quotations about baseball
Baseball is life with the volume turned up.
VICTOR ALEXANDER BALTOV, JR.
Baseball Is America: Origins and History: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
College baseball is an imperfect game; that is its beauty and the key to its enjoyment. Place it in a major league setting and it becomes an awkward parody. In the major leagues, a ground ball to the shortstop is an out, but in college ball, even a pop-up carries an element of doubt. The appeal of college baseball is that the players have talent but not perfection. They are capable of outstanding accomplishment and unbelievable mistakes; they are, in short, just like ourselves. It is a game all of us can understand.
PAUL BURKA
Texas Monthly, Apr. 1974
That's the thing about baseball ... You do what they did before you. That's the connection you make. There's a whole long line. A man takes his kid to a game and thirty years later this is what they talk about when the poor old mutt's wasting away in the hospital.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Baseball is a game of moments: exhilarating and excruciating, heartwarming and heartbreaking, dazzling and, yes, sometimes even dull. Red Barber, the greatest baseball announcer of all time, said that "baseball is dull only to dull minds," but I respectfully disagree.... Baseball is a lot like life: there are moments of excitement and joy with long stretches of monotony.
LIZ HARTMAN MUSIKER
The Smart Girl's Guide to Sports
I enjoy Shea Stadium. But the fans are something else. I look upon each game there as an experience. I get to go to a zoo and don't have to pay admission.
PETE ROSE
attributed, The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball
Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America's most privileged version of the level field.
A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI
Sports Illustrated, Apr. 17, 1989
I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats.
YOGI BERRA
attributed, The Great American Sports Book
Baseball is a hard game to play, so no matter what uniform you wear, you have something in common with the guy in the other dugout: We all fail. The game is built that way.
DAVID ORTIZ
Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits
Like a tree, baseball is a thing of dignity. A tree knows how to balance itself, roots in relation to trunk in relation to the outspreading and the growth. Pitcher battles a balance, with all the fielders on his side, against the wood-wielding enemy. The distances are right. From pitcher to batter, from base to base. There are enough chances, there are enough accidents, and when those things even out, it's still a test of skill. What it comes down to is that the batters with the most talent have the best records. Ditto with the pitchers. Baseball tests ability. Out of it all, an archives, a legacy of records, of statistics, has come down to us. And the compilation is always going on, season after season.
MARVIN COHEN
Baseball the Beautiful
I believe in the church of baseball. I've 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. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball. And it is never boring.... I've tried them all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in and day out, is the church of baseball.
RON SHELTON
Bull Durham
The Yankees have blown a 10-game lead in the standings, and are now tied for first place. You can tell they're depressed. Today, five of their players tested positive for Häagen-Dazs.
JIMMY FALLON
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Sep. 5, 2012
After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.
MICKEY MANTLE
attributed, A Yankee Century
The professional baseball fan is an American cultural phenomenon. His fund of quotable statistics, his trove of memorable traditions, his collections of valueless mementos comprise a mine of guilt-edged insecurity. Although he can neither do nor teach, he regards himself as a player-coach.
JIM BROSNAN
The Atlantic, Apr. 1964
It is hard to imagine a democratic republic without baseball for the instruction of its citizens.
MICHAEL NOVAK
The Joy of Sports
What we’ve done for baseball is this: We made all the ballparks smaller, we’ve juiced up the ball, the pitchers are bigger and stronger, and we won’t call strikes. Everything is against the pitcher. They should raise the mound again, put them on even terms. They lowered the mound after the ’68 season; that’s because Bob Gibson had 13 shutouts and Denny McLain won 31 games. And they haven’t done anything with it since then.
PETE ROSE
interview, Apr. 4, 2013
Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up.
SHARON OLDS
This Sporting Life
There are parents out there screaming as if their kid is going to be in the big leagues someday. C'mon. I chew them out if I see that. Maybe they've got their own idea how to do things, but it's wrong. Just be with the kids. Let 'em make errors. Give them all a chance. It's not about winning. It's spirit, togetherness.
TOMMY LASORDA
Los Angeles Daily News, July 14, Los Angeles Daily News, July 14, 2013
Baseball's time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the way the game was played in our youth and in our fathers' youth, and even back then--back in the country days--there must have been the same feeling that time could be stopped. 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
The Interior Stadium
Baseball is both poetic and narrative in its action. It is an activity grounded in a quest for home. Home is the game's beginning and end; its movement is both Grail-like and Odyssean.
PETER GIZZI
The House that Jack Built
To connect faith and the national pastime is not to argue that baseball is something more than a game; it is to affirm that baseball is a game.
CHRISTOPHER H. EVANS & WILLIAM R. HERZOG II
The Faith of 50 Million