Umpires Quotes

I cannot for the life of me see why the umpires, the only two people on a cricket field who are not going to get grass stains on their knees, are the only two people allowed to wear dark trousers. ~ Katharine Whitehorn

When I was 20, I didn't give a damn about song construction. I just wanted to make as much noise and play as fast and as loud as possible. ~ Ritchie Blackmore

The one thing that all umpires have is pride, and if you don't have pride, you lose that edge. ~ Doug Harvey

Why, they shot the wrong McKinley! ~ Dizzy Dean

The magistrates are the ministers for the laws, the judges their interpreters, the rest of us are servants of the law, that we all may be free. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

In public at least, Roberts himself purports to have a different view of the Court than his conservative sponsors. "Judges are like umpires," he said at his confirmation hearing. "Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them." Elsewhere, Roberts has often said, "Judges are not politicians." None of this is true. Supreme Court justices are nothing at all like baseball umpires. It is folly to pretend that the awesome work of interpreting the Constitution, and thus defining the rights and obligations of American citizenship, is akin to performing the rote […] task of calling balls and strikes. When it comes to the core of the Court's work, determining the contemporary meaning of the Constitution, it is ideology, not craft or skill, that controls the outcome of cases. ~ Jeffrey Toobin

The third umpires should be changed as often as nappies and for the same reason. ~ Navjot Singh Sidhu

Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking. ~ Bill Vaughan

Professional managers, coaches, and players have a right to question an umpire's decision if they do it in a professional manner. When they become personal, profane, or violent, they have crossed the line and must be dealt with accordingly. ~ Jim Evans

The trouble with women umpires is that I couldn't argue with one. I'd put my arms around her and give her a little kiss. ~ Casey Stengel

Earl gave me his version of what happened and asked me not to suspend the umpires. ~ Lee MacPhail

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy. ~ Walt Whitman

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. ~ Ray Bradbury

Listen, ump. How can you sleep with the lights on? ~ Amos Otis

Step outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own rules and your own reality. ~ Phil Ochs

Bishops are like umpires. You have to have them to call the close decisions. ~ Frank Butler

We are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, - the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans. ~ Max Baucus

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. ~ Henry George

We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in. ~ Brendan Behan

Today a pitcher gets fined if the umpire thinks he threw at a batter. In the olden days, the umpire didn't have to take any courses in mind reading. The pitcher told you he was going to throw at you. ~ Leo Durocher

It was hell to go through what I went through. I didn't know I had so many friends. Many people gave a damn about my situation. They helped cure me. ~ Bela Lugosi

Umpires sometimes have a quick trigger. ~ Joe Torre

I can have peace of mind only when I forgive rather than judge. ~ Gerald Jampolsky

There's absolutely no excuse for throwing a piece of equipment on an umpire or any player. You can argue your point and at times may accidentally bump an umpire, but to consciously throw a piece of equipment at someone is unforgivable. ~ Brad Ausmus

You go to a theater now and you literally see parents watching the movie and they suddenly cover their kid's ears. I figured I'd make one movie where they didn't have to do this. ~ Garry Marshall

There are clear cases in which 'understanding' literally applies and clear cases in which it does not apply; and these two sorts of cases are all I need for this argument. ~ John Searle

I'd love to stay in baseball, but I won't beg. I'd love to work with young umpires. I think I could teach them, help them develop. I can spot flaws, help them get over the hump. You're striving for perfection every game, yet you never achieve it. If baseball wants me, I'm available. ~ Doug Harvey

Somethin' like four thousand bottles have been thrown at me in my day but only about twenty ever hit me. That does not speak very well for the accuracy of the fans' throwing. ~ Harry Gordon Johnson

Once when the Yankee's Lou Pinella was batting he questioned a Palermo strike call. Pinella demanded, "Where was that pitch at?" Palermo told him that a man wearing Yankee pinstripes in front of 30,000 people should not end a sentence with a preposition. So Pinella, no dummy, said, "OK, where was that pitch at, asshole?" ~ George Will

Mars is there, waiting to be reached. ~ Buzz Aldrin

That's what I think we're all looking for - an honest love wherever you can find it. ~ Piper Perabo

I don't know how we could use it to improve the job that umpires do, ... The human element in sport has always been a big part of the game. I'm a football fan, too, and I hate instant replay in the NFL. Football games are taking four hours. ~ Bud Selig

Umpires are most vigorous when defending their miscalls. ~ Jim Brosnan

Your life is the same wherever you go. ~ Gary Kemp

Literally, I think I've quit acting three or four times, only for a few days. Maybe for a few weeks. ~ Mark Ruffalo

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him. ~ Napoleon Hill

They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be acute Republicans. ~ George Will

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball. ~ James Patrick Murray

I don't think you can set up a computer to do a strike zone on a guy who's 6-foot-5 and then a guy who's 5-8. Where does it draw the line? One guy stands tall, and another squats down, and it changes the lines. Nah. I still love the umpires; they do a great job. I don't have a problem with any of that. ~ Johnny Bench

Then when I reached college I realized that many people had thought about the problem during the 18th and 19th centuries and so I studied those methods. ~ Andrew Wiles

We've beat up our umpires. They're now allowed to be human. ~ Joe Torre

The best umpired game is the game in which the fans cannot recall the umpires who worked it. ~ Bill Klem

A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what's real and what's not and most of us have been going along with it ever since. ~ Charles De Lint

My favorite umpire is a dead one. ~ Johnny Evers

Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball, like the odor that follows an automobile. ~ Christy Mathewson

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung. ~ Beth Gibbons

... a country where we seldom understand that we must be prepared to fight for issues bigger than an umpire's decision at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. ~ Peter Carey

I don't live in as much fear as I used to. I'm not afraid of the music business. Life is too damn short. I know what's important, and the tasks are very clear. ~ Kathy Mattea

I argued that I didn't have any of the attributes to pose for cheesecake. I said I would have to make good on my acting ability, which was the only attribute I could offer. ~ Teresa Wright

As a whole, the managers today are different in temperament. Most have very good communication skills and are more understanding of the umpire's job. That doesn't mean they are better managers. It just means that I perceive today's managers a bit differently. ~ Jim Evans

What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise. ~ Robert Scheer

No player or manager has greater respect for the umpires than I do, and I have demonstrated that over the years. ~ Pete Rose

The integrity of the game is the umpires. Nobody else. The entire integrity of the game is the umpires. ~ Doug Harvey

Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live. ~ Raoul Vaneigem

Those amateur umpires are certainly flexing their fangs tonight. ~ Jerry Coleman

The roughest thing I ever said to an umpire was, 'Are you sure?' ~ Rod Laver

Being an umpire is like being a king. It prepares you for nothing. ~ Ron Luciano

Or there, in the clay-baked piedmont of the South, that lean and tan-faced boy who sprawls there in the creaking chair among admiring cronies before the open doorways of the fire department, and tells them how he pitched the team to shut-out victory to-day. What visions burn, what dreams possess him, seeker of the night? The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-balked outfields down in Georgia. The mounting roar of eighty thousand voices and Gehrig coming up to bat, the boy himself upon the pitching mound, the lean face steady as a hound's; then the nod, the signal, and the wind-up, the rawhide arm that snaps and crackles like a whip, the small white bullet of the blazing ball, its loud report in the oiled pocket of the catcher's mitt, the umpire's thumb jerked upwards, the clean strike. ~ Thomas Wolfe

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

I just loved officiating, and I hope what I did helped make it better. That's what I tell young umpires: you can have fun. I never spent a day where going out on a baseball field didn't make me feel better. ~ Doug Harvey

This magistrate is not the king. The people are the king. ~ Gouverneur Morris

I remember the Chillicothe ballplayers grappling the Long Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness. And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders of the Rock Island players were a yellow smoke against the sundown. And the umpire's voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpire's throat fought in the dust for a song. ~ Carl Sandburg

I didn't mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands. ~ Babe Ruth

Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill. ~ Rem Koolhaas

Mr. Speaker, we have reached a point in history where some have forgotten that it is the family, not the government, that is the fundamental building block of our society. ~ Jim Ryun

Baptists are very strong believers that the civil magistrate is ordained by God to punish those who do evil. ~ Richard Land

I mean people up here aren't stupid, I'm lower gene pool and I kind of sit in amazement at watching some of them because they are pretty damn smart. ~ Doug Ose

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.
I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.
Her legs are crossed.
I wait for her to speak.
'I have two special skills,' she says.
She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.
'Blackmail,' she says.
She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.
'And pyromania.'
I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.
'Right,' I say.
'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'
I feel powerless. She is in a throne.
'Okay,' I say. ~ Joe Dunthorne

When I was 14, I played in a summer league. One night the chief umpire asked me if I would like to try umpiring. There was a Little League tournament coming up and he needed more umpires than he had. ~ Jim Evans

I told the umpires to walk back at least thirty-five feet from home plate. That reduced the arguements. ~ Bill Klem

As all of us with any involvement in sports knows, no two umpires or no two referees have the same strike zone or call the same kind of a basketball game. ~ Herb Kohl

Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold. ~ W. Eugene Smith

The most important thing for a judge is - curiously enough - judgment. ~ Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Some have said that I can accept inadequacies in my players but not in umpires. That completely misses the point. I can't tolerate anyone's mistake. ~ Earl Weaver

Referees are the law. They have a whistle. They blow it. And that whistle is the articulation of God's justice. ~ Harold Pinter

I'm happy wherever I go, whatever I do. I'm happy in Iowa, I'm happy here in California. ~ Ashton Kutcher

Somebody has to keep score and I decided I was going to do it. I'm a born score-keeper and I realize, like an umpire, that my decisions may cause distress. ~ Gore Vidal

The umpire signals a bye with the air of a weary stalk ~ John Arlott

We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled. The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached. ~ Cindy Sheehan

Actually I walk around with the Emmy wherever I go, but I'm very casual about it. ~ Larry David

Men who have reached and passed 45, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this. ~ Benjamin Haydon

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Peace Corps as it reached its 45th anniversary on March 1, 2006. ~ Solomon Ortiz

When I was anorexic it just seemed like I literally wanted to disappear. And now I would like to reappear. ~ Portia De Rossi

Never pray for justice, because you might get some. ~ Margaret Atwood

The problem with art is, it's not like the game of golf where you put the ball in the hole. There's no umpire; there's no judge. There are no rules. It's one of its problems. But it's also one of the great things about art. It becomes a question of what lasts. ~ Richard Prince

The courtroom is a quiet place, Judge Roberts, where you park your political ideology, and you call the balls and you call the strikes. ~ Lindsey Graham

Everybody thinks I'm at death's door, but I'm not. There's nothing seriously wrong with me, and my heart is in 100 percent working order. Anything else you may hear is a damn lie! ~ Bobby Darin

There are rumors, rumors, rumors. I'm always the last one to know about these things, literally. ~ Shawn Ashmore

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

Many are attracted to social service - the rewards are immediate, the gratification quick. But if we have social justice, we won't need social service. ~ Julian Bond

The only good thing about that decision, Gatt, is that I'll get tea before you. ~ Graham Gooch

When I meet successful people I ask 100 questions as to what they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people. ~ Kiana Tom

Justified or not, the Supreme Court has a kind of sacred status in American life. For whatever reason, Presidents can safely run against Congress, and vice versa, but I think there is an inherent popular aversion to assaults on the court itself. Perhaps it has to do with an instinctive belief that life needs umpires. ~ Jon Meacham

I don't give a damn about the stock market. But I do care about jobs. ~ George Voinovich

I lived in an attached house. My father used to drive into the wrong driveway all the time. He'd say, Damn it, how do you tell one of these houses from another? ~ Paul Simon

We talked to the referees before the game; there's always new situations to adjust, for the refs and for us as well. Even on the ice, it's good for players to talk and interact with the referee. ~ Peter Bondra