Pennant Quotes & Sayings

He was ever conscious of his obligation to play well. Late in his career, when his legs were bothering him and the Yankees had a comfortable lead in a pennant race, a friend of his, columnist Jimmy Cannon, asked him why he played so hard - the games, after all, no longer meant so much. "Because there might be somebody out there who's never seen me play before," he answered. — David Halberstam

Nobody ever won a pennant without a star shortstop. — Leo Durocher

He'd never played in Wrigley Field - the Cubs had still been out at old West Side Grounds when he came through as a catcher for the Cardinals before the First World War. But seeing the ballpark in ruins brought the reality of this war home to him like a kick in the teeth. Sometimes big things would do that, sometimes little ones; he remembered a doughboy breaking down and sobbing like a baby when he found some French kid's dolly with its head blown off. Muldoon's eyes slid over toward Wrigley for a moment. "Gonna be a long time before the Cubs win another pennant," he said, as good an epitaph as any for the park - and the city. — Harry Turtledove

When you're in the middle of a pennant race, you can't go up there thinking about home runs. — Sammy Sosa

It took Feyra some time to realise that she was not delirious: the citizens were wearing painted masks.From childhood she had heard the legend that the Venetians were half human, half beast.She knew that this could not be true, but in the swirling fog of this hellish city she almost believed it. The creatures seemed to stare at her down their warped noses from their blank and hollow eyes. And overlord of all was the winged lion - he was everywhere, watching from every plaque or pennant, ubiquitous and threatening. — Marina Fiorato

Anyone can create the future but only a wise man can create the past — Vladimir Nabokov

I'd rather win a pennant than an Academy Award. — Laraine Day

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race. — Marilyn Monroe

When I wasn't lying awake thinking and planning and fighting over that furious pennant race, I was dreaming restless dreams about it. — Smoky Joe Wood

My idea of heaven is a pennant winner. — Tom Yawkey

Don't believe those tales you hear about my being all-in. Wait until you see me in action for your team and then form your opinion of my worth to your team. I assure you that I am delighted to be a Pirate and that I will do my best to bring another pennant to the Smoky City. — Vic Willis

One headline read: 'West Ham supporters set light to a yacht.' Now, if that boat was a yacht, then it probably only needed two paddles to row it. But if the headlines were exaggerated, the events of that night weren't. Some nasty things happened that night. It was inevitable when you had a thousand young men down for a football match with nowhere to stay and nowhere open. [...] It was well into the wee hours before we at last found somewhere to crash out. We met a bird and bloke who were local, and for some unknown reason they offered us the use of their flat on the seafront. Needless to say, we showed our appreciation of their generosity by guzzling the spirits cabinet dry and trashing the flat. The bloke was so pissed he was half joining in while the bird, who we all thought was a bit odd, was going mental. In fact, she was like a fucking animal.

- Jimmy Smith — Cass Pennant

Son, we'd like to keep you around this season but we're going to try and win a pennant. — Casey Stengel

If Satch (Paige) and I were pitching on the same team, we would clinch the pennant by July fourth and go fishing until World Series time. — Dizzy Dean

But the last time the Cubs won a National League pennant
Was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan — Steve Goodman

Baseball is caring. Player and fan alike must care, or there is no game. If there's no game, there's no pennant race and no World Series. And for all any of us know there might soon be no nation at all. It is good to care - in any dimension. More Americans put their caring into baseball than into anything else I can think of - and most put at least a little of it there. Baseball can be trusted, as great art can, and bad art can't. — William, Saroyan

I'm asking about the kid," Root said. "What does she get out of it?"
"My fist in her ear if she asks as many questions as you do," Pennant said. "You worry too much. Well, what do you say, Sultan? — Walter Kaylin

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

She stared out. She saw a vastness, a rising shape, indistinct in the rain, gray in the misty drizzle. At first she had thought it was a cloud, a great bank of fog drifting up over the mountains, but now she realized with a cold awe that it was real, a vast building climbing the mountainside, rising in a countless series of rooms, stairways, balconies, and galleries, far away and immense, its topmost roofs white with snow. And up there, like a needle sharp with ice, one uttermost pinnacle flew the remote black pennant of the Watch.
The Tower of Song. — Catherine Fisher

Lo, the unbounded sea, On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even her moonsails. The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately - below emulous waves press forward, They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam. I — Walt Whitman

The team that wins two-thirds of its one run games usually wins the pennant. — Pete Rose

There will be a time when everyone on the team is going to contribute to winning a pennant. — Joe Torre

Like all the other arrivals to the tournament, Hank had erected a banner in front. It was a long, tapering pennant with a blue and red circular design in the center and the words GO CUBS! on both sides.
Interesting," said Hugo. "What does it mean?"
It was a gift from Sam," Hank explained as they entered the tent. "He said it used to represent Triumph over Adversity, but now better represents Impossible Quests and Lost Causes."
I think I preferred not knowing that," said Hugo.
Hank grinned. "You're a Sox fan too, hey? — James A. Owen

Public opinion is the pennant on a nation's mast which shows the politician and the editor how to trim the sails. — Austin O'Malley

She thought it funny how the poor environment had been raped just fine until there was a sufficient excess of the people who had effected the raping to produce sufficient numbers of themselves who were sufficiently idle that they might begin to protest the raping of the environment, which was irretrievably lost to the raping by that point.
And this would be the great soothing cathedral music, the stopping of the chainsaws amid the patter of acid rain, that all good citizens would listen to for the quarter-century it took them all to wire up to cyberspace and forget about the lost hopeless run-over gang-ridden land, reproducing madly still all the while, inside their bunkers listening to NPR. — Padgett Powell

Fans all have their memories of pennant races, good memories, sick memories. — George Vecsey

I don't know. But it's my option. I don't want to leave Chicago. I want to be successful here. I want to help this team, like I always say, be in the pennant race ... I don't want to leave, and I don't think I will leave. — Carlos Zambrano

You take a team with twenty-five assholes and I'll show you a pennant. I'll show you the New York Yankees. — Bill Lee

The Yankees won the pennant, we went on to the World Series, 41 years after that in the city of Toronto. The great city of Toronto, and all the provinces in Canada, everybody reached out and they were excited because we won the first World Series ever, across the border. — Dave Winfield

No. 1, these guys out here on this field. They keep my energy level up. They try hard, they don't complain about things - and I'd just like to be with them when things are good, and hopefully we can win a pennant together. — Frank Robinson

Just give me 25 guys on the last year of their contracts; I'll win a pennant every year. — Sparky Anderson

The unit had organized itself like a small-market baseball team enjoying an unlikely pennant run: talented journeymen working together, no stars, no egos, mutually supportive, and above all ruthlessly and relentlessly effective. — Lee Child

Pennant races drain the energy from the best of them. Old-fashioned baseball races are to me the most grueling daily test in any sport. Gotta keep coming out, every day, in the face of looming disaster. — George Vecsey

Then I was at the pennant pole. I heard someone reading something, but the words were just a vague buzzing to me as I removed my cloak and lay it across the back of a stone bench that sat at the base of the pole. Then I began to unbutton my shirt, as casually as if I were preparing to take a bath. A hand on my wrist stopped me. The man that had read the announcement gave me a smile that tried to be comforting. "You don't need to go shirtless," he said. "It'll save you from a bit of the sting." "I'm not going to ruin a perfectly good shirt," I said. — Patrick Rothfuss

Everyone has a budget, I don't care who you are. But they said if we are in a pennant race in the middle of the summer they are going to get some help with added payroll. — Dusty Baker

I don't care what the situation was, how high the stakes were - the bases could be loaded and the pennant riding on every pitch, it never bothered Whitey. He pitched his game. Cool. Craft. Nerves of steel. — Mickey Mantle

I don't believe a manager ever won a pennant. Casey Stengel won all those pennants with the Yankees. How many did he win with the Boston Braves and Mets? — Sparky Anderson

It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder to lose one. — Chuck Tanner

If we're going to win the pennant, we've got to start thinking we're not as good as we think we are. — Casey Stengel

The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I'd rather go fishing for three days. — Whitey Herzog

People don't know this, but I helped the Cardinals win the pennant. I came down with hepatitis. The trainer injected me with it! — Bob Uecker

Baseball's Opening Day is full of time-honored traditions: the President throws out the first ball, the Cubs' starting pitcher walks away with a 54.00 ERA, the Royals get mathematically eliminated from the pennant race. — Rob Sheffield

It was 843 B.C.. The year the patriarchs won the pennant. — Tom Robbins

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

We want to add an American League pennant ... and to bring the World Series to Arlington. — Tom Hicks

We won (the pennant) because we've got a superior ball club. Not many stars perhaps, but the kind of team that always plays well together. — Nellie Fox

5. Unfair to Animals 6. Unfair to Muledom THE HALF-PENNANT PORCH Finley was obsessed with the Yankees and attributed their success to the short distance to the right field fence in Yankee Stadium. He believed sluggers who batted left-handed, like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris, had an unfair advantage. The fence was the sole reason the Yankees were winners. Before the 1964 season, Finley sought to create his own advantage. He moved his right field fence so that it was 296 feet from home plate and called it his "Pennant Porch." The commissioner forced Finley to change it to 325 feet. — Josh Ostergaard

I don't think a manager should be judged by whether he wins the pennant, but by whether he gets the most out of the twenty-five men he's been given. — Chuck Tanner

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping. — Walt Whitman

And if I have my choice between a pennant and a triple crown, I'll take the pennant every time. — Carl Yastrzemski

No club that wins a pennant once is an outstanding club. One which bunches two pennants is a good club. But a team which can win three in a row really achieves greatness. — John McGraw

The moment the game (AL Pennant versus the Twins) was over I sprinted for the dugout. The fans were pouring onto the field. If they'd caught me they'd have torn my uniform into shreds for souvenirs. — Carl Yastrzemski

There was a point at which I thought I'd never get the most valuable player, especially the years I played at Minnesota. We never won a pennant there, we were far away from the big media centers of Los Angeles and New York, and I wasn't a flashy power hitter but a guy who hit to spots, who bunted and stole bases. — Rod Carew

People find hope, comfort, or confidence in making the sign of the cross or not walking under a ladder, just as you find hope and confidence in offering a pennant to the witch. Magic exists in the minds of those who believe in it, not in its actual influence on reality. — Thomas Olde Heuvelt

The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner. — Warren Buffett

I took the liberty of designing your pennant," said Rhy, resting his elbows on the gallery's marble banister. "I hope you don't mind."
Kell cringed. "Do I even want to know what's on it?"
Rhy tugged the folded piece of fabric from his pocket, and handed it over. The cloth was red, and when he unfolded it, he saw the image of a rose in black and white. The rose had been mirrored, folded along the center axis and reflected, so the design was actually two flowers, surrounded by a coil of thorns.
"How subtle," said Kell tonelessly.
"You could at least pretend to be grateful."
"And you couldn't have picked something a little more ... I don't know ... imposing? A serpent? A great beast? A bird of prey?"
"A bloody handprint?" retorted Rhy. "Oh, what about a glowing black eye?"
Kell glowered.
"You're right," continued Rhy, "I should have just drawn a frowning face. But then everyone would know it's you. I thought this was rather fitting. — Victoria Schwab

Initially, it (winning the 1967 American League Pennant) was what you would dream about in Little League. The winning pitcher, being on the mound to win the pennant, everyone congratulating me. But a few minutes later, you realize you're not going where you want to go. I was trying to get back in the dugout. Thank God for the Boston police, they were able to control the crowd. It was delirium. — Jim Lonborg

We should have won the pennant that year. It was the best club I was ever on. — Jimmy Piersall

His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions
gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose. — Yukio Mishima