"Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson." Willie Mays
"I'm not sure what the hell charisma is, but I get the feeling it's Willie Mays." - Ted Kluszewski

"I hate all hitters. I start a game mad and I stay that way until it's over." Don Drysdale

"You can't hit what you can't see." Walter Johnson

"Walter Johnson's fastball looked about the size of a watermelon seed and it hissed at you as it passed." Ty Cobb

"I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball." Pete Rose

"Don Gullett's the only guy who can throw a baseball through a car wash and not get the ball wet." Pete Rose

"You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise, they won't come to yours." Yogi Berra

"The game's isn't over until it's over." Yogi Berra

"The American boy starts swinging the bat about as soon as he can lift one." Tris Speaker

"I don't want my picture in any cigarettes, but I also don't want you to lose the ten dollars, so I'm enclosing my check for that sum." Honus Wagner

"I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand." – From Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea

"Trying to hit Sandy Koufax was like trying to drink coffee with a fork." Willie Stargell

"I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being." Jackie Robinson

"Aw, how could he Jorge Orta lose the ball in the sun, he's from Mexico." Announcer Harry Carry

"Fill in any figure you want for that boy (Mickey Mantle). Whatever the figure, it's a deal." Branch Rickey

"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common." Satchel Paige

"When the ball was last seen crossing the roof of the stand in deep right field at 315 feet, we wonder whether new baseballs conversing together in the original package ever remark: "Join Ruth and see the world." From a 1923 New York World newspaper column by Heywood Broun.

"I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can." Babe Ruth

"I had a better year than he did." Babe Ruth (on his salary exceeding President Hoover's.)

"As a ballplayer, I would be delighted to do it again. As an individual, I doubt if I could possibly go through it again." Roger Maris (on breaking Ruth's 60 HR record)

"I think it puts baseball back on the map as a sport. It's America's pastime and just look at everyone coming out to the ballpark. It has been an exciting year." Mark McGuire (On breaking Maris's record)

"Dear Mr. Kuhn, After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes" Curt Flood

"The first glove I ever saw on the hand of a ball player in a game was worn by Charles C. Waite in Boston in 1875." Albert Goodwill Spalding (founder of Spaulding Sporting Goods)

"Baseball was invented in 1839 at Cooperstown, NY by Abner Doubleday-afterward General Doubleday, a hero of the battle of Gettysburg-and the foundation of this invention was an American children's game call one old cat."  1908 report of the Spalding Commission appointed to research the origin of baseball

"They (Frederick the Prince of Whales and his friends) divert themselves at baseball, a play all who have, or have been, schoolboys, are well acquainted with." From a 1748 letter written by Londoner Mary (Lady Hervey) Leppell

"Is it not very wonderful that Catherine who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback and running around the country at the age of fourteen, to books." From Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey written in 1798.

"The base paths belonged to me, the runner. The rules gave me the right. I always went into a bag full speed, feet first. I had sharp spikes on my shoes. If the baseman stood where he had no business to be and got hurt, that was his fault." Ty Cobb

"Ty Cobb was still fighting the Civil War, and as far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees. But who knows, if he hadn't had that terrible persecution complex, he never would have been about the best ballplayer who ever lived."  Sam Crawford

"I don't want them to forget Ruth, I just want them to remember me!" Henry Aaron

"Hitting is better than sex." Reggie Jackson

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Lou Gerhig's farewell speech, July 4, 1939 at Yankee Stadium.

"Sporting goods companies pay me not to endorse their products." Bob Eucker

"It's like deja vu all over again." Yogi Berra

fShare

Tweet