T Ball Baseball Quotes & Sayings

I could always throw the ball pretty well and I worked pretty hard at learning how to play the game. But I didn't consider it work as a kid, since I just loved playing baseball. — Jim Abbott

When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball." They say, "Play ball." — Willie Stargell

Here's the thing about baseball-it's not the individual sport I thought it was. Turns out I was wrong about that.
Yeah, the batter is a lone man against the world. He stands in the batter's box like a soldier and it's up to him-and him alone-what happens next.
But here's the thing I didn't understand until I was forced to, until recently: In order to hit a home run ...
Someone else has to pitch the ball. — Barry Lyga

Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something on the blind side holding it in place? A single frame didn't mean a thing. Patterns were based on data. With enough datapoints, you could predict just about anything. — Marcus Sakey

We aren't designed by God to seek the image of others; we are designed to seek him. When we spend time on social media focusing on how well others present their lives, we are, to use one of my father's baseball analogies, taking our eye off the ball. — Craig Groeschel

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

I didn't teach you that. Catch the ball with your glove. — Willie Mays

I was a baseball player. I played in high school and a little bit in college. I was a catcher. I don't know if I could have played any other position. As a catcher, you're always on the ball. — Tim DeKay

All he'd ever wanted was for nothing to change. Or for things to change only in the right ways, improving little by little, day by day, forever. It sounded crazy when you said it like that, but that was what baseball had promised him, what Westish College had promised him, what Schwartzy had promised him. The dream of every day the same. Every day was like the day before but a little bit better. You ran the stadium a little faster. You bench-pressed a little more. You hit the ball a little harder in the cage; you watched the tape with Schwartzy afterward and gained a little insight into your swing. Your swing grew a little simpler. Everything grew simpler, little by little. You ate the same food, work up at the same time, wore the same clothes. Hitches, bad habits, useless thoughts
whatever you didn't need slowly fell away. Whatever was simple and useful remained. You improved little by little til the day it all became perfect and stayed that way. Forever. — Chad Harbach

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

Some day I'm going to have to stand before God, and if He asks me why I didn't let that [Jackie] Robinson fellow play ball, I don't think saying 'because of the color of his skin' would be a good enough answer. — Branch Rickey

People like us are afraid to leave ball. What else is there to do? When baseball has been your whole life, you can't think about a future without it, so you hang on as long as you can. — Willie Stargell

I don't give a damn about any actors. What good will John Barrymore do you with the bases loaded and two down in a tight ball game. Either I get the money (more than Barrymore), or I don't play! — Babe Ruth

Upsetting the dope is a favorite pastime in baseball. Past performances count for but little in the national pastime. Reputations don't get you anywhere. A club is judged solely on results, and to get results, you must win ball games. — Billy Evans

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all. — Earl Weaver

Football, you can go out and buy a football and play it in your backyard. Basketball, you can go out and play it in the schoolyard or in your driveway. Baseball, you get a glove and a bat and a ball and you go out and play in the neighborhood. You can't do that in hockey. — Jeremy Roenick

I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn't play ball too good - I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn't preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing. — Muddy Waters

That flag's not just the emblem of being a racist asshole, a club to which your daddy probably belongs happily. But it's also the Confederate flag. The one carried by Southerners to say to the Yankees - that's your daddy, a Yankee - 'Don't tread on me or I'll pop a musket ball up your ass.' Northerners driving around with the Dixie flag is like a Jew wearing a 'Go Hitler!' baseball cap." Jonesy's — Chuck Wendig

Well I can't rightly say (which player hit the ball hardest), but the ones (home runs by) Ruth hit got smaller quicker. — Walter Johnson

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

The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum . (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway. — Stephen Jay Gould

Baseball players need strength but also the ability to make fast-paced, explosive movements, so their training is all about strengthening the tendons around the bone and the joint so you don't tear the muscles from the bones. And so the muscles will have endurance and stability. And flexibility, which helps you throw the ball harder or have the snap to hit a ball. Or to take off quickly to steal a base. — Chadwick Boseman

What would he say to her, if he was going to speak truly? He didn't know. Talking was like throwing a baseball. You couldn't plan it out beforehand. You just had to let go and see what happened. You had to throw out words without knowing whether anyone woud catch them
you had to throw out words you knew no one would catch. You had to send your words out where they weren't yours anymore. It felt better to talk with a ball in your hand, it felt better to let the ball do the talking. But the world, the nonbaseball world, the world of love and sex and jobs and friends, was made of words. — Chad Harbach

I just wouldn't have believed a ball could be hit that hard. I've never seen anything like it. — Bucky Harris

Looking at the ball going over the fence isn't going to help. — Hank Aaron

When life throws you a curve ball, have a good eye. — T.F. Hodge

Teddy is never going to graduate from T-ball to baseball. He's never going to grow a mustache. Never going to get into a fistfight or shoot a deer or kiss a girl or have sex or fall in love or get married or father his own curly-haired child. I'm only ten years older than him, but it's like I've already had so much more life. It is unfair, If one of us should have been left behind, if one of us should have been given the opportunity for more life, it should be him. — Gayle Forman

In this game, you have to think about making plays, you can't worry about making mistakes. At times, a guy will get thrown out, but in the bigger scheme, the bases we're going to take will far outweigh that occasional misread. And it depends on what you call a mistake. If the outfielder puts the ball right on the money, he's out by a quarter-step and it's a bang-bang play, that's not a mistake. That's baseball. If you're out by four or five steps, it's ugly, it's a misread, but in the big picture, that aggressiveness is going to help us more than the occasional blunder will hurt. — Mike Scioscia

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

The reformation of the church must occur so that there is a reformation of our subculture, and then our subculture will affect the larger polis. Expecting our faith to affect the larger polis when it has not yet changed the average shelf at the local Christian book store is expecting something that is not going to happen. With the weird exception of baseball, where the ball is handled entirely by the defense, you can't score points until you have the ball. And reformers will not have the ball until they have a culture. — Douglas Wilson

I think I throw the ball as hard as anyone. The ball just doesn't get there as fast. — Eddie Bane

I don't like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game,but it isn't exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport. — Bowie Kuhn

[A knuckleball is] a curve ball that doesn't give a damn. — Jimmy Cannon

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

He hit the ball so hard, I couldn't even turn around in time to see it go over the fence. — Roger Clemens

After all, I was choosing to walk in the front door of Morgan Stanley every day. I didn't have to. I could make a different choice. I had to stop throwing away my power by focusing on what was wrong and focus on ways, to use a baseball term, "to knock the cover off the ball. — Carla Harris

I'm sure glad this isn't my home ball park. — Hank Aaron

Don't tell me about the world. Not today. It's springtime and they're knocking baseball around fields where the grass is damp and green in the morning and the kids are trying to hit the curve ball. — Pete Hamill

When I played ball, I didn't play for fun ... It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest. — Ty Cobb

We lived near a playground that had four baseball diamonds on it, and when I got to be 11, 12 years old, I was always over at the ballpark practicing or playing or doing something pertaining to baseball. And when I wasn't doing that, I was bouncing a rubber ball off the steps of my front porch at home. — Bobby Doerr

Vic Wertz once hit a ball rather famously that was later described as such: 'It would have been a home run in any other park - including Yellowstone.' Instead, he's remembered as the guy who got robbed by Willie Mays' spectacular catch during the 1954 World Series between the Indians and the Giants, a play that remains one of the game's all-time greatest defensive efforts. What people often forget about Wertz is that his greatest battle wasn't that one at bat, and that one out never defined his career. He was stricken with polio in 1955, and after 74 games his season was over and his career was hanging in the balance. 'The Catch' by Willie Mays couldn't keep him down, and neither could polio - he came back in 1956, and despite playing in only 136 games he belted 32 home runs with 106 RBIs. — Tucker Elliot

The key to hitting for high average is to relax, concentrate, and don't hit the fly ball to center field. — Stan Musial

Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?' 'It ain't hardly legal if you don't. — Edna Ferber

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

Nobody likes the ball low and away, but that's where you're going to get it from me. I been pitching it there 50 years, away from them. That way they can't hurt you. You keep the ball in the park. — Satchel Paige

Baseball is a set of individuals doing their thing in the same team, but it's much more individual. In basketball people are making real time decisions about who gets the ball, do we trust everybody out on the court, and the analytics certainly don't show you all those subtle dynamics, but they're very important. — Steve Ballmer

I really don't care much about baseball, or looking at ball games, major or minor. All my interest in baseball is in its statistics. — Ernest Lanigan

Baseball calls it a curve ball for a reason: you just don't know where some pitches will land. Your ace could get injured. Your golden glover could err. Your team could sit through a rain delay. Your manager could get ejected. Your bench must be broad and deep enough to overcome. — Christine Pelosi

When I was a kid I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit. — Shel Silverstein

When I was in baseball and you went into the clubhouse, you didn't see ball players with curling irons. — Red Barber

How can I play baseball if I'm stupid? If I was stupid I wouldn't have pitched in the World Series. I'd be playing ball in Mexico or Yugoslavia or on Pluto. — Joaquin Andujar

Cyclists, I work with a number of cyclists. They are great athletes; they are great aerobic athletes. If you ask them to hit a baseball or golf ball, they can't do that. — Eric Heiden

Don't forget to swing hard, in case you hit the ball. — Woodie Held

Other than hitting the ball ... there's nothing else I have ever done or know how to do. How to live on the outside, how to earn a living, how to take of my family, I'm a stupid idiot who doesn't know how to do any of that. Therefore ... Please let me play baseball. — Kim Young-kwang

Honestly, I don't think I'm doing anything any different right now. You swing, and the ball finds a hole. That's it. That's the game of baseball. — Andrew McCutchen

Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don't think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base - in both senses - greed. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of the brontosaurus. — John Fowles

Do you know how crazy that made me? I'm trying to concentrate on my fucking fucking ball baseball game and all I can think about is why the hell the girl I'm in love with is ignoring me. I knewsomething was wrong when you never called. I tried to shake it off, but I couldn't. You can't do that tome. Don't you understand? You can't fucking do that to me when I'm trying to play ball! — J. Sterling

Casey didn't easily forgive a guy who got doubled up on a hit-and-run play. He didn't see any reason why the runner couldn't take a quick glance back toward the plate to make sure the ball was hit safely. — Mickey Mantle

But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric - not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football.You stood and waited and tried to still your mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see? — Chad Harbach