"You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you."
-- Roy Campanella
"One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while you come into a situation where you want
to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something."
-- Nolan Ryan
"If I were playing third base and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I'd trip her.
Oh, I'd pick her up and brush her off and say, 'Sorry Mom, but nobody beats me."
-- Leo Durocher
"The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely."
-- Ted Williams
"I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the batter;
that the only thing I knew about pitching was that it was hard to hit."
--Tim McCarver
"Trying to hit him (Phil Niekro) was like trying to eat Jell-O with chopsticks."
-- Bobby Murcer, Yankees outfielder
"Why certainly I'd like to have that fellow who hits a home run every time at bat, who strikes out every opposing
batter when he's pitching, who throws strikes to any base or the plate when he's playing outfield and who's always
thinking about two innings ahead just what he'll do to baffle the other team. Any manager would want a guy like
that playing for him. The only trouble is to get him to put down his cup of beer and come down out of the stands
and do those things."
-- Danny Murtaugh, manager
"When you're in a slump, It's almost as if you look out at the field and it's one big glove."
-- Vance Law
"The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics.
You don't have to wait for the reviews."
-- Sandy Koufax
"Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose-unless it be to have it assumed that I
once pitched a baseball with distinction."
-- Robert Frost
"When we lost I couldn't sleep at night. When we win I can't sleep at night. But when you win, you wake up feeling
better."
-- Joe Torre
"Baseball reflected the language of America, and spiced it, too. Presidents, politicians, executives, generals and
parents touched all the bases regularly so that nobody would be out in left field or caught off the base in the
greater pursuits of life. If you did it right, you hit a grand slam home run; if not you struck out."
-- Joseph Durso
"Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again.
That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is."
-- Bob Feller
All I want out of life, is that when I walk down the street folks will say, "There goes the greatest hitter that ever
lived."
--Ted Williams
"A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz."
-- Humphrey Bogart
"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love."
-- Bryant Gumbel
"If a man can beat you, walk him."
-- Satchel Paige
You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.
-- Joe DiMaggio, on Opening Day
Slump ? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hittin.
-- Yogi Berra
We're supposed to be perfect our first day on the job and then show constant improvement.
-- Ed Vargo, major league baseball umpire
Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical
-- Yogi Berra
"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's
life without even considering if there is a man on base."
-- Dave Barry
You teach me baseball and I'll teach you relativity...No we must not You will learn about relativity faster than I
learn baseball.
-- Albert Einstein
Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalised for too many
players on the field
-- Jim Boulton
Hitting is 50% above the shoulders.
-- Ted Williams
I never thought home runs were all that exciting. I still think the triple is the most exciting thing in baseball. To me,
a triple is like a guy taking the ball on his 1-yard line and running 99 yards for a touchdown.
-- Hank Aaron
I used to love to come to the ballpark. Now I hate it. Every day becomes a little tougher because of all this. Writers,
tape recorders, microphones, cameras, questions and more questions. Roger Maris lost his hair the season he hit
sixty-one. I still have all my hair, but when it's over, I'm going home to Mobile and fish for a long time.
-- Hank Aaron as he closed in on Babe Ruth's career home run record
Mickey meant an awful lot to me. He was a tremendous athlete. People didn't understand him the way they should
have. He played 10 years on one leg. But more than that, he was a tremendous person.
-- Hank Aaron on Mickey Mantle
I had just turned 20, and Jackie told me the only way to be successful at anything was to go out and do it. He said
baseball was a game you played every day, not once a week.
-- Hank Aaron on Jackie Robinson
He's been very talkative. But it is usually under oath.
-- Sandy Alderson, on Albert Belle
You're only young once, but you can be immature forever
-- Larry Andersen
Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive,
and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.
-- Roger Angell
Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.
-- Joe Adcock
I'm beginning to see Brooks [Robinson] in my sleep. If I dropped a paper plate, he'd pick it up on one hop and throw
me out at first.
-- Sparky Anderson
That's why I don't talk. Because I talk too much.
-- Joquin Andujar
There's one word that describes baseball -- 'You never know.'
-- Joquin Andujar
He's like an amusement-park ride - Even for guys who play.
-- Ruben Amaro on Mark McGwire
"Baseball is dull only to dull minds."
-- Red Barber
"Jimmy Connors plays two tennis matches and winds up with $850,000, and Muhammad Ali fights for one bout and
winds up with five million bucks. Me, I play 190 games--if you count exhibitions -- and I'm overpaid!"
-- Johnny Bench
"I was thinking of making a comeback until I pulled a muscle - vacuuming."
-- Johnny Bench
A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way
around all the time."
-- Jim Bouton
"If I stay healthy, I have a chance to collect three thousand hits and one thousand errors."
-- George Brett
"Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time."
-- Lou Brock
"I can sit in a ballpark after a game and love looking at the field. Everybody's gone, and the ballpark is empty, and I'll
sit there. I sit there and think, 'Is this as close to heaven as I'm going to get?' Or, 'If I get to heaven, will there be
baseball?"
-- Kim Braatz-Voisard
Don Baylor, New York Yankees DH, on Billy Martin and his predecessor Yogi Berra:
"Playing for Yogi is like playing for your father; playing for Billy is like playing for your father-in-law."
"You mix two jiggers of scotch to one jigger of Metrecal. So far I've lost five pounds and my driver's license."
-- Rocky Bridges, minor league manager, on his new diet drink
"It's a good thing I stayed in Cincinnati for four years -- It took me that long to learn how to spell it."
-- Rocky Bridges
"Coaching third with a pitcher on base is like being a member of a bomb disposal squad. The thing could blow up in
your face at any moment."
-- Rocky Bridges
"I prefer fast food."
-- Rocky Bridges, on why he won't eat snails
"Kids today are looking for idols, but sometimes they look too far... They don't have to look any farther than their
home because those are the people that love you. They are the real heroes."
-- Bobby Bonilla
"Every member of our baseball team at West Point became a general: this proves the value of team sports."
-- Gen. Omar Bradley
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