Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
I’ve found that if you wear a beret, people think you’re either a cabdriver or a producer of dirty movies.
I have a great faith in God and Jesus.
The good Lord has blessed me with a great journey.
Anything can happen. That’s the beauty of creating.
I had a job to do, and I did it all these years to the best of my ability. That’s what I’d like to leave behind as I finish my final game in Toronto.
I’ve been lucky to broadcast some great events and to broadcast the exploits of some great players.
I think if you checked the attendance records of all the announcers, you’d find a lot better record than you would of anybody else in any other business because we love the game and have a passion for it.
I think God always has the best for us.
Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.
I have great faith that Heaven’s there and I’ll see my brothers and my mom and dad when I get there.
In radio, they say, nothing happens until the announcer says it happens.
Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
Baseball is a tongue-tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball!
Also I’m a part of the people that I’ve worked with in baseball that have been so great to me, Mr. Earl Mann of Atlanta, who gave me my first baseball broadcasting job.
That other saying, I’m a part of all that I have met, I think that would have to begin with my wonderful parents back in Atlanta when I was a youngster five years old I was tongue tied.
Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch, and then dashing off to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals. That’s baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, ‘I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.’
Sparky’s the only guy I know who’s written more books than he’s read.
Needless to say, I have more no-hitters than Nolan Ryan.
If I walked back into the booth in the year 2025, I don’t think it would have changed much. I think baseball would be played and managed pretty much the same as it is today. It’s a great survivor.
I’d like to be remembered as someone who showed up for the job. I consider myself a worker.