Baseball Quotes

"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."

Babe Ruth

"I’ll convert a school desk into a tricycle, because how else am I supposed to learn to love? It’s not like baseball gloves are very effective oven mitts."

Jarod Kintz

"Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!"

Babe Ruth

"When her boyfriend broke his leg, I knew it was my chance to ask her to dance. So I put down my baseball bat and approached her like Babe Ruth."

Jarod Kintz

"The thing I write will be the thing I write."

Steve Shilstone

"[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.)"

David Halberstam

"A pitcher throws baseballs, but a pitcher also holds liquid. My emotions are so fluid I wonder how large the pitcher would have to be to hold my heart. Probably 6’3”."

Jarod Kintz

"The sheer quantity of brain power that hurled itself voluntarily and quixotically into the search for new baseball knowledge was either exhilarating or depressing, depending on how you felt about baseball. The same intellectual resources might have cured the common cold, or put a man on Pluto."

Michael Lewis

"Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear -- and doubt."

H.A. Dorfman

"It's the wild, wild West of baseball, and it just keeps getting wilder."

Joe Kehoskie

"You take 5 percent of Contreras's $30 million, you're retired."

Joe Kehoskie

"Unfortunately, here in the Dominican, a lot of the time kids just quit school at 10, 11, 12 and play baseball full-time. It’s great for the kids who make it because they become superstars and [make] millions of dollars in the big leagues. But for 98 kids out of a hundred, it results in a kid who is 18, 19 with no education. So it’s kind of a win-lose here in the Dominican."

Joe Kehoskie

"There's at least half a billion dollars [worth] of baseball players in Cuba right now and probably a lot more."

Joe Kehoskie

"[Chapman] is a strong candidate for being the fool’s gold of the current free-agent market."

Joe Kehoskie

"In many if not most cases, Cuban players haven’t been busts so much as they’ve been systematically over-hyped during the signing process, which led to unrealistic expectations around Major League Baseball and in the media. The vast majority of Cuba’s truly elite players have either stayed in Cuba for their entire careers or left Cuba too late to have a meaningful MLB career."

Joe Kehoskie

"Everyone has the fire, but the champions know when to ignite the spark."

Amit Ray, Enlightenment Step by Step

"Worrying about things you can't control is a waste both on the baseball field and in life."

Tom Swyers

"Four out of five doctors prescribe baseball for whatever ails you. The fifth guy is a quack."

Tom Swyers

"He has the body of a professional athlete, chiseled to perfection in all the right places."

Collette West, Night Games

"In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game."

Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

"[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'", March 25, 2007.)"

David Halberstam, Everything They Had: Sports Writing

"I've got a Don Baylor," J.T. said."California sucks this year."Ralph snickered. "I wouldn't use a Baylor card to scrape dog shit off the street."

Jodi Picoult, Salem Falls

"You’re not going to always hit a home run in life. You’re going to strike out! You’re going to walk to the dugout of life, frustrated, while spectators chirp your name in judgment. They’re afraid to even get on the field, and you know it. The fact that you get back up there, unafraid, going after that next home run, makes you the person you are."

Ron Baratono, The Writings of Ron Baratono

"Champions never sleep, the eternal spirit keep them alert and awake."

Amit Ray, Enlightenment Step by Step

"It is not over. Champions extend their limits and make things happen."

Amit Ray

"Men go to the ballpark with an assumed knowledge and interest, whereas women need to constantly demonstrate how much they know and care."

Stacey May Fowles, Baseball Life Advice

"The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation."

Criss Jami, Healology

"You have intellect, and courage, and command. Play your own game, and don't worry about what anyone else is doing. That is what's going to give you a shot at making it. Comparing yourself to anyone else will just drive you crazy."

Ellen Emerson White, A Season of Daring Greatly

"New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi."

Bill Maher, The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass

"That's sounds right. Another $5,000 went to dress up the Little League park where he had played so many games. Seems like he paid off the MORTAGE on his parents' home, which wasn't that much."

John Grisham, Calico Joe

"How soon do you think it is? Time will tell me. When it's autumn, the leaves fall. When the time comes, I'll know it. [Responding to a question about when he will start throwing his slider in his attempt to comeback from a career-ending stroke.]"

J.R. Richard

"And so, my beloved Kermit, my dear little Hussein, at the moment America changed forever, your father was wandering an ICBM-denuded watseland, nervously monitoring his radiation level, armed only with a baseball bat, a 10mm pistol, and six rounds of ammunition, in search of a vicious gang of mohawked marauders who were 100 percent bad news and totally had to be dealth with. Trust Daddy on this one."

Tom Bissell, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

"Baseball isn't just a game. It's life being played out on a field—a field of dreams—on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all—where men become boys and boys become men, all speaking one universal language without uttering a single word."

Tom Tatum

"In our beautiful memoryWe were all handsomeWe could all singWe all had the heart Of the prettiest girl in townAnd we all hit .300"

John Buck O'Neil

"Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else."

N.D. Wilson, 100 Cupboards

"But Little League can be a great experience for kids, as long as they want to play--and don't play to bring their parents glory."

Yogi Berra, When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes

"No, I would not say that assault with a baseball bat constitutes "justice being done."

Garth Ennis

"This girl owns me, whether she realizes it or not. I'm a slave to her will."

Collette West, Night Games

"His lips are against my ear and I feel the warmth of his body surrounding me, caging me in, comforting me."

Collette West, Night Games

"He’s letting me see the real him, something he doesn’t allow a lot of people to see."

Collette West, Night Games

"My heart starts to pound as he gets closer and closer to the stands, never taking his eyes off me."

Collette West, Night Games

"A soft moan escapes me, making him smile even more. He's too good at this."

Collette West, Night Games

"I’m frozen in place as his eyes rake over me."

Collette West, Night Games

"I guess somethings turned out too sad even to be explained with a bases-loaded strikeout."

Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

"Perhaps crossing the barriers of time has freed me."

W.P. Kinsella, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy

"Being a parent is like being a catcher. You gotta handle whatever is thrown your way."

Tom Swyers

"If mankind was playing a baseball game, he would still be choosing his lineup after the game was over."

Anthony T. Hincks

"Baseball was a safe bet. Baseball also didn't have a girlfriend. Then again, baseball didn't have big brown eyes or show a little hint of cleavage under its uniforms. Decisions, decisions."

Rachel Spangler, Heart of the Game

"As history of any kind will tell us, when human beings get an opportunity to express their individual selves, a few selves will go completely over the top."

Doug Glanville, The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer's Inside View

"[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing t"

David Halberstam, Everything They Had: Sports Writing

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