People identify with the swashbuckling individuals, not polite little men who field their position well. Sir Galahad had a big following – but I’ll bet Lancelot had more.
If you can’t outsmart people, outwork them.
The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too many games in between.
When there is no room for individualism in ballparks, then there will be no room for individualism in life.
Tradition is the albatross around the neck of progress.
Baseball is the only game left for people. To play basketball, you have to be 7 feet 6 inches. To play football, you have to be the same width.
Suffering is overrated. It doesn’t teach you anything.
Suffering is overated.
I believe in God, but I’m not too clear on the other details.
Baseball is a boy’s game that makes grown men cry.
Though it is a team game by definition, it is actually a series of loosely connected individual efforts.
Three strikes, you’re out. I don’t care if you hire Edward Bennett Williams to defend you; three strikes, you’re still out. Baseball is an island of stability in an unstable world.
An island of surety in a changing world.
The Falstaff people, romantics all, went for it. They were so anxious to find out what I was going to do that they could hardly bear to wait out the two weeks. I was rather anxious to find out what I was going to do, too.
I was in the game for love. After all, where else can an old-timer with one leg, who can’t hear or see, live like a king while doing the only thing I wanted to do?
When the Supreme Court says baseball isn’t run like a business, everybody jumps up and down with joy. When I say the same thing, everybody throws pointy objects at me.
Hating the Yankees isn’t part of my act. It is one of those exquisite times when life and art are in perfect conjunction.
What can I do, I asked myself, that is so spectacular that no one will be able to say he had seen it before? The answer was perfectly obvious. I would send a midget up to bat.
I’m for the dreamers. The only really important things in history have been started by the dreamers. They never know what can’t be done.
I try not to kid myself. You know, I don’t mind romancing someone else, but to fool yourself is pretty devastating and dangerous.