You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too.  ~Roy Campanella

No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined.  ~Paul Gallico

The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.  ~Rick Wise, 1974

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.  ~Earl Wilson

Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.  ~Bob Lemon

When you're in a slump, it's almost as if you look out at the field and it's one big glove.  ~Vance Law

That's baseball, and it's my game.  Y' know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave 'em there.  You yell like crazy for your guys.  It's good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops.  Pretty girls, lots of 'em.  ~Humphrey Bogart

Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the other team controls the ball.  ~Ken Harrelson, Sports Illustrated, 6 September 1976

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 you like 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, 1966

Every hitter likes fastballs, just like everybody likes ice cream.  But you don't like it when someone's stuffing it into you by the gallon.  That's what it feels like when Nolan Ryan's thrown balls by you.  ~Reggie Jackson

Strikeouts are boring - besides that, they're fascist.  Throw some ground balls.  More democratic.  ~From the movie Bull Durham

Baseball players are smarter than football players.  How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?  ~Jim Bouton, 1988

Nolan Ryan is pitching much better now that he has his curve ball straightened out.  ~Joe Garagiola

I don't care how long you've been around, you'll never see it all.  ~Bob Lemon, 1977

It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one.  ~Chuck Tanner

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 disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability.  ~George Bernard Shaw

I see great things in baseball.  It's our game - the American game.  It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism.  Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.  Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.  ~Walt Whitman

Baseball is a fun game.  It beats working for a living.  ~Phil Linz

When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball."  They say, "Play ball."  ~Willie Stargell, 1981

Baseball is the only major sport that appears backwards in a mirror.  ~George Carlin, Brain Droppings, 1997

Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him?  Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol.  You have to love a ballplayer like that.  ~Nomar Garciaparra

Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America.  ~Bruce Catton

The charm of baseball is that, dull as it may be on the field, it is endlessly fascinating as a rehash.  ~Jim Murray

It breaks your heart.  It is designed to break your heart.  The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.  ~A. Bartlett Giamatti, "The Green Fields of the Mind," Yale Alumni Magazine, November 1977

There are three things in my life which I really love:  God, my family, and baseball.  The only problem - once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit.  ~Al Gallagher, 1971

If a horse can't eat it, I don't want to play on it.  ~Dick Allen, on artificial turf, 1970

Ideally, the umpire should combine the integrity of a Supreme Court judge, the physical agility of an acrobat, the endurance of Job and the imperturbability of Buddha.  ~"The Villains in Blue," Time magazine, 25 August 1961

Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world.  If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off.  ~Bill Veeck

I've come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life are good friends and a good bullpen.  ~Bob Lemon, 1981

Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster.  ~Attributed to both Joe Adcock and Curt Simmons

Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really appreciated.  ~Author Unknown

A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big-leaguer.  That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues.  ~Joe DiMaggio, quoted in New York Times, 30 April 1961

You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow.  Tomorrow it may rain.  ~Leo Durocher, in New York Times, 16 May 1965

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock.  You've got to throw the ball over the plate and give the other man his chance.  That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.  ~Earl Weaver

Progress always involves risks.  You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.  ~Frederick B. Wilcox

“People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball.  I'll tell you what I do.  I stare out the window and wait for spring.”  Rogers Hornsby

I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile.  ~Tom Clark

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I don't want to play golf.  When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it.  ~Rogers Hornsby

No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games.  No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games.  It's the other third that makes the difference.  ~Tommy Lasorda