Best 2491 quotes in «baseball quotes» category

On the surface, there is something peculiar about turning a portion of one's happiness over to a collection of ballplayers, and perhaps more peculiar still is concerning oneself about ball games played decades before one's birth.

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'" (One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.)

Ortiz is now synonymous with walk-off homers. After all, he hit a total of nine game-ending blasts from 2002-07. And that was just in the regular season. It was his blasts in the 2004 postseason that cemented his legacy in Boston.

Or there, in the clay-baked piedmont of the South, that lean and tan-faced boy who sprawls there in the creaking chair among admiring cronies before the open doorways of the fire department, and tells them how he pitched the team to shut-out victory to-day. What visions burn, what dreams possess him, seeker of the night? The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-balked outfields down in Georgia. The mounting roar of eighty thousand voices and Gehrig coming up to bat, the boy himself upon the pitching mound, the lean face steady as a hound’s; then the nod, the signal, and the wind-up, the rawhide arm that snaps and crackles like a whip, the small white bullet of the blazing ball, its loud report in the oiled pocket of the catcher’s mitt, the umpire’s thumb jerked upwards, the clean strike.

Owen," Henry said excitedly, "I think Coach wants you to hit for Meccini." Owen closed The Voyage of the Beagle, on which he had recently embarked. "Really?" "Runners on first and second," Rick said. "I bet he wants you to bunt." "What's the bunt sign?" "Two tugs on the left earlobe," Henry told him. "But first he has to give the indicator, which is squeeze the belt. But if he goes to his cap with either hand or says your first name, that's the wipe-off, and then you have to wait and see whether--" "Forget it," Owen said. "I'll just bunt.

Peg, are you goin' to throw me down, too?” “Mr. Arthurs! I—I—

Rose worked and played so hard that kids all across the country—not just in Cincinnati—were emulating him on sandlots everywhere, proud to dirty their jerseys doing a headfirst “Pete Rose” dive into cardboard boxes used for bases … whether they needed to slide or not.

Putting Henry at shortstop - it was like taking a painting that had been shoved in a closet and hanging it in the ideal spot. You instantly forgot what the room had looked like before.

Real ballplayers pass the stuffing by rolling it up in a ball and batting it across the table with a turkey leg.

Runs like a rotary phone thrown into a running clothes dryer. Throws like an effete Frenchman throwing a bookcase uphill. Swings a bat like his elbows are stapled to his knees and his underwear is pulled over his head. States at you while you aren't looking.

Serving time doesn't make you fit to do anything but serve more time.

Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear -- and doubt.

She had fouled off of the curves that life had thrown at her.

Some books have too much tennis. Some books have too much baseball. Some books have too much boxing. Some books have too much horse.

Skip Caray was my favorite announcer as I grew up listening to the Braves on TBS and on the radio. One night, listening to a game that was headed into extra-innings, the broadcast was just breaking away to commercial when Skip said, 'Free baseball in Atlanta!' One of the best lines I’ve ever heard.

Since 2008, batters have hit only .175 against pitches thrown at 100 m.p.h. or above. Batting averages go up as the speed of the pitches goes down: .210 at 99, .213 at 98, .225 at 97, .242 at 96 and .252 at 95.

Sometimes, sitting in the park with my boys, I imagine myself back at Ebbets Field, a young girl once more in the presence of my father, watching the players of my youth on the grassy fields below—Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges. There is magic in these moments, for when I open my eyes and see my sons in the place where my father once sat, I feel an invisible bond among our three generations, an anchor of loyalty and love linking my sons to the grandfather whose face they have never seen but whose person they have come to know through this most timeless of sports.

Some of ours is so crooked they can't lay in a birth only when the trains making a curve.

Sometimes are feats aren’t so fabulous, they’re just dubious—but either way, they’re fun to talk about.

That's a Winner

Sparky Anderson wasn’t just my favorite manager … he was my mom’s favorite manager.

Tampa Bay, like any other expansion team, toiled and persevered in its infancy—but today, minus the Devil, the Rays have become one of the most exciting teams in baseball.

That's sounds right. Another $5,000 went to dress up the Little League park where he had played so many games. Seems like he paid off the MORTAGE on his parents' home, which wasn't that much.

That's why he was here, to surrender himself to longing, to listen to his host recite the anecdotal texts, all the passed-down stories of bonehead plays and swirling brawls, the pitching duels that carried into twilight, stories that Marvin had been collecting for half a century--the deep eros of memory that separates baseball from other sports.

So the Mets are a bad ball club. All right, they're the worst ball club you ever saw. So what? The important thing is they are in the National League and they are familiar.

Ted Williams hit 17 career grand slams. He is the toughest batter to get out in major league history. It was never fun for opposing pitchers to have to face him, but that was never more true than it was when there was nowhere to put him—and his grand slam total is only one of the many franchise records that he owns.

That's the way baseball go.

That's why baseball is more like life than other games. Sometimes I feel like that's all I do in life, keep track of my errors.

The affair between Boston and Ted Williams has been no mere summer romance; it has been a marriage, composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories. It falls into three stages, which may be termed Youth, Maturity, and Age; or Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis; or Jason, Achilles, and Nestor.

The career batting average (.254) during parts of five Major League seasons for Francisco Cabrera—which proves that it takes only one big hit, on the right stage, to become a legend. Cabrera is still honored in Atlanta, and rightfully so, for winning the 1992 NLCS vs. Pittsburgh.

...the Big Red Machine was exactly that—a freaking machine.

The Indians franchise is more than a century old. It’s been called the Blues, the Bronchos, and the Naps. It’s also been called a lot worse during hard times when the team wasn’t winning.

The crowd and its team had finally understood that in games, as in many things, the ending, the final score, is only part of what matters. The process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count too.

The fearful happenings of the second game need not be lingered over, being now as well known as the circumstances surrounding the fall of Troy. Until the gods began their heavy-handed meddling, it was a fine, fast game, with the Dodgers having somewhat the better of it.

The game was played hard in those days, Mr.King, with plenty of fuck-you.

The coach put his hand on Ken's knee.

The great thing about baseball is, I've heard a hundred statements beginning, 'The great thing about baseball is.

The Mets lose an awful lot? Listen, mister. Think a little bit. When was the last time you won anything out of life?

The man on the rock had pitched five outs in the losing game, and had given up two runs on a single. But he’d inherited loaded bases. The story of his life. The story of all our lives.

The plan was simple. Once on the Plain of Idavoll, we were going to follow the immortal strategy of Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh and “announce [our] presence with authority.

The naked pinch hitter takes only one thing to the plate: his raw, and somewhat irrational, confidence in himself. That this confidence is so unreasonable adds to its dignity.

The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place.

The Phillies in the 1960s had shortstop Bobby Wine and second baseman Cookie Rojas, a period known as the Days of Wine and Rojas.

The questions came...hurling at him...like the balls from a baseball pitching machine...just one after the other without a care or concern of where they went - but he couldn't hit them, he didn't have a baseball bat - he only had a toothpick!

The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation.

There are many ways to measure a manager’s success and contributions to a franchise ... but in this case the two numbers that illustrate it best are eight and four: Bobby Cox’s #6 jersey was just the eighth number retired in franchise history, and of the remaining seven, four of them played for Bobby.

The red haired waitress arrived with their drinks, dancing about the table as she placed their orders in front of them. "Hiya, keeds. Peachy place, ain't it?" Before anyone could respond, she kicked her heels in the air and flitted off again. Waldo lit up a cigarette and tasted his drink. "Listen, I don't think we ought to stay here very long...." "No shit, Sherlock!" Brisbane chortled. "But first I want to have a little fun. I think I'm gonna talk to some of these guys." The fredneck left the table and walked over to a group of five men, all of them clad in the old baseball uniforms that were apparently quite popular at The One Year Wonder And All-Around Oddity Bar. They were huddled together on one side of the bar, and Brisbane broke into their conversation with a burst of fredneck chutzpah.

There was a bold gleam in his eyes and a smile on his face.

There is something special about baseball that goes far deeper than being a game. It is the father-son relationship that is built, the life lessons that are taught in the process of playing a game and the ability to overcome not succeeding all of the time and still considering yourself a success.

The reporter asked, "why did you play so hard." "Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who'd never seen my play before, and might never see me again" -Joe DiMaggio