Portal:Baseball/Quotes/Archive/1

October 3, 2006 - February 20, 2007

• When [Scott] Boras talks to Tom Hicks, does he first have to enter a PIN number? — Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike DiGiovanna, on free agency negotiations subsequent to the 2006 Major League Baseball season betwixt the two, respectively a sports agent and the owner of the Texas Rangers, theretofore collective brokers of US$383 million in contracts
• If you're going to play at all, you're out to win. Baseball, board games, playing Jeopardy!, I hate to lose. — New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, pictured at right, on winning
• I copied Jackson's style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter. — New York Yankees outfielder Babe Ruth, on copying Shoeless Joe Jackson's hitting style
• A kid copies what is good. I remember the first time I saw Lefty O'Doul, and he was as far away as those palms. And I saw the guy come to bat in batting practice. I was looking through a knothole, and I said, 'Geez, does that guy look good!' And it was Lefty O'Doul, one of the greatest hitters ever. — Boston Red Sox left fielder Ted Williams, on his childhood baseball idol
• In the end it all comes down to talent. You can talk all you want about intangibles, I just don't know what that means. Talent makes winners, not intangibles. Can nice guys win? Sure, nice guys can win - if they're nice guys with a lot of talent. Nice guys with a little talent finish fourth and nice guys with no talent finish last. — Los Angeles Dodgers Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, on talent
• There are surprisingly few real students of the game in baseball; partly because everybody, my eighty-three year old grandmother included, thinks they learned all there was to know about it at puberty. Baseball is very beguiling that way. — Major League Baseball manager Alvin Dark, on learning in baseball

• It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. — Major League Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, on the baseball season
• Managing can be more discouraging than playing, especially when you're losing because when you're a player, there are at least individual goals you can shoot for. When you're a manager all the worries of the team become your worries. — Major League Baseball manager Chicago White Sox, on managing

• • I'm not a big guy and hopefully kids could look at me and see that I'm not muscular and not physically imposing, that I'm just a regular guy. So if somebody with a regular body can get into the record books, kids can look at that. That would make me happy. — Seattle Mariners right fielder Ichiro Suzuki, on his having, in the 2004 Major League Baseball season, displaced Saint Louis Browns first baseman George Sisler atop the enumeration of Major League players by most hits in a single season despite his measuring just 69 inches (1.8 m) and weighing just 160 pounds (73 kg)), and on the distinction betwixt his physique and those of others accused of doping
  • People say I don't have great tools. They say that I can't throw like Ellis Valentine or run like Tim Raines or hit with power like Mike Schmidt. Who can? I make up for it in other ways, by putting out a little bit more. That's my theory, to go through life hustling. In the big leagues, hustle usually means being in the right place at the right time. It means backing up a base. It means backing up your teammate. It means taking that headfirst slide. It means doing everything you can do to win a baseball game. — Cincinnati Reds second baseman Pete Rose, on his explanation for his professional success
• The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws. — Saint Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Rick Wise, on the 1973 implementation by the American League of Major League Baseball of a rule permitting another player to bat in place of a pitcher
• What we have are good gray ballplayers, playing a good gray game and reading the good gray Wall Street Journal. They have been brainwashed, dry-cleaned and dehydrated!...Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils....Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober. — Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck, on the contemporary disfavoring by Major League Baseball executives of players' acting boisterously off-field
• Money wasn't an issue because I could have made more money playing in Japan. This is like going from a beat-up Volkswagen to a Mercedes. — Starting pitcher Masato Yoshii, on his departing the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of the Japanese Central League for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball

August 14 to October 2, 2006

• He was the best defensive player at any position. I used to stand in the outfield like a fan and watch him make play after play. I used to think, Wow, I can't believe this. — Baltimore Orioles right fielder Frank Robinson, on teammate third baseman Brooks Robinson, sixteen times a Major League Baseball Gold Glove Award winner
• No human mind may measure the blessing conferred by the game of baseball on the soldiers of the Civil War. It had its earliest evolution when soldiers, North and South, were striving to forget their foes by cultivating, through this grand game, fraternal friendships with comrades in arms. — American baseball historian Al Spalding in America's National Game, on the playing of primitive versions of baseball by soldiers of the United and Confederate States of America and the attendant expansion of the National Association of Base Ball Players
• Money wasn't an issue because I could have made more money playing in Japan. This is like going from a beat-up Volkswagen to a Mercedes. — Starting pitcher Masato Yoshii, on his departing the Tokyo Yakult Swallows of the Japanese Central League for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball
• There is a special sensation in getting good wood on the ball and driving a double down the left field line as the crowd in the ballpark rises to its feet and cheers. But, I also remember how much fun I had as a skinny barefoot kid hitting a tennis ball with a broomstick on a quiet, dusty street in Panama. — Panama-born Minnesota Twins first baseman Rod Carew, on his experiences in amateur baseball in Gatun and professional baseball in the United States

• A surge of joy flooded over me that I shall never forget. I felt like shouting out that I had made a ball curve. I wanted to tell everybody–it was too good to keep to myself. — Brooklyn Excelsiors Baseball Hall of Fame starting pitcher Candy Cummings, pictured, alongside Fred Goldsmith one of two players to whom the invention of the curveball is credited, on his first throwing the pitch
• Baseball is dull only to dull minds. — American sportscaster Red Barber, antanaclastically on dual nature of the sport as intellectually demanding yet frequently slow in pace
• Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things. — American poet Robert Frost, on the infrequency with which starting pitchers play and impact baseball games
• The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws. — Saint Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Rick Wise, on the 1973 implementation by the American League of Major League Baseball of a rule permitting another player to bat in place of a pitcher
• What we have are good gray ballplayers, playing a good gray game and reading the good gray Wall Street Journal. They have been brainwashed, dry-cleaned and dehydrated!...Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils....Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober. — Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck, on the contemporary disfavoring by Major League Baseball executives of players' acting boisterously off-field

July 21 to August 14, 2006

• You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all. — Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, on his preference for baseball over American football and basketball, in which a team who lead often try to stall play in order that time should expire
• There are only five things you can do in baseball: run, throw, catch, hit, and hit with power. — Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher, on the skills possessed by a five-tool player
• Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game. — American author Edward Abbey
• I was only halfway to the record and it seemed like it took me a long time. I feel like that one will never be broken. — Anaheim Angels left fielder Garret Anderson, on his recording a hit in 28 consecutive games, as against New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio's compiling a 56-game hitting streak in 1941
• Cub fans, by consensus, are the best in baseball. Year after year, in good times and (mostly) bad, they turn out in vociferous numbers, sustaining themselves with a heavenly ichor that combines loyalty, criticism, cheerfulness, durability, rage, beer and hope, in exquisite proportions. — American essayist Roger Angell, on fans of the Chicago Cubs, the team with the longest active Major League Baseball World Series drought
• Everybody in the park knows he is going to run, and he makes it anyway. — Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa, on Saint Louis Cardinals left fielder Lou Brock's propensity for stealing bases, evidenced by Brock's trailing only outfielder Rickey Henderson, pictured, amongst Major League Baseball players in career stolen bases
• That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on the ball. — Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck

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• The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for reviews. — Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Sandy Koufax
• All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street, folks will say, There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived. — Boston Red Sox left fielder Ted Williams, the last Major League Baseball hitter to have recorded a super-.400 batting average (1941)
• They say I was born too soon. I say the doors were opened too late. — Kansas City Stars center fielder Cool Papa Bell, on his retiring prior to Major League Baseball's color line's being broken

July 4 to July 21, 2006

• No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so clearly defined. – American author Paul Gallico
• What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join 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. – Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw
• Catching a fly ball is a pleasure, but knowing what to do after you catch it is a business. – New York Yankees right fielder Tommy Henrich
• When he took BP, everybody would kind of stop what they were doing and watch. – Washington Senators pitcher Jim Kaat, on captivating batting practice appearances made by New York Yankees center fielder Mickey Mantle
• It's a good thing Babe Ruth isn't here. If he was, Steinbrenner would have him bat seventh and say he's overweight. – New York Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles, on the portliness of the former Yankees outfielder, pictured, and the intemperateness of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner
• Willie Mays and his glove: where triples go to die. – Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Fresco Thompson, on the defensive prowess of the San Francisco Giants center fielder
• I never thought home runs were all that exciting. I still think the triple is the most exciting thing in baseball. To me, a triple is like a guy taking the ball on his one-yard line and running 99 yards for a touchdown. – Milwaukee Braves outfielder Hank Aaron, the Major League Baseball career home runs leader, analogizing his sport to American football
• No one can stop a home run. No one can understand what it really is, unless you have felt it in your own hands and body. As the ball makes its high, long arc beyond the playing field, the diamond and the stands suddenly belong to one man. In that brief, brief time, you are free of all demons and complications. – Yomiuri Giants first baseman Sadaharu Oh, Nippon Professional Baseball's single season and career home runs leader

• As I grew up, I knew that as a building, it was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid at Giza, the nation's capitol, the czar's Winter Palace, and the Louvre—except, of course, that it is better than all those inconsequential places. – Massachusetts native and Major League Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, on Fenway Park, the home field of the Boston Red Sox

June 1 to July 4, 2006

• "I know it is the fans that are responsible for my being here. I've always tried in each and every broadcast to serve fans to the best of my ability." - Chicago Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray
• "God knows I gave my best in baseball at all times and no man on Earth can truthfully judge me otherwise." - Chicago White Sox left fielder "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, on his being banned from baseball for his alleged involvement in the Black Sox scandal
• "Fans, for the past two weeks you've been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." - New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, addressing fans at Yankee Stadium upon his contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and retiring from professional baseball
• "I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?" - New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra
• "What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did." - New York Yankees outfielder Babe Ruth, responding to concerns that he earned more money in 1931 than did President Herbert Hoover
• "I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me...All I ask is that you respect me as a human being." - Brooklyn Dodgers third baseman Jackie Robinson