The great trouble with baseball today is that most of the players are in the game for the money and that's it, not for the love of it, the excitement of it, the thrill of it.
I love to play baseball. I'm a baseball player. I've always been a baseball player. I'm still a baseball player. That's who I am.
Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.
Baseball is just my job.
I wish that they had the freedoms like the Japanese and the Koreans and the Mexicans and everybody else that has that freedom to come over here and play the game, because I know Cuba has a very strong baseball history.
As a kid, before I could play music, I remember baseball being the one thing that could always make me happy.
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
I don't feel I could've played major league baseball.
I also developed an interest in sports, and played in informal games at a nearby school yard where the neighborhood children met to play touch football, baseball, basketball and occasionally, ice hockey.
Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking.
I wonder why there is a designated hitter in baseball after all these years? As an experiment, it seemed like a swell enough idea, but you would think the novelty would have worn off by now and everyone would get back to playing baseball.
When we played the Dodgers in St. Louis, they had to come through our dugout, and our bat rack was right there where they had to walk. My bats kept disappearing, and I couldn't figure it out. Turns out, Pee Wee Reese was stealing my bats. I found that out later, after we got out of baseball. He and Rube Walker stole my bats.
Of course, I believe that Mike Piazza is probably the greatest offensive catcher in the history of baseball, only got over 50%. Johnny Bench is the best catcher in the history of baseball, but Piazza has all the record for catchers as far as offensively.
I don't wish that I was playing football. I love baseball, and the way I play is like it's my last day ever playing it. I do like football, but you've got to respect that it's not like baseball.
It was all I lived for, to play baseball.
The Capone era. That was my time. Capone was a big baseball fan. He'd walk into the ballpark like the president walking in today, with bodyguards all around him.
I've seen fire, and I've seen rain. I've also had to scramble over tundra to get to the Super Bowl and seen baseball turf fields that could fry a fielder's soles.
Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
I wanted to play baseball ever since I was 5 years old.
Kids are our future, and we hope baseball has given them some idea of what it is to live together and how we can get along, whether you be black or white.
I just want to play well, have the people in Chicago enjoy watching soccer. You have a very good baseball team, a very good ice hockey team, and a very good football team. Hopefully you'll have a very good soccer team.
Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on.
Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.
You know, I'm from Boston, and in Boston, you are born with a baseball bat in your hand.
I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.
Baseball's my life.
Baseball has long been a national pastime that many Americans have cherished.
The walls of our upstairs hallway testify that we once had photogenic children. There are rows of framed pictures that show them playing baseball, basketball, holding a toad, and smiling in the sunlight at their eager parents. Everything is orderly and bright.
I grew up in baseball stadiums. It was my two brothers and baseball around me all the time. I knew nothing about film or acting or theater when I was young!
So you have to be more mentally focused in baseball.
It really gets into your system. All baseball players have this internal clock around February when it starts to kick in and the juices start to flow. I think underestimated how much I was going to miss it.
A baseball manager is a necessary evil.
I think that baseball games are like soap operas. If you watch five in a row, you know enough to get hooked.
Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
I'm a terrible singer. I feel lucky to play baseball. You can't be gifted in everything.
I'm flattered that so many baseball people think I'm a Hall of Famer. But what's hard to believe is how one-hundred and fifty plus people have changed their minds about me since I became eligible, because I haven't had a base hit since then.
