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You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.
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.
Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.
Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is eighty percent of being a successful hitter. The other twenty percent is just execution.
Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what it most truly is, is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.
There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens.
I ain't afraid to tell the world that it don't take school stuff to help a fella play ball.
I never smile when I have a bat in my hands. That's when you've got to be serious.
It helps if the hitter thinks you're a little crazy.
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.
I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats.
I'd like to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee.
Any man who can look handsome in a dirty baseball suit is an Adonis. There is something about the baggy pants, and the Micawber-shaped collar, and the skull-fitting cap, and the foot or so of tan, or blue, or pink undershirt sleeve sticking out at the arms, that just naturally kills a man's best points.
EDNA FERBER, "A Bush League Hero"
With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions.
The pitcher has got only a ball. I've got a bat. So the percentage in weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting.
The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It's the only thing I know.
Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become.
The game's isn't over until it's over.
Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.
BILL LEE, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 1977
Baseball is such a game of hope. Anything can happen--and often does--usually in the most tension-filled times. Maybe your team is up by a run or two with only three outs to get. Why does it seem that those three outs are always the toughest three to get? Or maybe you are on the other side of the ledger with your team being down a run or two with three outs to go. Doesn't hope spring eternal if you get a base runner or two on?
PETER G. DOUMIT, What I Know about Baseball is What I Know about Life
Baseball is an American icon. It is the Statue of Liberty, the bald eagle, "In God We Trust," Mount Rushmore, ice cream, apple pie, hot dogs, and rally monkeys. BASEBALL IS AMERICA.
VICTOR ALEXANDER BALTOV, JR., Baseball Is America
Football may be the "disco beat" of modern sports, but baseball is Chopin or the mystique of Mozart. Every baseball game is new with the pristine beauty of the notes of Beethoven's Ninth.
PHILLIP GERSTLE, attributed, Baseball's Greatest Quotations
The seductiveness of baseball is that almost everyone with an abiding interest in it knows exactly how it should be played. And secretly believes that he could do it, if only God had seen fit to make him just a little bit less clumsy.
GEORGE V. HIGGINS, The Progress of the Seasons
Baseball is a game of long-suffering, and if one doesn't have the endurance to get over the hard times, bad hops, bad luck, failure-at-the-rate-of-70%-or-better hitting, and all the other things that happen that try one's patience, they won't last long in the game.
PETER G. DOUMIT, What I Know about Baseball is What I Know about Life
Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.
JOE GARAGIOLA, Baseball Is a Funny Game
The state of baseball is the barometric pressure of America's soul.
VICTOR ALEXANDER BALTOV, JR., Baseball Is America
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
Baseball gives you every chance to be great. Then it puts every pressure on you to prove that you haven't got what it takes. It never takes away the chance, and it never eases up on the pressure.
JOE GARAGIOLA, Baseball Is a Funny Game
I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.
WILLIE MAYS, Newsweek, Feb. 5, 1979
Baseball is essentially a 19th century sport that is no longer congruent with contemporary American cultural dynamics and thus seems terribly slow and boring to many people. Baseball games are now events at which to drink beer and relax, and the ambience at baseball games is considerably different from what one finds at football games--especially crucial games, where ancient antagonisms or bowl bids hang in the balance.
ARTHUR ASA BERGER, Media Analysis Techniques
The fundamental reason for the popularity of the game is the fact that it is a national safety valve. Voltaire says that there are no real pleasures without real needs. Now a young, ambitious and growing nation needs to "let off steam." Baseball furnishes the opportunity. Therefore, it is a real pleasure.... That is what baseball does for humanity. It serves the same purpose as a revolution in Central America or a thunderstorm on a hot day.... A tonic, an exercise, a safety-valve, baseball is second only to Death as a leveler. So long as it remains our national game, America will abide no monarchy, and anarchy will be too slow.
ALLEN SANGREE, attributed, The Ultimate Baseball Book
Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure.
JOHN THORN, "Baseball: Our Game"
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