19th-century Baseball Player Quotes

Ty Cobb

Christy Mathewson

Billy Sunday

Shoeless Joe Jackson

Branch Rickey

Casey Stengel

Alfred Lawson

Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile.

Christy Mathewson

Churches don't need new members half so much as they need the old bunch made over.

The first time I faced him I watched him take that easy windup and then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn't touch him... Every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.

I no longer worry about being a brilliant conversationalist. I simply try to be a good listener. I notice that people who do that are usually welcome wherever they go

All the big sportswriters seemed to enjoy writing about me as an ignorant cotton-mill boy with nothing but lint where my brains ought to be. That was all right with me. I was able to fool a lot of pitchers and managers and club owners I wouldn't have been able to fool if they'd thought I was smarter.

Shoeless Joe Jackson

Mantle had more ability than any player I ever had on that club.

Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game.

We are too apt to attribute to accident or occult influence that which we cannot understand.

Is it unmanly to cry? If so, I must confess my unmanliness, for on this occasion it was impossible for me to repress the tears from coursing down my cheeks, as I realized that the last of nature's grandest and noblest earthly beings had passed away. But the tears I shed apparently softened my nature, and as I stood buried in the depth of meditation concerning the preceding events, I became impregnated with the desire to try and do some real good in the world; to make myself useful to mankind; to live for others instead of myself alone.