Quotes & Sayings About How Great Baseball Is

I developed an interest in major league baseball and the 1960s were, as far as I'm concerned (with a nod to the Babe Ruth era of the 1920s), the Golden Age of Baseball. Like most people in the valley, I was a diehard Yankees fan and, in a pinch, a Mets fan. They were New York teams, and most New Englanders rooted for the Boston Red Sox, but our end of Connecticut was geographically and culturally closer to New York than Boston, and that's where our loyalties went.
And what was not to love? The Yankees ruled the earth in those days. The great Roger Maris set one Major League record after another and even he was almost always one hit shy of Mickey Mantle, God on High of the Green Diamond. — John William Tuohy

I've always been a great lover of baseball. — Peter Lynch

Babe Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching. — Tris Speaker

(Al) Lopez is a great believer in speed and hustle, in the go-go style of baseball. No other manager is so determined a foe of stodgy baseball, lack of hustle and slipshod practices and so powerful an advocate of the unexpected. — Nellie Fox

I'm merely a baseball player, guys, ... In the great scheme of things, my thoughts, opinions and attitudes are of little importance. — John Rocker

If there is one thing I know, it's that with every great achievement in our lives, there is an insecure idiot hiding around the corner waiting to take a baseball bat to it. — Dan Pearce

It's no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. Now it's sanctimony. — Nathan Hill

Baseball will miss Steinbrenner. He did a lot of great things-and some not so great-but it's a sad day for baseball, no doubt about it. He was a winner, and he made the Yankees a winner. — Don Zimmer

I'm not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things - not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them. — Stephen Jay Gould

We are fortunate and blessed to have a partner of Harvey Schiller's stature, who shares our vision for the future of the Dodgers, the city of Los Angeles and our great baseball fans throughout the world. — Steve Garvey

Thank you ... adjustable baseball caps with no logo on the front and mesh netting in the back, for being a great way to say, 'Hi, I'm over 80 years old.' — Jimmy Fallon

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

I came up in 1941 and I played against men who played in the 1930s. I stayed until 1963 playing against men who will be playing in the 1970s. So I think I can feel qualified to say that baseball really was a great game, and baseball is really a great game, and baseball will always be a great game. — Stan Musial

I'm just worried about winning baseball. I'm only worried about what I can do to help the team win. It's about improving in every facet of the game. I think that's everyone's goals. Whatever we can do to help the team win is what we'll do. I think Andy has done a great job of coming in and helping our offense. AD is getting those pitchers ready. Coach Mainieri is going to coach up some wins this year. We are very excited and working on every facet of the game. — Alex Bregman

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 never got to see the '27 Yankees. Everyone says that was the greatest team ever. But I think it would've been a great series if we'd have had the chance to play them. — Mickey Mantle

Power is a big thing in baseball. It can't be cheapened. That is, a fellow has it or hasn't. It isn't a fluke or great accomplishment, like a perfect game. When Mantle connects, it's a tape-measure job. Nobody who ever lived has more power than Mantle. — Gabe Paul

Molly stood up. You made an error! She felt like saying. A bad throw. So what? It's a baseball game. A game. Who really cares? A bad throw? In the great scheme of things? A bad throw? Of course she didn't say that. She understood that your own errors always feel tragic. — Mick Cochrane

Definitely if you're an athlete, you're gonna be having all the baseball fame you can have. That's the great thing about baseball and sports. You can measure ability. — John Leguizamo

I know I'm the world's worst fielder, but who gets paid for fielding? There isn't a great fielder in baseball getting the kind of dough I get paid for hitting. — Dick Stuart

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

Jim Fregosi was not only one of the most respected men in baseball, he was a great man. He was a player's manager. He had that special gift as a manager that made you want to get to the field and play your ass off for him. Jim Fregosi was the reason that 1993 was one of the most exciting years in Philadelphia sports history. — Lenny Dykstra

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. — R.A. Dickey

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

Who is he anyhow, an actor?"
"No."
"A dentist?"
" ... No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: "He's the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919."
"Fixed the World Series?" I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as something that merely happened, the end of an inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people
with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.
"He just saw the opportunity."
"Why isn't he in jail?"
"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Now, I have to tell you, this reminds me of a story. Actually, it's an old baseball story. You see, one day, old Lucifer down there from his headquarters called St. Peter in Heaven, said they wanted to challenge him to a baseball game. And St. Peter said, "Sure, let's play. But to be fair, I have to tell you all the great ones are up here. We've got Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Satchel Paige, Roberto Clemente. We've got all the best players, and our manager is the legendary Connie Mack. You won't have a chance." Well, old Lucifer says, "That doesn't matter, we'll win anyway." And St. Peter says, "How do you expect to do that?" "Well," he says, "simple, we've got all the umpires." Luncheon for Representative Connie Mack Miami, Florida June 29, 1988 — Malcolm Kushner

It gives me great peace to know that no matter how good or how bad I do, the Lord loves me. That's all that really matters to me. Baseball isn't what everything is about. It's about the way I'm being a Christian husband, a Christian father, or the way I'm living my life and trying to be a Christian testimony to people. — Andy Pettitte

I'm half-Italian and my name is Portuguese. Michael Young is half-Mexican. There are players from the United States that have heritage elsewhere and it's a great thing to have a world cup to celebrate the whole world. It shows the world that baseball is important and how great the game is. — Mark Teixeira

Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees; Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees' corner ... The efficiently triumphant Yankee maching is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel? — Gay Talese

The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia. — Sparky Anderson

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

This is a great thing that's happening in baseball. We don't know if it will ever happen again. — Mark McGwire

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

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

Humbled by the fact that never in a million years would I ever thought that I would be on the same stage with all these great Hall of Famers and enshrined to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. — Wade Boggs

Baseball writers develop a great attachment for the Brooklyn club if long exposed, — Roger Kahn

For my books of nonfiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. I've been a Yankees and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades, so I wrote 'Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man.' It's more the story of his great courage than of his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges, and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig. — David A. Adler

Grantland Rice, the great sportswriter once said, 'It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.' Well Grantland Rice can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. — Gene Autry

Baseball is great because anything can happen through the ninth inning. — Richard M. Nixon

Through SCP Auctions, the Garvey family will also continue to share our great love for baseball by donating time and dollars to youth baseball programs. — Steve Garvey

American baseball, by luck, trial, and error, and since the famous playing rules council of 1889, had struck on an almost perfect balance between offense and defense, and it was that balance, in fact, that and the accountability - the beauty of the records system which found a place to keep forever each least action - that had led Henry to baseball as his final great project. — Robert Coover

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

Eddie is like one of those great relief pitchers in baseball who gets the strikeout at the right time. Belfour comes up with the great saves when you need them. — Rick Tocchet

At pier four there is a 34-foot yawl-rigged yacht with two of the three hundred and twenty-four Esthonians who are sailing around in different parts of the world, in boats between 28 and 36 feet long and sending back articles to the Esthonian newspapers. These articles are very popular in Esthonia and bring their authors between a dollar and a dollar and thirty cents a column. They take the place occupied by the baseball or football news in American newspapers and are run under the heading of Sagas of Our Intrepid Voyagers. No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sunburned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will sail to another yacht basin and write another saga. They are very happy too. Almost as happy as the people on the Alzira III. It's great to be an Intrepid Voyager. — Ernest Hemingway,

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

You can keep going on and on about the interactions of people, which makes it a great drama and great event, and you'll always hold that special, but if you're looking at a baseball moment, the feeling you get when you win the World Series by far exceeds anything else in the game that you're able to do. — Cal Ripken Jr.