Baseball Quotes
• •
- 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. ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970
- If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry
- 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. ~Rogers Hornsby
- 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
- I’m convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile. ~Tom Clark
- A good cigar is like a beautiful chick with a great body who also knows the American League box scores. ~M*A*S*H, Klinger, “Bug-Out,” 1976
- A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz. ~Humphrey Bogart
- 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
- 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
- There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my family, and baseball. The only problem – once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit. ~Al Gallagher, 1971
- 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. ~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. ~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. ~Walt Whitman
- 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.” ~Willie Stargell, 1981
- Baseball is the only major sport that appears backwards in a mirror. ~George Carlin, Brain Droppings, 1997
- 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
- I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby
- When you’re in a slump, it’s almost as if you look out at the field and it’s one big glove. ~Vance Law
- 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. ~Humphrey Bogart
- When we played softball, I’d steal second base, feel guilty and go back. ~Woody Allen
- 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
- Every hitter likes fastballs, just like everybody likes ice cream. But you don’t like it when someone’s stuffing it into you by the gallon. That’s what it feels like when Nolan Ryan’s thrown balls by you. ~Reggie Jackson
- Strikeouts are boring – besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls. More democratic. ~From the movie Bull Durham
