Baseball Quotes

Baseball, America’s national pastime, brings many emotions to those who play the game, manage the game, or watch the game. Many individuals, famous and otherwise, have spoken words of sheer wisdom, true delight, and comical relief about this beloved sport. A few of them are shared here.

“Why does everybody stand and sing, “Take me out to the ballgame,” when they’re already there?” -- Larry Anderson

“Baseball is a man maker.” -- Al Spalding

“A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.” -- Humphrey Bogart

“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

“My feeling is that when you’re managing a baseball team, you have to pick the right people to play and then pray a lot.” -- Robin Roberts

“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 the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.” -- Ted Williams

“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

“When they start the game, they don’t yell, 'Work ball.' They say, 'Play ball.'” -- Willie Stargell

“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

“Baseball is a game of inches.” -- Branch Rickey

“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 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

“Baseball is like driving, it’s the one who gets home safely that counts.” -- Tommy Lasorda

“I’m convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile.” -- Tom Clark

“A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.” -- Earl Wilson

“It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.” -- Hank Aaron

“Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really appreciated.” -- Unknown

“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

“A baseball park is the one place where a man’s wife doesn’t mind his getting excited over somebody else’s curves.” -- Brendan Francis

“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

“Basketball, hockey, and track meets are action heaped upon action, climax upon climax, until the onlooker’s responses become deadened. Baseball is for the leisurely afternoons of summer and for the unchanging dreams.” -- Roger Kahn

“Baseball is a fun game. It beats working for a living.” -- Phil Linz

“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

“The triple is the most exciting play in baseball. Home runs win a lot of games, but I never understood why fans are so obsessed with them.” -- Hank Aaron

“Baseball is a game. 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

“Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.” -- Robert Frost

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

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

“Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem.” -- Saul Steinberg

“The great thing about baseball is that there’s a crisis every day.” -- Gabe Paul