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For many years, even after Jackie Robinson, baseball was so segregated, really. You just didn't expect us to have a chance to do anything. Baseball was meant for the lily-white.
I could always throw the ball pretty well and I worked pretty hard at learning how to play the game. But I didn't consider it work as a kid, since I just loved playing baseball.
In baseball, it's tough to get up for every single game, every single moment. In football, you have 90,000 fans screaming and the band's playing. I do miss that adrenaline rush.
It's very disappointing... Anything that harms the integrity of the game is terrible. We always thought we were immune to drugs in baseball, but we know that's not true anymore.
Baseball is meant to be a contemplative game. They play music to draw young people to the game. If young people can't come to the game without music, then they should stay home.
When I won the World Championship in '72, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.
Both of my parents are actually music teachers. I think I got to a certain age where I decided I'd rather be a baseball player than a musician. Now, like most kids, I regret it.
I don't want to take anything away from Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. They're both great hitters, but they're batting against guys they never would have seen in previous years.
The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.
You have to have a lot of motivation, a lot of heart and be able to work hard. You can never be down on yourself because baseball is a sport that will bring you down [at times].
A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member's talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.
A baseball field must be the most beautiful thing in the world. It's so honest and precise. And we play on it. Every star gets humbled. Every mediocre player has a great moment.
When it came to religion, I felt I belonged to no one. It saddened me, it angered me, it confused me, and it made me religiously ambivalent. So I chose my calling: Cubs baseball.
Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what is most truly is is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.
I believe in the Rip Van Winkle theory—that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark, and understand baseball perfectly.
His herding instinct is so strong that he confuses tractors on a baseball field for sheep. He was hospitalized twice. Once by a line drive and once for attacking a tractor tread.
In cricket, as in no other game, a great master may well go back to the pavilion scoreless.... In no other game does the law of averages get to work so potently, so mysteriously.
I don't want to be Babe Ruth. He was a great ballplayer. I'm not trying to replace him. The record is there and damn right I want to break it, but that isn't replacing Babe Ruth.
My favorite part of any baseball book - and I read a lot of them - is the anecdotes. I believe there is a story within every boxscore and for me - the more outrageous the better!
In baseball you hit your home run over the right-field fence, the left-field fence, the center-field fence. Nobody cares. In golf everything has got to be right over second base.
I get a kick out of watching a team defense me. A player moves two steps in one direction and I hit it two steps the other way. It goes right Stan Musialby his glove and I laugh.
Short of baseball and my family, it was gaming. And gaming is a $20-million to $200-million multi-year effort. It's an insane, stupid and utterly irresponsible act. But I did it.
Last year, more Americans went to symphonies than went to baseball games. This may be viewed as an alarming statistic, but I think that both baseball and the country will endure.
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.
Racing is not football or baseball or basketball where you can do it yourself. If you're good in high school, you just shine. (But in racing) you have to have a family behind you.
Here I am, a baseball superstar, falling into the pits, having everybody write you off, and then having God say, 'I'm going to use your mess for a message.' How beautiful is that?
It's no coincidence that female interest in the sport of baseball has increased greatly since the ballplayers swapped those wonderful old-time baggy flannel uniforms for leotards.
Everybody is a football senator for a while, but it is a much shorter season and there are not that many teams that are on top, and baseball is just built into the American psyche.
Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.
Bitcoin, in the short or even long term, may turn out be a good investment in the same way that anything that is rare can be considered valuable. Like baseball cards. Or a Picasso.
I don't think special attention should be given to an actor or a singer or a baseball player or a soccer player more than anyone else, but they do have an opinion like anyone else.
I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the batter; that the only thing I knew about pitching was that it was hard to hit!
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.
Some kids dream of joining the circus, others of becoming a major league baseball player. I have been doubly blessed. As a member of the New York Yankees, I have gotten to do both.
Football can stand parity better than any of the other sports, I think. Baseball, basketball and hockey need a defining team, in essence to frame the season. Football? Not so much.
Let me get this straight. The owners are about to shut down baseball when it's more prosperous than it's even been, and the players are the ones who have to get their urine tested?
I bet on the game of baseball and I bet on my team, even the mistakes I made, I have to take a different look at someone betting against their own team... that's throwing the game.
I have a relationship with Christ. It allows me to handle situations better. It allows me to treat people better and it allows me to have a better mental attitude towards baseball.
You can't be afraid to make errors! You can't be afraid to be naked before the crowd, because no one can ever master the game of baseball, or conquer it. You can only challenge it.
I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.
Having a pitch clock, if you have ball-strike implications, that's messing with the fabric of the game. There's no clock in baseball, and there's no clock in baseball for a reason.
I was not a good student; I was an average student. In order to play basketball and baseball, I had to go to school every day. And so I was pretty good in terms of attending school.
Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season with the Chicago Cubs. That's baseball as it should be played - in God's own sunshine. And that's really living.
I'm a great believer in the character of the club. To me, character has a lot to do with how you compete. That creates urgency and toughness. That elevates the talent that you have.
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.
When you're famous you can't go to Topshop. Even when I disguise myself in a moustache, baseball cap, sunglasses - the full Madonna kit - it doesn't work: my stupid face is too big.
Football is played best full of adrenaline and anger. Moderation seldom finds a place. Almost every act of baseball is a blending of effort and control; too much of either is fatal.
When I won the world championship, in 1972, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, a baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.
They say I couldn't play football, I was too small. They say I couldn't play basketball, I wasn't tall. They say I couldn't play baseball at all and now everyday of my life, I ball.
I have gone from a player who thought he would spend his whole career with one organization to a player who's been with three organizations in a week. It's like rotisserie baseball.