Welcome to the Baseball Quote Blog
Unlike a lot of the researchers, analysts and fans who frequent this site I have little interest in what impact a pitcher has on a batted ball that is in play. While I recognize these researchers and analysts contributions are valuable in understanding the games past, present and future it isn’t something that I personally want to spend my time researching. I don’t have the training or the skills necessary to make any kind of useful contribution in terms of numbers crunching. Instead I spend my research time searching through archives for lost anecdotes, forgotten quotes and misremembered insights, which can then be used when forming opinions and making judgments about players and events of the past.
Baseball is a game rich in quotes and richer in quotable people from Babe Ruth to Rogers Hornsby to George Brett. Heck let me share some of one of my favorites* from each of them just so my first entry isn’t quote less:
“I have only one superstition. I make sure I touch all the bases when I hit a homerun.” -BR
“Guys who can field you can shake out of any old tree. Find me guys who can hit.” - RH
“If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with all her teeth out.” - GB
While those certainly are some of the best quotes in baseball’s long history they are not going to be the types of quotes you’ll find here, at least normally. Instead look for the contemporary opinion on issues as they were unfolding or on some particular anecdote that I stumbled on, or even a short passage from whatever book I happen to be reading that strikes me as insightful. Occasionally you’ll even see some Stengel-ese or Yogi-isms.
I hope you enjoy my little corner of Baseball Think Factory, if you have any ideas quotes or feedback please drop me a line.
* quotes from Total Baseball VI – Appendix I - Baseball Quotations by Sean Lahman page 2503.
Mister High Standards
Posted: December 13, 2005 at 03:39 PM |
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This should be an interesting BTF blog.
My favorite, from Ty Cobb circa late-50's, early 60's:
"So, Mr. Cobb, how would you hit in today's game?"
"Oh, .280, .290 or so."
"Wow. Why so low?"
"Because I'm seventy-three ####### years old, that's why!"
This ain't no f---in' football game. We do this every goddam day.
I've been traded for Dooley Womack? Not the Dooley Womack?
Is that the show where contestants have to calculate DIPS while eating live crickets?
Rocky Bridges via Jim Bouton: "I managed good, but boy did they play bad." So applicable to so many different fields.
No offense to my fellow Primates who happen to be Cubs fans, but that rant is just awe-inspiring.
But in the spirit of this thread, my favorite was Derek Bell telling us "I'll just hop into my yacht and ride off into the sunset." Which ranks right up there with Mike Tyson (boxer not Cardinal)'s "fade off into Bolivia"
Best Regards
John
OK, it's not baseball, but it's a sport that's played with a ball. And it's my favorite quote
"Does he (George W. Bush) know that he doesn't really run this team?" a writer once asked a Rangers official. "No, no," said the official, "and don't you dare tell him."
I do have one suggestion. I'd come up with a new name for your little corner on the site. "Blog" is getting to be used on Primer like Smurf was used on that cartoon with the blue elves.
Rickey Henderson to John Olerud in the 2000 Seattle Mariners Spring Training Camp. Rickey and Olerud were Mets teammates the year before.
That is no way to talk to Bloglasher.
Whitey Herzog on his pitchers: "It's like they're afraid they'll get the clap or something if they throw strikes."
This one is a gem Shropshire relates about a "one sided conversation" an "oiled up Carty" is having with a woman on a non-chartered plane:
"They call me the B-E-E-E-G Boy...Ho Ho Ho. They say the B-E-E-G Boy no longer H-E-E-T and you know what I say? Horse S-H-E-E-E-T." Now gripping an imaginary bat and waving it in her face, Carty assures her, "The B-E-E-E-G Boy will H-E-E-T!"
Herzog on Carty: "Rico's crazier than a peach orchard sow."
"You guys don't look like sportswriters!"
"That's the kindest thing that anyone has said all day."
/approximate quote
No offense to my fellow Primates who happen to be Cubs fans, but that rant is just awe-inspiring.
That offends Cub fans?
I think most of us take a perverse pleasure in it as well -- at least most Cubs fans I know.
~Rogers Hornsby
they don't make them any better than that
Orlando Cepeda
Marquis Grisson commenting on the Delino Deshields- Pedro Martinez trade.
Earl Weaver, replying to a religious member of the Orioles who had said: "Gee, Earl, you got to walk with the Lord."
OK, it's not baseball, but it's a sport that's played with a ball. And it's my favorite quote
The best basketball quote has gotta be Micheal Ray Richardson:
Reporter: What do you think is happening to the team?
Richardson: The ship be sinking.
Rep.: How far can it sink?
Richardson: Sky's the limit.
The first one which comes to mind is this one from the Spring of 1949, which refers to the WWII experiences of Earl Rapp, who came up with the Tigers and White Sox for a cup of coffee that year:
SLUGGER RAPP, PINNED DOWN BY ENEMY FIRE,
VOWED TO LEARN TO HIT LEFTIES IF SPARED
manager Gene Mauch once retorted,
"Why the hell not?"
"Alice ought to be wondering where the f___ her next lay is coming from rather than wondering where her next ####### tomato plant's coming from. If she could get her ass out of the f___ing bars at night and go hustling around the ####### streets she might get a prick stuck in her once in a while. I don't understand where these questions are coming from, Tom. That's about it for Manager's Corner; go f___ yourself and to f___ with your show coming up next on the Baltimore Orioles Baseball F___ing Network!"
"You can tell baseball is a great game because the owners haven't been able to ruin it."
/paraphrase
?
Because if it can't, I have no use for it. I have been searching for the speaker for years.
Noted alumni Les Grobstein brought that into broadcasting school to play when he was a guest speaker. He pre-warned us and several sensitive types left prior to the playback.
My favorite Ruth quote: "No thank you, ma'am. It makes my piss stink." (after being offered chilled asparagus by a society matron at a social function)
---Sandy Koufax
"Prorated at 500 at bats a year, that means that for two years out of the 14 I played, I never even touched the ball."
-Reggie Jackson talking about Nolan Ryan
- Chris Kahrl.
Rickey Henderson to John Olerud in the 2000 Seattle Mariners Spring Training Camp. Rickey and Olerud were Mets teammates the year before.
I understood it to be something more along the lines of, "I used to play with another guy that always wore a batting helmet in the field"
And that Earl Weaver quote in #30 sounds like it should be out of "Anchorman"--"Go f*** yourselves, Baltimore"
1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lay down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain't restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.
-Leroy 'Satchel' Paige
Donovan, Richard The Fabulous Satchel Paige
Collier's 1953
This is my all- time favorite...
I'm probably pretty sure it will work out for the best.
-Detroit Tiger Lou Whitaker, arriving in a stretch limo for a players' union meeting during the 1994 baseball strike.
"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf."
-Tug McGraw, asked whether he preferred grass or Astroturf
Long live the Baseball Quote Blog.
I've been reading the annuals all month, so I haven't done any research or read anything obscure. It's not really the place for me to be quoting Baseball America, or Sickles, or the Hardball Times. But I got a shipment from Ebay yesterday of some really neat things.
Andrew Toney, as a rookie IIRC, when asked what help he was getting from old veteran Lionel Hollins and a still young Maurice Cheeks, said, "Mo, he tell me what it is; Train, he tell me what it be."
Like a Yogi Berra quote, you know exactly what he meant.
Mo needs to tell Chris Webber what it "be" about right now in the season; what it "is" isn't registering.
Marquis Grisson commenting on the Delino Deshields- Pedro Martinez trade.
I like these kind of quotes. Quotes about transactions or players that just turned out to be dead wrong. Sparky Anderson should be a treasure trove for this. What did he say about Howard Johnson, that he was useless or something like that? And that Torey Luvullo was the next big thing?
During George Brett's 1980 Season
"The only way to pitch him now is way inside, so you force him to pull the ball. That way, the line drive won't hit you." - Yankee pitcher Rudy May
"The way George Brett is hitting right now, God could have him down no balls and two strikes and he'd get a hit." -- Umpire Steve Palmero
"I wouldn't go that far. If the Lord was up 0-2, He might get George out . . . but God better hit the black." -- Hal McRae, Kansas City Royals
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