Ballpark Quotes

As I travel the country for away games, I meet kids fighting cancer in almost every city. They visit the ballpark, and I invite them onto the field so we can chat and then watch the game. ~ Jon Lester

I love to be in the ballpark. I love to just go in and enjoy a great baseball game, a great pitchers' duel. ~ Magic Johnson

The only other animals that would be in the ballpark to be able to do it would be a gorilla, but it's not going to occur to a gorilla to strangle the life out of somebody. They might rip their head off, all right, but it wouldn't occur to a gorilla to just, I'm going to cut off your air. ~ Quentin Tarantino

There is a special sensation in getting good wood on the ball and driving a double down the left-field line as the crowd in the ballpark rises to its feet and cheers. But, I also remember how much fun I had as a skinny barefoot kid hitting a tennis ball with a broomstick on a quiet, dusty street in Panama. ~ Rod Carew

It gives us a lot of versatility and flexibility. Looking ahead, we've got a lot of good young players coming through the system. As they make their way, we'll have some tough decisions down the road. I'm just glad to have this one bat in our lineup that can drive in 100 runs, hit 25 to 30 home runs at least, and in our ballpark, maybe more. ~ Tim Purpura

All I know is that when I come to the ballpark I'm going to be on time and give 100 percent. I know that I have to do that to keep my job. ~ Marcus Giles

I have an older son, Josh, and growing up, he just didn't care that much for baseball. And that was fine. But Chaddie, he always wanted to go to the ballpark. He just kind of took to it right away. ~ Bruce Sutter

I think it puts baseball back on the map as a sport. It's America's pastime and just look at everyone coming out to the ballpark. It has been an exciting year. ~ Mark McGwire

More than anything, it's a game of innocence. Politicians may come and go, but they always get booed at the ballpark. ~ Pete Hamill

I used to think it would be neat to play my whole career with one team. But as a baseball player you want to come to the ballpark every day knowing you have a chance to win and that the games mean something. ~ Carlos Beltran

Your guilt's got nothing on my guilt," Franny said. "Your guilt isn't even in the ballpark. ~ Ann Patchett

New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi. ~ Bill Maher

The reason we are at the ballpark is to win that day's game, and we don't need to be concerned with anything else during the time we are in uniform. It makes things a lot simpler, a lot easier. ~ Todd Helton

The big ballpark can do it all! ~ Jerry Coleman

Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark, and I'll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he'll say, "Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys - poor Jennifer was having a 'real stressful week' and really needed him at home. ~ Gillian Flynn

You want someone in the ballpark and then you grow together. Thats what a relashionship's about: changing each other. ~ Grayson Perry

I didn't like The Astrodome or any of the Astro-Turf fields. Probably my worst ballpark was The Met in Minnesota; I hated that place. I was so glad when they tore that place down, you have no idea. ~ Rollie Fingers

The best place to catch a baseball hit by (Mark) McGwire is definitely not within the confines of the playing field, or sometimes even the ballpark. Other players dial '1' for long distance. McGwire has to ask for an international operator. ~ Thomas Boswell

I used to love to come to the ballpark. Now I hate it. Every day becomes a little tougher because of all this. Writers, tape recorders, microphones, cameras, questions and more questions. Roger Maris lost his hair the season he hit sixty-one. I still have all my hair, but when it's over, I'm going home to Mobile and fish for a long time. ~ Hank Aaron

To suggest that the president should be censured because you don't agree with the legal advice he got seems to me to just
to be out of the ballpark in terms of the way we can sensibly discuss and talk about issues like this. ~ Jon Schmidt

Team speed for Christ's sake. You got bleeping' bleep bleep little fleas on the bleeping' bases getting picked off, trying to steal, getting thrown out, taking runs away from you. You get some big bleep bleepers that can hit the bleeping ball out of ballpark and you can't make any bleep bleeping mistakes. ~ Earl Weaver

Why did I get married in a ballpark? My wife wanted a big diamond ~ Mookie Wilson

If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them? ~ Yogi Berra

There was a time we laughed at the old guys up on the hill. The ones who graduated a couple of years before us, and who would hang around the school and the ballpark still, and would sit on the hoods of their cars and tell us how when they were seniors they did it better, faster, and further. We laughed, because we were still doing it, and all they could do was talk. If our goals were not met, there was next year, but it never occurred to us that one day there would not be a next year, and that the guys sitting on the hoods of their cars at the top of the hill, wishing they could have one more year, willing to settle for one last game, could one day be us. ~ Tucker Elliot

They could never beat me in Springfield. I loved that old ballpark. If I could have pitched there all my career, I'd be a 300-game winner. ~ Tommy Lasorda

Whether people know the evolution of the conversation or not, I don't know, but thematically, as a comedian, I stay in the same ballpark - around my issues and my philosophy of life. ~ Marc Maron

As the days went on, I didn't mind the games. In fact, I looked forward to them. That was the easiest part of all. I couldn't wait to get to the ballpark I'd be the first one there and I was willing to do anything. I think that's why the veterans liked me. ~ Al Kaline

You should enter a ballpark the way you enter a church. ~ Bill Lee

It looked like a ballpark. It smelled like a ballpark. It had a feeling and a heartbeat, a personality that was all baseball. ~ Richie Ashburn

Money has to be put in the way a club feels it should. If you put money in a new ballpark, that helps to generate revenue so you can spend more money. It should be spent to make the club's operations the best. That will help in the end, and it will mean enhanced payroll. ~ Bud Selig

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark. ~ Walter Lippmann

You visualize [pitches]. You see it in your head; you think it ... I used to play every pitcher in my mind before I went to the ballpark. I started getting ready for ever game the moment I woke up. ~ Hank Aaron

Brother John and I had our ears glued to the radio. It was a Sunday afternoon in early December 1941, and our football Giants were getting pounded by the Brooklyn Dodgers, an NFL team that played from 1930 to 1943 in Ebbets Field, a faraway ballpark I'd never seen. So far as I was concerned, Brooklyn was on the other side of the moon. The Polo ~ Ralph Branca

I'll never forget that first night with the team. Going to the ballpark on the bus was the hardest 30 minutes of my life. I had to walk down that aisle between all the players. I really didn't know too much about the Detroit Tigers at that time. ~ Al Kaline

Men go to the ballpark with an assumed knowledge and interest, whereas women need to constantly demonstrate how much they know and care. ~ Stacey May Fowles

[B]aseball is diffracted by the town and ballpark where it is played ... Does baseball, like a liquid, take the shape of its container? ~ Thomas Boswell

He'd never played in Wrigley Field - the Cubs had still been out at old West Side Grounds when he came through as a catcher for the Cardinals before the First World War. But seeing the ballpark in ruins brought the reality of this war home to him like a kick in the teeth. Sometimes big things would do that, sometimes little ones; he remembered a doughboy breaking down and sobbing like a baby when he found some French kid's dolly with its head blown off. Muldoon's eyes slid over toward Wrigley for a moment. "Gonna be a long time before the Cubs win another pennant," he said, as good an epitaph as any for the park - and the city. ~ Harry Turtledove

One hundred ten thousand ears in this ballpark, and he's got to hit my ear. ~ Don Zimmer

Memoirs are - memory is - rarely 100 percent accurate. Any autobiography is a construct, ballpark, even unnatural. Private diaries, too, can be unreliable - a detail that matters only if the diary is read. ~ Darin Strauss

There's a reason diehard fans get to the ballpark hours before game time. It's not for better parking. It's not for extra time to find our seats. It's not so we'll have time to down an extra hot dog, heavy on the mustard, prior to the first pitch. It's called BP. ~ Tucker Elliot

I'm helplessly and permanently a Red Sox fan. It was like first love ... You never forget. It's special. It's the first time I saw a ballpark. I'd thought nothing would ever replace cricket. Wow! Fenway Park at 7 o'clock in the evening. Oh, just, magic beyond magic: never got over that ~ Simon Schama

I want everybody to feel he has a chance to get into a game when he comes to the ballpark. I play guys when I want to so they'll be ready when I have to. I don't consider myself a motivator of players. I think it's an insult to a ballplayer to have to be motivated. ~ Gene Mauch

I've been pretty lucky with neighbors. But back in 1998, I lived, like, literally next door to Wrigley Field in Chicago. And I had, like, 50,000 bad neighbors spread out over the course of one summer. I'm a diehard Cubs fan, but living right next to the ballpark, it's just - as you're trying to go to sleep, you can just, like, hear urination. ~ Ike Barinholtz

This guy don't come to the ballpark to beat you. He comes to beat you bad. This (Jackie) Robinson, he plays a ton. ~ Leo Durocher

Umpires got power, man. You ever notice if you go to a ballpark and there's a close play on first base, they will not run the replay at the ballpark? I've seen umpires go underneath and call up and say if you run one more of those replays, we're gonna forfeit the game. That's how strong their union is. ~ Pete Rose

Privilege is being born on third base. Ignorant privilege is thinking you're there because you hit a triple. Malicious privilege is complaining that those starving outside the ballpark aren't waiting patiently enough. ~ Glennon Doyle

If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them. ~ Yogi Berra

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals. ~ David Ogilvy

Well technology has changed a lot of things, making it possible for just about anyone to make music. But not everybody is a songwriter, so that puts me in a completely different ballpark than the other DJs out here that are writing and producing tracks. I don't stop at tracks, I try to complete the whole package with the song. So working at that level has put me in a completely different place. ~ Frankie Knuckles

If the fans don't wanna come out to the ballpark, no one can stop 'em. ~ Yogi Berra

A ballpark at night is more like a church than a church ~ W.P. Kinsella

The Capone era. That was my time. Capone was a big baseball fan. He'd walk into the ballpark like the president walking in today, with bodyguards all around him. ~ Billy Herman

I suppose in antique Marxist terms we are lavishly paid because we are perfect tools for the class even higher up, those who own the ballpark. You can occasionally have some sympathy for those frequently unhappy souls with big inheritances from birth. This was fate in which the sense of victimization is always possible. But my own class is undeserving of a mote, a mite, a filament, an iota of sympathy. We are self-made barkers, toy dogs, prime weenies. ~ Jim Harrison

Every ballpark used to be unique. Now, it's like women's breasts - if you've seen one, you've seen 'em both. ~ Jim Kaat

When suddenly everybody is guessing, or some even getting close, to the ballpark of what you're earning - well, that's interesting, that everyone knows what you make. ~ Jim Parsons

All I really try and do is live up to my potential and do as well as I possibly could and to bring to the ballpark each and every day a good effort and do the best that I could each and every day. ~ Cal Ripken, Jr.

If I'm in the car after a bad game, I may think about ways I need to improve. But the second I reach home, the game's over. Work doesn't come inside with me. Same thing in reverse - I don't bring my personal life into the ballpark. Learning to keep it all separate has made life easier. ~ Matt Kemp

You know, when you can play with the greatest players of that particular era, you look forward to going to the ballpark. I mean, you thought it was great to be there in the clubhouse. You thought it was great to be on the field. ~ Johnny Bench

I don't own an ounce of the work I've ever done on 'Batman,' and I still work on 'Batman.' I love the character, I think it's a lot of fun, and it's kind of fun to be in that ballpark every once in a while, where you're seeing a different crowd. ~ Frank Miller

The sport to which I owe so much has undergone profound changes, but it's still baseball. Kids still imitate their heroes on playgrounds. Fans still ruin expensive suits going after foul balls that cost five dollars. Hitting streaks still make the network news and hot dogs still taste better at the ballpark than at home. ~ Duke Snider

Indians love baseball," jokes Charlie Hill, "but we don't set up camp in the ballpark! Hey, if the Atlanta Braves think that using Indians as mascots is simply harmless fun, then why not have them dress up some white guy in a three-piece suit and have him shuffle around a mobile home parked in the middle of the outfield every time their team scores a hit? Or how about changing the names of a few of these sports teams? Why not have the Atlanta White Boys or the Kansas City Caucasians or the Chicago Negroes, the Washington Jews or New York Rednecks?" My ~ MariJo Moore

I believe in the Rip Van Winkle theory - that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark, and understand baseball perfectly. ~ Bowie Kuhn

For the briefest of seconds, it was like he looked back into the stands, like maybe he spotted me, shaking my rattle, giving him all the encouragement I could. I could have sworn I saw a corner of his mouth curl up. Then he did the whole Velcro batting glove thing and stepped up to the plate.
The pitch came.
He swung.
Crack!
He hit it! He hit it! I jumped up and started shouting.
I had a second to see the stunned look on his face, like maybe he'd never hit the ball before, but that couldn't be…
And then I realized what it was. As he started running, he turned his head, his gaze following the ball…
The ball that went out of the ballpark!
Right over the Backyard Mania billboard!
Home run!
My boyfriend had hit a home run!
I jumped around, pointing at the number on my jersey, hugging Bird, hugging Tiffany, watching Jason slapping his coach's hand as he rounded third. I watched him cross home plate, wearing the biggest grin on his face.
"You know what this means, don't you?" Bird said.
"That we're ahead two to nothing?"
"It means he'll insist you sit in this exact spot for every game. He'll think this is the good luck spot."
"No way."
"Either that, or he'll ask you not to wash your underwear."
"Ew! That's so not happening. Maybe I can convince him it was wearing the jersey."
Yeah, I thought. That's the ticket. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

His participation was in the ballpark of a pity fuck. ~ Janet Evanovich

A guesstimate?" prompted the man Enrique. "About your dad?" "Ballpark will do," the Korean lady said. ~ Donna Tartt

Now, you tell me, if I have a day off during the baseball season, where do you think I'll spend it? The ballpark. I still love it. Always have, always will. ~ Harry Caray

I haven't given it (achieving 3,000 hits) much thought. I was taught a certain approach, how to come to the ballpark. I try not to do too much thinking about things like that. In this society we measure success in different ways. Three thousand (hits) represents success over a career, not a season. It'll be nice to get to that point. ~ Cal Ripken, Jr.