Mickey Mantle Quotes about Sports

During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at-bats a season. That means I played 7 years without ever hitting the ball.

It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.

Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball.

Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part.

As far as I'm concerned, Aaron is the best ball player of my era. He is to baseball of the last fifteen years what Joe DiMaggio was before him. He's never received the credit he's due.

I always loved the game, but when my legs weren't hurting it was a lot easier to love.

Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been.

It was all I lived for, to play baseball.

Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century.

The hardest thing to do in sports, I think, is to hit a home run.

The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It's the only thing I know.

I'll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.

Today's Little Leaguers, and there are millions of them each year, pick up how to hit and throw and field just by watching games on TV. By the time they're out of high school, the good ones are almost ready to play professional ball.

The biggest game I ever played in was probably Don Larsen's perfect game.

Roger Maris was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was.

When I hit a home run I usually didn't care where it went. So long as it was a home run was all that mattered.