Baseball Quotes - Page 9

A good base stealer should make the whole infield jumpy. Whether you steal or not, you're changing the rhythm of the game. If the pitcher is concerned about you, he isn't concentrating enough on the batter.

It's hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going.

Ethnic prejudice has no place in sports, and baseball must recognize that truth if it is to maintain stature as a national game.

Baseball games are like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two are ever alike.

I'm not sure what the hell charisma is, but I get the feeling it's Willie Mays.

Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.

You can't tell how much spirit a team has until it starts losing.

Golf is the only sport I know of where a player pays for every mistake. A man can muff a serve in tennis, miss a strike in baseball, or throw an incomplete pass in football and still have another chance to square himself. In golf, every swing counts against you.

I'd rather be lucky than good

Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the other team controls the ball.

Three more saves and he ties John the Baptist.

I don't see pitches down the middle anymore - not even in batting practice.

The seductiveness of baseball is that almost everyone with an abiding interest in it knows exactly how it should be played. And secretly believes that he could do it, if only God had seen fit to make him just a little bit less clumsy.

If you're not having fun in baseball, you miss the point of everything.

Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America.

It (a baseball box score) doesn't tell how big you are, what church you attend, what color you are, or how your father voted in the last election. It just tells what kind of baseball player you were on that particular day.

How can you not be romantic about baseball?

Aw, everybody knows that game, the day I hit the homer off ole Charlie Root there in Wrigley Field, the day October first, the third game of that thirty-two World Series. But right now I want to settle all arguments. I didn't exactly point to any spot, like the flagpole. Anyway, I didn't mean to, I just sorta waved at the whole fence, but that was foolish enough. All I wanted to do was give that thing a ride... outta the park... anywhere.

Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher.

Catching a fly ball is a pleasure, but knowing what to do with it after you catch it is a business.

The last time the Cubs won the World Series was 1908. The last time they were in one was 1945. Hey, any team can have a bad century.

I've found in life the more you practice, the better you get. If you want something enough and work hard to get it, your chances of success are greater.

Baseball, to me, is still the national pastime because it is a summer game. I feel that almost all Americans are summer people, that summer is what they think of when they think of their childhood. I think it stirs up an incredible emotion within people.

The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.

People think [baseball players] make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don't realize that most of us only make $500,000.