Ernie Harwell Quotes

I knew that everybody could be replaced. Nobody lasts forever. And if you work for somebody, he's certainly got the privilege and the right to fire you.

Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Season to season.

I praise the Lord here today. I know that all my talent and all my ability comes from him, and without him I'm nothing and I thank him for his great blessing.

I think God always has the best for us.

I think I owe thanks to the people who have listened to me over the years, who tuned in on the radio. They have given me a warmth and loyalty that I've never been able to repay. The way they have reached out to me has certainly been the highlight of my life.

But most of all, I'm a part of you people out there who have listened to me, because especially you people in Michigan, you Tiger fans, you've given me so much warmth, so much affection and so much love.

I deeply appreciate the people of Michigan. I love their grit. I love the way they face life. I love the family values they have.

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.

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 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 love what I do. If I had my time over again, I'd probably do it for nothing.

I have great faith that Heaven's there and I'll see my brothers and my mom and dad when I get there.

A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That's baseball.

Wheaties was the big sponsor in those days (1940s). They sponsored almost all the baseball games in the majors and the minors. That was a lot of Wheaties. I think there were twenty-four boxes in a case and some of these guys were hitting twenty-five and thirty home runs a season. We had a dog in those days named Blue Grass and the players used to give us their Wheaties for him. Blue Grass loved Wheaties and so did I.

What happens with any announcer when he comes into an area, if he stays four or five years and does a fairly decent job, people accept him and he becomes part of the family.

Baseball just a came as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.

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!

I look on life as a joyous adventure.

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.

God blessed me by putting me here for thirty-one years at Michigan and Trumbull.

With the Giants I broadcast the debut of Hall of Famer Willie Mays.

It's been a terrific life.

Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.

I've found that if you wear a beret, people think you're either a cabdriver or a producer of dirty movies.

In radio, they say, nothing happens until the announcer says it happens.

It isn't me that people love. It's baseball.

Anything can happen. That's the beauty of creating.

Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words.

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.'

Baseball is a rookie, his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream.

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.

I just have faith. It's just there. It's not any big deal.

Baseball is a lot like life. It's a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life.

In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's.

I think once you start as an announcer, you have to decide what kind of approach you're going to have. I decided very early that I was going to be a reporter, that I would not cheer for the team. I don't denigrate people who do it. It's fine. I think you just have to fit whatever kind of personality you have, and I think my nature was to be more down the middle and that's the way I conducted the broadcasts.