Sports Ball Quotes & Sayings

It's amazing to be able to play the sport that I grew up loving so much and that I have a strong passion for. I'm just having a ball. There's a lot of pressure that comes with being in the spotlight and being a superstar and a role model, but I'm enjoying it. — Reggie Bush

Kevin's always saying things like "You've got a real deep bench, now, kid." Or "You gotta keep your eye on the ball, and you're going to push it over the goal line." And I have no idea what he is talking about, but I nod enthusiastically and say, "Sure, of course, sports," and hope he doesn't ask any follow-up questions. — Mindy Kaling

By the time a man can afford to lose a golf ball, he can't hit that far. — Jacob Braude

I learned to give him the ball ... — Magic Johnson

Golf is no longer a game of hitting the ball, finding it, and hitting it again. There is wind to be measured, whether that means tossing blades of grass in the air or studying the gentle movement of 60-foot high branches. There are caddie conferences for even the most routine shots. There are sports psychologists who tell players not to hit until they're ready. — Doug Ferguson

No jockey ever won a race by carrying the horse across the finish line; no coach ever won a volleyball match by touching the ball during play. — John Kessel

I found climbing to be a very tactile sport. There's no ball that is zipping through the air ready to crack you in the head. It is just you and the rock base. — Erik Weihenmayer

Most ball games are lost, not won. — Casey Stengel

I cannot consider fighting in competitive Manly Fun any more than I can consider pitting my running, swimming or climbing body against other bodies. Nothing, then, or now, arouses me or will ever arouse me from a perfect disinterest in ball games. — Hal Porter

With 'Love & Basketball,' I played ball my whole life and did track at UCLA. So, I'm an athlete. And it was very important for me to get it right. I started with casting: As an athlete, there's nothing worse for me than watching a sports movie and the woman that they hire can't run or can't shoot. It sets women's sports back years. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

Not interested. I didn't try very hard. I went to boarding school on a sports' scholarship after I bowled a cricket ball into my old headmaster's leg. He said, 'Christ, that was accurate,' and got it for me. But I walked out at 16. — Tony Blackburn

When life throws you a curve ball just give up, no need messing around with that off speed shit — Bradley Bowman

By the time you get to your ball, if you don't know what to do with it, try another sport. — Julius Boros

Profit by your own mistakes and profit by the mistakes of others. The referees were calling ball handling violations like they were getting commissions. — John Kessel

Racquetball is the only sport where simultaneously you can be looking at the ball and it'll hit you in the back of the head at 90 miles per hour. — Brian Regan

But I was so wrapped up in sports growing up as a kid, that I think I was going to grow to be a pro ball player. But I found out real quick that was not going to happen. — Tim McGraw

Get in front of the ball, you won't get hurt. That's what you've got a chest for, young man. — John McGraw

I hate sports. My reaction to the ball is this [kicks soccer ball] Don't kick it back to me. I don't wanna see it again. — Steven Page

He looked up through long, wet lashes and narrowed crystal-blue eyes at her. With a final swipe of the towel to his head, he bunched it up in his fist.

The gray ball was sent hurling in the air, spiraled once, and hit her boss square in the face.

Jerry sputtered, and swatted away the offensive material.
Keane "Boom-Yay" O'Shea KNOCK OUT — Michele Mannon

Sometimes, in a tight game with runners on, digging in at short, ready to break with the ball, a peace I'd never felt before would paralyze the diamond. For a moment of eternal stillness I felt as if I were cocked at the very heart of the Midwest. — Stuart Dybek

He hits it long. His shoulders are impressively quick through the ball. That's where he's getting his power from. He's young and has great elasticity. — Nick Faldo

Bowling is all physics and energy distribution. It's F = ma. So it is actually one of the most science-y sports, because it literally is just a ball and a surface and objects to knock down. — Chris Hardwick

I was a hyper kid, so I didn't want to play baseball and wait for the ball to come to me. I wanted to play a sport where I could go get the ball. — Shane Larkin

You don't need to play every ball on back foot. Some balls in life deserve to be played on front foot. Every ball needs good judgement to extend the limit. — Amit Ray

If you meet the Buddha in the lane, feed him the ball. — Phil Jackson

'Madden' is all about speed, and the Falcons have it on both sides of the ball. I love playing sports games. I played my PlayStation so much, I pretty much wore it out. — Carl Crawford

Hitting a golf ball correctly is the most sophisticated and complicated maneuver in all of sports, with the possible exception of eating a hot dog at a ball game without getting mustard on your shirt. — Ray Fitzgerald

Infield practice is more mystic ritual than preparation, encouraging the big-leaguer, no less than the duffer in the stands, to believe in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that playing ball is a snap. — Roger Angell

A ball feels different off every player's racket-there are minute but concrete subtleties of force and spin. Now, hitting with her (Steffi Graf), I feel her subtleties. It's like touching her, though we're forty feet apart. Every forehand is foreplay. — Andre Agassi

If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. — Jack Lemmon

I grew up in New York City, where we played highly unorganized sports: stick ball, stoop ball, and the occasional game of baseball with no adult supervision. — Jeff Greenfield

I started playing ball when I was a kid. My dad was a pro ball player and he passed on his knowledge to me. — Kurt Russell

You should want to win. I still remember when I was little. Girls would score a goal, and we would walk together, high-five, and walk back to our positions. Boys are running around, going "I'm Number One." It wasn't like that for young girls. With girls, if you miss the ball on a tackle and hit the other player, it's like, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry. — Jere Longman

When I was younger, I used to bite my nails so bad. I used to play sports; I played, like, every sport. I would be playing soccer, and I'd be in the middle of the field just zoned out, biting my nails, and I'd, like, miss the ball going past me. — Kendall Jenner

The tennis ball doesn't know how old I am. The ball doesn't know if I'm a man or a woman or if I come from a communist country or not. Sport has always broken down these barriers. — Martina Navratilova

Thinking about the things that happened, I don't know any other ball player would could have done what he (Jackie Robinson) did. To be able to hit with everybody yelling at him. He had to block all that out, block out everything but this ball that is coming in at a hundred miles an hour and he's got a split second to make up his mind if it's in or out or down or coming at his head, a split second to swing. To do what he did has got to be the most tremendous thing I've ever seen in sports. — Pee Wee Reese

The smaller the ball used in the sport, the better the book. — George Plimpton

As hard as you try and create narratives about sports, once the ball is in the air, there's not a damn thing you can do about it, it's just very real. — Ian MacKaye

The first time I faced him I watched him take that easy windup and then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn't touch him ... Every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park. — Ty Cobb

On the surface, there is something peculiar about turning a portion of one's happiness over to a collection of ballplayers, and perhaps more peculiar still is concerning oneself about ball games played decades before one's birth. — Tom Swift

There was clearly great charm and worth in a sport so quaintly perverse in its basic instructions. Hit down to make the ball rise. Swing easy to make it go far. Finish high to make it go straight. — John Updike

When I'm directing actors, I often find myself slipping in sports metaphors, like: 'Don't go for the punch line here, just put it up on a T-ball stand so she can hit it out of the park.' — Mark Waters

Tennis takes care of everything. It requires agility and quickness to get to the ball, core strength to get power into your shorts and stamina to last for an entire match. In addition to toning your arms and shoulders, it's a total body workout for your legs and abs, and works your heart and core unlike any other sport. — Samantha Stosur

I don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century. — David A. Adler

During my childhood, I played just about every sport imaginable, which became less feasible at Juilliard ... Although I remember our annual dodge-ball game as a highlight. The Juilliard 'Fighting Penguins' are a force to be reckoned with. — Seth Numrich

In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way. — Stephenie Meyer

I really enjoy surfing a lot. It's an awesome sport. With surfing there are no mind games versus Peyton Manning, or versus anyone else. It's not me trying to throw a certain shot put further - or to put a ball in a hoop, it's just me against mother nature. — Troy Polamalu

Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win. — Gary Lineker

The typical baseball play is a pitcher throwing a ball and the batter not swinging at it, while the other players watch. Even a home run, the sport's defining big blast, is only metaphorically exciting; a fly ball that leaves the yard changes the score but may offer no more compelling view than an outfielder staring up. — Richard Corliss

I think in most sports sometimes you need a little luck for the ball or calls to roll your way. — Kim Smith

I'm an Adidas guy who walks around in sports gear all the time because there's always a ball right next to me somewhere. I do a lot of sports but I do enjoy wearing a lot of suits. I have quite a few suits that I really enjoy wearing but, unlike Hannibal, I like wearing them only at special occasions. — Mads Mikkelsen

It is the best of all games for me. It frequently escapes from the pattern of sport and assumes the form of a virile ballet. It is purer than any dance because the actions of the players are not governed by music or crowded into a formula by a director. The movement is natural and unrehearsed and controlled only by the unexpected flight of the ball. — Jimmy Cannon

Well, a funny thing, there are three that I like all for the same reason, golf, fishing, and shooting, and I do because first, they take you into the fields. There is mild exercise, the kind that an older individual probably should have. And on top of it, it induces you to take at any one time 2 or 3 hours, if you can, where you are thinking of the bird or that ball or the wily trout. Now, to my mind it is a very healthful, beneficial kind of thing, and I do it whenever I get a chance, as you well know. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I later discovered that in order to be a good athlete one must care intensely what is happening with a ball, even if one doesn't have possession of it. This was ultimately my failure: my inability to work up a passion for the location of balls. — Haven Kimmel

At Barca we trained every day with the ball. I hardly even took a step running without a ball at my feet. — Lionel Messi

Review and question what you already know or have. In most ball sports and games, you confirm whether you have scored by checking whether the ball has gone into the goal or hit its target. So evaluation of results means that you must look at your goal to see if the ball has hit its target. Look at your educational aspirations or dreams and say "am I on track to meet my 2020 PhD target? — Archibald Marwizi

What happens is once you start to understand football, you realise that it's not just about the physical side of the game and chasing after a ball. It's a strategic sport which requires a lot of intelligence. It's a very mental game. — Shakira

Really it's not deliberate. Sometimes I try really hard to be anything but gay. I watch the other guys - and I know what you're thinking. You think I mean I check them out, and yeah, I can't help but do that too. But what I'm sayin is that I watch the really normal guys, the ones who are into sports, who act all totally straight, and I try to copy them. I try to lower the timber of my voice, not sound so nasally when I talk. I try to gesture with my hands in a manly sorta way instead of all limp-wristed and girly. I try to remember not to sit with my legs crossed, and I try really hard to avoid throwing a ball like a girl. — Jeff Erno

Bill Walton, UH Volleyball coach, after his player kept looking at him on the bench every time the ball hit the floor ... Next time you look at me I'll put you on the bench where you can see me better. My basic principle is that you don't make decisions because they are easy; you don't make them because they are cheap; you don't make them because they are popular. You make them because they are right. — Theodore Hesburgh

Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the other team controls the ball. — Ken Harrelson

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness ... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him. — Blaise Pascal

The ball is man's most disastrous invention, not excluding the wheel. — Robert Morley

Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose. — Woodrow Wilson

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

Why isn't it fun to watch a videotape of last night's football game even when we don't know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts! — Daniel M. Gilbert

The truth is that I've never cared anything about sports. In PE, I do my best to get hit with the dodgeball on the first throw so I can sit out and read instead of play. I'd rather eat a hot dog at a baseball game than play baseball. I'd rather paint a soccer ball than kick one. I don't mind running, but only if I'm running towards something wonderful. i don't see the point in running away from anything, ever. -Felicity Pickle — Natalie Lloyd

I never took a position we were going to be a good ball club. I took the position we were going to be a winning ball club. — Red Auerbach

Larry Bird just throws the ball in the air and God moves the basket underneath it. — Howie Chizek

The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself
the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent
all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action. — George Plimpton

I played six to 10 hours a day, every day, 90 days during the summer, and I'd do incredible things. I would dribble blindfolded in the house. I would take my basketball to bed with me, I'd lay there after my mother kissed and tucked me in, and I'd shoot the ball up in the air and say, 'Finger tip control, backspin, follow through. — Pete Maravich

There are two basic situations in volleyball - either you got the ball or you don't. — John Kessel

It's like you came to a controversy and a ball game breaks out. — Matt Keough

I admit that I sometimes climbed on other fellows' backs. But I used to watch the flight of the ball perhaps more than the other fellow did. Perfect timing, a deep breath and a natural spring then helped me to get above them. — Roy Cazaly

If you can pick up a ground ball you'll play for any team you want. — Marcus Holman

Another atrocity of summer is soccer. When the Euro Cup is on, it brings out the worst in people. It turns them into ravaging beasts who complain when a team they like, which they have done nothing to deserve, slips from grace and loses the match.
An old man sitting beside me at the cafe was watching the men watch the soccer rather than watch the soccer himself. He found their reactions more entertaining than the game.
"All this stuff and nonsense over men kicking a ball," he groused. "And they don't do any of the work themselves."
I told him, "We should just have wars. Then we would not need sports."
He laughed and quite agreed with me. — Michelle Franklin

I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. — Rogers Hornsby

Sport doesn't know barriers, really. You are judged on your performance ... how far you can jump, how fast you can run, how well you can hit a tennis ball. — Martina Navratilova

He wants to play major college football at a university far away, where nobody will know about his tragic family history. Then he wants to play in the NFL.

Every catch brings him closer to that reality. That's how he thinks of it, anyway. Every time he runs downfield, sees the ball in the air, and hears the defensive back laboring to catch up, whenever he feels that ball fall out of the sky and into his waiting hands, he inches closer to his goals. — Neil Hayes

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier. — Dick Schaap

What I say about actors is you always want to find an actor you can play ball with. You throw the ball at them and you want them to throw it back. Your ball playing is a lot better when you play with good ballplayers, like any sport. Every actor I know feels the same way. — Robert Knepper

In order to play some sports there's quite a big cost implication, whereas football is relatively cheap. All you need is a ball and a couple of jumpers to practise. — Hope Powell

Hitting. That's what I enjoy most. Realistically, it's probably the hardest thing to do in all of sport. Think about it. You've got a round ball, a round bat, and the object is to hit it square. — Pete Rose

Stretched and skewed
Tap of the 8-ball and the cue
Scratches fall through
They are the scars of you — Criss Jami

I enjoy sports movies that don't sugarcoat. One thing that irritates me about sports movies is that they're like, 'The magic of the ball,' and 'The magic of the stadium.' It ain't that magical. When you get hit coming across the middle at 25 miles per hour, the magic's over. — Terry Crews

Many of us enjoy going to ball games and watching them on television. I am no exception. I love to watch a good athletic contest. If we spend excessive time with sporting events, however, we may neglect things that are much more important. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball. — Billie Jean King

Always think of passing the ball before shooting it. — John Wooden

Forget about showering with my fellow students in Tribeca Alternative's prison-style showers - one nozzle for four to six girls at a time - in the locker room.
It was impossible to work up a sweat during what passed for physical education class at TAHS, so there was no need to shower, anyway.
Well, impossible for me, considering that, in the past, whenever a volleyball or whatever came near me,
I'd always make sure to step calmly away to avoid it.
See? No sweat. No need for a shower. Problem solved. — Meg Cabot

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me - sports ... basketball. I use it because you're naive if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket ... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. — Sarah Palin

You play ball against yourself; your opponent is your potential. — Bobby Knight

It was not long before I was struck with the idea that base ball was just the game for a national sport for Americans. — Henry Chadwick

Chess is "a lot like football because you have to set up your offense and your defense, every once in a while you need to give up a piece of your team in order to make the big play. It's a game of patience, and that pretty much defines how I run the ball. I'm patient, always looking for the opportunity and always trying to capitalize on the other person's mistake." — Priest Holmes

I've had moments where I didn't hit the ball very good coming in, and you've got to turn it around. That's the whole idea of practicing and really working on being focused on what I'm doing and being committed to what I'm doing. I know what the fix is and I've proven it to myself, and it's just a matter of going out there and executing it consistently over 72 holes. — Tiger Woods

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

Concentration is born on the practice court ... you must mentally treat your practice sessions as matches, concentrating on every ball you hit. — Martina Navratilova

I didn't know it yet, but he would become one of our high school's super-athletes. There were hints of athletic (and, presumably, sexual) prowess there. For one, boys as ridiculously Abercrombie- esque good-looking as he was are always sports stars throughout high school. It is a rule, a self- fulfilling prophecy. It seems as if, sometime during elementary school, coaches make note of the little boys with the most classic bone structure and the best height projections and kidnap them, training them under cover of night. Not all of them will make it in college ball (that's what people call it, right?) because by the time they're all seniors, many of them will have been riding more on the sportsman-like nature of their faces than their actual abilities. But until that day, coaches will keep putting them on the field in the most prominent and visually appealing positions because they just kind of look like that's where they should be. At least I'm pretty sure that is what's going on. — Katie Heaney

Pack them into a small round mold, or form a ball and flatten it to resemble a hockey puck (or a baby Brie if you're not from Minnesota and into winter sports.) — Joanne Fluke

I love football. I love the aesthetics of football. I love the athleticism of football. I love the movement of the players, the antics of the coaches. I love the dynamism of the fans. I love their passion for their badge and the colour of their team and their country. I love the noise and the buzz and the electricity in the stadium. I love the songs. I love the way the ball moves and then it flows and the way a teams fortune rises and falls through a game and through a season. But what I love about football is that it brings people together across religious divides, geographic divides, political divides. I love the fact that for ninety minutes in a rectangular piece of grass, people can forget hopefully, whatever might be going on in their life, and rejoice in this communal celebration of humanity. The biggest diverse, invasive or pervasive culture that human kinds knows is football and I love the fact that at the altar of football human kind can come worship and celebrate. — Andy Harper

It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square. — Pete Rose

Losing is the bane and bugbear of every professional athlete's existence, but in baseball the monster seems to hang closer than in other sports, its chilly claws and foul breath palpable around the neck hairs of the infielder bending for his crosshand scoop or the reliever slipping his first two fingers off-center on the ball seams before delivering his two-and-two cut fastball. — Roger Angell