Quotes About Baseball

Growing up, I played 'Ken Griffey, Jr. Baseball' and just whatever I could get my hands on. When I was really young, I was a big fan of Mario and that type of stuff. I still play videogames now, so it was really cool for me to be able to play as myself on '2K6' or '2K7,' I believe it was, when I was a rookie.

There's no crying in baseball! —Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings. —Earl Wilson

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

For consistency, Philadelphia baseball, among other things in the town, always has been the worst.

In his time, Hornsby was an unbelievable hitter who three times finished with an average of over .400, reaching .424 in 1924, a record still standing. This background has not made him exactly tolerant of the ability of baseball players. To illustrate, we reprint herewith the most glowing report on an individual which Hornsby handed in all season: LOOKS LIKE A MAJOR-LEAGUE PLAYER The name at the top of the sheet said the report was about Mickey Mantle.

The Dodgers won it, 9-8, when Robinson hit a home run in the fourteenth inning. In the eleventh, he had knocked himself unconscious in a dive for a low line drive hit by Del Ennis. If he had not made the catch, the game would have been over. It was one of the matchless individual performances baseball has seen.

Troy: Why do we inflict this on ourselves? Ben: Why? I'll tell you why, 'cause the Red Sox never let you down. Troy: Huh? Ben: That's right. I mean - why? Because they haven't won a World Series in a century or so? So what? They're here. Every April, they're here. At 1:05 or at 7:05, there is a game. And if it gets rained out, guess what? They make it up to you. Does anyone else in your life do that? The Red Sox don't get divorced. This is a real family. This is the family that's here for you.

The stories are endless, infinitely familiar, traded by the faithful like baseball cards, fondled until they fray around the edges and blur into the apocryphal.

It's a mere moment in a man's life between an All-Star Game and an Old-timers' Game.

Bryan threw the ball to Dad. Dad threw it back. Bryan swung the stick again. He hit the ball! Now we were really playing. The ball sailed toward the fence. I ran after it. The goslings ran after me. And then something amazing happened. Something I had never seen before. Brewster ran. He heaved himself up and lumbered across the yard. He wanted the ball! It hit the fence and bounced off, right at him, and he scooped it up!

Lovers of small numbers go benignly potty, Believe all tales are thirteen chapters long, Have animal doubles, carry pentagrams, Are Millerites, Baconians, Flat-Earth-Men. Lovers of big numbers go horribly mad, would have the Swiss abolished, all of us Well-purged, somatotyped, baptised, taught baseball: They empty bars, spoil parties, run for Congress.

He pops a bat twice more on home plate, then tosses a ball in the air and swings. The crack of the bat sounds like a paper bag exploding, yet the sound is cold and lonely, too, like a hunter firing on an endless tundra.

He cranks up his arm, rears back, and throws, and the ball, taking an even more perfect path than it took off the bat, travels in a white arc, seeming to leave behind a line like a streak of forgotten rainbow as it drops over the fence, silent as a star falling into a distant ocean.

Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That's why they say, "the game is never over until the last man is out." Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game.

I don't have to tell you that the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and then erased again. But baseball has marked time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.

Shoeless Joe became a symbol of the tyranny of the powerful over the powerless. The name Kenesaw Mountain Landis became synonymous with the Devil.

The Yankees lose so seldom, you have to celebrate every single time.

Baseball is a ceremony, a ritual, as surely as sacrificing a goat beneath a full moon is a ritual.

Sandor Boatly had never guessed that, properly played, baseball consisted of mathematics, geometry, art, philosophy, ballet, and carnival, all intertwined like the mystical ribbons of color in a rainbow.

If I stay healthy, I have a chance to collect 3,000 hits and 1,000 errors.

Honestly, I'm on the road so much that I never really get a chance to go to baseball games.

I feel it's the best thing that could have happened for me, leaving the Braves so I could go to another team that would give me more of a chance to play like with the Marlins.

Back in 1987 when they drafted me. The Indians were the only team interested in taking a chance on Albert Belle, and I made the most of it. Hopefully, they got as much from me as I got from them.