's a safety issue. — Jay Leno

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

Let me get this straight. The owners are about to shut down baseball when it's more prosperous than it's even been, and the players are the ones who have to get their urine tested? — Ron Darling

Baseball players tend to have something like 20 good years in them and then around their mid-thirties they aren't in the same shape as the young guys in the league and kind of aren't worth as much. Then they retire before 40. And they are left floating adrift in the middle of the ocean. — Michael Cera

I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn't even start. I was a sub on this team. This was, like, an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had, like, the only black team in the league, basically. We had four players go to the All-Star game. — Nelly

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