"Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."
-- Jacques Barzun
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"Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time's constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National Pastime."
-- Ken Burns
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The good players feel the kind of love for the game that they did when they were Little Leaguers."
-- Tom Seaver
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"Baseball is more than a game to me, it's a religion."
-- William J Klem (umpire)
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"A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big-leaguer. That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues."
-- Joe DiMaggio
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"Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second and keep your foot on first."
-- Frederick B. Wilcox
."I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it."
-- Rogers Hornsby
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"Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbers go for base hits. It's an unfair game."
-- Ron Kanehl
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"I never feel more at home than at a ballgame."
-- Robert Frost
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"I don't care how long you've been around, you'll never see it all."
-- Bob Lemon
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"Now there's three things you can do in a baseball game: You can win or you can lose or it can rain."
-- Casey Stengel
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"Playing this game and surviving this game is tough."
-- Bill Harford, scout
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"No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined."
-- Paul Gallico
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"A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz."
-- Humphrey Bogart
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"Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils .... Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober."
-- Bill Veeck
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People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."
"Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that."
-- Rogers Hornsby
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"Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer."
-- Ted Williams
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"Baseball is not necessarily an obsessive-compulsive disorder, like washing your hands 100 times a day, but it's beginning to seem that way. We're reaching the point where you can be a truly dedicated, state-of-the-art fan or you can have a life. Take your pick."
-- Thomas Boswell
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"A game of great charm, in the adoption of mathematical measurements to the timing of human movements, the exactitudes and adjustments of physical ability to hazardous chance. The speed of the legs, the dexterity of the body, the grace of the swing, the elusiveness of the slide -- these are the features that make Americans everywhere forget the last syllable of a man's last name or the pigmentation of his skin."
-- Branch Rickey
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"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona."
-- George F. Will
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"[I]t's our game; that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."
-- Walt Whitman
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"Baseball is dull only to dull minds."
-- Red Smith
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"Baseball, because of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, is a place where memory gathers."
-- Donald Hall
"You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, "too." ~Roy Campanella
"A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings."
"A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings."
~Earl Wilson
"Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up."
"Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up."
~Bob Lemon
"What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game.... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability."
"What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game.... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability."
~George Bernard Shaw
"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."
"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."
~Walt Whitman
"Baseball is a fun game. It beats working for a living."
"Baseball is a fun game. It beats working for a living."
~Phil Linz
"When they start the game, they don't yell, 'Work ball.' They say, 'Play ball.'"
"When they start the game, they don't yell, 'Work ball.' They say, 'Play ball.'"
~Willie Stargell, 1981
"Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that."
~Nomar Garciaparra
"With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them."
"With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them."
~Art Hill
"That's baseball, and it's my game. Y' know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave 'em there. You yell like crazy for your guys. It's good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops. Pretty girls, lots of 'em."
"That's baseball, and it's my game. Y' know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave 'em there. You yell like crazy for your guys. It's good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops. Pretty girls, lots of 'em."
~Humphrey Bogart
"Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball." ~Jim Murray
"Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the other team controls the ball" ~Ken Harrelson, Sports Illustrated, 6 September 1976
"Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa.""
"Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball." ~Jim Murray
"Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the other team controls the ball" ~Ken Harrelson, Sports Illustrated, 6 September 1976
"Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa.""
~Bob Veale, 1966
"Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?"
"Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?"
~Jim Bouton, 1988
"It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one."
"It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one."
~Chuck Tanner
"Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America."
"Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America."
~Bruce Catton
"There is a soothing rhythm to it all, pitch by pitch, inning by inning. Baseball is a world of order, interupted by brief, breathtaking moments of chaos, where memories and heroes can be made. It has unlimited potential. It can be ugly one moment and beautiful the next. It is part play, part profanity and part poetry. And really, what is more American than that?'
--Mike Napela
"Baseball provides escape. Furthermore, there is no other place in our society that I know of in which the perimeter of play and the rules are clearly defined and known to everyone - in which justice is absolutely equal and sure. Three strikes, you're out. I don't care if you hire Edward Bennett Williams to defend you; three strikes, you're still out. Baseball is an island of stability in an unstable world."
--Bill Veeck
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."
--A. Bartlett Giamatti
"There is a soothing rhythm to it all, pitch by pitch, inning by inning. Baseball is a world of order, interupted by brief, breathtaking moments of chaos, where memories and heroes can be made. It has unlimited potential. It can be ugly one moment and beautiful the next. It is part play, part profanity and part poetry. And really, what is more American than that?'
--Mike Napela
"Baseball provides escape. Furthermore, there is no other place in our society that I know of in which the perimeter of play and the rules are clearly defined and known to everyone - in which justice is absolutely equal and sure. Three strikes, you're out. I don't care if you hire Edward Bennett Williams to defend you; three strikes, you're still out. Baseball is an island of stability in an unstable world."
--Bill Veeck
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."
--A. Bartlett Giamatti
