Babe Ruth Quotes

32 Sourced Quotes

Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.

Babe Ruth
The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.

Babe Ruth
Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.

Babe Ruth
I was a bad kid. I say this without pride but with a feeling that it is better to say it. I live with one great hope: to help kids who now stand where I stood as a boy. If what I have to say here helps even one of them avoid some of my own mistakes, or take heart from such triumphs as I have had, this book will serve its purpose.

Babe Ruth
Make no mistake about that. The old boy was the greatest player I ever saw or hope to see. When I was pitching I had fair success against all the other great hitters, but Cobb was one guy I never could get out. I had a reputation for being a slugger and I guess I could hit 'em pretty far at that, but that guy Cobb could do everything—better than any player I ever saw. Old Georgia Peach was a great hitter, a spectacular fielder, a wonderfui thrower and oh boy, how he could run.

Babe Ruth
Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. You know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad. You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth. That means the boys. And after you've been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.

Babe Ruth
I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball. In boxing, your fist usually stops when you hit a man, but its possible to hit so hard that your fist doesn't stop. I try to follow through in the same way. The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.

Babe Ruth
I always swing at the ball with all my might. I hit or miss big and when I miss I know it long before the umpire calls a strike on me, for every muscle in my back, shoulders and arms is groaning, "You missed it." And be­lieve me, it is no fun to miss a ball that hard. Once I put myself out of the game for a few days by a miss like that.

Babe Ruth
My answer to that [i.e. the question of whether Ruth hoped to set a new single-season HR record] was "No." I don't believe I can ever better my 60 mark that I made in 1927. And, frankly, I don't believe anyone else will beat it for a long time either.

Babe Ruth
Of course I'm not kidding myself. My recent illness proved to me that I've reached the place now where I've got to take particularly good care of myself. A lot of the boys have been kidding me because they said that illness "scared me to death." Frankly it did scare me and I'm still scared. I hope to stay scared to the point where I never forget that taking care of myself is the most important thing in my life from now on.

Babe Ruth
If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. I have the same violent temper my father and older brother had. Both died of injuries from street fights in Baltimore, fights begun by flare-ups of their tempers.

Babe Ruth
All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

Babe Ruth
There's one thing in baseball that always gets my goat and that's the intentional pass. It isn't fair to the batter. It isn't fair to his club. It's a raw deal for the fans and it isn't baseball. By "baseball," I mean good square American sportsmanship because baseball represents America in sport. If we get down to unfair advantages in our national game we are putting out a mighty bad advertisement.

Babe Ruth
The only real game — I think — in the world is baseball.

Babe Ruth
To my little sick pal. I will try to knock you another homer, maybe two today.

Babe Ruth
That's easy. The new rules have made these pitchers turn square, and their offerings have been clouted. I know some pitchers who used the old emery and the shiner and all the rest, and they were bearcats. Now they have to get by on their natural ability and they don't rate so high. I can think of one pitcher who was a wonder last year. They took the old sail ball away from him, and now he hasn't enough to get by in a good class AA league. So it goes. They say that the ball is livelier. I think that is the old bunk. The pitchers are not pitching as they used to and the batters have a better chance.

Babe Ruth
After all, there's only one aswer to be made to the young fellow who is asking constantly for advice as to how to hit. The answer is: "Pick out a good one and sock it!"

Babe Ruth
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.

Babe Ruth
I'm afraid that someday I'll kill some pitcher. It is one thing I've always dreaded. My heart stood still in that game in Detroit when I almost got Ehmke with that drive through the box. I thought for a certainty that the ball would hit him before he got his hands up to protect himself. A couple of pitchers have asked me not to hit the ball back at them, and I always try not to. Why should I try to hurt any ball players? We are all out there trying to make a living, and no man worthwhile would deliberately try to injure another.

Babe Ruth
I only have one superstition: I make sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.

Babe Ruth
I only have one: whenever I hit a home run I make certain to touch all four bases.

Babe Ruth
There's been so many lovely things said about me, and I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to thank everybody. Thank you.

Babe Ruth
I'd play for half my salary if I could hit in this dump all the time.

Babe Ruth
What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did.

Babe Ruth
A man who knows he's making money for other people ought to get some of the profits he brings in. Don't make any difference if it's baseball or a bank or a vaudeville show. It's business, I tell you. There ain't no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.

Babe Ruth
If I'd just tried for them dinky singles I could've batted around six hundred!

Babe Ruth
I'm glad that I've played every position on the team, because I feel that I know more about the game and what to expect of the other fellows. Lots of times I hear men being roasted for not doing this or that when I know, from my all round experience, that they couldn't have been expected to do it. It's a pity some of our critics hadn't learned the game from every position.

Babe Ruth
I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun.

Babe Ruth
I didn't mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

Babe Ruth
It was at St. Mary's that I met and learned to love the greatest man I've ever known. His name was Brother Matthias. He was the father I needed. He taught me to read and write — and he taught me the difference between right and wrong.

Babe Ruth