Baseball Umpire Quotes & Sayings

It sounds so simple, but if you just be yourself, you're different than anyone else. — Tony Bennett

Today a pitcher gets fined if the umpire thinks he threw at a batter. In the olden days, the umpire didn't have to take any courses in mind reading. The pitcher told you he was going to throw at you. — Leo Durocher

Baseball isn't just a game. It's the smell of popcorn drifting in the air, the sight of bugs buzzing near the stadium lights,the roughness of the dirt beneath your cleats. It's the anticipation building in your chest as the anthem plays, the adrenaline rush when your bat cracks against the ball, and the surge of blood when the umpire shouts strike after you pitch. It's a team full of guys backing your every move, a bleacher full of people cheering you on. It's ... life — Katie McGarry

Football has end zones and goal posts; basketball has the hoop, and hockey the goal cage. Baseball is the only game with an imaginary box: the strike zone, which the umpire determines at his own discretion. — Richard Corliss

A good umpire, like a good FBI agent, is never noticed if he is doing his job. — Thomas Boswell

One of the things that I noticed in war was how difficult it was for our soldiers, at first, to realize that there are no rules to war. Our men were raised in sports, where a referee runs a football game, or an umpire a baseball game, and so forth. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Come at once if convenient- if inconvenient come all the same.
- S. H. — Arthur Conan Doyle

My first and only experience in baseball, the coach signed me up; he didn't tell me there's a thing called the curveball. I didn't know that. So the ball's coming at me and I start backing out, and then it broke inside. And the umpire says, 'Strike one!' And I'm saying, 'How is that a strike? It almost hit me!' — Magic Johnson

As we all know, Cooperstown is the home of baseball. One of the many duties of the home plate umpire is to make sure that the runner touches home. Well, if you're a true baseball fan, you need to visit Cooperstown. This is home. — Doug Harvey

Never wear a backward baseball cap to an interview unless applying for the job of umpire. — Casey Stengel

Or there, in the clay-baked piedmont of the South, that lean and tan-faced boy who sprawls there in the creaking chair among admiring cronies before the open doorways of the fire department, and tells them how he pitched the team to shut-out victory to-day. What visions burn, what dreams possess him, seeker of the night? The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-balked outfields down in Georgia. The mounting roar of eighty thousand voices and Gehrig coming up to bat, the boy himself upon the pitching mound, the lean face steady as a hound's; then the nod, the signal, and the wind-up, the rawhide arm that snaps and crackles like a whip, the small white bullet of the blazing ball, its loud report in the oiled pocket of the catcher's mitt, the umpire's thumb jerked upwards, the clean strike. — Thomas Wolfe

What is true belongs to me! — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Ideally, the umpire should combine the integrity of a Supreme Court judge, the physical agility of an acrobat, the endurance of Job and the imperturbability of Buddha. — Time-Life Books

I remember the Chillicothe ballplayers grappling the Long Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness. And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders of the Rock Island players were a yellow smoke against the sundown. And the umpire's voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpire's throat fought in the dust for a song. — Carl Sandburg

She'll be evaluated like any other Double-A umpire. Major League Baseball has never attempted to influence our decision — Mike Fitzpatrick

Someday, I hope that we will all be patriots of our planet and not just of our respective nations. — Zoe Weil

Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile. — Christy Mathewson

I couldn't see well enough to play (baseball) when I was a boy, so they gave me a special job - they made me an umpire. — Harry S. Truman

My father is from Jamaica, and as a child I spent many holidays there. I remember the weight and drenching wetness of that hot rain, as I experienced it in my childhood, not only for itself, but for what it represented for me. — Sadie Jones

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball. — James Patrick Murray

It is more comfortable for me, in the long run, to be rude than polite. — Wyndham Lewis

A good umpire is the umpire you don't even notice — Ban Johnson

The public wouldn't like the perfect umpire in every game. It would kill off baseball's greatest alibi - 'We was robbed.' — Billy Evans

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

Anyone interested in becoming a professional umpire and becoming eligible to work in the minor leagues must attend one of the two umpire schools sanctioned by Major League Baseball. — Jim Evans

Sometimes, it's better to bunk a class and enjoy with friends, because now, when I look back, marks never make me laugh, but memories do. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam