Quotes on Baseball

It was a breaking period for black people coming into baseball, and how many followed depended on Jackie's conduct. But that's not the case now. What and how I do doesn't mean nearly as much as what and how Jackie did.

I don't feel right unless I have a sport to play or at least a way to work up a sweat.

In baseball, there is something electrifying about the big leagues. I had read so much about Stan Musial, Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson. I had put those guys on a pedestal. They were something special. I really thought they put their pants on different, rather than one leg at a time.

I've felt some great feelings on the baseball field... in front of 50,000 people and millions on TV... but the feeling you get when you give a kid a chance, that is a hundred times greater than that feeling.

It's not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn't sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

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

I would like people not to think in terms of the 755 home runs I hit but think in terms of what I've accomplished off the field and some of the things I stood for.

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.

When I first came into baseball, people didn't want to hear that a team was a business. But it is. And the better the business is run, the healthier the team on the field is going to be.

I was a baseball player, I taught baseball, and all of a sudden I was in the business world. Now I used the baseball world to talk about their product. Not too much, just enough to keep going. Just be yourself and you'll never have a problem. That's what I did.

Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.

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

I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.

So many good things have happened to me in the game of baseball. When I do allow myself a chance to think about it, it's almost like a storybook career. You feel so blessed to have been able to compete this long.

My dad told me, 'If you're going to go out there and play baseball, or you're going to play basketball or football, work hard at it no matter what. I want you to have fun with your buddies, but you have to put in the time because this is your craft.' He didn't just want me to be good. He pushed me to that next level.

Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods.

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

I did make a choice when I got away from baseball to be there to get my kids off to college.

Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.