They give you a round bat and they throw you a round ball and they tell you to hit it square.
I can remember when, as a beginner, I was delighted with any ball as long as it would bounce.
Donning a glove for a backyard toss, or watching a ball game, or just reflecting upon our baseball days, we are players again, forever young.
If I don't need to shoot the ball, I won't do it.
There is no more reason to think that they expected the world to remain static than there is to think that any of us holds a crystal ball. The only way to create a foundational document that could stand the test of time was to build in enough flexibility that later generations would be able to adapt it to their own needs and uses.
There is a place in the net where the keeper cannot reach the ball.
By that time I was thinking a little about pro ball and hopeful that someone would draft me.
You start chasing a ball and your brain immediately commands your body to 'Run forward, bend, scoop up the ball, peg it to the infield,' then your body says, 'Who me?'
People like us are afraid to leave ball. What else is there to do? When baseball has been your whole life, you can't think about a future without it, so you hang on as long as you can.
Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens.
I am enthralled until the last ball Djokovic hits, and the moment it is over and he is on his knees eating grass, I sink into my chair, cannot believe I have spent another fleeting fortnight of the few summers I have left caring about the outcome of contests I will have forgotten in the blink of an eye, and begin to question my sanity.
If I really had to pinpoint my happiest days out of the United States, I'd choose those Fifties military days in Britain, particularly my time in South Ruislip. I had a ball.
My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.
I know I've got to just keep throwing the ball. That's what I do best.
Nashville, there's people that are ten times more talented than me, ten times better singer than me, song writer than me, but for some reason you get the ball, and now - and now you run with it. And you do the best you can.
I hit the ball early and move my wrist a lot, so I get bigger angles.
We just want to be sure that what we're creating is pushing the ball forward for women and diversity in media.
I got into a bad habit of dropping my elbow and pushing the ball to the plate instead of getting on top of it and using some leverage to get it down in the strike zone or get some depth with the ball.
Life's like a ball game. You gotta take a swing at whatever comes along before you wake up and find out it's the ninth inning.
It takes courage to pull the ball down and reverse field and do some of the crazy things that Favre and Manziel do. There's going to be consequences when sometimes it doesn't work out. But it takes a tremendous amount of guts and courage to go make a play when there's nothing there instead of throwing the ball away.
But through experience I learned to control my body and locate the ball.
Four times out of five the linesman gets a better view of the ball near him than the player himself.
No one hit home runs the way Babe did. They were something special. They were like homing pigeons. The ball would leave the bat, pause briefly, suddenly gain its bearings, then take off for the stands.
My theory of hitting was just to watch the ball as it came in and hit it.
I love talk and I love fishing. I'm having a ball.
I like the ball in a big game. I'm not afraid to take it.
Before you take your address, while you're still reading the putt, imagine the ball tracking on the line you've chosen and falling into the cup. If you don't believe you can make every putt, why bother trying?
It's not easy to act, but to direct to act. It goes form one place to the next. It's not heading for the punchline, and also it's not about scoring goals. It's about passing the ball, and the goals will come by themselves.
I could always hit. I learned to hit with a broomstick and a ball of tape and I could always get that bat on the ball.
My father never saw me play ball, and I was an outstanding ballplayer. I missed all that adoration.
Israel is one of the easiest places to play ball. When I say easy I am referring to the easy lifestyle an athlete has while in Israel. It's very easy to get around the country, because it's so small.
When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball: Their eyes go a little crazy, the leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way.
How you play the game is for college ball. When you're playing for money, winning is the only thing that matters.
It's fun when the ball is going in the hole and things are going right, but it's a miserable game when things aren't going well.
When you see young players coming into the squad and pushing you, no matter what age you are, you have to react. You have to worry about yourself and perform as well as you can. If you end up looking around at others, wondering who's performing better, you take your eye off the ball.
Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight, they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball, than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets.