Baseball’s unique jargon lends itself to colorful sayings

Joe DiMaggio, the “Yankee Clipper”

All pitchers are born pitchers.

You start chasing a ball and your brain immediately commands your body to ‘Run forward, bend, scoop up the ball, peg it to the infield,’ then your body says, ‘Who me?’

A ball player has to be kept hungry to become a big leaguer. That’s why no boy from a rich family has ever made the big leagues.

I can remember a reporter asking me for a quote, and I didn’t know what a quote was. I thought it was some kind of soft drink.

I’d like to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee.

Pair up in threes.

There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time. I owe him my best.

When baseball is no longer fun, it’s no longer a game.

You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you’re a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.

Lawrence “Yogi” Berra

It’s déjà vu all over again.

 

Ninety percent of the game is half mental.

 

Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.

 

How can you hit and think at the same time.

 

I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.

 

Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.

It ain’t over till it’s over.

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Rogers Hornsby

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

“Players who stand flat footed and swing with their arms are golfers, not hitters.”

“I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it.”

“I always tried to hit the ball back through the box because that is the largest unprotected area.” Source: Baseball Digest (October 1953)

“I don’t like to sound egotistical, but every time I stepped up to the plate with a bat in my hands, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the pitcher.”

 

 

Leroy “Satchel” Paige

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.

How old would you be if you didn’t  know how old you are?

Avoid running at all times.

Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.

Mickey Mantle

If I had played my career hitting singles like Pete Rose, I’d wear a dress.

If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.

 

Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, ‘Sure, every time.’

 

Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing’s ever been as fun as baseball.

 

You don’t realize how easy this game is until you get up in that broadcasting booth.

 

It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.
I always loved the game, but when my legs weren’t hurting it was a lot easier to love.
He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.

 

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

 

Bill “Spaceman” Lee

The only rule I got is if you slide, get up.

The other day they asked me about mandatory drug testing. I said I believed in drug testing a long time ago. All through the sixties I tested everything.

There’s nothing in the world like the fatalism of the Red Sox fans, which has been bred into them for generations by that little green ballpark, and the wall, and by a team that keeps trying to win by hitting everything out of sight and just out-bombarding everyone else in the league. All this makes Boston fans a little crazy and I’m sorry for them.

Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel

All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.

Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa.

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks during batting practice.

 

 

NO LEAGUE PRACTICE SAT. OF MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND. ENJOY The Top 50 Funniest Baseball Quotes below

Top 50 Funniest Baseball Quotes

The Major League Baseball season is here, and what better way to celebrate the season than by reliving baseball’s best verbal heaters, curveballs and sliders?

1. It ain’t nothin’ till I call it. — Bill Klem, umpire

2.  There have been only two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare. — Tallulah Bankhead
3.  I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain’t never been seen by this generation. — Satchel Paige
4.  Ninety percent of this game is half mental. — Yogi Berra
5.  If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there is a man on base. — Dave Barry6. Who is this Baby Ruth? And what does she do? — George Bernard Shaw
6.  The way to make coaches think you’re in shape in the spring is to get a tan. — Whitey Ford
7.  Running a ball club is like raising kids who fall out of trees. — Tom Trebelhorn
8.  I watch a lot of baseball on radio. — Gerald Ford
9.  I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands. — Babe Ruth
10.  If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off. — Bill Veeck
11.  Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn’t score any runs. — Tim McCarver
12.  Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster. — Joe Adcock
13.  The other teams could make trouble for us if they win. — Yogi Berra
14.  Beethoven can’t really be great because his picture isn’t on a bubble gum card. — Charles Schulz
15.  I think I throw the ball as hard as anyone. The ball just doesn’t get there as fast. — Eddie Bane
16.  Third ain’t so bad if nothin’ is hit to you. — Yogi Berra
17.  There’s no crying in baseball! — Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own
18.  I never took the game home with me. I always left it in some bar. — Bob Lemon
19.  Well, it took me 17 years to get 3,000 hits in baseball, and I did it in one afternoon on the golf course. — Hank Aaron21. After Jackie Robinson, the most important black in baseball history is Reggie Jackson. — Reggie Jackson
20.  We know we’re better than this, but we can’t prove it. — Tony Gwynn
21.  It ain’t like football. You can’t make up no trick plays. — Yogi Berra
22.  If a horse won’t eat it, I don’t want to play on it. — Dick Allen on artificial turf
23.  You don’t realize how easy this game is until you get up in that broadcasting booth. — Mickey Mantle

 

6.  Alan Sutton Sothoron pitched his initials off today. — Anonymous, St. Louis newspaper
7.  All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a doubleheader. — George F. Will
8.  Never root for a team whose uniforms have elastic stretch waistbands. — Susan Sarandon
9.  There ain’t much to being a ballplayer, if you’re a ballplayer. — Honus Wagner
10.  Us ballplayers do things backward. First we play, then we retire and go to work. — Charlie Gehringer
11.  The funny thing about these uniforms is that you hang them in the closet and they get smaller and smaller. — Curt Flood
12.  Sure I played, did you think I was born age 70 sitting in a dugout trying to manage guys like you? — Casey Stengel, to Mickey Mantle
13.  When you start the game, they don’t say “Work ball!” They say “Play ball!” — Willie Stargell
14.  There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither one of them works. — Charlie Lau
15.  The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until the ball stops rolling and then to pick it up. — Bob Uecker
16.  Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time? — Yogi Berra
17.  The majority of American males put themselves to sleep by striking out the batting order of the New York Yankees. — James Thurber
18.  A hot dog at the game beats roast beef at the Ritz. — Humphrey Bogart
19.  He’s the strangest hitter in baseball. Figure him out one way and he’ll kill you another. — Sandy Koufax on Roberto Clemente
20.  As a nation we are dedicated to keeping physically fit — and parking as close to the stadium as possible. — Bill Vaughan
21.  Slump? I ain’t in no slump. I just ain’t hitting. — Yogi Berra
22.  A man once told me to walk with the Lord. I’d rather walk with the bases loaded. — Ken Singleton
23.  I’d be willing to bet you, if I was a betting man, that I have never bet on baseball. — Pete Rose
24.  Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets. — Yogi Berra
25.  Lasorda’s standard reply when some new kid would ask directions to the whirlpool was to tell him to stick his foot in the toilet and flush it. — Steve Garvey
26.  If you don’t succeed at first, try pitching. — Jack Harshman
27.  The Hall of Fame is for baseball people. Heaven is for good people. — Jim Dwyer
28.  So I’m ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face. — Yogi Berra
29.  He looks like a greyhound, but he runs like a bus. — George Brett on third baseman Jamie Quirk

50. The baseball mania has run its course. It has no future as a professional endeavor. — Cincinnati Gazette editorial, 1879

Source: Baseball’s Greatest Quotations: An Illustrated Treasury of Baseball Quotations and Historical Lore, by Paul Dickson, HarperCollins, 2008.