Quotes About Baseball

I could have been the next Babe Ruth. No doubt about it.

I didn't like The Astrodome or any of the Astro-Turf fields. Probably my worst ballpark was The Met in Minnesota; I hated that place. I was so glad when they tore that place down, you have no idea.

I have no interest at all in the success of the Seattle Mariners.

In baseball and sex, cliches are usually true: pitching beats hitting, and people always want to be loved by anyone who doesn't seem to care.

Pessimists thought this shutdown would kill baseball entirely. It did not. But it does represent the point where baseball's past became more desirable than baseball's future, an inversion that would never really reverse itself.

Why does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" when they're already there?

There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens.

When we win, I'm so happy I eat a lot. When we lose, I'm so depressed, I eat a lot. When we're rained out, I'm so disappointed I eat a lot.

The average age of our bench is deceased.

My theory of hitting was just to watch the ball as it came in and hit it. As I realized years later, that is still the finest theory of hitting yet devised.

I wasn't quite sure how a player got to the big leagues. As far as I knew, he was just there one day.

I walk into the clubhouse and it's like walking into the Mayo Clinic. We have four doctors, three therapists and five trainers. Back when I broke in, we had one trainer who carried a bottle of rubbing alcohol and by the seventh inning he had drunk it all.

Baseball is like driving, it's the one who gets home safely that counts.

I love doubleheaders. That way I get to keep my uniform on longer.

I managed the Dodgers for 20 years. It's hard to believe that there are only four guys in the history of baseball who managed the same team for 20 years or more. One was owner of the team, Connie Mack. Another was part owner of the team, John McGraw. Then there was my predecessor, Walter Alston, and me. It's amazing. In the 20 years I managed the Dodgers, 210 managers were fired.

Yes! The Yanks had creamed the Red Sox last night.

I was a ballplayer, but only for a limited time. I grew up playing in Wisconsin. It's a very sports-centric part of the country that I grew up in and I played a lot of sports, but baseball first and foremost. I played through high school. I was a middle-infielder.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had blue laws that didn't allow bars to be open on Sunday. No stores were open. It was the day of worship. Even later on when night baseball came in, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Athletics could play baseball at Shibe Park on Sunday only while there was daylight. They weren't allowed to turn on the stadium lights on Sunday. Many a Sunday game was called on account of darkness.

Everything you needed to play baseball was in the Garden of Eden. You had the grass. You had the dirt. You had a branch from a tree to make a bat. There had to be a cow somewhere to give you the ball and the glove. I was telling this story once and some wise guy said: 'Yeah, they even had a snake for the media.

Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every day, like those of a baseball player.

Unfortunately, the business side of the game shows its head every once in a while. But I still think there's opportunity and chances that we can have good conversations as far as an extension's concerned.

Toledo is better than exciting, it's happy. Because nothing is more conducive to unhappiness than taking yourself seriously, and taking yourself seriously is difficult when you're baseball team is the Mud Hens.

In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's.

I'm proud to wear a Reds uniform, and I look forward to doing that until the last day of my Major League Baseball career.