Bob Feller Quotations

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.

I'm no hero. Heroes don't come back. Survivors return home. Heroes never come home. If anyone thinks I'm a hero, I'm not.

The soldiers that didn't come back were the heroes. It's a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you're a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you're a survivor.

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.

Life comes down to honesty and doing what's right. That's what's most important.

I spent 34 months on the battleship Alabama, South Dakota-class. I was a gun captain. First we went to Russia for about 11 months with the British convoys. Then we were up in Norway and Scandinavia.

I went on inactive duty in August 1945, and since I had stayed in such good shape and had played ball on military teams, I was ready to start for the Indians just two days later, against the Tigers.

When I pick up the ball and it feels nice and light and small I know I'm going to have a good day. But if I picked it up and it's big and heavy, I know I'm liable to get into a little trouble.

The difference between relief pitching when I did it today is simple, there is too much of it. It's one of those cases where more is not necessarily better.

I try to be a good human being and keep up with what's going on in the world by reading and staying in touch with the current events.

If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.

If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don't say the Allies; they say the United States won the war and saved the world.

You can talk about teamwork on a baseball team, but I'll tell you, it takes teamwork when you have 2,900 men stationed on the U.S.S. Alabama in the South Pacific.

I was only a gun captain on the battleship Alabama for 34 months. People have called me a hero for that, but I'll tell you this - heroes don't come home. Survivors come home.

Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.

I needed to join the Navy. If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don't say the Allies, they say the United States won the war and saved the world.

I would rather beat the Yankees regularly than pitch a no hit game.

Nobody lives forever and I've had a blessed life.

I did what any American could and should do: serve his country in its time of need.

Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.

Sympathy is something that shouldn't be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.

My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don't think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.

There was great leadership in this country at the time of World War II. There was also unrelenting resolve at home, in America's factories and on the farms, in the cities and the country.

Where the ball went was up to heaven. Sometimes I threw the ball clean up into the stands.

I don't think baseball owes colored people anything. I don't think colored people owe baseball anything, either.

Ted Williams was the greatest hitter I ever saw, but DiMaggio was the greatest all around player.

You figure they cheat at the ballpark, they'll cheat on the golf course, they'll cheat in business, and anything else in life. Players may laugh about it and say it's funny, but right down in their heart, they don't think it's funny at all, and they have no respect for a person who cheats.

Baseball in the Navy always was much more fun than it had been in the major leagues.

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.

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.

I just reared back and let them go.

When you make a bad pitch and the hitter puts it out of the park and you cost your team the game, it's a real test of your maturity to be able to stand in front of your locker fifteen minutes later and admit it to the world. How many people in other professions would be willing to have their job performances evaluated that way, in front of millions, every afternoon at five o'clock.

Cooperstown is the greatest place on Earth.

Trying to sneak a fastball by Ted Williams was like trying to sneak a sunbeam by a rooster in the morning,

Buck O'Neil deserves to be in the Hall. Not just as a player, but as a human being and as a person that promotes baseball all over the world.

He kept harping about 'What rules don't they know?' And I said, 'The entire rule book is something that they just don't know, that they should know.' He got a little testy about it and he said, 'If you don't like it, hang up' -- which I did.

I said some of the boys from the Caribbean area don't know the rules quite so well,

Those games drew a lot of people; the fans loved every minute of it.

There has always been cheating going on in pitching and hitting. As far as cheating, using a wooden bat and flattening the hitting surface, that has always been going on. ... It is usually discovered in pretty good time.

A lot of these players coming from the Caribbean, they don't even know the rules.

It's really nice to be competitive in this tournament. The kids came out here with the attitude that they could win it. It's been a long time since they've had that.

I'm not PC, ... My wife is PC, but I am not.

These guys are pretty resilient. They don't hang their heads too long, which is really good. I really like that about them.