Baseball Quotes - Page 31

The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the hitter is timid, he has to remind the hitter he's timid.

I’m always looking to improve. And every year I want to do better than the year before.

The DOCF all started when I made a trip to a local hospital in the Dominican Republic. I was visiting children who had received life-saving heart care operations. I couldn't help but think that in another life, one of these kids could be my own son. If it wasn't for baseball, I may have remained in the Dominican Republic and who knows where life would have taken me. It was then that I knew that I had to use the gift that I received, to play baseball, to do whatever I could to give back.

My mom, she wasn't like a baseball mother who knew everything about the game. She just wanted me to be happy with what I was doing.

When I broke my arm, I knew there was something a lot bigger than baseball (about to happen) ... I had a sense that God had something for me, something bigger than baseball.

There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them work.

We was going to get you a birthday cake, but we figured you'd drop it.

Left-handers have more enthusiasm for life. They sleep on the wrong side of the bed, and their head gets more stagnant on that side.

I love sporting events and popcorn and pizza and being outside, like at a baseball or football game. I love amusement parks, going to ride roller coasters.

The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.

Baseball is the only game left for people. To play basketball, you have to be 7 feet 6 inches. To play football, you have to be the same width.

A catcher must want to catch. He must make up his mind that it isn't the terrible job it is painted, and that he isn't going to say every day, 'Why, oh why with so many other positions in baseball did I take up this one.'

Coaches and headmasters praise sport as a preparation for the great game of life, but this is absurd. Nothing could be more different from life. For one thing sports, unlike life, are played according to rules. Indeed, the rules are the sport: life may behave bizarrely and still be life, but if the runner circles the bases clockwise it's no longer baseball.

If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?

You can be distracted by your love life, by the baseball game, movies, by the nonsense. "Can I get my kid into this private school? Can I get this girl to go out with me Saturday night? Am I going to get the promotion in my office?" All this stuff, but in the end the universe burns out. So I think it's completely meaningless.

I don't rate them, I just hit them.

When you're in a slump, it's almost as if you look out at the field and it's one big glove.

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.

Decades after a person has stopped collecting bubble gum cards, he can still discover himself collecting ballparks... their smells, their special seasons, their moods.

To a pitcher, a base hit is the perfect example of negative feedback.

The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back.

I can't believe that Babe Ruth was a better player than Willie Mays. (Babe) Ruth is to baseball what Arnold Palmer is to golf. He got the game moving. But I can't believe he could run as well as (Willie) Mays, and I can't believe he was any better an outfielder.

The practical joke is the psychiatry of baseball.

Losing is the bane and bugbear of every professional athlete's existence, but in baseball the monster seems to hang closer than in other sports, its chilly claws and foul breath palpable around the neck hairs of the infielder bending for his crosshand scoop or the reliever slipping his first two fingers off-center on the ball seams before delivering his two-and-two cut fastball.

My father gave me a bat for Christmas. The first time I tried to play with it, it flew away.