Yankee Quotes & Sayings

During the 1920s New York Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert once described his perfect afternoon at Yankee Stadium. 'It's when the Yankees score eight runs in the first inning,' Ruppert said, 'and then slowly pull away.' — Peter Golenbock

This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me. — Roger Angell

This must be the legendary Yankee rudeness — Charlaine Harris

It is plain and demonstrable, that much ale is not good for Yankee, and operates differently upon them from what it does upon a Briton; ale must be drank in a fog and a drizzle. — Herman Melville

New York City vagrant:
"What sort of 'nese are you people? Are you Chinese, or Japanese, or Javanese?"
Kakuzo Okakura responds:
"We are Japanese gentleman. But what sort of 'key are you? Are you a Yankee, or a donkey, or a monkey? — Okakura Kakuzo

I'm so excited about the new [Yankee] stadium! — Mark Teixeira

I was known as a Yankee killer. My best year against them was 1953. I beat them five times and shut them out four times. You just played a little harder against them. — Mel Parnell

India Lima Yankee — Teresa Mummert

Yankee Stadium, it's like everything else in this country. In Europe, they save all their old buildings for history. Here, we just tear them all down. — Bob Feller

Living in Atlanta those seven tumultuous years, I learned not to trust the Northern stereotype of white Southerners as incorrigible racists. Yankee self-righteousness ignored the depth of race hatred in places like Boston or New York. — Howard Zinn

Student today don't mean na', but in a Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the Fall of Arbenz, by the Stoning of Nixon, by the Guerrillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs - in a Latin America already a year and half into the Decade of the Guerrilla - a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a vibrating quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. — Junot Diaz

You're never going to be a Yankee for a day, or you're never going to be a Laker, but with Pro-Ams, they allow you to feel like you're a professional golfer and play under their conditions. — George Lopez

They just didn't make them like that anymore. Nowadays she was lucky to get some mild flirtation from some leather-faced NRA lobbyist. Forget about doggy-style on an eighteenth-century canopied bed by a certified KGB agent who said things like beg for it my little Yankee poodle. — Magnus Flyte

The history of [Mariano] Rivera is pretty unbelievable. And even if you're not a Yankee or a baseball fan, you have to appreciate the tradition. He gets respect from Boston fans and Phillies fans, and I love tradition. — Andrea Tantaros

Hopkins is talking about fighting at Yankee Stadium but that's rubbish. If he fought at Yankee Stadium, even the ushers wouldn't want to watch him. Bernard Hopkins couldn't draw breath. — Bob Arum

Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits - 25 hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points. There's six months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - you get a ground ball with eyes, you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week ... and you're in Yankee Stadium. — Crash Davis

I would rather be the tail of a lion than the head of a mouse. — Daddy Yankee

You look at all the great players that they've had and the potential of playing in Yankee Stadium. — Nick Johnson

The Yankee dollar and Confederate dumbness combined to heal the wounds of four years of fratricidal strife ... — Robert Penn Warren

It seems whenever we get too high hat and too sophisticated for flag-waving some thug nation comes along and decides we're a pushover all ready to be blackjacked. And it isn't long before we're looking up mighty anxiously to be sure the flag is still waving over us. Jimmy Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy — George M. Cohan

There was a nook in the house that contained what they called the Turkish Room, which was for intimate conversation. And when my mother had her sixth birthday, her grandmother led her into the Turkish Room. They were both named Inez. And on that day Big Inez gave Little Inez a plantation all her own. Two thousand acres. Then her little sister came running in and said, "Grandmother, can I have a plantation too?" And Big Inez looked down and said, "Child, your name is Alice. You were named for your Yankee grandmother. Go ask your Yankee grandmother for a plantation. — Adam Gopnik

I've barely said five words to you. What indication could you possibly have that I am a Yankee?"
"Well, we could start with the words 'what indication.' Someone from south of the Mason-Dixon would have said, 'Who the hell are you calling a Yankee?' Then we would have fought. — Jana Deleon

I had a dream about you last night ... Well I say dream I mean nightmare ... you were a Yankee fan. — Nicole McKay

Our aim is to establish El Cartel as not just another tequila but part of the club and party lifestyle. There are several songs where I mention the brand name, and a lot of these party songs go hand in hand with the concept of Cartel Tequila. — Daddy Yankee

I am a die-hard Red Sox fan, and yes, I dated a Yankee fan. I know I should be kicked out of The Nation for that, but I couldn't help it. He was way too charming back then. — Monica Alexander

We took dancehall and hip-hop and mixed it in the middle. I knew we had something. I thought, 'This sound is Puerto Rican sound.' — Daddy Yankee

No," I said. "You're not a Yankee imperialist?" she prodded. "Certainly not," I told her. "I come from Ireland." "Holland," she said, frowning. "No, — Valerie Hemingway

Call listened with amusement
not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep. — Larry McMurtry

The British have their own conception of what constitutes the typical American. He must have a flavor of the Wild West about him. He must do spectacular things. He must not be punctilious about dignity, decorum and other refinements characteristic of the real British gentleman. The Yankee pictured by the Briton must be a bustler. If he is occasionally flagrantly indiscreet in speech and action, then he is so much more surely stamped the genuine article. The most typical American the British ever set their eyes on was, in their judgment, Theodore Roosevelt. — B.C. Forbes

Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver. — Mary Karr

I know only two tunes. One of them is 'Yankee Doodle' the other isn't. — Ulysses S. Grant

I know a man who is a diamond cutter. He mows the lawn at Yankee Stadium. — Henny Youngman

I've been through a lot of beef with other singers, but it's all verbal. — Daddy Yankee

Whether or not anybody had invented the category in his lifetime, Babe Ruth was surely the Greatest Living Yankee almost immediately upon lofting home runs at the Polo Grounds, allowing the Yankees to build their own palace across the Harlem River. — George Vecsey

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

When I first came to Yankee Stadium I used to feel like the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were walking around in there. — Mickey Mantle

Well, that kind of puts a damper on even a Yankee win. — Phil Rizzuto

The virtue of Yankee upbringing spiritually speaking is of more downright value to me than any past heritages. — Marsden Hartley

Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding, — Frederick Douglass

It has a way of eroding barriers-that famous Yankee reticence-which would otherwise be impregnable. — Stephen King

I have never yet gotten entirely over the feeling that a Yankee, on account of his peculiar teachings and bringing-up, is far inferior to the better class of Southern people. I do not believe the world ever saw or will ever again see, unless the millennium comes, such high state of civilization and culture and exalted virtue as was the Southern states prior to the war. I have yet to find one Yankee, thought I do not say there are none, who, when the money test is made, will not for his own interest do some small or little thing, and often mean thing, if it is to his advantage to do so.

Writing as I now do after the lapse of nearly 40 years (and years do soften, and old age ought to) one may somewhat judge my feeling about the Yankees when the war ended. — George Benjamin West

Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods. — Alice Hoffman

If you saw that Yankee pitching too often, there would be a lot of guys doing different jobs. — Joe Rudi

She didn't want to handle him. She didn't want anything to do with him - this man with his cold, intense eyes and clipped speech, this stranger, this Yankee. He made her feel like a rabbit facing a cobra: terrified, but fascinated at the same time. He tried to hide his ruthlessness behind smooth, cosmopolitan manners, but Evie had no doubts about the real nature of the man.

He wanted her. He intended to have her. And he wouldn't care if he destroyed her in the taking. — Linda Howard

The best thing about being a Yankee is getting to watch Reggie Jackson play every day. The worst thing about being a Yankee? Getting to watch Reggie Jackson play every day — Graig Nettles

Gilbert: How Clark Gable turn every women's head so? Foolish young English girls would see a movie star in every GI with the same Yankee-doodle voice. Glamour in US privates named Jed, Buck or Chip, with their easy-come-by-gifts and Uncle Sam sweet-talk. Dreamboats in hooligans from Delaware or Arizona with fingernails that still carried soil from home, and eyes that crossed with any attempt at reading. Heart-throbs from men like those in the tea-shop, who dated their very close relatives and knew cattle as their mental equal. — Andrea Levy

I've been called a lot of things. But never, and I mean never, could anyone ever make the mistake of calling me a Yankee fan. — Curt Schilling

One thing led to another. That was the only way to explain how Arnold Brinkman, who considered both professional sports and young children unjustifiable, had ended up at Yankee Stadium with a nine-year-old boy. — Jacob M. Appel

When I talk about the Internet, it's because young people are there. TV and radio are still what moves the masses, and you can't ignore that. But you also have to feed that monster that grows daily, which is the Internet. — Daddy Yankee

All suburban housing developments look alike, and besides, every Yankee who ever crossed the Potomac except Ulysses S. Grant got lost as soon as he reached the Virginia side. — Charles McCarry

For decades Southie had been immigrant Irish against the world, fighting first a losing battle againsnt shameful discrimination from the Yankee merchhants who had run Boston for centuries and then another one against mindless bureaucrats and an obdurate federal judge who imposed school busing on the "town" that hated outsiders to begin with. Both clashes were the kind of righteous fight that left residents the way they liked to be: bloodied but unbowed. The shared battles reaffirmed a view of life: never trust outsiders and never forget where you come from. — Dick Lehr & Gerard O'Neill

To pitch a perfect game wearing pinstripes at Yankee Stadium, it's unbelievable. Growing up a Yankee fan, to come out here and make history, it really is a dream come true. — David Wells

I read one time that I am permanently banned from Yankee Stadium and that I could never ever go back. This article mentioned, supposedly, that I did something in the early 2000s at Yankee Stadium, and I got arrested, and supposedly, allegedly, I went to jail for something that I did. I read that about myself one time and I thought that was pretty fascinating. — Rob Huebel

GOING TO WALDEN
It isn't very far as highways lie.
I might be back by nightfall, having seen
The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!
Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are. — Mary Oliver

Sometimes she'd go a whole day without thinking of him or missing him. Why not? She had quite a full life, and really, he'd often been hard to deal with and hard to live with. A project, the Yankee oldtimers like her very own Dad might have said. And then sometimes a day would come, a gray one (or a sunny one) when she missed him so fiercely she felt empty, not a woman at all anymore but just a dead tree filled with cold November blow. She felt like that now, felt like hollering his name and hollering him home, and her heart turned sick with the thought of the years ahead and she wondered what good love was if it came to this, to even ten seconds of feeling like this. — Stephen King

All the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are the encapsulation of heterosexual love. I have different records for gay sex. — Margaret Cho

... There was something regal about her. She carried herself like she was wearing pink moire. And that powerless complexion glowed. Watching her, it came to me that she must have some Yankee strength that didn't need frippery. — Ann Rinaldi

The Greatest Living Yankee is Whitey Ford, who came out of Aviation High School, which was then in Manhattan, and helped pitch the Yankees to victory in the 1950 World Series when he was 21. — George Vecsey

It was a death struggle every day being a Yankee you either won or you lost. There was no second place. Half of us were nuts by the end of a season. — Jerry Coleman

Thus we come to the problem of determining what the poem is 'about.' Charles Altieri notes that '[a]n expression of the self can be one that is intended, the self's act, or one that is symptomatic, the act of a self not in control of what it manifests'(24) In 'Yankee Doodle,' and to a lesser extent in '$$$$$$," the interesting aspects of the poem are not 'the intended expression of the self.' The lack of explicitness is not suggestive in any positive sense because we feel that were things to be spelled out, this would weaken, not strengthen, the narrator's case by revealing the unacknowledged irrationality at the root of it. — Russell Harrison

Most guys who don't like me are either Democrats or Yankee fans. — Curt Schilling

I'd like to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee. — Joe DiMaggio

Apparently she was beyond words so she pushed the card into his hands. He looked down. Blinked. Blinked again before stumbling back into a chair. Did he just wet himself? Ah, who cared? He was holding four tickets to the Yankees vs. Red Sox at Yankee Stadium for this Friday and they were without a doubt the best seats in the stadium.
His eyes shifted from Haley to the tickets and back again before he made a split second decision and made a run for it. He didn't make it five feet before his little grasshopper tackled him to the ground and ripped the card from his hands.
He spit grass out of his mouth. "Fine. You can come with me I guess," he said, earning a knee to the ribs. — R.L. Mathewson

George H. W. Bush may be a World War II hero and New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ducts of a Sicilian grandmother. — Christopher Buckley

I was always the shame of the family - the one Yankee who was actually born in the North. — Randy Harrison

Riker tells Data to just get on with it already, so Data says Ferengi are like Yankee traders from 18th-century America. This indicates that, in the 24th century, the traditional practice of using 600-year-old comparisons is still in vogue, like when you're stuck in traffic on the freeway, and say, Man, this is just like Vasco de Gama trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope! — Wil Wheaton

Clay's brow's furrowed as the yuppie, Yankee, tone filled his ear. Who the hell could be dating a yuppie in Midnight? Sure, one could end up with a Yankee; it wasn't out of the realm of possibility, but a fucking yuppie? — Alex Morgan

I may not have been the best Yankee to put on the pinstripes, but I am the proudest. — Billy Martin

Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees; Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees' corner ... The efficiently triumphant Yankee maching is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel? — Gay Talese

I was a Yankee fan in Brooklyn because my father was a Yankee fan. And my father was required to live in Brooklyn with my mother's family, who were all Dodger fans. So he was surrounded by Dodger fans. He was a Yankee fan. So his revenge was to make me a Yankee fan. — Rudy Giuliani

He cannot hold his wine; he has no head for it. Why, on no more than three glasses, for I absolutely poured him out no more, he was on the point of singing Yankee Doodle. Yankee Doodle, in a King's ship, upon my sacred honour! — Patrick O'Brian

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life — John Cheever

It was the first time I used that bat. A Yankee fan in Chicago gave it to me the last time we were there and said it would bring me luck. There's no brand name on it or anything. Maybe the guy made it himself. It had been in the bat rack, and I picked it up by mistake because it looked like the bat I had been using the last few days. — Graig Nettles

Yankee caps pop up all over the world, not as a statement of loyalty to that team, but as a symbol of - what? Winning 27 so-called World Series? Much of the world doesn't even play that sport. — George Vecsey

If I were playing today I'd do what Joe DiMaggio said. I'd go knock on the door at Yankee Stadium and when George Steinbrenner answered I'd say, 'Howdy, pardner.' — Mickey Mantle

YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. — Ambrose Bierce

The best way to help the Latino community is to give back. I love giving back; I'm quiet about God and what I do, but we do a lot in the Dominican Republic. — Daddy Yankee

Derek Jeter has been a great representative of what the Yankees have stood for over the years. He has been a team player who has only cared about winning. He has also been a fine example both on and off the field over his long tenure as a Yankee. It has been a real pleasure to manage him and play alongside him. — Joe Girardi

When I was 15 years old, I used to actually dream I was pitching in Yankee Stadium. Bill Dickey was my catcher. — Tommy Lasorda

Freedom!' Mrs. Lynde sniffed. 'Freedom! Don't talk like a Yankee, Anne. — L.M. Montgomery

Coonskin caps, Yankee bats, the Hound Dog man's big start. The A-bomb fears, Annette had ears, I lusted in my heart. — John Fogerty

Fawn M. Brodie, whose classic life of Smith earned her excommunication from the Mormon Church, saw the Book of Mormon as 'one of the earliest examples of frontier fiction, the first long Yankee narrative that owes nothing to English literary fashions'.105 There was quite a genre of 'lost race' novels at the time. A century on, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga formed an English Catholic parallel, conscious or unconscious, to Smith's work. — Diarmaid MacCulloch

I swear," Nell said, walking faster, "you're looking at a life of hamburger and no yelling." She held the dachshund closer, and it sighed this time and put its head on her arm, and she stopped to look down into
its eyes. "Hello," she said, and SugarPie stared back, pathetic and wide-eyed in the glow from the streetlight, her eyelashes fluttering like a Southern belle confronted by a Yankee. — Jennifer Crusie

My office is at Yankee stadium. Yes, dreams do come true. — Derek Jeter

I've set the vast majority of my books in New England because that's where I live. I love this part of the country the gentle hills, the lush forests, the cycles of the seasons, the ocean, the quiet lakes and rivers that spread across the region. And, then of course, there's that Yankee spirit, which is a combination of optimism and responsibility, rugged individualism and a strong sense of community. I consider myself and my characters very lucky to live in New England. — Judith Arnold

Accepting Uncle Tom's Cabin as revelation second only to the Bible, the Yankee women all wanted to know about the bloodhounds which every Southerner kept to track down runaway slaves. And they never believed her when she told them she had only seen one bloodhound in all her life and it was a small mild dog and not a huge ferocious mastiff. They wanted to know about the dreadful branding irons which planters used to mark the faces of their slaves and the cat-o'-nine-tails with which they beat them to death, and they evidenced what Scarlett felt was a very nasty and ill-bred interest in slave concubinage.
Especially did she resent this in view of the enormous increase in mulatto babies in Atlanta since the Yankee soldiers had settled in the town. — Margaret Mitchell

Babe Ruth made a baseball fan of me. I used to go to Yankee Stadium just to see him come to bat. — Effa Manley

The Grand Ole Opry, to a country singer, is what Yankee Stadium is to a baseball player. Broadway to an actor. It's the top of the ladder, the top of the mountain. You don't just play the Opry; you live it. — Bill Anderson

It was now the fall of 1956, and nine years after entering Georgia Military Academy as a scrawny "Yankee" from Ohio, I was now considered a "southerner," enrolling at one of the North's most elite institutions. — Ted Turner

A doorman opened the door for me and I went in. The lobby was not quite as big as the Yankee Stadium. It was floored with a pale blue carpet with sponge rubber underneath. It was so soft it made me want to lie down and roll. — Raymond Chandler

It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what 'tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one. — Pat Conroy

I feel so much pride to represent my community and be Latino. No doubt about it, above my career and sales being a Latino comes first. — Daddy Yankee

The reason I'm a Yankee is that George Steinbrenner out hustled everybody else. — Reggie Jackson

My heroes, my dreams, and my future lay in Yankee Stadium. And they can't take that away from me. — Derek Jeter

He'd lived for those letters, he remembered. He'd imagined meeting and marrying Miss Sarah Matthews, and bringing his bride up to meet his friend at Beaumont Hall. But the visit was not to be - Jeff died, despite Nolan's care and desperate prayers, and once he was gone, there was no real reason for Nolan to remain at Beaumont Hall. The "Spinsters' Club" had invited him and a couple other candidates to come for Founders' Day. He'd ridden southward, knowing Sarah Matthews would be as beautiful in person as she was interesting in her letters, and hoping she would not hate him because he was a Yankee. — Laurie Kingery

We are all doomed, Yankee detective. One day I will come into work and see myself lying on this slab. — Carroll Bryant

And I didn't neglect to point out to my Yankee buddies that most of the high shooters in our platoon were Southern boys. — Eugene B. Sledge

I've never been an actor on Broadway, but it feels like you're on a stage when you play at Yankee Stadium. And that's the feeling I've always had. — Derek Jeter

The school year started in September, with a long vacation in the winter, not the summer, due to the difficulty of keeping the schools warm in North Korea's harsh winters. My kindergarten had a large wood-burning stove in the middle of the classroom and walls painted with colourful scenes of children performing gymnastics, children in uniform, and of a North Korean soldier simultaneously impaling a Yankee, a Japanese and a South Korean soldier with his rifle bayonet. — Hyeonseo Lee

Around New York, I used to hear that expression, 'Once a Dodger, always a Dodger.' But how about, 'Once a Yankee, always a Yankee?' There never was anything better than that. You never get over it. — Tony Lazzeri