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quote of the day
"You spend a good piece of your life gripping
a baseball and in the end it turns out that
it was the other way around all the time."
Bouton, Jim
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"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
General George S. Patton
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Asked why he had ejected mild-mannered
Pie Traynor from a game, umpire Bill Klein
replied that the Pittsburgh Pirates third
baseman was not feeling well. Since Traynor
looked just fine, Klem was pressed to explain
further.
"Well that was what he told me," Klein said.
"He came up to me like the perfect gentlemen
he is and said, `Mr. Klein, I'm sick and tired
of your decisions."
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I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder
I work, the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
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It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't
quit when you're tired- you quit when the gorilla
is tired.
Robert Strauss
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"The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital."
Joe Paterno - Head Coach Penn State
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"You have to expect things of yourself before
you can do them."
Michael Jordan
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"In 1960 when Pittsburgh beat us in the World
Series, we outscored them 55-27. It was the only
time I think the better team lost. I was so
disappointed I cried on the plane ride home."
Mickey Mantle, despite batting .400 with three
homers, 11 rbi, eight runs and eight walks in
the 1960 World Series against Pittsburgh.
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"A full mind is an empty bat."
Branch Rickey
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"I wasn't scared. I just told them to give me
all that hockey equipment."
Roger Clemens who wore Mo Vaughn's forearm pad
and Kevin Mitchell's shinguard to get his first
major-league hit, after a series of shifts put
the DH in left field, forcing the Boston pitcher
to bat.
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I loved the game. I'd have played for food
money. I'd have played for free and worked
for food. It was the game, the parks, the
smells, the sounds. Have you ever held a bat
or a baseball to your face? The varnish, the
leather. And it was the crowd, the excitement
of them rising as one when the ball was hit
deep. The sound was like a chorus. It makes me
tingle all over like a kid on his way to his
first double-header, just to talk about it.
Shoeless Joe Jackson
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"Does Pete (Rose) hustle? Before the All-Star
game he came into the clubhouse and took off
his shoes and they ran another mile without him."
Hank Aaron
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Any time a guy that big steps up to the plate
-- they're very few and far between, -- it's
kind of hard not to notice them standing there.
The sun just disappears for a while.
On Mark McGuire
Kevin Brown
Los Angeles Dodgers
Pitcher
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"He (Sandy Koufax) throws a 'radio ball,' a pitch
you hear, but you don't see."
Gene Mauch
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Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded
men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had
better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy,
survival of the fittest."
Ty Cobb
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"There are two theories on hitting the
knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither one
of them works."
Charlie Lau
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"Trying to hit him (Sandy Koufax) was like
trying to drink coffee with a fork."
Willie Stargell
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"You can't hit what you can't see."
Walter Johnson
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"I can throw out any man alive."
Johnny Bench
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"I ain't ever has a job I just always played
baseball."
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige
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"I love doubleheaders. That way I get to keep
my uniform on longer."
Tommy Lasorda
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"Hey, big mouth, how do you spell triple?"
- response to a heckler.
Shoeless Joe Jackson
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"If your not practicing, somebody else is,
somewhere, and he'll be ready to take your job."
Brooks Robinson
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"It helps if the hitter thinks you're a
little crazy."
Nolan Ryan
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"Baseball is the only field of endeavor where
a man can succeed three times out of ten and
be considered a good performer."
Ted Williams
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All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock
it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what
it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except
it looked good."
Babe Ruth
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"I'm real happy my name is in the record book,
but it means nothing because we lost."
Sammy Sosa
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There should be a new way to record standings
in this league; one column for wins, one for
losses and one for gifts."
Gene Mauch
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"When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend
of mine and I went fishing.... I told him I
wanted to be a real Major League Baseball Player,
a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My
friend said that he'd like to be President of
the United States. Neither of us got our wish."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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"Every day is a new opportunity. You can
build on yesterday's success or put its
failures behind and start over again.
That's the way life is, with a new game
every day, and that's the way baseball is."
Bob Feller
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"Humanity is the keystrone that holds nations
and men together. When that collapses, the
whole structure crumbles. This is as true of
baseball teams as any other pursuits in life."
Connie Mack
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"Any time you think you have the game conquered
the game will turn around and punch you right in
the nose."
Mike Schmidt
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"You'd be surprised by how many shortcomings
you overcome by hustling"
Pete Rose
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"When we lost I couldn't sleep at night. When we
win I can't sleep at night. But when you win, you
wake up feeling better."
Joe Torre
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"If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is
like kissing you grandmother with her teeth out."
George Brett
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"The great thing about baseball is that there's
a crisis every game."
Gabe Paul
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"You don't save pitchers for tomorrow. Tomorrow
it may rain."
Leo Durocher
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"Fans don't boo nobodies."
Reggie Jackson
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Among the highly-touted youngsters of
pre-World War II days was outfielder
Lou Novikoff of the Chicago Cubs. Novikoff,
called the Mad Russian, one day made a
great steal of third base. Unfortunately
the bases were loaded at the time. Asked
why he had taken off, Novikoff explained.
"I couldn't resist. I had such a great jump
on the pitcher."
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As a kid, I had idols like Jackie Robinson
and Nellie Fox. But, as an adult, my only idol
has been Willie Stargell, both as a player and
a friend. He's just special people.
— Joe Morgan, Hall of Famer on former Pirate
great Willie Stargell.
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"Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues.
But to be able to trick people year in and year out
the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat."
Bob Eucker
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"Me carrying a briefcase is like a hotdog
wearing earrings."
Sparky Anderson
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Oakland A's general manager Sandy Alderson took candor to extremes in 1985 in explaining the release of outfielder Barbaro Garbey right after obtaining him in a trade.
"We really didn't want him in the first place. We just took him from Detroit to get rid of (outfielder) Dave Collins."
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After first baseman Zeke Bonura was traded
by the White Sox to Washington in 1938,
Chicago manager Jimmy Dykes scorned changing
the signs for the first series against
Washington:
"Why should we? He couldn't remember them when
he was with us."
HOWEVER! lumbering Bonura stole home against
his old team after he saw Dykes swipe a
mosquito with his scorecard because:
"I saw Dykes give the sign to steal, and I
forgot I wasn't on his team anymore."
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"I signed with the Milwaukee Braves for
$3,000. That bothered my dad at the time
because he didn't have that kind of dough,
But he eventually scraped it up."
Bob Eucker
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"The secret of managing a club is to
keep the five guys who hate you away
from the five guys who are undecided."
Casey Stengel
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"I hit'em where they ain't"
Wee Willie Keeler
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"If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be"
Yogi Berra
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Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela explaining his habit of rolling his eyes skyward when delivering a pitch:
"I don't want to see the hits going past me."
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Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith after
he sold the team:
"Honestly, I'm having a great deal of fun. Hey,
I go the supermarket and everyone stops to talk
to me. When I owned the team, no one would talk
to me."
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Chuck Tanner, admitting to his always upbeat
attitude even while managing losing teams in
Pittsburgh, Chicago and Oakland:
"People make light of my optimistic outlook,
such as, if I were captain of the Titanic, I
would tell my passengers we were stopping for ice."
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"I refuse to call a forty-seven year old man Sparky."
Umpire Al Clark
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"I don't want to embarrass any other catcher
by comparing him to Johnny Bench."
Sparky Anderson
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ON UMPIRING
After a controversial call that went against
their White Sox, Chicago fans were really
giving it to umpire Red Ormsby. A woman in
a firstbase box screamed,:
"You blind bum! If you were my husband, I'd
give you poison." Ormsby turned toward her, bowed
politely, and replied, " Madam, if you were my wife,
I'd take it!"
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In 1981, the Yankees issued No. 5 to rookie
infielder Andre Robertson, who grumbled:
"Don't you have something lower? I've been
looking around, and I've noticed nobody's
wearing numbers 3 or 4."
Evidently, the fact that 3 and 4 were the retired numbers of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig had eluded Robertson.
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"Every hitter has slumps and they're
discouraging. But after a while I worked
out a mind-set that helped. When I was in
a slump, I was going to work particulary
hard at my defense, my fielding. That way
when I was 0-4, I'd still be contributing
to the team".
Pete Rose
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"You can observe a lot by watching".
Yogi Berra
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"In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the Biggs".
Bob Uecker
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