American Baseball Player Quotes

Stadiums fill up with people to see what's going to happen between the lines. But life isn't only about visible realities. There are invisible and unseen nuances...things that shape us into who we are.

A catcher and his body are like the outlaw and his horse. He's got to ride that nag till it drops.

It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense 'better' than the form that is being used today.

A manager should stay as far away as possible from his players. I don't know if I said ten words to Frank Robinson while he played for me.

Accomplishment is something you can't buy. If you have a chance and don't make the most of it, you are wasting your time on this earth.

Roberto Clemente

All you have to do is pick up a baseball. It begs to you: throw me. If you took a year to design an object to hurl, you'd end up with that little spheroid small enough to nestle in your fingers but big enough to have some heft, lighter than a rock but heavier than a hunk of wood. Its even, neat stitching, laced into the leather's slippery white surface, gives your fingers a purchase. A baseball was made to throw. It's almost irresistible.

I found it hugely insulting that people believed I'd go so far out of my way - living with Playmates, vacationing with actresses, showing up at nightclubs - to act out a lifestyle that would amount to a charade. If I was gay, I'd be gay all the way.

If you ask what's been my secret of success, most might say it's my God-given athletic ability to throw a football. While talent is important, it's not necessarily the most important thing. Thousands of talented people fail every day. My strength has been my will to win-that competitive fire inside.

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

I think the key to that particular play was the throw. I knew I had the ball all the time. In my mind, because I was so cocky at that particular time when I was young, whatever went in the air I felt that I could catch. That's how sure I would be about myself. When the ball went up I had no idea that I wasn't going to catch the ball. As I'm running — I'm running backwards and I'm saying to myself, "How am I going to get this ball back into the infield?"

I copied Jackson's style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter.

The one thing I always said to myself was that when baseball started to feel more like a job, it would be time to move forward.

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.

The playoffs are the wedge between the season and the World Series. If you lose, it means you won't be going to the greatest sports event in this country...You're forgotten by Thanksgiving.

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

I don't know why people like the home run so much. A home run is over as soon as it starts... wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

George Foster (baseball)

I was always matching wits with authority. Pondering over my past and present hassles, I began to wonder why my life had taken the direction it had. What cosmic forces had led me to this precise moment that saw me, once again, dancing on the rim of the volcano? The answers started to come to me as my life flashed before my eyes. I think it all started when I was arrested as a pyromaniac.

Bill Lee (left-handed pitcher)

People only rooted for the underdog in movies, not in middle school.

Your body is just like a bar of soap. It gradually wears down from repeated use.

To get a better piece of chicken, you'd have to be a rooster.

Once the record was mine, I had to use it like a Louisville Slugger. I believed, and still do, that there was a reason why I was chosen to break the record. I feel it's my task to carry on where Jackie Robinson left off, and I only know of one way to go about it. It's the only way I've ever had of dealing with things like fastballs and bigotry -- keep swinging at them.

I really haven't even thought about it," he said. "If I somehow miraculously made it to the All-Star Game, I would be floored. I'd really be totally humbled by that. I'm just happy right now to play, to produce and to be with a good group of guys.

There's no way I can go play for the Yankees, but I know they are going to come after me hard. … It's definitely not the most important thing to go out there for the top dollar, which the Yankees are going to offer me. It's not what I need.

Why do people sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the stadium when they're already there?

Character is forged not on the mountaintop but in the valley.