Baseball Quotations | Page 2

Opening day. All you have to do is say the words and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air out, the light pour in. In baseball, no other day is so pure with possibility. No scores yet, no losses, no blame or disappointment. No hangover, at least until the game's over.

Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part.

A person always doing his or her best becomes a natural leader, just by example.

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.

Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.

Going back down to the minors is the toughest thing to handle in baseball.

I like to see the difference between good and evil as kind of like the foul line at a baseball game. It's very thin, it's made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair.

Baseball is like church. Many attend few understand.

A cloud hangs over baseball. It's a cloud called drugs and it's permeated our game.

There has always been a saying in baseball that you can't make a hitter, but I think you can improve a hitter. More than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game.

In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.

I liked baseball and sports and Garbage Pail Kids and comic books. I know what its like to really adore something.

Just give me 25 guys on the last year of their contracts; I'll win a pennant every year.

The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.

That's what I love about acting. There's never a set role. You can be a firefighter, you can be a baseball player, you can be whatever you want in the acting world. I think I've found my calling.

I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it.

If you have a bad day in baseball, and start thinking about it, you will have 10 more.

The crack of the bat, the sound of baseballs thumping into gloves, the infield chatter are like birdsong to the baseball starved.

You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.

I try not to break the rules, but merely to test their elasticity.

Free agency screws everybody's allegiances up. Whether it be football, baseball, hockey, basketball, whatever it may be. It's really hard.

Baseball hasn't forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven't lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.

My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn't pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn... If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year's time.

When I played, I never needed the spotlight, nor did I want it. I simply wanted to play baseball and be respected by my teammates and the opposing players.

There are no war stories. I ended up a bombardier, but I never got overseas. And it wasn't because I was playing baseball either. It was just a series of things that went on.

Whether you want to or not, you do serve as a role model. People will always put more faith in baseball players than anyone else.

I've never heard a crowd boo a homer, but I've heard plenty of boos after a strikeout.

You sweat out the free agent thing in November then you make the trades in December. Then you struggle to sign the guys left in January and in February I get down to sewing all the new numbers on the uniforms.

I was a big baseball player, and my passion in life, in third grade, was collecting baseball cards. That was my childhood thing.

What a player does best, he should practice least. Practice is for problems.

Baseball was socially relevant, and so was my rebellion against it.

These days baseball is different. You come to Spring Training, you get your legs ready, you arms loose, your agents ready your lawyer lined up.

The best thing about baseball is there's no homework.

Now, you tell me, if I have a day off during the baseball season, where do you think I'll spend it? The ballpark. I still love it. Always have, always will.

In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's.

You shouldn't have any betting in the locker room at all, whether it's baseball or it's horses. You can't beat the horses. You can't beat any kind of gambling because they have the odds.

The economics of baseball are the big problem. The big clubs make a lot of money and the little clubs don't.

Our economics are not baseball's economics. Our game is not baseball's game. Our owners are not baseball's owners, with one or two exceptions. Our union is not baseball's union. What we do has to be crafted and suited to address hockey, to address the NHL, to address our 30 teams and our 700-plus players.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

Major League Baseball is a national institution and we take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to how the game affects the lives of American youth.

Toughest job in baseball is the general manager. Second toughest is the hitting coach.

Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game.

I went through baseball as a player to be named later.

As far as sleeping goes, you're up and ready to go at six in the morning. Spring training was always a combination of relaxing and working, and I missed that quite a bit. I missed being around the ball field. A baseball. A bat. The smell of the uniform, you might say. Talking baseball. Seeing opponents as well as the Cubs.

I never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.

Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on.

Everybody kind of perceives me as being angry. It's not anger, it's motivation.

If I had to name the number one asset you could have for any sport I'd say speed. In baseball, all a guy with speed has to do is make contact.

Kids should practice autographing baseballs. This is a skill that's often overlooked in Little League.

I really love baseball. The guys and the game, and I love the challenge of describing things.

My baseball career was a long, long initiation into a single secret: At the heart of all things is love.

I belong to an improv group, I play cello, I have these phases - fencing, tae kwon do, baseball, ice hockey, boogie boarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter.

When I was a little boy, my dream was to play baseball and leave Cuba.

I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won't matter if I get this guy out.

That space between the white lines, that's my office. That's where I conduct my business.

The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers.

I wanted to be a professional baseball player.

Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating.

I'm the youngest of five kids, and I wanted attention. And in Santa Barbara, there was lots of theater going on, so for that area, it was a little bit like playing Little League baseball. There were dance classes, theater classes, and I just loved it.

Now, I know you expected me to say that, well, I just kick back in the rocking chair, fished a little bit, listened to Willie Nelson tapes and watched old baseball games on the Classic Sports network. And, tell you the truth, I have done that for maybe about five total minutes.

Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.

I heard that in the United States the level of baseball was the highest in the world. So it was only natural that I would want to go there, as a baseball player.

The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It's the only thing I know.

When I was a kid, I have two dreams. I want to be a baseball player. Hometown, Hiroshima, has a Japanese baseball franchise team called Hiroshima Carps. You know, and then I want to be a sushi chef. I want to make own restaurant - sushi restaurant.

Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it's about love, integrity, and respect.

And of course in America you've got American football and baseball and all those other ball games, soccer has become a little niche that the women have kind of filled.

It helps if the hitter thinks you're a little crazy.

When I started to sing, my mother would have me engaged to perform at the Women's Christian Temperance Union national or annual meetings. I would hate doing this because I wanted to play baseball or go off skiing.

Up until the time I was 14 years old, I was sure that I was going to be a big-league baseball player. But that dream came to a rude awakening when I got cut from my high school baseball team.

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.

Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game.

A baseball swing is a very finely tuned instrument. It is repetition, and more repetition, then a little more after that.

Major League Baseball has prostate awareness for two weeks leading up to Father's Day, and I want to get involved in that.

The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia.

I had an extremely boring time doing 20 to 30 trades a day while everyone was talking about baseball or basketball. So I stood there fantasizing about a device that could do the same thing I was doing.

If my uniform doesn't get dirty, I haven't done anything in the baseball game.

The American boy starts swinging the bat about as soon as he can lift one.

Perhaps the truest axiom in baseball is that the toughest thing to do is repeat.

I played football in high school, I played baseball when I was younger, things like that, but I think it was the passion I had for track where you want to do an individual sport and be the best, I think - there's nothing that can replace that.

I love baseball. And American Football, too. But not rugby.

Every baseball crowd, like every theatre audience, has its own distinctive attitude and atmosphere.

A pitcher will never be a big winner until he hates hitters.

I'll play out the string and leave baseball without a tear. A man can't play games his whole life.

The only real game, I think, in the world is baseball.

Hats have been my thing pretty much my whole life but finance has not. I would go to the corner store and buy really cheap baseball style caps and wear those to school.

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.

Words can be like baseball bats when used maliciously.

Having Willie Stargell on your ball club is like having a diamond ring on your finger.

In baseball, I was always in control of everything until I let the ball go.

You have to go understand that life and baseball is littered with all kinds of obstacles and problems along the way. You have to learn how to overcome them to be successful in life.

In this game of baseball, you live by the sword and die by it. You hit and get hit. Remember that.

It is hard to imagine the World Series being held in the sweet hazy sunshine of late September rather than the sour night air of late October, but that is precisely what has transpired in baseball over the past 50 years, a deterioration from light to darkness.

It was a terrible day for baseball, it was a worse day for Congress.

My main objective is to prepare candidates for professional baseball; however, the majority of our graduates will go home as much better qualified amateurs.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead.

Most one-run games are lost, not won.

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond.