Baseball Stats Quotes

Vic Wertz once hit a ball rather famously that was later described as such: 'It would have been a home run in any other park - including Yellowstone.' Instead, he's remembered as the guy who got robbed by Willie Mays' spectacular catch during the 1954 World Series between the Indians and the Giants, a play that remains one of the game's all-time greatest defensive efforts. What people often forget about Wertz is that his greatest battle wasn't that one at bat, and that one out never defined his career. He was stricken with polio in 1955, and after 74 games his season was over and his career was hanging in the balance. 'The Catch' by Willie Mays couldn't keep him down, and neither could polio - he came back in 1956, and despite playing in only 136 games he belted 32 home runs with 106 RBIs. ~ Tucker Elliot

The best word to describe Albert Belle during the mid-1990s is "prolific." The man could flat hit. ~ Tucker Elliot

Most of us would give anything for the chance to play just one day of MLB baseball - especially for our favorite team. Well, there once was a pitcher named Bock Baker who actually got two opportunities to pitch in the big leagues. He took the mound for Cleveland against the Chicago White Sox in his big league debut. How did he fare? Well, he pitched a complete game. Pretty spectacular, right? Well, sure - but it depends on your perspective. He gave up 23 hits and 13 runs. Baker never pitched for Cleveland again, but the Philadelphia Athletics gave him a second big league start that same year (1901). He lasted juts six innings, and lost again after giving up 11 runs - and then his career was over. ~ Tucker Elliot

Joe DiMaggio batted safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941, the same season Ted Williams batted .406 - but did you know that also in 1941, Jeff Heath, an outfielder who spent a decade playing for the Indians, became the first player in AL history to hit 20 doubles, 20 triples, and 20 home runs in the same season? It's true. ~ Tucker Elliot

It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder to lose one. ~ Chuck Tanner

Taking the best left-handed pitcher in baseball and converting him into a right fielder is one of the dumbest things I ever heard. ~ Tris Speaker

I keep a lot of my old baseball hats, and if you look in the hats I've had since I started pitching, you'll see 'Philippians 4:13' written on the brim. That's the Scripture that gets me through the day because sometimes you can't do it all by yourself. You can't do it on your own, so you lean on Him. ~ Scotty McCreery

By 1968, I had lived 10 years in Michigan. Gradually, I had come to love watching Detroit's baseball club in its small, beautiful, antiquated Tiger Stadium - a baseball park as fine as Fenway Park or Wrigley Field, though it never got the adulatory press. ~ Donald Hall

Anything less would not have been worthy of me. Anything more would not have been possible. ~ Carl Yastrzemski

The big ballpark can do it all! ~ Jerry Coleman

She sucked in air and thought of things to cool herself off. Baseball came to mind, but then she pictured all those baseball players' tight butts and fit bodies and quickly canceled that train of thought. ~ T.A. Grey

Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail. ~ John Thorn

Baseball without fans is like Jayne Mansfield without a sweater. Hang on, that can be taken two ways. ~ Richard M. Nixon

I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn't play ball too good - I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn't preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing. ~ Muddy Waters

You probably don't call home and say, 'Hi, mom. I am facing Pete Schourek tonight.' Names and stats don't do it. You have to do it out on the field. ~ Carlos Delgado

I pride myself on being one of the oldest fans. I can certainly count up about seventy years of devotion. ~ Herbert Hoover

wasn't Lily; it was Craig Simmons, the landscaper. Holding a sweat-stained baseball cap in his hand, the fortyish-something sandy-haired man stood on the front porch, still wearing his work boots, faded jeans and stained T-shirt. "Hello, Ms. Boatman, I just got back from lunch, noticed your car in the back drive and wondered if you had a chance to look through your house. I wanted to make sure everything is all right." "Yes, we went through the house, and nothing seems to be missing." That wasn't entirely true. She had only been to the library and kitchen, but according to Walt, Adam and Bill left empty ~ Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

Catholics speak, like baseball players, in the coded language of gesture. Sure, the Roman Catholic Church is an abomination to man and a disgrace to God, but it comes with a highly structured Mass, several sacred pilgrimages, the oldest songs, the most impressive architecture, and a whole bunch of things to do whenever you enter the church. Taken all together, they make you one with your brother. ~ Joshua Ferris

I never picked up my phone and called a bookmaker and bet on a baseball game from the clubhouse. Never. ~ Pete Rose

At pier four there is a 34-foot yawl-rigged yacht with two of the three hundred and twenty-four Esthonians who are sailing around in different parts of the world, in boats between 28 and 36 feet long and sending back articles to the Esthonian newspapers. These articles are very popular in Esthonia and bring their authors between a dollar and a dollar and thirty cents a column. They take the place occupied by the baseball or football news in American newspapers and are run under the heading of Sagas of Our Intrepid Voyagers. No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sunburned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will sail to another yacht basin and write another saga. They are very happy too. Almost as happy as the people on the Alzira III. It's great to be an Intrepid Voyager. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love. ~ Bryant Gumbel

A critic once characterized baseball as six minutes of action crammed into two-and-one-half hours. ~ Ray Fitzgerald

Here's the thing about baseball-it's not the individual sport I thought it was. Turns out I was wrong about that.
Yeah, the batter is a lone man against the world. He stands in the batter's box like a soldier and it's up to him-and him alone-what happens next.
But here's the thing I didn't understand until I was forced to, until recently: In order to hit a home run ...
Someone else has to pitch the ball. ~ Barry Lyga

In a proud fatherly sadomasicisticly way, I am thrilled when I get hit. As every deep purple bruise on my body represented a perfect swing.
If I were to lift my shirt at any time there would be 4-5 bruises on my body ...
As soon as I was able to, I would throw batting practice again from the short distance, and take another shot if necessary to keep the boys in the zone. ~ JohnA Passaro

Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer. ~ Jodi Picoult

I'M LOSING FAITH IN MY FAVORITE COUNTRY

Throughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans.

I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians.

Then everything changed.

Partly because of its proximity to ~ Stephen Douglass

During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball. ~ Mickey Mantle

I could have played another year, but I would have been playing for the money, and baseball deserves better than that. ~ George Brett

I'm not one of those guys that focuses much on individual stats because my main goal is to be at my best physically and mentally. ~ Giovani Bernard

When you see Major League Baseball putting academies in other countries, obviously that throws up a red flag. You wonder why they ain't going up in our neighborhood. Bottom line, what I see, I talk about ... I see it over and over. If anybody can show me I'm wrong, then show me. ~ Gary Sheffield

I've seen fire, and I've seen rain. I've also had to scramble over tundra to get to the Super Bowl and seen baseball turf fields that could fry a fielder's soles. ~ George Vecsey

When you've learned to believe in yourself, there's no telling how good a player you can be. That's because you have the mental edge. ~ Rod Carew

The season starts too early and finishes too late and there are too many games in between. ~ Bill Veeck

Baseball is continuous, like nothing else among American things, an endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons. ~ Donald Hall

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. ~ Ernie Harwell

The reason I didn't take the baseball route is because they don't have rankings for baseball players. ~ Jim Courier

Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero. ~ Edward Abbey

These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don't have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks. ~ Jimmy Buffett

I know better than anyone else that my time is near. I've had a good life, and you don't stop and complain at this stage of the game. I've made some mistakes, and I'd like to stay around a little longer and overcome them, but there isn't time. I'll miss baseball. That I know. ~ Joe Tinker

If anyone stays away (after the 1981 strike), my response is this - those people had no right to ever come to the park, because they aren't true baseball fans. ~ George Brett

I've shepherded a good many people through their lives, I've baptized babies by the hundred, and all that time I have felt as though a great part of life was closed to me. Your mother says I was like Abraham. But I had no old wife and no promise of a child. I was just getting by on books and baseball and fried-egg sandwiches. ~ Marilynne Robinson

It needs to be said, over and over again, that Stan the Man was voted by 'The Sporting News' as the best baseball player of the postwar decade, from 1946 through 1955. ~ George Vecsey

The first rule of baseball is to get a good ball to hit. ~ Rogers Hornsby

Why should I mind?" She drummed her fingertips against his knee. "Because you got asked to play baseball, while I got a lecture on circumspection, Jezebels, and leading men into sin?"
"Did you really?" He managed to sound annoyed, fascinated, and amused all at once.
"It's not funny."
"Of course it's not." He was quick to try and placate her. "But we can do something about those lectures real quick. All you have to do is marry me."
Coyote Bluff had too many secrets that weren't hers to share. She couldn't put him in that position. He was a federal marshal. And she'd seen what all the lies her father told had done to her mother. She'd died hating him.
The last remnants of her earlier contentment vanished. "I like my independence."
"Then I guess you'll have to get used to the lectures, Sheriff Jezebel," he replied. ~ Paula Altenburg

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me. ~ Matt Kemp

Then it dawned on him: these people were hanging around to see the man who was taking on the challenge of breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. That settled it - he wouldn't quit the team. He couldn't quit the team. ~ Doreen Rappaport

Many of the greatest black athletes of all time played baseball for no money and no recognition. I'm just sorry many major league fans never got to see them play, because many of them were awesome. ~ Monte Irvin