Tucker Game Quotes & Sayings

Ortiz is now synonymous with walk-off homers. After all, he hit a total of nine game-ending blasts from 2002-07. And that was just in the regular season. It was his blasts in the 2004 postseason that cemented his legacy in Boston. — Tucker Elliot

One big lesson I learned from movie [making] was I don't do creative projects that I headline unless I have all the control. I can't deal with having to live with other people's screw ups, and that's just sort of the way the movie business works. The people with the money are in charge. Until I'm in charge, I don't want to play that game. — Tucker Max

Joe Sewell is the toughest strikeout in baseball history. In 14 seasons he struck out only 114 times - he never struck out three times in a game, and he struck out twice in a game on only two occasions. So how is it possible that a 30-year-old pitcher who won eight games and recorded 54 strikeouts - in his career - fanned Sewell twice in one game? I don't know, but he did, in 1923. — Tucker Elliot

When you get right down to it, there is no dignified way to go, be it decomposition, incineration, dissection, tissue digestion, or composting. They're all, bottom line, a little disagreeable. It takes the careful application of a well-considered euphemism - burial, cremation, anatomical gift-giving, water reduction, ecological funeral - to bring it to the point of acceptance. — Mary Roach

It's Curt Schilling and his bloody sock staring down the Yankees in the Bronx. It's Derek Lowe taking the mound the very next night to complete the most improbable comeback in baseball history - and then seven days later clinching the World Series. It's Pedro Martinez and his six hitless innings of postseason relief against the Indians. Yes, it is also Cy Young and Roger Clemens, and the 192 wins in a Red Sox uniform that they share - the perfect game for Young, the 20 strikeout games for Clemens - but it is also Bill Dinneen clinching the 1903 World Series with a busted, bloody hand, and Jose Santiago shutting down Minnesota with two games left in the season to keep the 1967 Impossible Dream alive, and Jim Lonborg clinching the Impossible Dream the very next day, and Jim Lonborg again, tossing a one-hitter and a three-hitter in the 1967 World Series, and Luis Tiant in the 1975 postseason, shutting out Oakland and Cincinnati in back-to-back starts. They are all winners. — Tucker Elliot

We don't call it sin today, we call it self-expression. — Max Stirner

It's quite the game you're playing, Charlie." I shouldn't ask. I shouldn't. Don't ask. Don't . . . "And do you like playing it?" I'm surprised he even heard me, what with my voice as low as it is. But he must have - that or he read my lips, where his focus is locked right now - because he steps in closer, until our chests are almost touching but aren't. I hold the air in my lungs as he leans in toward my ear, his warm breath skating along my neck. "Yes, I do. Too much. — K.A. Tucker

The future is itself a story, and predictions are stories we tell to amaze ourselves, to give hope to the desperate, to jolt the complacent. — David Remnick

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you — Anonymous

It's widely noted that among players currently eligible for the Hall of Fame, Maris and Murphy are the only two-time MVP recipients not enshrined at Cooperstown. In a previous book I argued Maris should be in the Hall of Fame - here I'd simply point out that during his prime, Murphy was the best player in the game. You can argue that his prime didn't last long enough or that his career numbers aren't strong enough, but then he didn't cheat either. — Tucker Elliot

Skip Caray was my favorite announcer as I grew up listening to the Braves on TBS and on the radio. One night, listening to a game that was headed into extra-innings, the broadcast was just breaking away to commercial when Skip said, 'Free baseball in Atlanta!' One of the best lines I've ever heard. — Tucker Elliot

hat was then Now Johannes Cabal and Joey Granite stood before Billy Butler and said nothing. The smell of smoke said it all for them. Butler smiled nastily. "Oh. It's - " As famous last words go, they lacked a certain something. "Uppercut, Joey," said Cabal. Joey Granite delivered an uppercut of surpassing science and pugilistic artistry. It was a thing of beauty and kinetic poetry that might be long admired among people who enjoy watching other people beat the living daylights out of one another. It was also powerful enough to lift a small building off its foundations. Anything up to a branch library would have tottered and fallen. Billy Butler, despite a bit of a gut, simply wasn't in the same league weight-wise. By some miracle, his head stayed on his body, but there was little doubt that the police would be making enquiries long before he hit the ground again. "Let us leave, Joey," said Cabal as Butler vanished through the cloud base. — Jonathan L. Howard

[George] Foster lacks the name recognition outside of Cincinnati that other members of the Big Red machine maintain, but that doesn't diminish his contributions to the club - he followed his MVP campaign with three more seasons of 20-plus home runs and 90-plus RBIs, never mind the fact he batted .326 during three trips to the World Series. And just like Rose and Morgan and Bench during their MVP seasons, Foster can say, if only for that one summer, he was the best in the game. — Tucker Elliot

There's almost nothing worse than spending an entire day anticipating watching a Yankees vs. Red Sox game, only to have the score be 9-0 in the third inning. — Tucker Elliot

There was a time we laughed at the old guys up on the hill. The ones who graduated a couple of years before us, and who would hang around the school and the ballpark still, and would sit on the hoods of their cars and tell us how when they were seniors they did it better, faster, and further. We laughed, because we were still doing it, and all they could do was talk. If our goals were not met, there was next year, but it never occurred to us that one day there would not be a next year, and that the guys sitting on the hoods of their cars at the top of the hill, wishing they could have one more year, willing to settle for one last game, could one day be us. — Tucker Elliot

Most of us would give anything for the chance to play just one day of MLB baseball - especially for our favorite team. Well, there once was a pitcher named Bock Baker who actually got two opportunities to pitch in the big leagues. He took the mound for Cleveland against the Chicago White Sox in his big league debut. How did he fare? Well, he pitched a complete game. Pretty spectacular, right? Well, sure - but it depends on your perspective. He gave up 23 hits and 13 runs. Baker never pitched for Cleveland again, but the Philadelphia Athletics gave him a second big league start that same year (1901). He lasted juts six innings, and lost again after giving up 11 runs - and then his career was over. — Tucker Elliot

Baseball really is a glorified game of throw and catch. And if you don't have guys who throw it really well, you can't compete for long. — Tucker Elliot

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it. — Annie Proulx

There's a reason diehard fans get to the ballpark hours before game time. It's not for better parking. It's not for extra time to find our seats. It's not so we'll have time to down an extra hot dog, heavy on the mustard, prior to the first pitch. It's called BP. — Tucker Elliot

Freddie Freeman led all Braves' starters with a (.282) batting average in 2011. Not bad for a rookie. Then again, this is the kid who hit his first big league bomb against none other than Roy Halladay ... the same kid whose leather at first is so flashy than at times it's hard to decide which to be more excited about, his bat or his glove, the same kid who joined teammate Dan Uggla with concurrent 20-game hitting streaks in 2011 - a first in modern era Braves' history - and the same kid who won NL Rookie of the Month honors in July after hitting .362 with six homers, 17 runs, and 18 RBIs. — Tucker Elliot

There was once a people in some land - and they may be still there for what I know - who thought it sacrilegious to stay the course of a raging fire. If a house were being burned, burn it must, even though there were facilities for saving it. For who would dare to interfere with the course of the god? Our idea of sorrow is much the same. We think it wicked, or at any rate heartless, to put it out. If a man's wife be dead, he should go about lugubrious, with long face, for at least two years, or perhaps with full length for eighteen months, decreasing gradually during the other six. If he be a man who can quench his sorrow - put out his fire as it were - in less time than that, let him at any rate not show his power! — Anthony Trollope

Tucker Case did not play golf. He'd tried it once, and although he'd enjoyed the drinking and driving the little electric car into the lake, he just didn't get the appeal. It seemed - and he'd examined the game closely because his father had loved it - an awful lot like a bunch of rich white guys in goofy clothing walking around on an absurdly large lawn hitting absurdly small white balls with crooked sticks. — Christopher Moore

I'm always in those tabloids where they show who's badly dressed. It's funny, because each time I'm getting my picture taken, I'm thinking, This is a nice outfit. — Sarah Silverman

A powerful connection between two people is a potent psychic factor that exists regardless of either person's opinion about the relationship. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

It's one thing to win a game with a base hit, or to save a game by pitching a scoreless ninth ... it's something altogether different to save our National Pastime by day in and day out showing up with the joy and passion of a kid playing Little League and the determined attitude and work ethic of a consummate professional bent on doing one thing and one thing only: his job. — Tucker Elliot

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

I don't know how long we talked about that game the first time my dad showed me the ticket stub. He admitted he hadn't even been sure that he still had it, that he was surprised when he'd been able to find it. But we've spent hours and hours and hours talking about it since. And it's pretty amazing, because that ticket stub sat in a box for two decades - once it let my dad into a stadium to see a baseball game, and then later, it let me into my dad's world, into his past, to learn about the man who taught me to love a game so passionately that it shaped nearly every aspect of my life. — Tucker Elliot