Small Baseball Quotes & Sayings

I was sitting in a plastic desk-chair contraption in an English classroom in Minnesota, tapping out the meter of lines from Pound's Cantos, wearing a baseball shirt with a small hole in the armpit. But I was also roiling with feelings and thoughts and doubts and conjectures and worries and layers of complication ... If so much happened in my head, didn't I have to conclude that it was the same way with everyone else? I had to look down again. The world was too big. — Kate Hattemer

That big guy, Winfield, at 6'6, can do things only a small man can do. — Jerry Coleman

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

God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.
No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.
I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration. — W.P. Kinsella

I went to college to be a jock and to play on the baseball team. And then, I got cut and realized that that was it for that. I was really small. The other guys were really big, on that team. I was a bit of a theater nerd, and I was an art history major. — Charlie Day

They were childless - Dan Needham suggested that their sexual roles might be so "reversed" as to make childbearing difficult - and their attendance at Little League games was marked by a constant disapproval of the sport: that little girls were not allowed to play in the Little League was an example of sexual stereotyping that exercised the Dowlings' humorlessness and fury. Should they have a daughter, they warned, she would play in the Little League. They were a couple with a theme - sadly, it was their only theme, and a small theme, and they overplayed it, but a young couple with such a burning mission was quite interesting to the generally slow, accepting types who were more typical in Gravesend. Mr. Chickering, our fat coach and manager, lived in dread of the day the Dowlings might produce a daughter. Mr. Chickering was of the old school - he believed that only boys should play baseball, and that girls should watch them play, or else play soft-ball. — John Irving

From the time I went into baseball, I have always been handicapped by my hands, which are too small. I never saw the day yet when I was able to span an ordinary baseball. — Pud Galvin

Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose; it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance - thrown hard and with precision. — Roger Angell

By 1968, I had lived 10 years in Michigan. Gradually, I had come to love watching Detroit's baseball club in its small, beautiful, antiquated Tiger Stadium - a baseball park as fine as Fenway Park or Wrigley Field, though it never got the adulatory press. — Donald Hall

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.
I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator's underpants!
Chase's thoughts raced. — Cole Alpaugh

Lovers of small numbers go benignly potty,
Believe all tales are thirteen chapters long,
Have animal doubles, carry pentagrams,
Are Millerites, Baconians, Flat-Earth-Men.

Lovers of big numbers go horribly mad,
would have the Swiss abolished, all of us
Well-purged, somatotyped, baptised, taught baseball:
They empty bars, spoil parties, run for Congress. — W. H. Auden

You know, don't you?" The unfamiliar voice startled him for a second, but Dan just figured that the guy hadn't been talking to him. Still, when he sneaked a look, he could see some stranger was staring directly into Dan's sunglassed eyes. Little guy, Dan thought, but then again, everyone looked little to Dan. Not short. Just small. Small hands, thin arms, almost frail. The guy who was staring at him now stuck out here because it was so clear he didn't belong. There was nothing football about him. Too little. Too nerdy. Big baseball cap pulled down too low. And that soft, friendly smile. "You — Harlan Coben

Chemistry is good for fun - it's like baseball. It has its role for small children, but I can't see an adult being concerned with it. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

She wielded it easily, lightly. She carried it swinging like a baseball bat, only with more poetry to it. It was a frightening thing to watch, this small shadow of billowing grey fabric and sprawling, wild hair splaying out behind her, the axe held at the ready with both hands, poised and prepared. — Cherie Priest

Every year I collect a select amount of material possessions (baseball cards, coins, famous paraphernalia) to pass on to my children. In two or more generations they should have a small fortune of 'ancient' famous items. — Akutra-Ramses Atenosis Cea

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

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

Ugh. Intense, yeah. Whew." She smiled, a little lopsidedly. "At least at baseball games you get to drink beer and eat hot dogs in the boring parts." Jamie, grasping at the only part of this conversation that made sense, leaned forward. "There's a crock of small beer, cool in the pantry," he said, peering anxiously at Brianna. "Will I fetch it in?" "No," I said. "Not unless you want some; alcohol wouldn't be good for the baby." "Ah. What about the hot dog?" He stood up and flexed his hands, obviously preparing to dash out and shoot one. — Diana Gabaldon

All you have to do is pick up a baseball. It begs to you: throw me. If you took a year to design an object to hurl, you'd end up with that little spheroid small enough to nestle in your fingers but big enough to have some heft, lighter than a rock but heavier than a hunk of wood. Its even, neat stitching, laced into the leather's slippery white surface, gives your fingers a purchase. A baseball was made to throw. It's almost irresistible. — Dave Dravecky

I threw the baseball I held after all. Not hard and it didn't even hit him but it almost did.
His eyes went wide with surprise.
"So you weren't really offering me a target?"
He gave a small laugh. "I didn't think you'd take me up on it. — Kasie West

Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else. — N.D. Wilson

Baseball is the only sport there is - next to bowling that is.
Luella Lorraine Lavell — Kate Curran

There sat Floyd, naked as a blue jay and not half as pretty. He had the largest head I ever saw on a man, and was wearing a Ford baseball cap that was three sizes too small. Men around these parts don't take off their hats unless they absolutely have to. "Gertie Johnson," Floyd exclaimed. "What are you doing?" The difference between men and women is this - if you catch a woman butt-naked, she tries to cover the private parts with her hands. A man will sit there just like you found him even if he doesn't have much to be proud of. Floyd sat like that, not moving. — Deb Baker

The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon. — Sinclair Lewis

Consider developing your whole self with the same raw focus and intensity that you develop a particular skill set. Get focused. Go out, have adventures. Run, jump, skin your knee, fall in love, root loudly for the away team at a baseball game, barely escape a crash of stampeding rhinos, live to see another day. Experience things big and small. Go for a walk. The world is full of wonders. — Anthony Holden

When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing. I told him I wanted to be a real Major League baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The game itself is an autonomous game, but everybody is a part of it. No contribution is too small. — Joe Torre

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

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game and do it by watching first some high-school or small-town teams — Jacques Barzun

Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.
Crash Davis Bull Durham — Ron Shelton

I got into running because I was too uncoordinated to play baseball, too small for basketball, and too tiny for football. I lived in a broken home and had looked to those sports as a way of staying away from my home. — Gerry Lindgren

There is a progression of understanding vis-a-vis pro football that varies drastically with the factor of distance
physical, emotional, intellectual and every other way. Which is exactly the way it should be, in the eyes of the amazingly small number of people who own and control the game, because it is this finely managed distance factor that accounts for the high-profit mystique that blew the sacred institution of baseball off its 'national pastime' pedestal in less than fifteen years. — Hunter S. Thompson

I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and my dad was a basketball coach. Thanks to him, I have excellent fundamentals in both basketball and baseball. — Nick Offerman