Quotes from Jim Bouton

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

Sheldon Kopp, the author and psychologist, wrote, "There are no great men. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.

The author emphasizes the importance of self-forgetfulness when his statistics were marred by a bad outing. He forgot all of that outing to such an extent that he quipped, "What was my name?

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?

A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

It never hurts to apologize, especially if you don't mean it.

I can still remember Pete Rose, on the top step of the dugout screaming, "Fuck you, Shakespeare.

The day he is out of baseball will be the day he starts to think about what comes next. By then, it may be too late.

Sometimes the bedsheet is a Confederate flag. I wonder how the Negro players feel about them. The worst part is that these things are hung by kids. Why the hell couldn't they let that stuff die with their grandfathers? These are not rebels who want something new. These are rebels who want to bring back the old. Doug

The older they get, the better they get when they were younger

Pete Rose gets banned for life for gambling while the drug addicts are allowed back after a year; and then they get extra chances after that. Baseball is saying, in effect, that gambling is worse than drugs. How do kids make sense out of that?

I think we are all better off looking across at someone, rather than up. Sheldon Kopp, the author and psychologist, wrote, "There are no great men. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.

I'm not sure I'm going to like Don Mincher. I keep hearing that big southern accent of his. It's prejudice, I know, but every time I hear a southern accent I think: stupid. A picture of George Wallace pops into my mind. It's like Lenny Bruce saying he could never associate a nuclear scientist with a southern accent.

And I don't like the Mantle who refused to sign baseballs in the clubhouse before the games. Everybody else had to sign, but Little Pete forged Mantle's signature. So there are thousands of baseballs around the country that have been signed not by Mickey Mantle, but by Pete Previte.

I think I should be allowed to be only fair, or even mediocre, for a while.

We agreed we're both troubled by the stiff-minded emphasis on the flag that grips much of the country these days. A flag, after all, is still only a cloth symbol. You don't show patriotism by showing blank-eyed love for a bit of cloth. And you can be deeply patriotic without covering your car with flag decals.

Front offices are more interested in players that are far than players that are near.

Has anybody noticed that we haven't won a game since we ate that chicken á la king?

The author says his young son, adopted from South Korea, occasionally burps and says thank you but otherwise is doing all right.

Religion is like baseball," said Steve. "Great game, bad owners.

The author relates that Mickey Mantle did not expect to play one day and showed up extremely hung over. He was nevertheless called on to pitch and smashed a towering home run to an enthusiastic ovation. He related to his teammates, "Those people don't know how tough that was.

The pitching coach was bugged by the author's technique because he had never seen anyone do it before, and besides, it wasn't the coach's idea.