Memorable Baseball Quotes

It's been a few years since I posted some of the more memorable baseball quotes. I thought it was time to do it again, especially since the season may not last much longer. Many of these appeared previously ("Notable Baseball Quotes","Love is the Most Important Thing in the World, but Baseball is Pretty Good, Too (Yogi Berra)","On the Lighter Side: Memorable Baseball Quotes"), but a few are new.


Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.
-- Yogi Berra

The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor.
-- Cincinnati Gazette editorial, 1879

You can have the best team in baseball, and if nobody goes through the turnstiles, you've got to shut the doors down.
-- Tommy Lasorda

I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won 25 games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five.

-- Yogi Berra

I have discovered, in 20 years of moving around a ball park, that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats.

-- Bill Veeck

Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.
-- Leo Durocher

Do you know what I love most about baseball? The pine tar, the resin, the grass, the dirt. And that's just in the hot dogs.
-- David Letterman

A hot dog at the game beats roast beef at the Ritz.

-- Humphrey Bogart

Greaseball, greaseball, greaseball, that's all I throw him (Rod Carew), and he still hits them. He's the only player in baseball who consistently hits my grease. He sees the ball so well, I guess he can pick out the dry side.

-- Gaylord Perry

Win any way you can as long as you can get away with it.
-- Leo Durocher

The tradition of professional baseball is agreeably free of chivalry. The rule is, 'Do anything you can get away with.'

-- Heywood Broun

The great American game of baseball is a fraud, a treachery and un-American. It offers a regrettable example to the nation's youth, is populated by cheats, thrives on sneaky tricks, and teaches Fagin values to thousands of Little Leaguers

-- Shirley Povich

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal, and you can spit anywhere except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.

-- Jim Murray

Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa.

-- Bob Veale

Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?

-- Yogi Berra

When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.

-- Woody Allen

The other teams could make trouble for us if they win. 

-- Yogi Berra

What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagement's of his wife fidelity and his mother's respectability.
-- George Bernard Shaw

So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.

-- Yogi Berra

I never took the game home with me. I always left it in some bar.

-- Bob Lemon

Baseball is the only major sport that appears backwards in a mirror.
-- George Carlin

It's a round ball and a round bat, and you have to hit it square.

-- Pete Rose

Why does everybody stand up and sing, 'Take Me Out To The Ball Game' when they're already there?

-- Larry Anderson

Baseball is accused of being too slow. Here's something that would not only speed up the game but also provide a welcome opportunity for serious injuries. Like most good ideas, it's uncomplicated: If the pitcher hits the batter with the ball, the batter is out. That's it. A simple idea, but it would make quite a difference.

-- George Carlin

I'm one of those people who's not really turned on by baseball. My idea of a relief pitcher is one that's filled with martinis.

-- Dean Martin

The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the hitter is timid, he has to remind the hitter he's timid.

-- Don Drysdale (known for throwing at a batter or two during his career)

The season starts too early and finishes to late and there are too many games in between.

-- Bill Veeck

The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.

-- Casey Stengel

For the parents of a Little Leaguer, a baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown in innings.

-- Earl Wilson

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.

-- Dave Barry

If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.

-- Babe Ruth

I learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able throw something back.

-- Maya Angelou

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for having too many players on the field?

-- Jim Bouton

Baseball is what we were; football is what we've become.

-- Mary McGrory

It ain't nothin' till I call it.

-- Bill Klern, umpire

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

-- Babe Ruth

Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn't score any runs.

-- Tim McCarver

Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.

-- Joe Adcock

I think I throw the ball as hard as anyone. The ball just doesn't get there as fast.

-- Eddie Bane

When they start the game, they don't say, 'Work Ball!' They say 'Play Ball!'

-- Willie Stargell

Sure I played. Did you think I was born age 70 sitting in a dugout trying to manage guys like you?

-- Casey Stengel to Mickey Mantle

As a nation we are dedicated to keeping physically fit... and parking as close to the stadium as possible.

-- Bill Vaughn

If you don't succeed at first, try pitching.

-- Jack Harshman

When we lose, I eat. When we win, I eat. I also eat when we're rained out.

-- Tommy Lasorda

Ninety percent of this game is half mental.

-- Yogi Berra

All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a double-header.

-- George Will

I never said most of the things I said.

-- Yogi Berra