For Love of the Game

Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. -Ted Williams


Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world. -Babe Ruth

I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to keep playing baseball. -Pete Rose

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base. -Dave Barry

If I were playing third base and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I'd trip her. Oh, I'd pick her up and brush her off and say, 'Sorry Mom, but nobody beats me. -Leo Durocher

Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man ever come to perfection. -Red Smith

If God wanted football played in the spring, he would not have invented baseball. -Sam Rutigliano

The hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a round baseball with a round bat, squarely. -Ted Williams

The only reason I don't like playing in the World Series is I can't watch myself play. -Reggie Jackson

Gene Green, to pitcher Jim Brosnan: I don't mind catching your fastball at all. Naturally, I'd want to have a glove on in case you might be having an especially good day.

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. -Babe Ruth

In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept destructive criticism. Without 100 percent dedication, you won't be able to do this. -Willie Mays

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

A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz. ~Humphrey Bogart

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

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

Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that. ~Nomar Garciaparra