Yankee Stadium. The (World Champion!) Red Sox against the Yankees. Randy Johnson on the mound.
Celebrate with your favorite baseball quote - from a player, manager, announcer, anything goes as long as it’s baseball related.
Annie Savoy - I believe in the church of baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there’s 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there’s 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. (she sighs) But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. Y’see, there’s no guilt in baseball, and it’s never boring. (she giggles) Which makes it like sex. There’s never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn’t have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I’d never sleep with a player hitting under .250. Not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. Y’see, there’s a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I get a ballplayer alone, I’ll just read Emily Dickenson or Walt Whitman to him. And the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. Of course, a guy’ll listen to anything if he thinks it’s foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe – and pretty. 'Course what I give them lasts a lifetime. What they give me lasts a 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball. Who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for god’s sake! It’s a long season, and you gotta trust it. I’ve tried them all, I really have. And, the only church that feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the church of baseball.
Same as you! Same as YOU!!! I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don’t Know. I Don’t Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don’t know! He’s on third and I don’t give a darn!
Jimmy Dugan: Evelyn, could you come here for a second? Which team do you play for?
Evelyn Gardner: Well, I’m a Peach.
Jimmy Dugan: Well I was just wonderin’ why you would throw home when we got a two-run lead. You let the tying run get on second base and we lost the lead because of you. Start using your head. That’s the lump that’s three feet above your ass.
[Evelyn starts to cry]
Jimmy Dugan: Are you crying? Are you crying? ARE YOU CRYING? There’s no crying, there’s no crying in baseball. Rogers Hornsby was my manager, and he called me a talking pile of pigshit. And that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game. And did I cry? NO. NO. And do you know why?
Evelyn Gardner: No, no, no.
Jimmy Dugan: Because there’s no crying in baseball.
This episode of The X-Files is always my nomination when ye good old “Best episode of television…EVER?” comes along, be it on these boards or in conversation. It’s the one about the baseball-playing shape-shifting alien (“Josh Exley,” below) who hit Roswell in the '40s and chose to look like a black man so he’d never be scouted for the major leagues.
Agent Dales: So what happened? Josh Exley: Well, you know what happened. Dales: You fell in love with an earth woman. Exley: [laughs] No! …I saw a baseball game. See, there’s something you got to understand about my race. We don’t have a word for laughter. We don’t laugh. I don’t know if you noticed in between all that fainting you was doing, but we have very tiny mouths. So no smiling even. Dales: Wow. Exley: I tell you, when I saw that baseball game being played, this laughter just – it just rose up out of me. You know the sound the ball makes when it hits the bat? Dales: Yeah. Exley: It was like music to me. You know, the smell of the grass, eleven men… First unnecessary thing I ever done in my life, and I fell in love. I didn’t know the unnecessary could feel so good. You know, the game was meaningless, but it seemed to mean everything to me. It was useless, but perfect.
I went to the Giants’ home opener last Tuesday. What a gloriously beautiful day for a ball game. PacBell Park (still can’t get used to SBC) is a fabulous place for a game.
And the Giants proved they don’t really need Barry - he is a big whiner.
–Roger Angell, “The Interior Stadium”, February 1971
Those who’ve visited the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown might recognize this passage as the one used to conclude the introductory presentation “The Baseball Experience” that most visitors to the HOF start their tour with.
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
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*
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