Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What the hell has (Herbert) Hoover got to do with it? Anyway, I had a better year than he did.
I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.
I didn't mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.
Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?
What I am, what I have, what I am going to leave behind me - all this I owe to the game of baseball.
I learned early to drink beer, wine and whiskey. And I think I was about 5 when I first chewed tobacco.
Well, the good Lord and good luck must have been with me because I did exactly what I said I was going to do.
I won't be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat.
"I'm going over the valley." (Dying from throat cancer, his doctor found him wandering around his room, asked him where was he going?)
Don't ever forget two things I'm going to tell you. One, don't believe everything that's written about you. Two, don't pick up too many checks.
Reading isn't good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn't hit home runs. So I gave up reading.
All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except it looked good.
After all, there's only one aswer to be made to the young fellow who is asking constantly for advice as to how to hit. The answer is: "Pick out a good one and sock it!
I copied (Shoeless Joe) Jackson's style because I thought he was the greatest hitter I had ever seen, the greatest natural hitter I ever saw. He's the guy who made me a hitter.
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.
I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun.
I don't give a damn about any actors. What good will John Barrymore do you with the bases loaded and two down in a tight ball game. Either I get the money (more than Barrymore), or I don't play!
As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher's mound. It was as if I'd been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.
You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth - that means the boys. And after you've been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.
If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery. I have the same violent temper my father and older brother had. Both died of injuries from street fights in Baltimore, fights begun by flare-ups of their tempers.
The most important thing that a young athlete must do it pick the right sport. Not one that they like just a little bit, but one that they love. Because,if they don't really love their sport, they won't work as hard as they should. Me? I loved to hit.
A man ought to get all he can earn. A man who knows he's making money for other people ought to get some of the profit he brings in. Don't make any difference if it's baseball or a bank or a vaudeville show. It's business, I tell you. There ain't no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.
How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.
I've heard people say that the trouble with the world is that we haven't enough great leaders. I think we haven't enough great followers. I have stood side by side with great thinkers - surgeons, engineers, economists; people who deserve a great following - and have heard the crowd cheer me instead.
A part of control is learning to correct your own weaknesses. The person doesn't live who was born with everything. Sometimes he has one weak point, generally he has several. The first thing is to know your faults. And then take on a systematic plan of correcting them. You know the old saying about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link. The same can be said in the chain of skills a man forges.
Aw, everybody knows that game, the day I hit the homer off ole Charlie Root there in Wrigley Field, the day October first, the third game of that thirty-two World Series. But right now I want to settle all arguments. I didn't exactly point to any spot, like the flagpole. Anyway, I didn't mean to, I just sorta waved at the whole fence, but that was foolish enough. All I wanted to do was give that thing a ride... outta the park... anywhere.
The curve and the fast one are important; the change of pace and the other trick deliveries are great but they're not worth a plugged nickel unless you have control to go along with them. And by control I don't mean the ability to put the ball over the plate somewhere between the shoulders and knees. I mean the ability to hit a three-inch target nine times out of ten, the sort of control that lets you put the ball in the exact spot you want it, and to play a corner to the split fraction of an inch.