Baseball Quotes

“Over time, ink fades like a duck quack in the wind. I have a baseball signed by Babe Ruth, but his autograph has gone invisible. That’s why it’s now ON SALE for ONLY $19.95.”
― Jarod Kintz, Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.

“He said there are two ways for a hitter to get the pitch he wants. The simplest way is not to want any pitch in particular. But the best way, he said -- which sounds almost the same, but is really very different -- is to want the very pitch you're gonna get. Including the one you can handle. But also the one that's gonna strike you out looking. And even the one that's maybe gonna bounce off your head.”
― David James Duncan, The Brothers K

“Boston and Chicago are two great seats of mathematical research located in major American cities. Until they won in 2004, if you asked a baseball fan in Boston what they most hoped to see in their lifetime, they would have answered a World Series win for the Boston Red Sox. Chicago Cubs fans are still waiting. Ask a mathematician in either of those cities or anywhere else in the world what they would most hope to see in their lifetime, and they would most likely answer: "A proof o the Riemann hypothesis!" Perhaps mathematicians, like Red Sox fans, will have their prayers answered in our lifetimes, or at least before the Cubs win the World Series.”
― Stephen Hawking, God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History

“Bowing low, he gave a last confident nod toward home plate, the kind that said, 'You know kid, I'm Danny Dragoon. I pitch fire, and you can't hit fire. No one can.”
― Anthony Trendl, My Biggest Game: A Baseball Story: A Bluster County Tale

“A Coyote game of paths and chances.”
― Michael Chabon, Summerland

“the demon virtues — patience, deception, quick hands, craftiness, an for the mistakes of others”
― Michael Chabon, Summerland

“Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become.”
― Mary McGrory

“It measures just 9 inches in circumference, weighs only about 5 ounces, and it made of cork wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cowhide, and stiched by hand precisely 216 times.
It travels 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher's mound to home--and it can cover that distance at nearly 100 miles an hour. Along the way it can be made to twist, spin, curve, wobble, rise, or fall away.
The bat is made of turned ash, less than 42 inches long, not more than 2 3/4 inches in diameter. The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball. And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes.
It is played everywhere. In parks and playground and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers fields. By small children and by old men. By raw amateurs and millionare professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game where the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.
Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom.
At the games's heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game, born in crowded cities; an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that sometimes manages to be years ahead of its time.
It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to father and grandfathers. And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.
It is a haunted game, where each player is measured by the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.”
― John Chancellor

“My grandson and me wanted to thank you for your service," the man said, his voice solemn. He held out his gnarled hand, and it trembled as Nick looked at it.
Nick took it, shaking it dazedly. "Thank you," he managed. "And thank you for yours."
The man nodded, then instructed his grandson to do the same as he shook Ty's hand as well. The boy, who was anywhere between eight and twelve maybe - Nick had no idea how to tell the age of children - gave Nick a sideways glance as he tentatively shook Nick's hand. Then he turned to his grandfather and hissed a question. He probably through he was being discreet, but Nick heard him loud and clear: "How'd they know you were a soldier, Pop?"
The old man just smiled as he tossed a piece of popcorn into his mouth. "It's just something you know.”
― Abigail Roux, Part Parcel

“When I was a child the comic case for baseball being the hardest game argued, 'Despite using a round bat and a round ball, you're told to hit it square.”
― Carl Erskine

“Ain't no such thing as communist baseball team!”
― Donald Hays, The Dixie Association: A Novel

“If the USA had as many people concerned with their government as are concerned with sports this country would not be in the bad shape it is today.”
― James Thomas Kesterson Jr

“Baseball builds more character than bible.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“I floated away into that omnipresent timelessness of baseball, where boys with a dream and long-expired Major Leaguers orbit forever on equal planes.”
― Greg Larson, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir

“You don't ask the sun why you orbit, you just orbit. You let the gravitational waves of the baseball season pull you in and you surrender yourself, happily.”
― Greg Larson, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir

“It turned out that life only mattered inasmuch as it could be sectioned off on baseball's terms.”
― Greg Larson, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir

“Baseball taught me how to love.

The game made sense to me, and spending time with it felt more like an obsessive relationship than a simple want.”
― Greg Larson, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir

“From the first moment I started to uncover the infinite mysteries of baseball--like why players chose to wear certain numbers, what the brown stuff in players' mouths was, and just what the hell a balk entailed--I was hooked.”
― Greg Larson, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir

“Days during the baseball season don't start with M, T, W, F, or S. They only start with G or O: game day or off day.”
― Greg Larson, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir

“You realize that the sleeping stadium is more beautiful at night, with the unshakable quietus rooting it to the earth. It rests like a graveyard--empty but throbbing all at once. With the pollution of light extinguished, maybe you even see the Dog Star blinking back at you.”
― Greg Larson, Clubbie: A Minor League Baseball Memoir

“Fat fingers dance across
the clattering keyboard
Grinding out meaning
Ennobling the actions
Of real men doing something tangible
for a living
And not sitting on their asses
“analyzing” shit.
Pathetic.
—Baseball Players’ Poems about Sportswriters and Sportswriting”
― Bob Odenkirk

“It is not the honor that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind.”
― Branch Rickey

“When life throws you a curveball, hit out of the park.”
― Shanka Jayasinha, Don't Settle

“one man asked his friend, 'So how is her figure?', to which the reply was, 'Ballpark'.”
― J.S. Mason, A Dragon, A Pig, and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar...and other Rambunctious Bites

“Before setting off to make his mark in baseball in 1887, Ed Delahanty went to his mother and announced, 'I'm goin' to quit you and play ball in Mansfield [Ohio].'

'Drat baseball,' shot back Mrs. Delahanty. 'It's ruinin' the family.'

In a final attempt to win her approval, Ed reminded his mother of the money there was to be made in the game.

'I'm comin' home with "rocks" in me pocket,' he said.

Mrs. Delahanty remained unimpressed.

'And many's the time ye've come back with rocks on the side of yer thick head,' she answered.”
― Mike Sowell, July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty

“There was a time when the [National baseball]League stood for integrity and fair dealing. Today it stands for dollars and cents. Once it looked to the elevation of the game and an honest exhibition of the sport. Today its eyes are on the turnstile. Men have come into the business for no other motive than to exploit it for every dollar in sight.

Brotherhood Manifesto, November 1889”
― Mike Sowell, July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty

“Baseball makes you feel like you have an American smile.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“The bat and the ball only matter because we stepped up to the plate.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“In all our lives there are hits, strikeouts, and the occasional home run. This book is dedicated to my two young sons, Chance King and his brother Cannon King, two of the cherished home runs of my life.”
― Larry King, Why I Love Baseball

“P.S.2. During the day, they are drilling us on passwords we will need in the jungle in case we run into a Japanese spy dressed like a USMC. One of them was "Who lost game 4 of the 1941 W. Series?" Half the guys said "Brooklyn" and the other half said "Mickey Owen" and the third half said "Tommy Henrich". Then some fist fights happened so they scrapped the question. But I told you so.”
― Steve Kluger, Last Days of Summer