The Virginia Mustangs 

AAU / USSSA 13U Baseball Club

Stafford, Virginia

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The Boys of Summer

Baseball Quotes

"There is a different kind of excitement about this game, because this time you are a player, not merely a fan.  You proudly put on your jersey, your pants, your stockings, shoes and cap in a pregame ritual that is performed by ballplayers from tee ball to the big leagues.  As you walk onto the field you look around.  The other players on your team are all wearing the same uniform as you and you feel a sense of belonging and camaraderie.  You are a member of a baseball team and these are your teammates."

-- 'Your First Baseball Game', National Baseball Hall of Fame

"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 nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."

-- Walt Whitman

"You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid.  You think something wonderful is going to happen."

-- Joe DiMaggio, on Opening Day

"That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on the ball."

-- Bill Veeck

"Kids today are looking for idols, but sometimes they look too far... They don't have to look any farther than their home because those are the people that love you. They are the real heroes."

-- Bobby Bonilla

"The American boy starts swinging the bat about as soon as he can lift one."

-- Tris Speaker

"Baseball was invented in 1839 at Cooperstown, NY by Abner Doubleday - afterward General Doubleday, a hero of the battle of Gettysburg - and the foundation of this invention was an American children's game called one old cat." 

- - 1908 report of the Spalding Commission appointed to research the origin of baseball

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

-- Roy Campanella

"If your not practicing, somebody else is, somewhere, and he'll be ready to take your job."

-- Brooks Robinson

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.  America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers.  It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.  This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray.  It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.  Oh people will come, Ray.  People will most definitely come."

-- James Earl Jones as Terence Mann, Field of Dreams

"Whether your name is (Lou) Gehrig or (Cal) Ripken, (Joe) DiMaggio or (Jackie) Robinson, or that of some youngster who picks up his bat or puts on his glove, you are challenged by the game of baseball to do your very best day in and day out.  That's all I've ever tried to do."

-- Cal Ripken, Jr.

"One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something."

-- Nolan Ryan

"A baseball swing is a very finely tuned instrument.  It is repetition, and more repetition, then a little more after that."

-- Reggie Jackson

"My job is to give my team a chance to win."

-- Nolan Ryan

"Any baseball is beautiful.  No other small package comes as close to the ideal in design and utility.  It is a perfect object for a man's hand.  Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose: it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance-thrown hard and with precision.  Its feel and heft are the beginning of the sport's critical dimensions; if it were a fraction of an inch larger or smaller, a few centigrams heavier or lighter, the game of baseball would be utterly different."

"Hold a baseball in your hand ... Feel the ball, turn it over in your hand; hold it across the seam or the other way, with the seam just to the side of your middle finger. Speculation stirs. You want to get outdoors and throw this spare and sensual object to somebody or, at the very least, watch somebody else throw it. The game has begun."

-- Roger Angell in Five Seasons

"Baseball is the only thing beside the paper clip that hasn't changed."

-- Bill Veeck

 "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

"Cal (Ripken, Jr.) is a bridge, maybe the last bridge, back to the way the game was played.  Hitting home runs and all that other good stuff is not enough.  It's how you handle yourself in all the good times and bad times that matters.  That's what Cal showed us.  Being a star is not enough.  He showed us how to be more."

-- Joe Torre

"I never thought home runs were all that exciting.  I still think the triple is the most exciting thing in baseball.  To me, a triple is like a guy taking the ball on his 1-yard line and running 99 yards for a touchdown."

-- Hank Aaron

"I had just turned 20, and Jackie told me the only way to be successful at anything was to go out and do it.  He said baseball was a game you played every day, not once a week."

 -- Hank Aaron, on Jackie Robinson

"Now here is Henry Aaron. This crowd is up all around. The pitch to him, bounced it up there, ball one. Henry Aaron in the second inning walked and scored. He's sitting on seven-hundred and fourteen. Here's the pitch by Downing, swinging, there's a drive into left centerfield, that ball is gonna be, OUTA HERE, ITS GONE, ITS SEVEN-HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN! There's a new home run champion of all time and its Henry Aaron. The fireworks are going. Henry Aaron is coming around third, his teammates are at home plate. Listen to this crowd!"

-- Announcer Milo Hamilton

"Here comes Roger Maris. They're standing up, waiting to see if Roger is going to hit number sixty-one. Here's the windup, the pitch to Roger, wayyyy outside, ball one. The fans are starting to boo, low, ball two. That one was in the dirt and the boos get louder. Two balls, no strikes on Roger Maris. Here's the windup, fastball, hit deep to right, this could be it, WAY BACK THERE, HOLY COW, HE DID IT, SIXTY-ONE HOME RUNS! They're fighting for the ball out there. Holy cow."

-- Announcer Phil Rizzuto

"As a ballplayer, I would be delighted to do it again. As an individual, I doubt if I could possibly go through it again."

-- Roger Maris (on breaking Ruth's 60 HR record)

"Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time.  You remain forever young."

 -- Roger Angell

"I'm beginning to see Brooks [Robinson] in my sleep.  If I dropped a paper plate, he'd pick it up on one hop and throw me out at first."

-- Sparky Anderson

"Brooks Robinson belongs in a higher league."

-- Pete Rose

"They ought to create a new league for that guy (Mickey Mantle)."

-- White Sox pitcher Jack Harshman

"... I feel an invisible bond between our three generations, an anchor of loyalty linking my sons to the grandfather whose face they never saw but whose person they have already come to know through this most timeless of all sports, the game of baseball."

-- Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

-- Joe Adcock

"Henry Aaron is simply smarter than all the pitchers.  He deceives pitchers.  One of his secrets is his slow manner, he puts pitchers to sleep."

-- Ernie Johnson

"Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time."

-- Lou Brock

"Players who stand flat footed and swing with their arms are golfers, not hitters."

-- Rogers Hornsby

"A pitcher needs two pitches, one they're looking for and one to cross them up."

-- Warren Spahn

"I don't think I can get into my deep inner thoughts about hitting.  It's like talking about religion."

-- Mike Schmidt

"Any time you think you have the game conquered, the game will turn around and punch you right in the nose."

-- Mike Schmidt

"The baselines belongs to the runner, and whenever I was running the bases, I always slid hard.  I wanted infielders to have that instant's hesitation about coming across the bag at second or about standing in there awaiting a throw to make a tag.  There are only twenty-seven outs in a ballgame, and it was my job to save one for my team every time I possibly could."

-- Frank Robinson

"Baseball gives you every chance to be great.  Then it puts every pressure on you to prove that you haven't got what it takes. It never takes away that chance and it never eases up on the pressure."

-- Joe Garagiola

"I can sit in a ballpark after a game and love looking at the field.  Everybody's gone, and the ballpark is empty, and I'll sit there. I sit there and think, is this as close to heaven as I'm going to get?  Or, if I get to heaven, will there be baseball?"

-- Kim Braatz-Voisard, Silver Bullets' center fielder, 1997

"Every member of our baseball team at West Point became a general: this proves the value of team sports."

-- General Omar Bradley

"He can throw his glove out there and it will start ten double plays by itself."

-- Sparky Anderson, on Brooks Robinson

"He charged everything.  He reacted as the ball was coming off the bat, sometimes as it was coming to the bat!"

-- George Brett, on Brooks Robinson

"I will become a left-handed hitter to keep the ball away from that guy."

-- Johnny Bench, on Brooks Robinson

"Baseball to me is still the national pastime because it is a summer game.  I feel that almost all Americans are summer people, that summer is what they think of when they think of their childhood.  I think it stirs up an incredible emotion within people."

-- Steve Busby

"The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely."

-- Ted Williams

"Hitting is 50% above the shoulders."

-- Ted Williams

"Think. Don't just swing.  Think about the pitcher, what he threw you last time up, his best pitch, who's up next. Think."

-- Ted Williams

"The game has a cleanness.  If you do a good job, the numbers say so.  You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews."

-- Sandy Koufax

"Every day is a new opportunity.  You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again.  That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is."

-- Bob Feller

"He solidified the club.  We became a great team when he came to know us and how much he could do for all of us."

-- Brooks Robinson on Frank Robinson's impact with the Orioles

"Bob Gibson's the luckiest pitcher I've ever seen...  He always picks the night to pitch when the other team doesn't score any runs."

-- Tim McCarver

"He made plays that opponents at first viewed with amazement, and then gloomily came to accept as his normal performance."

-- Sportswriter Ed Prell on Luis Aparicio

"I don't want to embarrass any other catcher by comparing him with Johnny Bench."

-- Sparky Anderson on Johnny Bench

"Baseball reflected the language of America, and spiced it, too.  Presidents, politicians, executives, generals and parents touched all the bases regularly so that nobody would be out in left field or caught off the base in the greater pursuits of life. If you did it right, you hit a grand slam home run; if not you struck out."

-- Joseph Durso

"I loved the game. I'd have played for food money.  I'd have played for free and worked for food.  It was the game, the parks, the smells, the sounds.  Have you ever held a bat or a baseball to your face?  The varnish, the leather.  And it was the crowd, the excitement of them rising as one when the ball was hit deep.  The sound was like a chorus.  Then there was the chug-a-lug of the tin lizzies in the parking lots, and the hotels with their brass spittoons in the lobbies and brass beds in the rooms.  It makes me tingle all over like a kid on his way to his first double-header, just to talk about it."

-- Joe Jackson, in W.P.Kinsella's Shoeless Joe Jackson

"I think there are only three things that America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music and baseball.  They're the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced."

-- Gerald Early

"A baseball club is part of the chemistry of the city. A game isn't just an athletic contest. It's a picnic, a kind of town meeting."

-- Michael Burke

"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 goddamn plate and give the other man his chance.  That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all."

-- Earl Weaver

"The only time I really try for a strikeout is when I'm in a jam.  If the bases are loaded with none out, for example, then I'll go for a strikeout.  But most of the time I try to throw to spots.  I try to get them to pop up or ground out.  On a strikeout I might have to throw five or six pitches, sometimes more if there are foul-offs.  That tires me.  So I just try to get outs.  That's what counts - outs.  You win with outs, not strikeouts."

-- Sandy Koufax

"Few names have left a firmer imprint upon the stages of the history of American times than that of Ty Cobb.  For a quarter of a century his aggressive exploits on the diamond, while inviting opposition as well as acclaim, brought high drama.  This great athlete seems to have understood from early in his professional career that the competition of baseball, just as in war, defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory."

-- General Douglas MacArthur

"He didn't out hit and he didn't out run them, he out thought them."

-- Sam Crawford, on Ty Cobb

"Ty Cobb was still fighting the Civil War, and as far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees. But who knows, if he hadn't had that terrible persecution complex, he never would have been about the best ballplayer who ever lived."

-- Sam Crawford

"The base paths belonged to me, the runner. The rules gave me the right. I always went into a bag full speed, feet first. I had sharp spikes on my shoes. If the baseman stood where he had no business to be and got hurt, that was his fault."

-- Ty Cobb

"The game isn't over till it's over."

-- Yogi Berra

"Just take the ball and throw it where you want to.  Throw strikes.  Home plate don't move."

-- Satchel Paige

 "Let me tell you about Cool Papa Bell.  One time he hit a line drive right past my ear.  I turned around and saw the ball hit his rear end as he slid into second."

-- Satchel Paige on Cool Papa Bell

"The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all." 

-- Lou Gehrig

"He never complained about his team's bad luck or bad talent, never stopped playing the game with joy, never stopped giving his all, never lost his proud demeanor, and never acted like anything but a winner.  He was a symbol of the Cub fan's undiminishing resilience.  If he could be happy to come to the park each afternoon, then so could we."

-- Joe Mantegna, on Ernie Banks

"His wrists are the secret of (Ernie) Banks' success.  Instead of taking the big Ruthian type swing of the lively ball era, he swings his bat as if it were a buggy whip, striking at the ball with the reflexive swiftness of a serpent's tongue."

-- Bill Furlong in Baseball Stars of 1959

"If Satch and I were pitching on the same team, we'd cinch the pennant by July Fourth and go fishing until World Series time."

-- Dizzy Dean, on Satchel Paige

"Kiner can wipe out your lead with one swing."

-- Warren Spahn, on Ralph Kiner

"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 how you feel when Ryan's throwing balls by you."

-- Reggie Jackson on Nolan Ryan

"You don't face (Nolan) Ryan without your rest.  He's the only guy I go against that makes me go to bed before midnight."

-- Reggie Jackson, on Nolan Ryan

"I believe in the Rip Van Winkle Theory: that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark and understand baseball perfectly."

-- Bowie Kuhn

"I think a baseball field must be the most beautiful thing in the world. I t's so honest and precise.  And we play on it.  Every star gets humbled.  Every mediocre player has a great moment."

-- Lowell Cohn

"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

"Baseball gives you every chance to be great.  Then it puts every pressure on you to prove that you haven't got what it takes.  It never takes away that chance and it never eases up on the pressure."

-- Joe Garagiola

"Love America and hate baseball?  Hate America and love baseball?  Neither is possible, except in the abstract."

-- John Krich

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got.  Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.  I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.  Look at these grand men.  Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?  Sure I'm lucky.  Who wouldn't have considered it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert?  Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrows?  To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins?  Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy?  Sure, I'm lucky.  When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat and vice versa, sends you a gift, that's something.  When everybody down to the groundskeeper and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies, that's something.  When you have a father and mother work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it's a blessing.  When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that's the finest I know.  I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.  And I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for."

-- Lou Gehrig, Farewell Speech at Yankee Stadium; July 4, 1939

"The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor."

--The Cincinnati Gazette, 1879

"Baseball is democracy in action: in it all men are 'free and equal,' regardless of race, nationality, or creed.  Every man is given the rightful opportunity to rise to the top on his own merits....  It is the fullest expression of freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of assembly in our national life."

-- Francis Trevelyan Miller

"Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer."

-- Ted Williams

"Did they tell me how to pitch to (Ted) Williams?  Sure they did.  It was great advice, very encouraging.  They said he had no weakness, won't swing at a bad ball, has the best eyes in the business, and can kill you with one swing.  He won't hit anything bad, but don't give him anything good."

-- Bobby Shantz

"Ted (Williams) was everything that was right about the game of baseball.  If you really think about it, he was everything that is right about this country.  It is certainly a sad day for all of us.  He is a man who lost five years of service time serving his country.  What he could have done with those years in the prime of his life ... it would be awesome to really put those numbers together. He would have probably been the greatest power hitter of all time."

-- Pirates Manager Lloyd McClendon

"Ted (Williams) was the greatest hitter of our era.  He won six batting titles and served his country for five years, so he would have won more.  He loved talking about hitting and was a great student of hitting and pitchers."

-- Stan Musial

 "The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man's determination"

-- Tommy Lasorda

"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

"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

"Brooks (Robinson) never asked anyone to name a candy bar after him.  In Baltimore, people named their children after him."

-- Gordon Beard

"He (Brooks Robinson) was the best defensive player at any position.  I used to stand in the outfield like a fan and watch him make play after play. I used to think WOW, I can't believe this."

-- Frank Robinson

"Close don't count in baseball.  Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades."

--Frank Robinson

"Going over the hitters it was decided that we should pitch Frank Robinson underground."

-- Jim Bouton

"Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player that ever lived.  I mean, people say he's less then a God, but more than a man.  Like Hercules or something."

-- The Sandlot

"He (Shoeless Joe Jackson) was the finest natural hitter in the history of the game."

-- Ty Cobb

"All the ballparks and the big crowds have a certain mystique.  You feel attached, permanently wedded to the sounds that ring out, to the fans chanting your name, even when there are only four or five thousand in the stands on a Wednesday afternoon."

-- Mickey Mantle

"After the game, Jackie Robinson came into our clubhouse and shook my hand.   He said, 'You're a helluva ballplayer and you've got a great future.'  I thought that was a classy gesture, one I wasn't then capable of making.  I was a bad loser.  What meant even more was what Jackie told the press, '(Mickey) Mantle beat us.  He was the difference between the two teams.  They didn't miss (Joe) DiMaggio.'  I have to admit, I became a Jackie Robinson fan on the spot.  And when I think of that World Series, his gesture is what comes to mind.  Here was a player who had without doubt suffered more abuse and more taunts and more hatred than any player in the history of the game.  And he had made a special effort to compliment and encourage a young white kid from Oklahoma."

-- Mickey Mantle

"Mickey meant an awful lot to me. He was a tremendous athlete. People didn't understand him the way they should have. He played 10 years on one leg. But more than that, he was a tremendous person."

-- Hank Aaron on Mickey Mantle

"There was something about that man that just gripped you.  He was tough, he was intelligent, and he was proud."

-- Manager Clyde Sukeforth on Jackie Robinson

"Thinking about the things that happened, I don't know any other ball player who could have done what he (Jackie Robinson) did.  To be able to hit with everybody yelling at him.  He had to block all that out, block out everything but this ball that is coming in at a hundred miles an hour.  To do what he did has got to be the most tremendous thing I've ever seen in sports."

-- Shortstop Pee Wee Reese

"No man in the history of baseball had as much power as Mickey Mantle.  No man.  You're not talking about ordinary power.  Dave Kingman has power.  Willie Mays had power.  Then when you're talking about Mickey Mantle - it's an altogether different level.  Separates the men from the boys."

-- New York Yankees Manager Billy Martin

"There is no sound in baseball akin to the sound of (Mickey) Mantle hitting a home run, the crunchy sound of an axe biting into a tree, yet magnified a hundred times in the vast, cavernous, echo making hollows of a ball field."

-- Arnold Hano in Baseball Stars of 1958

"Don't compare me to Babe Ruth.  God gave me the opportunity and the ability to be here at the right time, at the right moment, just like he gave Babe Ruth when he was playing.  I just hope I can keep doing what I've been doing - keep taking care of business."

-- Sammy Sosa

"There is a special sensation in getting good wood on the ball and driving a double down the left-field line as the crowd in the ballpark rises to its feet and cheers.  But, I also remember how much fun I had as a skinny barefoot kid hitting a tennis ball with a broomstick on a quiet, dusty street in Panama."

-- Rod Carew

"Your first hit in the majors — that's tops.  It means you're on your way.  When you get the first hit, then you can get the rest."

-- Rod Carew

"Trying to hit Sandy Koufax was like trying to drink coffee with a fork."

-- Willie Stargell

"He has an uncanny ability to move the ball around as if the bat were some kind of magic wand."

-- Ken Holtzman, on Rod Carew

"He's the only guy I know who can go four for three."

-- Alan Bannister, on Rod Carew

"A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time."

-- Jim Bouton

"Eddie Murray's bronze bust in Cooperstown will chatter only slightly less than the man himself.  The first line of text on the monument should read: He spoke rarely and carried a mighty bat."

-- AP Sportswriter David Ginsburg

"Yaz (Carl Yastrzemski) did it all the time.  We'd be on the road and he'd call, 'C'mon, we're going to the ballpark.' I'd say, 'Christ, it's only one o'clock.  The game's at seven.'  He lived, breathed, ate, and slept baseball.  If he went 0-for-4, he couldn't live with it.  He could live with himself if he went 1-for-3.  He was happy if he went 2-for-4.  That's the way the man suffered."

-- Outfielder Joe Lahoud

"They can talk about Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial and all the rest, but I'm sure not one of them could hold cards and spades to (Ted) Williams in his sheer knowledge of hitting.  He studied hitting the way a broker studies the stock market, and could spot at a glance mistakes that others couldn't see in a week."

-- Carl Yastrzemski

"We try everything on Yaz and nothing works.  The only thing you can do against him is pitch him tight and hope."

-- Catcher Elston Howard, on Carl Yastrzemski

"I take my vote as a salute to the little guy, the one who doesn't hit five-hundred home runs.  I was one of the guys that did all they could to win.  I'm proud of my stats, but I don't think I ever got on for Joe Morgan.  If I stole a base, it was to help us win a game, and I like to think that's what made me special."

-- Joe Morgan

"My family fled Cuba because my parents wanted a better life for us,. They wanted to give us a better chance. When I was growing up, I just wanted to be a big league baseball player. That's all that I ever thought about. I'd tell my friends and everybody that I knew that that's what I was going to be. Knowing that the percentage of players making it was so small, everybody said, 'You're crazy; you need to do something else.' But, you know, I thought, 'Well there are people up there playing, so why not me?' I saw my dad come to a country where he didn't speak the language, didn't have a penny to his name. He came here with 3 little kids and a wife and had no place to live, and I saw that as a young kid. I saw him as a hero, as somebody who worked really hard and didn't accept any handouts or gifts from anyone. And just by watching him, I learned to work for the things that I wanted to achieve. He made time every day after work. He worked in construction most of his life, and he'd come home about 4:00, 4:30 and eat something, change his clothes, then we'd go to the ballpark. Every day. He pushed me as hard as he could and kept me focused."

-- Rafael Palmeiro

"My dad was the force behind me early on. He was just infatuated with baseball. He was the one that basically taught me how to play the game. He gave a lot of his time working out with me, practicing and taking me to a lot of different games. It was hard work between both of us."

-- Rafael Palmeiro

"I read where Roger Clemens said it was a goal of his.  To me, that's like planning for the ninth inning when you're in the first.  I don't know many players who have set out to make the Hall of Fame, and I've played with both Frank (Robinson) and Brooks Robinson.  I remember talking to Brooks about it one time, and it was like it hadn't even occurred to him.  If Brooks Robinson didn't have the right to think about it, who did?"

-- Jim Palmer 

"My best game plan is to sit on the bench and call out specific instructions like 'C'mon Boog,' 'Get ahold of one, Frank,' or 'Let's go, Brooks.'"

-- Earl Weaver

"A manager's job is simple. For one hundred sixty-two games you try not to screw up all that smart stuff your organization did last December."

-- Earl Weaver

"My idea of managing is giving the ball to Tom Seaver and sitting down and watching him work."

-- Sparky Anderson

"On the ball field he is perpetual motion itself.  He would run through a brick wall, if necessary, to make a catch, or slide into a pit of ground glass to score a run."

-- Sportswriter Arthur Daley, on Enos Slaughter

"He could pounce on bunts placed far out in front of the plate and get his throw away with no wasted motion.  He had not only a rifle arm, but an accurate one."

-- Sportswriter Tom Meany, on Roy Campanella

 "He can throw all day within a two-inch space, in, out, up or down.  I've never seen anyone as good as that."

-- Hank Aaron, on Juan Marichal

"Palmer is the greatest 'situation' pitcher I've ever seen.  He makes them beat him on a single and one run at a time.  Most of the homers he gives up are solos because he only works to their power when the bases are empty."

-- Pitching coach Ray Miller, on Jim Palmer

"Every time (Johnny) Bench throws, everybody in baseball drools."

-- Harry Dalton

"There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them works."

-- Charlie Lau, hitting coach extraordinaire

"If I had to pick myself one guy that I wouldn't want to hit against when he was right, it would be Hoyt Wilhelm.  It was a battle just to get the bat on that knuckleball."

-- Batting champion Billy Goodman, on Hoyt Wilhelm

"As the players came from the clubhouse for practice, an uncouth figure that brought a titter from the stands shambled along behind them.  His jersey shirt stretched across his missive body like a drumhead, and his arms dangled through its sleeves.  He dragged himself across the field bashfully, every angle of his frame exaggerated and emphasized and the stands tittered again.  The great (Cap) Anson saw (Cy) Young.  "Is that the phenom?" he asked with a sneer...  The gaunt figure lost its uncouthness as he warmed to his work, and the ball shot to the catcher's thin glove with a crack that betokend even greater speed then the flash of the sphere in the sunlight.  The game began and the Chicago batters strode to the plate arrogant and confident.  And one after the other, they threw down their bats and returned to the bench puzzled and baffled...  Young grew even more effective as the innings passed, and Chicago left the field beaten and blind with rage.  Then the crowd, which had laughed at the unique figure of the new pitcher, arose in a mass and gave him an ovation. "

-- The Sporting Life, on Cy Young

"One of the fellows called me 'Cyclone' but finally shortened it to 'Cy' and its been that ever since."

-- Cy Young

"The phrase 'off with the crack of the bat', while romantic, is really meaningless, since the outfielder should be in motion long before he hears the sound of the ball meeting the bat."

-- Joe DiMaggio

"Willie Mays and his glove: where triples go to die."

-- Dodgers executive Fresco Thompson

"Hey big mouth, how do you spell triple?"

-- Shoeless Joe Jackson's response to a heckler

"I can't very well tell my batters don't hit it to him.  Wherever they hit it, he's there anyway."

-- Gil Hodges, on Willie Mays

"You used to think if the score was 5-0, he'd hit a five-run homer."

-- Reggie Jackson, on Willie Mays

"Youngsters of Little League can survive under-coaching a lot better than over-coaching."

-- Willie Mays

"Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what it most truly is, is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps."

-- Willie Mays

"Three more saves and he ties John the Baptist."

 -- Hank Greenwald, on Bruce Sutter

"He's got a gun concealed about his person.  They can't tell me he throws them balls with his arm."

-- Ring Lardner, on Walter Johnson

"His fastball looked about the size of a watermelon seed and it hissed at you as it passed."

-- Ty Cobb, on Walter Johnson

"Either he throws the fastest ball I've ever seen, or I'm going blind."

-- Richie Ashburn, on Sandy Koufax

"He throws a 'radio ball,' a pitch you hear, but you don't see."

-- Gene Mauch, on Sandy Koufax

"I can see how he won twenty-five games.  What I don't understand is how he lost five."

-- Yogi Berra, on Sandy Koufax

"He hit line drives that put the opposition in jeopardy.  And I don't mean infielders, I mean outfielders."

-- Ossie Bluege, on Harmon Killebrew

"(Harmon) Killebrew can knock the ball out of any park, including Yellowstone."

-- Orioles Manager Paul Richards

"God, I just love baseball."

-- Robert Redford in The Natural

"If you build it, he will come."

-- Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams

"A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz."

--Humphrey Bogart

"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love."

--Bryant Gumbel

"'This is America,' my father used to say to me, 'and in this country, a smart young fellow like you can grow up and do just about anything.' My dad, no doubt, was thinking doctor, lawyer, teacher, scientist or businessman. I was thinking second baseman, New York Yankees."

-- Senator Joe Lieberman

"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

"Losing streaks are funny.  If you lose at the beginning, you got off to a bad start.  If you lose in the middle of the season, you're in a slump.  If you lose at the end, you're choking."

-- Gene Mauch, MBL Manager, 1960-87

"There'll be two buses leaving the hotel for the park tomorrow.  The 2:00 bus will be for those of you who need a little extra work.  The empty bus will leave at 5:00."

-- Dave Bristol, MLB Manager, 1966-80

"The job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won't hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game."

-- Earl Weaver

"It's designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything is new again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains comes, it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone."

-- A Bartlett Giamatti, Commissioner of Baseball

"Now, you tell me, if I have a day off during the baseball season, where do you think I`ll spend it?  The ballpark.  I still love it; always have, always will."

-- Sportscaster Harry Caray, on his reason not to retire

"Hello again, everybody. It's a bee-yooo-tiful day for baseball."

-- Harry Caray

"Is that the best game you ever pitched?"

-- Reporter interviewing Don Larsen after he had just thrown a WS perfect game

"You don't save pitchers for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain. "

-- Leo Durocher

"I don't put any foreign substances on the baseball.  Everything I use is from the good old USA."

-- George Frazier

"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

"The best place to catch a baseball hit by (Mark) McGwire is definitely not within the confines of the playing field, or sometimes even the ballpark.  Other players dial '1' for long distance.  McGwire has to ask for an international operator."

--Thomas Boswell, writing in the Washington Post

"I signed with the Milwaukee Braves for $3,000.  That bothered my dad at the time, because he didn't have that kind of dough to pay out.  But eventually, he scraped it up."

-- Bob Uecker, MLB catcher

"Why certainly I'd like to have that fellow who hits a home run every time at bat, who strikes out every opposing batter when he's pitching, who throws strikes to any base or the plate when he's playing outfield and who's always thinking about two innings ahead just what he'll do to baffle the other team.  Any manager would want a guy like that playing for him.  The only trouble is to get him to put down his cup of beer and come down out of the stands and do those things."

-- Danny Murtaugh

"There's no telling what that ball was worth before I signed it."

-- Gorman Thomas, after signing a ball autographed
by Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, & Hank Aaron

"This is a tough park for a hitter when the air conditioning is blowing in."

-- Bob Boone on the Astrodome in Houston

"Philadelphia fans would boo funerals, an Easter egg hunt, a parade of armless war vets, and the Liberty Bell."

-- Bo Belinsky

"When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and join a circus.  With the Yankees, I've accomplished both."

-- Graig Nettles

"The first big league game I ever saw was at the Polo Grounds.  My father took me, I remember it so well, the green grass and green stands, it was like seeing Oz."

-- John Curtis, MLB Pitcher

"Baseball is the only sport I know when you're on the offensive the other team controls the ball"

-- Ken Harrelson