Quotes on Baseball

I've tried them all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

Can you appreciate music without playing it? Yes, you can. You can appreciate baseball without playing it. Many people attend a football game merely for the crowd, the excitement, the color.

Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

Ballet is the fairies' baseball.

One time I snuck a ball on with me and when I went to winding up, I threw one of them balls to first and one to second. I was so smooth I picked off both runners and fanned the batter without that ump or the other team even knowing it.

There never was a man on earth who pitched as much as me. But the more I pitched, the stronger my arm would get.

I use my single windup, my double windup, my triple windup, my hesitation windup, my no windup. I also use my step-n-pitch-it, my submariner, my sidearmer and my bat dodger. Man's got to do what he's got to do.

I don't know if it's good for baseball, but it sure beats the hell out of rooming with Phil Rizzuto!

It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.

The worst team in baseball's history won only 55 games. The best team ever won 110 out of 160, so you're virtually guaranteed to win 1/3 of the time and lose 1/3 of the time. The difference is the 1/3 in the middle. You don't know what bucket the game you're playing falls into, so if you're smart, you'll fight like everything for all of them.

They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.

The base paths belonged to me, the runner. The rules gave me the right. I always went into a bag full speed, feet first. I had sharp spikes on my shoes. If the baseman stood where he had no business to be and got hurt, that was his fault.

Going out and playing football or baseball with the boys, when I was a tomboy, was a great way to learn about winning and losing, and most girls didn't have that experience.

Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, 'Sure, every time.'

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

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

It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball's wounds are self-inflicted.

When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early.

Conversation is the blood of baseball. It flows through the game, an invigorating system of anecdotes. Ballplayers are tale tellers who have polished their malarkey and winnowed their wisdom for years.

It's a Little Leaguers game that major leaguers play extraordinarily well, a game that excites us throughout adulthood. The crack of the bat and the scent of the horsehide on leather bring back our own memories that have been washed away with the sweat and tears of summers long gone...even as the setting sun pushes the shadows past home plate.