When It Was a Game

Trouble with Baseball

2009-02-22T05:59:00.000-08:00

“The trouble with baseball is that it is not played the year round.” -Gaylord Perry

Three Types of Players

2009-02-21T05:57:00.000-08:00

“There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens.” - Tommy Lasorda

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-02-20T05:56:00.000-08:00

“One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something.” - Nolan Ryan

Hope Springs Eternal

2009-02-19T05:54:00.000-08:00

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is.” -Bob Feller

Not a Tough Choice

2009-02-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base." -Dave Barry

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-02-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

"I believe in the Rip Van Winkle theory: that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark and understand baseball perfectly." -Bowie Kuhn

You Also Have the Same Sense of Reasoning

2009-02-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

"The only thing my father & I have in common is that our similarities are different." -Dale Berra

Good Point

2009-02-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want somebody else to go chase it." -Roger Hornsby

2009-02-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

"Baseball is the only thing beside the paper clip that hasn't changed." -Bill Veeck

Big Man Knew What He Was Doing

2009-02-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

"If God wanted football played in the spring, he would not have invented baseball." Sam Rutigliano

Time Stands Still

2009-02-03T10:01:00.000-08:00

"The clock doesn't matter in baseball. Time stands still or moves backwards. Theoretically, one game could go on forever." -Herb Caen

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-02-03T09:59:00.000-08:00

"Looking at the ball going over the fence isn't going to help." -Hank Aaron

Funny Baseball Quote

2009-02-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

"I broke in with four hits and the writers promptly decided they had seen the new Ty Cobb. It took me only a few days to correct that impression." -Casey Stengel

Baseball's Greatest Philosopher

2009-01-26T18:29:00.000-08:00

"I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won't matter if I get this guy out." - Bill Lee

Babe Ruth: Thoughts on Baseball

2009-01-26T06:27:00.000-08:00

"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime."
- Babe Ruth

Character

2009-01-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

"Sports do not build character. They reveal it." - Heywood Hale Broun

2009-01-25T06:22:00.000-08:00

"A good professional athlete must have the love of a little boy. And the good players feel the kind of love for the game that they did when they were Little Leaguers." - Tom Seaver

Solid Batting Advice

2009-01-24T18:20:00.000-08:00

"Swing hard, in case they throw the ball where you're swinging." - Duke Snider

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-24T06:18:00.000-08:00

Someone once described the pitching of a no-hit game as like catching lighting in a bottle.
- W. P. Kinsella

Baseball Analogies

2009-01-23T18:16:00.000-08:00

Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first. - Frederick B. Wilcox

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-23T06:14:00.000-08:00

"One year I hit .291 and had to take a salary cut. If you hit .291 today, you'd own the franchise."
- Enos Slaughter

Big Dreams

2009-01-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

Before I was ever in my teens, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. My goal was to be the greatest athlete that ever lived. - Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-22T06:10:00.000-08:00

"Baseball is beautiful....the supreme performing art. It combines in perfect harmony the magnificent features of ballet, drama, art, and ingenuity." - Commissioner Bowie Kuhn

W.P. Kinsella; Thoughts on Baseball

2009-01-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

"Baseball games are like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two are ever alike." - W. P. Kinsella

Harry Caray; Lovable Cubs

2009-01-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

"What does a mama bear on the pill have in common with the World Series? No cubs." Harry Caray

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-20T18:05:00.000-08:00

"Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season with the Chicago Cubs. That's baseball as it should be played - in God's own sunshine. And that's really living." Alvin Dark

Hank Aaron Thoughts on Baseball

2009-01-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

"The pitcher has got only a ball. I've got a bat. So the percentage of weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting." - Hank Aaron

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-19T18:38:00.000-08:00

Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose-unless it be to have it assumed that I once pitched a baseball with distinction. - Robert Frost

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-19T06:35:00.000-08:00

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 demands an complications. -Sadaharu Oh

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is. -Bob Feller

Presidents and Baseball

2009-01-17T18:30:00.000-08:00

When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing.... I told him I wanted to be a real Major League Baseball Player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on the ball. -Bill Veeck, 1976

Fountain of Youth

2009-01-16T18:27:00.000-08:00

Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young. -Roger Angell

Babe Ruth: Thoughts on Baseball

2009-01-16T06:24:00.000-08:00

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.
- Babe Ruth

Yogisms

2009-01-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

You observe a lot by watching. - Yogi Berra

Bo Knows Best

2009-01-15T06:18:00.000-08:00

Set your goals high, and don't stop till you get there. -Bo Jackson

Hank Aaron Thoughts on Baseball

2009-01-14T06:16:00.000-08:00

My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging. - Hank Aaron

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.
Satchel Paige

Words of Wisdom from the Diamond

2009-01-13T06:11:00.000-08:00

Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you. -Satchel Paige

The Church of Baseball

2009-01-12T22:43:00.000-08:00

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. ~Ron Shelton, Bull Durham, 1988

Wouldn't Be Wrong to Assume....

2009-01-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

It is well to remember that a Martian observing his first baseball game would be quite correct in concluding that the last two words of the National Anthem are: PLAY BALL! ~Herbert H. Paper, in Cincinnati Enquirer, 2 April 1989

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

Like those special afternoons in summer when you go to Yankee Stadium at two o'clock in the afternoon for an eight o'clock game. It's so big, so empty and so silent that you can almost hear the sounds that aren't there. ~Ray Miller

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-10T22:35:00.000-08:00

I don't love baseball. I don't love most of today's players. I don't love the owners. I do love, however, the baseball that is in the heads of baseball fans. I love the dreams of glory of 10-year-olds, the reminiscences of 70-year-olds. The greatest baseball arena is in our heads, what we bring to the games, to the telecasts, to reading newspaper reports. ~Stan Isaacs, "Diamond-Studded Memories," Newsday, 9 April 1990

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

Baseball? It's just a game - as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business - and sometimes even religion. ~Ernie Harwell, "The Game for All America," 1955

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood. ~Thomas Boswell, in Inside Sports

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

I don't know why people like the home run so much. A home run is over as soon as it starts.... The triple is the most exciting play of the game. A triple is like meeting a woman who excites you, spending the evening talking and getting more excited, then taking her home. It drags on and on. You're never sure how it's going to turn out. ~George Foster, 1978

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-08T22:26:00.000-08:00

This is a game to be savored, not gulped. There's time to discuss everything between pitches or between innings. ~Bill Veeck

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-08T06:24:00.000-08:00

A baseball fan has the digestive apparatus of a billy goat. He can, and does, devour any set of diamond statistics with insatiable appetite and then nuzzles hungrily for more. ~Arthur Daley

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-07T22:22:00.000-08:00

The strongest thing that baseball has going for it today are its yesterdays. ~Lawrence Ritter

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks in batting practice. ~Casey Stengel, 1967

Seven Year Miss

2009-01-07T06:16:00.000-08:00

During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball. ~Mickey Mantle, 1970

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-06T22:14:00.000-08:00

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in 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. ~A. Bartlett Giamatti, "The Green Fields of the Mind," Yale Alumni Magazine, November 1977

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-06T06:12:00.000-08:00

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us. ~Walt Whitman

Jim Murray's Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-05T10:07:00.000-08:00

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball. ~Jim Murray

Thoughts on the Game of Baseball

2009-01-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in 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 disparagement of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability. ~George Bernard Shaw

Our National Pastime

2009-01-05T09:09:00.001-08:00

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. ~Steve Busby, in Washington Post, 8 July 1974

Baseball, God, and Family. In No Particular Order

2009-01-05T08:35:00.000-08:00

There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my family, and baseball. The only problem - once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit. ~Al Gallagher, 1971

How to Spend Your Offseason

2009-01-05T05:39:00.000-08:00

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. ~Rogers Hornsby

For the Love of the Game

2009-01-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970

Hank Aaron Thoughts on Baseball

2009-01-04T19:58:00.000-08:00

“It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.” Hank Aaron.

People Will Come

2009-01-04T19:56:00.000-08:00

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.

Field of Dreams
Terence Mann:
(James Earl Jones)

For the Love of the Game

2009-01-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

“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” -Edward Abbey

Or you Could Just Hand Off to the Catcher

2009-01-03T19:52:00.000-08:00

“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.” Earl Weaver

Baseball Theater

2009-01-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

"Football is to baseball as blackjack is to bridge. One is the quick jolt. The other the deliberate, slow-paced game of skill, but never was a sport more ideally suited to television than baseball. It's all there in front of you. It's theatre, really. The star is the spotlight on the mound, the supporting cast fanned out around him, the mathematical precision of the game moving with the kind of inevitability of Greek tragedy. With the Greek chorus in the bleachers!" -Vin Scully

Sweet Dreams

2009-01-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

“I think about baseball when I wake up in the morning. I think about it all day and I dream about it at night. The only time I don't think about it is when I'm playing it.” - Carl Yastrzemski

Best Seat in the House

2009-01-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

“Fix your eye on the ball from the moment the pitcher holds it in his glove. Follow it as he throws to the plate and stay with it until the play is completed. Action takes place only where the ball goes.” -Bill Klem, "Father of Baseball Umpires"

Inequality in American Sports

2009-01-02T06:04:00.000-08:00

“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.” - George F. Will

One Out of Three Ain't Bad

2009-01-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

“There are three things you can do in a baseball game. You can win, or you can lose, or it can rain.” Casey Stengel

Gaylord Perry Thoughts on Baseball

2009-01-01T19:38:00.000-08:00

“The trouble with baseball is that it is not played the year round.” Gaylord Perry

Nolan Ryan on Baseball

2009-01-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

“One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something.” Nolan Ryan

That Should Fix Things

2009-01-01T06:28:00.000-08:00

"I told the umpires to walk back at least thirty-five feet from home plate. That reduced the arguments." - Bill Klem "Father of Baseball Umpires"