Quotes & Sayings About Yankees Baseball

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

A mystique of history and heritage surrounds the New York Yankees. It's like the old days revived. We're loved and hated, but always in larger doses than any other team. We're the only team in any sport whose name and uniform and insignia are synonymous with their entire sport all over the world ... the Yankees mean baseball to more people than all the other teams combined. — Paul Blair

I developed an interest in major league baseball and the 1960s were, as far as I'm concerned (with a nod to the Babe Ruth era of the 1920s), the Golden Age of Baseball. Like most people in the valley, I was a diehard Yankees fan and, in a pinch, a Mets fan. They were New York teams, and most New Englanders rooted for the Boston Red Sox, but our end of Connecticut was geographically and culturally closer to New York than Boston, and that's where our loyalties went.
And what was not to love? The Yankees ruled the earth in those days. The great Roger Maris set one Major League record after another and even he was almost always one hit shy of Mickey Mantle, God on High of the Green Diamond. — John William Tuohy

Hating the Yankees isn't part of my act. It is one of those exquisite times when life and art are in perfect conjunction. — Bill Veeck

It's hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going. — Jim Jarmusch

Baseball has changed dramatically since I began my tenure with the Yankees. — Joe Torre

After they remodeled Yankee Stadium I didn't feel that the ghosts were there anymore. It just wasn't the same. — Mickey Mantle

As much as we disliked the Yankees, fans and players alike, they were good for baseball. They consistently unsuccessful teams like the Browns, Senators, and A's paid a lot of their bills with those big crowds that poured through the gates when the Yankees came to town. — Bob Feller

Here at NBC there is just one more reason to hate the Yankees. — Chet Huntley

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

Baseball will miss Steinbrenner. He did a lot of great things-and some not so great-but it's a sad day for baseball, no doubt about it. He was a winner, and he made the Yankees a winner. — Don Zimmer

I would say I was jock. I went to Sierra College. I was a big baseball player. Getting into the MLB was my dream - to become a left-handed pitcher for the Yankees. That's what I was hoping, but life kind of went the other way. — Ryan Guzman

To be manager of the Yankees under the malevolent dictatorship of George Steinbrenner is like being married to Zsa Zsa Gabor - the union is short and sweet. — Robert Rubin

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

'This is America,' my father used to say to me, 'and in this country, a smart young fellow like you can grow up and do just about anything.' My dad, no doubt, was thinking doctor, lawyer, teacher, scientist or businessman. I was thinking second baseman, New York Yankees. — Joe Lieberman

Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel. — Joe E. Lewis

Once, while living in New York City in the early 2000s, I was asked to leave a sports bar because the Yankees were playing my hometown Red Sox on TV and I lost my cool at a guy who was loudly dissing them. I yelled, "Derek Jeter is baseball's Hitler! — Mindy Kaling

The Yankees, you see, they're a money team, they're the class of baseball. You don't ever bet against that. — Jim Thorpe

You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn't maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a t-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller? — Jimmy Breslin

When I first signed with the Yankees, the regulars wouldn't talk to you until you were with the team three or four years. Nowadays the rookies get $100,000 to sign and they don't talk to the regulars. — Lefty Gomez

For that matter I didn't understand Civil War reenactments. Why would you celebrate the biggest thing you ever lost? I quickly learned not to give voice to such skepticisms, and when asked if I was a Yankee I said I didn't follow baseball closely. That usually shut the person up. — Patricia Cornwell

Major League Baseball's labor negotiations involve two paradoxes. The players' union's primary objective is to protect the revenues of a very few very rich owners - principally, the Yankees'. The owners' primary objective is a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. The union believes that unconstrained spending by the richest three teams pulls up all payrolls. Most owners believe that baseball's problems
competitive imbalance, the parlous financial conditions of many clubs
result from large and growing disparities of what are mistakenly treated as 'local' revenues. — George Will

Baseball is known for superstitious players and cursed teams - and at the root of every curse there's a story. Boston's curse was to trade Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Cubs fans claim a billy goat is responsible for their futility. And Cleveland's curse? The club struggled after its Pennant-winning 1954 season, but it was rich with optimism just two years later as an onslaught of new talent promised to lift the club once more to the ranks of baseball's elite - and by 1959 the club was contending for the Pennant again. And then GM Frank Lane traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers and cursed everything. — Tucker Elliot

The NFL has a hard cap, but if you ask 20 NFL experts who is going to win the Super Bowl this year, you might get 20 different answers. If you then asked 20 baseball experts who is going to represent the American League in the World Series, at least 90 percent of them would say the Yankees and the rest would say Seattle. — Bob DuPuy

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

I remember when I got a call and was told I was traded [to the Yankees in 1974], I actually cried because I liked Kansas City. But coming to the Yankees was the best thing that ever happened to me in my baseball career. — Lou Piniella

I was always interested in baseball. In fact, in my younger years, I played it in an amateur way. But up to the time when I became identified with the Yankees, I was a strong National League rooter. — Jacob Ruppert

Why would anyone want to fight Henry?" Loondorf looked hurt.
"Because he's a ballplayer."
"So?"
"So he's a baller. He's got cash, chains, crisp clothes. He's got a hat that says Yankees and it's the real deal, yo. He didn't buy it at no yard sale. He walks into a bar and girls are like damn. Dudes get jealous. They want to get in his face, prove they're somebody."
"They want to take down the man," Steve said helpfully. — Chad Harbach

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

Ty Cobb was still fighting the Civil War, and as far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees. But who knows, if he hadn't had that terrible persecution complex, he never would have been about the best ballplayer who ever lived. — Sam Crawford

I didn't really say everything I said. — Yogi Berra

When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees. — Jerry Spinelli

Rooting for the Yankees is like owning a yacht. — Jimmy Cannon

You kind of took it for granted around the Yankees that there was always going to be baseball in October. — Whitey Ford

World Series MVP is a unique individual honor because with one exception - Bobby Richardson won 1960 World Series MVP honors for the Yankees, but the Pittsburgh Pirates won the Series that year - by virtue of winning the award you guarantee your teammates have won a ring. — Tucker Elliot

The best team I ever saw, and I really mean this, was the '61 Yankees. — Mickey Mantle

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

To join Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys was like throwing a baseball around in your front yard and somebody coming over and signing you to play for the New York Yankees. — Johnny Gimble

The Yankees are only interested in one thing, and I have no idea what that is. — Luis Polonia

I've played for teams that were family-oriented organizations. They made you feel like family. The Yankees are strictly a business. Baseball is your life and everything else is secondary. — Gary Sheffield

For my books of nonfiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. I've been a Yankees and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades, so I wrote 'Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man.' It's more the story of his great courage than of his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges, and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig. — David A. Adler

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

It ain't over 'til it's over. — Yogi Berra

When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and also join the circus. With the Yankees, I've accomplished both. — Graig Nettles

I never got to see the '27 Yankees. Everyone says that was the greatest team ever. But I think it would've been a great series if we'd have had the chance to play them. — Mickey Mantle

They don't know who I was or that I played baseball. — Catfish Hunter

As long as I'm around playing baseball, it doesn't matter where I am, as long as it's not with the Yankees. — Carl Everett

He looked nearly inconspicuous, a handsome man in faded Levi's and tennis shoes. A Yankees baseball cap covered his dark hair, the bill shadowing his features. Casual. Beautiful. A day's growth of beard on his jaw did little to detract from his excruciating attractiveness.
"She's eight months old, but she knows how to flirt," the baby's mother said. "Let go of the nice man's shirt, Gabbi." She dislodged the child's hand, then told Adrian, "I'm sorry. She must like the colors on your T-shirt."
Eight-month-old Gabbi's big blue eyes were fixed on Adrian's face, not on his T-shirt. Billie released a shaky breath. Good God. Even babies weren't immune. — Shelby Reed

Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel. — Yogi Berra

How can a you hit and think at the same time? — Yogi Berra

the Yankees were playing my hometown Red Sox on TV and I lost my cool at a guy who was loudly dissing them. I yelled, "Derek Jeter is baseball's Hitler!" This was in New York City. In a room full of Jewish sports fans. I don't even really like baseball that much! I have problems. — Mindy Kaling

The Yankees' Facebook page was hacked. The hacker was immediately purchased and signed to a 5 year contract with the Yankees. — Stephen Colbert

Baseball is just a game. But like religion, it has rituals. I need rituals. I need traditions. I need something to believe in, whether I worship in a church or a stadium. I believe in the Yankees and then divorced them and came all the way back to believing in them again, and what I have learned, if anything, is this: My belief, my faith, transcends individual players and is deeper than the outcome of any game, any season. It is unshakable. — Jane Heller

Bill Dickey is learning me his experience. — Yogi Berra

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

The game of baseball is better when the Dodgers are playing well, just like when the Yankees are playing well, or the Cubs, the Phillies, the big-name teams. — Pete Rose

Some kids dream of joining the circus, others of becoming a major league baseball player. I have been doubly blessed. As a member of the New York Yankees, I have gotten to do both. — Graig Nettles

I'm a character actor. I have to find work in good movies where I can make something of my role. I'm a very lucky guy to be in that kind of position. It's like a kid who dreams of becoming a baseball player and then he gets to play for the Yankees ... — Christopher Walken

Twenty years ago rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for IBM. — George Will

We all used to collect baseball cards that came with bubble gum. You could never get the smell of gum off your cards, but you kept your Yankees cards pristine. — Penny Marshall