Lamannas Baseball Quotes

I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. [ ... ] I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Did you hear that? I didn't hear anything. Put that question another way. ~ Ernie Banks

How do you find a buried city in a vast landscape? Finding it randomly would be the equivalent of locating a needle in a haystack, blindfolded, wearing baseball mitts. ~ Sarah Parcak

I've often wondered how a man who knew he was going to die could stand here and say he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, but now I guess I know how he felt. ~ Mickey Mantle

A man once told me to walk with the Lord. I'd rather walk with the bases loaded. ~ Ken Singleton

You can't be afraid to make errors! You can't be afraid to be naked before the crowd, because no one can ever master the game of baseball, or conquer it. You can only challenge it. ~ Lou Brock

As early as 1999, Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. ("Bud") Selig had taken to calling the Oakland A's success "an aberration," but that was less an explanation than an excuse not to grapple with the question: how'd they do it? What was their secret? ~ Michael Lewis

Power is a big thing in baseball. It can't be cheapened. That is, a fellow has it or hasn't. It isn't a fluke or great accomplishment, like a perfect game. When Mantle connects, it's a tape-measure job. Nobody who ever lived has more power than Mantle. ~ Gabe Paul

A brilliant idea without action is like Mark McGwire playing baseball without a bat. ~ Jack Canfield

Rose worked and played so hard that kids all across the country - not just in Cincinnati - were emulating him on sandlots everywhere, proud to dirty their jerseys doing a headfirst "Pete Rose" dive into cardboard boxes used for bases ... whether they needed to slide or not. ~ Tucker Elliot

Stiff, huh? I think seeing you roll around on the floor in that tight little outfit accomplished that. ~ Collette West

I sing the 'Star Spangled Banner,' so I can get into football, basketball and baseball games for free. ~ John Cullum

I kind of write about visual art the way Roger Angell writes about baseball, which is to say, you're writing about life: it's a somewhat focused, limited terrain in which you write about everything. ~ Lawrence Weschler

Wake up muscles we're in New York now. ~ Casey Stengel

If you could equate the amount of time and effort put in mentally and physically into succeeding on the baseball field and measured it by the dirt on your uniform, mine would have been black. ~ Mike Schmidt

Baseball is probably the world's best documented sport. ~ Ford Frick

Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published everyday, like those of a baseball player. ~ William Alexander

Don't be afraid to take advice. There's always something new to learn. ~ Babe Ruth

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. ~ Ernie Harwell

I've got a wife, four kids, a business, and a baseball career. ~ Curt Schilling

The key step for an infielder is the first one, to the left or right, but before the ball is hit. ~ Earl Weaver

The phrasing didn't work as well. ~ Paul Simon

When you're 18, when you're at college, sports can be your life. You can watch every baseball game, every college basketball game, every football game. Once you have a family and kids, you can't do that anymore. ~ Drew Magary

The sky is so clear today you can see all the way to Missouri. ~ Jerry Coleman

I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player. ~ John Kruk

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. ~ Bobby Bragan

Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season with the Chicago Cubs. That's baseball as it should be played - in God's own sunshine. And that's really living. ~ Alvin Dark

Phrases and images from the game filtered through his head... hitting the sweet spot, working the rosin bag, over the bat, going deep, in the hole, double header, baseball was a filthy, dirty sport! ~ J.D. Ruskin

No, I would not say that assault with a baseball bat constitutes "justice being done. ~ Garth Ennis

Always wanted to be a Major League player. Loved baseball. Followed it. Loved to play. Plus, I could always hit. ~ Stan Musial

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

Houston has its largest crowd of the night here this evening. ~ Jerry Coleman

I've done all kinds of cool things as an actor - I've jumped out of helicopters and done some daring stunts and played baseball in a professional stadium, but none of it means anything compared to being somebody's daddy. ~ Chris Pratt

George Bowering doesn't play fair. Baseball Love is so good there is no memoir in the league that can go up against it. Bowering has a sense of story and an eye for detail that eliminate the possibility that he was a lousy second baseman. Reading a home run is fun. ~ Robert Kroetsch

There are several insights at the heart of the A's system that I think are wonderful for baseball. One, that it's a team game. That no one player is going to make that much of a difference to your team, so for god's sake don't go blow a quarter of your budget on one guy. ~ Michael Lewis

The Big Red Machine was exactly that - a freaking machine. ~ Tucker Elliot

Baseball was a chapter in my life, and now I'm excited to start another chapter as a hitting coach. ~ Mark McGwire

I had been unaware that baseball was a Republican sport. ~ Tim Robbins

You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too. ~ Roy Campanella

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen. ~ Desiderius Erasmus

I want more runs in baseball itself. When you were raised on a sandlot, where the scores ran twenty-three to sixty-one, you yearn for something more than a five to two score. You know as well as I do that the excitement, temperature and decibels of any big game today rise instantly when there is someone on base. It reaches ecstasy when somebody makes a run. ~ Herbert Hoover

Keys parachuted down into one of the exact seats he purchased that he and his father sat in as season ticket holders in the Old Barn on Grand River Avenue. Keys slipped his arm around the empty chair dressed with his father's withering Tiger's baseball cap, secured to the seat with a quarter inch drywall screw. Keys reflected upon his father, who chauffeured Keys and other players, every weekend, to a hockey tournament somewhere, "You know pop…every kid you gave a ride too game or practice, came to your funeral. When this hat falls away, no more screws, pop. I'm gonna branch out…make new friends. Soon as these gypsy moths get a hold of your precious, Old English "D", here--turn your glory years, Kaline and Mclain into tree threads. ~ Kevin Moccia

Jimmy Carter was - he still - he remains to this day America's most ex of ex-presidents. You just can't believe that we elected this doofus. He was a bright enough guy and sort of well-meaning. But he was about as prepared to be president of the United States as your goofy old uncle, you know, the one that memorises baseball statistics. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The Mets are gonna be amazing. ~ Casey Stengel

In the summertime, I played Little League baseball; football in the fall; basketball in the winter. ~ Bobby Keys

Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying. ~ Jackie Robinson

Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis. ~ Studs Terkel

Jacks are home runs. So are dongs, bombs, and big flies. Baseball people express their fondness for a thing by thinking up lots of different ways to say it. ~ Michael Lewis

How the hell can you play here? ~ Harmon Killebrew