Last Updated: March 15, 2023 by Quote.cc Team
Baseball is the most fantastic game ever invented. There are not many other sports that offer you hundreds of games – 162 to be precise – in one season. The combined number of NFL and NBA games does not even come close to the number of baseball games in a year.
The physical nature of baseball requires a high degree of mental preparation, motivation, and alertness. Any baseball player who wants to make it big in this sport has to have a level of motivation and mental preparedness at a very high level. Strolling up to the home plate, focusing all your attention on the pitcher, and seeing the baseball speedily coming at you gives you an adrenaline rush beyond description. Only split seconds later, you hear a loud crack and feel an intense vibration at your bat. Filled with excitement about possibly having hit a home run, you start running as if all hell has broken loose.
It’s challenging to describe how fantastic playing baseball is to those who have never laid hands on ball and bat. Often, when someone plays baseball, they’ve played it their entire life. It becomes a part of them just as a partner, pet, or child would. Baseball is more than just America’s pastime—it’s life, and it’s symbolic of everything significant, from teamwork to the importance of recreation. Whether you’re a player, fan, or coach, baseball can impact your life for the better, bringing your inner child out, no matter how many years have passed.
In baseball, there’s nothing like a good motivational quote to get you going. If you’re in need of some inspiration or would like to take a stroll down memory lane, this list of baseball quotes is just what you need. Many of the following statements originate from baseball players and coaches. As such, these individuals have developed a great passion for the most beautiful game on this planet. When you read their words, you know that these individuals live and breathe baseball. These inspirational baseball quotes will have you thinking about all the intricacies of this beautiful sport. Ask any baseball player, and they’ll let you know that baseball is a thinking person’s game.
Since there is such an abundance of baseball quotes, we divided them up into categories. Player’s quotes, coaches and catcher quotes, pitcher quotes, movie quotes. Keep an eye out to see if your favourite baseball quote made a list. Let’s get started:
300 Best Baseball Quotes From Players, Movies, & More
Top 10 Baseball Quotes
“They give you a round bat and they throw you a round ball and they tell you to hit it square.” – Willie Stargell
“I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.” – Walt Whitman
“No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined.” – Paul Gallico
“You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.” – Earl Weaver
“How can you not be romantic about baseball?” – Moneyball
“Baseball was, is, and always will be the best game in the world to me.” – Babe Ruth
“You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.” – Earl Weaver
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” – Rogers Hornsby
“Man this is baseball. You gotta stop thinking, just have fun.” – The Sandlot
“I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.” – Pete Rose
See also: 160 Most Motivational Softball Quotes
What Is Baseball?
“Baseball is dull only to dull minds.” – Red Barber
“Baseball is 90% mental, and the other half is physical.” – Yogi Berra
“Baseball is the only major sport that appears backward in a mirror.” – George Carlin
“Baseball is almost the only neat thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off.” – Bill Veeck
“Baseball is a good thing. Always was, always will be.” – Stephen King
“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.”
“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.” – Jim Murray
“Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.” – Joe Garagiola
“When baseball is no longer fun, it’s no longer a game.” – Joe DiMaggio
“Baseball is a simple game. If you have good players and if you keep them in the right frame of mind, then the manager is a success.” – Sparky Anderson
“Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem.” – Saul Steinberg
“Reading about baseball is a lot more interesting than reading about chess, but you have to wonder: Don’t any of these guys ever go fishing.” – Dave Shiflett
“Baseball is one of the most beautiful games. It is. It is a very Zen-like game.” – Jim Jarmusch
“Baseball is an individual game, but it should never be a personal game.” – Pete Rose
“Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.” – Jackie Robinson
“The best possible thing in baseball is winning the World Series. The second best thing is losing the World Series.” – Tommy Lasorda
“Baseball is a game dominated by vital ghosts; it’s a fraternity, like no other we have of the active and the no longer so, the living and the dead.” – Richard Gilman
“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.” – Ted Williams
“Baseball is the only game left for people. To play basketball, you have to be 7 feet 6 inches. To play football, you have to be the same width.” – Bill Veeck
“Baseball isn’t a business; it’s more like a disease.” – Walter F. O’Malley
“Baseball is more than a game to me; it’s a religion.” – Bill Klem
“Baseball is like driving; it’s the one who gets home safely that counts.” – Tommy Lasorda
“Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.” – Jackie Robinson
“Baseball, to me, is still the national pastime because it is a summer game. I feel that almost all Americans are summer people, that summer is what they think of when they think of their childhood. I think it stirs up an incredible emotion within people.” – Steve Busby
“You never know what’s going to happen… And that’s the fun of it!! That’s what baseball’s all about!.” – Keiichi Arawi
“Baseball? It’s just a game — as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit, it symbolizes. It’s a sport, business — and sometimes even religion.” – Ernie Harwell
“A game of great charm in the adoption of mathematical measurements to the timing of human movements, the exactitudes and adjustments of physical ability to hazardous chance. The speed of the legs, the ability of the body, the grace of the swing, the elusiveness of the slide — these is the features that make Americans everywhere forget the last syllable of a man’s last name or the pigmentation of his skin.” – Branch Rickey
“Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens.” – Cal Ripken, Jr
“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.” – Bob Feller
“Baseball isn’t just a game. It’s life being played out on a field – a field of dreams – on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all – where men become boys and boys become men, all speaking one universal language without uttering a single word.” – Tom Tatum
“That’s one of the great gifts of this, the greatest of all games, baseball: it allows you, still, to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn’t begun to batter optimism.” – Mike Barnicle
Short Baseball Quotes
“No matter what I talk about, I always get back to baseball.” – Connie Mack
“Fenway is the essence of baseball.” – Tom Seaver
“It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” – Yogi Berra
“I see great things in baseball.” – Walt Whitman
“I just want to play baseball.” – David Ortiz
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” – Babe Ruth
“It ain’t like football. You can’t make up no trick plays.” – Yogi Berra
“I was born to play baseball.” – Roberto Clemente
“It was all I lived for, to play baseball.” – Mickey Mantle
“A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.” – Humphrey Bogart
“I don’t rate them; I just hit them.” – Willie Mays
“I’m the straw that stirs the drink.” – Reggie Jackson
“Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?”
“This is like deja vu all over again.”
“Swing hard, in case they throw the ball where you’re swinging.” – Duke Snider
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth
“Defense, to me, is the key to playing baseball.” – Willie Mays
“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” – Babe Ruth
“In baseball, you don’t know anything.” – Yogi Berra
“Baseball changes over the years. It gets milder.” – Babe Ruth
“Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder – and nothing more.” – Philip Roth
“You can’t second guess baseball. You can’t second guess yourself.” – Mariano Rivera
“Slump? I ain’t in no slump. I just ain’t hitting.”
“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” – John Wooden
“Remember these two things: Play hard and have fun.” – Tony Gwynn
Famous Baseball Quotes
“I like to see the difference between good and evil as a kind of like the foul line at a baseball game. It’s very thin, it’s made of something very flimsy like lime, and if you cross it, it really starts to blur where fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair.” – Harlan Coben
“Baseball players have such a bad rap of, like, we don’t work out, or we’re not strong or this or that. Guys work so hard in baseball, it’s incredible. But people don’t know that.” – Bryce Harper
“I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it.” – Rogers Hornsby
“Your job as a baseball player is to come to the park ready to play every day, and the manager, it’s his job to make those decisions about who plays.” – Cal Ripken, Jr.
“When I played ball, I didn’t play for fun. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It’s a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, the survival of the fittest.” – Ty Cobb
“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” – A. Bartlett Giamatti
“More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.” – Thomas Boswell
“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
“There have been only two geniuses in the world. Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.” – Tallulah Bankhead
“Analyzing baseball yields many numbers of interest and value. Yet far and away – far, far and away- the most critical number in all of baseball is 3: the three outs that define an inning. Until the third out, anything is possible; after it, nothing is.” – Eric Walker
“My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling bad or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging.” – Hank Aaron
“With baseball, it’s simple. There’s no mystery to what happens on the field because everything has a label – full count, earned run, perfect game – and there’s a certain amount of comfort in this terminology. There’s no room for confusion.” – Jennifer E. Smith
“It was one at-bat during October 1975 that defined his [Joe Morgan’s] place in baseball history and secured the legacy of the Big Red Machine, all with one swing.” – Tucker Elliot
“We picked the Red Sox because they lose. If you root for something that loses for 86 years, you’re a pretty good fan. You don’t have to win everything to be a fan of something.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate, trying to hit a home run. I said, ‘Sure, every time.’” – Mickey Mantle
“Like those special afternoons in summer when you go to Yankee Stadium at two o’clock in the afternoon for an eight o’clock game. It’s so big, so empty and so silent that you can almost hear the sounds that aren’t there.” – Ray Miller
“It is dangerous to spring to obvious conclusions about baseball or, for that matter, ballplayers. Baseball is not an obvious game.” – Roger Kahn
“The great thing about baseball is when you’re done, you’ll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I’ll tell them I had amnesia.” – Sparky Anderson
“One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in awhile, you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something.” – Nolan Ryan
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.” – Lou Gehrig
“I believe in the Church of Baseball. I tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary, and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance.” – Ron Shelton
“What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game… There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife’s fidelity and his mother’s respectability.” – George Bernard Shaw
Funny Baseball Quotes
“A knuckleball is a curveball that doesn’t give a damn.” – Jimmy Cannon
“Does it disturb anyone else that ‘The Los Angeles Angels’ baseball team translates directly to ‘The The Angels Angels’?” – Neil DeGrasse Tyson
“It is well to remember that a Martian observing his first baseball game would be quite correct in concluding that the last two words of the National Anthem are: PLAY BALL.” – Herbert H. Paper
“A baseball fan has the digestive apparatus of a billy goat. He can, and does, devour any set of diamond statistics with an insatiable appetite and then nuzzles hungrily for more.” – Arthur Daley
“Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in blackjack.” – Adam Morrow
“I don’t know why people like the home run so much. A home run is over as soon as it starts… The triple is the most exciting play of the game. A triple is like meeting a woman who excites you, spending the evening talking and getting more excited, then taking her home. It drags on and on. You’re never sure how it’s going to turn out.” – George Foster
“The Yankees don’t pay me to win every day – just two out of three.” – Casey Stengel
“Confucius say: Baseball wrong — a man with four balls cannot walk..”
“They say some of my stars drink whiskey. But I have found that the ones who drink milkshakes don’t win many ball games.” – Fred McMane
“The place was always cold, and I got the feeling that the fans would have enjoyed baseball more if it had been played with a hockey puck.” – Andre Dawson
“A critic once characterized baseball as six minutes of action crammed into two-and-one-half hours.” – Ray Fitzgerald
“Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension, but football, basketball, and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns.” – John Leonard
“A baseball game is twice as much fun if you’re seeing it on the company’s time.” – William C. Feather
“Nobody deserves to go to the World Series more than the Chicago Cubs. But they can’t go because that would spoil their custom of never going. It is an irreconcilable paradox.” – Bill Bryson
“I’m convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile.” – Tom Clark
“Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the gods.” – A. Bartlett Giamatti, former Commissioner of Baseball
“If there are any curses left in baseball, they are all on the north side of Chicago.” – Tucker Elliot
“It’s a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan, it’s when you discover that your wife left you in May.” – Denis Norden
“Baseball hasn’t forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers’ games, and I haven’t lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.” – Bob Uecker
“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
“To have some idea what it’s like, stand in the outside lane of a motorway, get your mate to drive his car at you at 95 mph, and wait until he’s 12 yards away before you decide which way to jump.” – Geoffrey Boycott
“That’s baseball, and it’s my game. Y’ know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave ’em there. You yell like crazy for your guys. It’s good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops. Pretty girls, lots of ’em.” – Humphrey Bogart
“In baseball, you train the whole body, except for the hip and eyes.” – Rickey Henderson
“When they knock you down, you not only have to get up, but you have to make it clear that you won’t be knocked down a second time.” – Carl Yastrzemski
“Every hitter likes fastballs, just like everybody likes ice cream. But you don’t like it when someone’s stuffing it into you by the gallon. That’s what it feels like when you throw Nolan Ryan balls.” – Reggie Jackson
“I was such a dangerous hitter; I even got intentional walks in batting practice.” – Casey Stengel
“Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not everything.” – Toby Harrah
“Being with a woman all night never hurt any professional baseball player. It’s staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.” – Casey Stengel
“There are three things you can do in a baseball game. You can win, or you can lose, or it can rain.” – Casey Stengel
“It’s no coincidence that female interest in the sport of baseball has increased greatly since the ballplayers swapped those wonderful old-time baggy flannel uniforms for leotards.” – Mike Royko
“Putting lights in Wrigley Field is like putting aluminum siding on the Sistine Chapel.” – Roger Simon
“That moment, when you first lay eyes on that field — The Monster, the triangle, the scoreboard, the light tower Big Mac bashed, the left-field grass where Ted (Williams) once roamed — it all defines to me why baseball is such a magical gam.” – Jayson Stark
“If you have a bad day in baseball, and start thinking about it, you will have ten more.” – Sammy Sosa
“A baseball park is the one place where a man’s wife doesn’t mind his getting excited over somebody else’s curves.” – Brendan Francis
“Spread the diaper in the position of the diamond with you at-bat. Then fold second base down to home and set the baby on the pitcher’s mound. Put first base and third together, bring up home plate and pin the three together. Of course, in case of rain, you gotta call the game and start all over again.” – Jimmy Piersall
“Ideally, the umpire should combine the integrity of a Supreme Court judge, the physical agility of an acrobat, the endurance of Job, and the imperturbability of Buddha.” – “The Villains in Blue
“Be on time. Bust your butt. Play smart. And have some laugh while you’re at It.” – Whitey Herzog
“Pro-rated at 500 at-bats a year that means that for two years out of the fourteen I played, I never even touched the ball.” – Norm Cash
“All requests for leave of absence on account of grandmother’s funeral, sore throat, housecleaning, lame back, turning of the ringer, headaches, brainstorm, cousin’s wedding, general ailments or other legitimate excuses must be made out and handed to the boss not later than 10 a.m. on the morning of the game.”
Inspirational Baseball Quotes
“Sometimes, in a tight game with runners on, digging in at short, ready to break with the ball, a peace I’d never felt before would paralyze the diamond. For a moment of eternal stillness, I felt as if I were cocked at the very heart of the Midwest.” – Stuart Dybek
“Sandy’s fastball was so fast; some batters would start to swing as he was on his way to the mound.” – Jim Murray
“In baseball, you can’t kill the clock. You’ve got to give the other man his chance. That’s why this is the greatest game.” – Earl Weaver
“The one thing I always said to myself was that when baseball started to feel more like a job, it would be time to move forward.” – Derek Jeter
“Doctors tell me I have the body of a thirty-year-old. I know I have the brain of a fifteen-year-old. If you’ve got both, you can play baseball.” – Pete Rose
“Positive expectations are important for your baseball success because you tend to get what you expect.” – Felicity Luckey
“In the 8th inning, you can’t hear the roar of the 9th, all you can do to hold yourself together and trust.” – Jim Abbott
“If you have the right mental attitude, nothing can stop you from achieving your baseball goals.” – Felicity Luckey
“That’s the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball.” – Bill Veeck
“When they start the game, they don’t yell, ‘Work ball.’ They say, ‘Play ball..’” – Willie Stargell
“There are three types of baseball players: Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens.” – Tommy Lasorda
“Basketball, hockey and track meets are action heaped upon action, climax upon climax, until the onlooker’s responses become deadened. Baseball is for the leisurely afternoons of summer and for the unchanging dreams.” – Roger Kahn
“Believe in your baseball dreams, and you’re halfway to reaching your baseball goals.” – Felicity Luckey
“Progress always involves risks. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” – Frederick B. Wilcox
“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
“The more you play baseball, the less depends on your athletic ability. It’s a mental war more than anything.” – Alex Rodriguez
“The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration.” – Babe Didrikson Zaharias
“No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are, you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference.” – Tommy Lasorda
“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
“It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball’s wounds are self-inflicted.” – Bill Veeck
“Baseball players with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” – Felicity Luckey
“Baseball goals are attained not by strength but by perseverance.” – Felicity Luckey
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there is no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.” – Derek Jeter
Baseball Love Quotes
“I think about baseball when I wake up in the morning. I think about it all day, and I dream about it at night. The only time I don’t think about it is when I’m playing it.” – Carl Yastrzemski
“I chose baseball because, to me, baseball is the best game of all.” – Dave Winfield
“I love to play baseball. I’m a baseball player. I’ve always been a baseball player. I’m still a baseball player. That’s who I am.” – Ryne Sandberg
“Back in my day, we didn’t think about money as much. We enjoyed playing the game. We loved baseball. I didn’t think about anybody else but the Cardinals.” – Stan Musial
“I’ve fallen in love with baseball.” – Nick Jonas
“No one loves the numbers more than I do, but numbers don’t measure everything, especially when it comes to evaluating defense. And in the end, I am going to trust Buck Showalter’s eyes more than a set of statistics devised by someone who never played the game.” – Tim Kurkjian
“Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball — you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that.” – Nomar Garciaparra
“Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.” – Pat Conroy
“There ought to be some other means of reckoning quality in this the best and loveliest of games; the scoreboard is an ass.” – Neville Cardus
“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” – Yogi Berra
“Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it’s about love, integrity, and respect.” – Pat Gillick
“The other sports are just sports. Baseball is love.” – Bryant Gumbel
“Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it’s business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don’t love what you’re doing and you can’t give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You’ll be an old man before you know it.” – Al Lopez
“When I was coming up, I just wanted to play baseball, and I’m doing what I love to do most. How can I feel pressure doing what I love to do?” – Miguel Cabrera
“I’ve always loved baseball. Ever since 6th grade, I was geared to becoming a baseball writer.” – Scott Miller
“When you step into the batter’s box, have nothing on your mind except baseball.” – Pete Rose
“If I didn’t make it in baseball, I won’t have made it workin’. I didn’t like to work.” – Yogi Berra
“Close don’t count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.” – Frank Robinson
“I stand by my belief that individual performances are the most important part of baseball.” – Earl Weaver
“Deep down, it’s all baseball, no matter what kind of geometrical shape you play it with.” – Vernon D. Burns
“The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It’s the only thing I know.” – Mickey Mantle
“There’s almost nothing worse than spending an entire day anticipating watching a Yankees vs. Red Sox game, only to have the score by 9-0 in the third inning.” – Tucker Elliot
Baseball Coach Quotes
“To not look at the data is foolish, but to look at the data as having all the answers is even more foolish. It is a collision of new-school statistics and statisticians against old-school managers, coaches, and instructors. Neither side is right, neither is wrong; there is so much to be gained from listening to both sides.” – Tim Kurkjian
“Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character.” – John Wooden
“The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love.” – Bryant Gumbel
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi
“The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” – Vince Lombardi
“There are three types of baseball players: Those who make it happen, those… There are three types of baseball players: Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens.” – Tommy Lasorda
“It gets late early out there.” – Yogi Berra
“If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace… If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra
“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
“Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you… Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” – Tom Landry
“Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in… Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.” – Babe Ruth
“If you don’t know where you are, a map won’t help.” – Watts Humphrey
“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.” – John Wooden
“Every hitter likes fastballs, just like everybody likes ice cream. But you don’t like it when someone’s stuffing it into you by the gallon. That’s what it feels like when Nolan Ryan’s thrown balls by you.” – Reggie Jackson
“Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.” – Yogi Berra
“I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance.” – Ron Shelton
“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooden
“What are we at the park for except to win? I’d trip my mother. I’d help her up, brusher her off, tell her I’m sorry. But mother don’t make it to third.” – Leo Durocher
“Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.” – Pat Riley
“Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.” – Yogi Berra
“My coaching staff gets to go to the World Series. From a financial perspective that’s great for coaches because baseball coaches in the Major League level don’t really make that much money. People don’t realize that.” – Joe Maddon
“The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong bullpen.” – Bob Lemon
“It’s hard to get lost if you don’t know where you’re going.” – Jim Jarmusch
“If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.” – Yogi Berra
“I posted some story about the Arizona State baseball coach getting into a fight with an autograph hound, and it was a disastrous thing. The guy rescinded his story. It proved to me that I’m not cut out to be a proper journalist. I’m much better sitting around and making fun of journalists and telling them what terrible journalists they are than being an actual journalist.” – Drew Magary
“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.” – John Wooden
“The other teams could make trouble for us if they win.” – Yogi Berra
“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” – Vince Lombardi
“Football is like life – it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.” – Vince Lombardi
“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.” – George Will
“Never permit the pressure to exceed the pleasure.” – Joe Maddon
“I have discovered in 20 years of moving around a ballpark, that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats.” – Bill Veeck
“If you don’t know where you are currently standing, you’re dead.” – Samuel Beckett
“When Steve and I die, we are going to be buried in the same cemetery, 60-feet 6-inches apart.” – Tim McCarver
“Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.” – Lou Brock
“The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.” – Joe Paterno
“The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.” – John Madden
“We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.” – Vince Lombardi
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” – Rogers Hornsby
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” – John Wooden
“Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting.” – Yogi Berra
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” – John Wooden
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” – Seneca the Younger
“Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit. Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.” – Vince Lombardi
“Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” – Vince Lombardi
“Nobody wanted me. Scouts told me to go to school, to forget baseball. Coaches said, ‘You’re never going to make it.’ I appreciated their honesty, because I think when someone tells you something you may not like, you have to use that as fuel for motivation.” – Mike Piazza
“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
Baseball Catcher Quotes
“There are only five things you can do in baseball – run, throw, catch, hit, and hit with power.” – Leo Durocher
“Baseball really is a glorified game of throw and catch. And if you don’t have guys who throw it really well, you can’t compete for long.” – Tucker Elliot
“I do what I’ve trained my whole life to do. I watch the ball. I keep my eye on the ball. I never stop watching. I watch it as it sails past me and lands in the catcher’s mitt, a perfect and glorious strike three.” – Barry Lyga
“A catcher must want to catch. He must make up his mind that it isn’t the terrible job it is painted, and that he isn’t going to say every day, ‘Why, oh why with so many other positions in baseball did I take up this one.” – Bill Dickey
“The best way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until the ball stops rolling and then pick it up.” – Bob Uecker
“I do what I’ve trained my whole life to do. I watch the ball. I keep my eye on the ball. I never stop watching. I watch it as it sails past me and lands in the catcher’s mitt, a perfect and glorious strike three.” – Barry Lyga
“There has always been a saying in baseball that you can’t make a hitter, but I think you can improve a hitter. More than you can improve a fielder. More mistakes are made hitting than in any other part of the game.” – Ted Williams
“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.” – Dave Barry
Baseball Pitcher Quotes
“Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” – Warren Spahn
“To a pitcher, a base hit is the perfect example of negative feedback.” – Steve Holley
“No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.” – Casey Stengel
“Life will always throw you curves, just keep fouling them off… the right pitch will come, but when it does, be prepared to run the bases.” – Rick Maksian
“You don’t save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain.” – Leo Durocher
“Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens.” – Cal Ripken, Jr.
“He hits my changeup. He hits my curveball. He hits my slider. I’ve run out of pitches to throw him. I try to pick the spots where he’s going to hit his home runs.” – Brian Bohannon
“I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it.” – Sandy Koufax
“It’s pitching, hitting, and a defense that wins. Any two can win. All three make you unbeatable.” – Joe Garagiola
“The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the hitter is timid, he has to remind the hitter he’s timid.” – Don Drysdale
“My dad taught me to switch-hit. He and my grandfather, who was left-handed, pitched to me every day after school in the back yard. I batted lefty against my dad and righty against my granddad.” – Mickey Mantle
“The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three-run homers.” – Earl Weaver
Baseball Team Quotes
“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.” – Ernie Harwell
“My job is to give my team a chance to win.” – Nolan Ryan
“Baseball is a team game but, at the same time, it’s a very lonely game: unlike in soccer or basketball, where players roam around, in baseball, everyone has their little plot of the field to tend. When the action comes to you, the spotlight is on you, but no one can help you.” – Chad Harbach
“You can talk about teamwork on a baseball team, but I’ll tell you, it takes teamwork when you have 2,900 men stationed on the U.S.S. Alabama in the South Pacific.” – Bob Feller
“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” – Babe Ruth
“A well-run restaurant is like a winning baseball team. It makes the most of every crew member’s talent and takes advantage of every split-second opportunity to speed up service.” – David Ogilvy
“Building a baseball team is like building a house. You look for the best architects, the best builders – and then you let them do their jobs.” – Pat Gillick
“I bet on the game of baseball, and I bet on my team, even the mistakes I made, I have to take a different look at someone betting against their team… that’s throwing the game.” – Pete Rose
“Baseball is a team sport played by individuals for themselves.” – Joe Torre
“I’m going to do my best to help the team play hard and help the team win… I’m just coming to play baseball.” – Asdrubal Cabrera
“Baseball is the only sport I know that when you’re on offense, the other team controls the ball.” – Ken Harrelson
“We’re the best team in baseball, but not by much.” – Sparky Anderson
“Always play a game with somebody, never against them. Always win a game, never beat an opponent.” – Andrew Bailey
“I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all.” – George Steinbrenner, upon buying the Yankees in 1973
“How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.” – Lou Holtz
“They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them.” – Paul Auster
“The season starts too early and finishes too late, and there are too many games in between.” – Bill Veeck
“Really, it’s not harder to train for them because once baseball starts, you play every day almost.” – Bo Jackson
Baseball Movie Quotes
“Strikeouts are boring — besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls. More democratic.” – From the movie Bull Durham
“Pick me out a winner, Bobby.” – The Natural
“Juuuust a bit outside.” – Major League
“There’s no crying in baseball!” – A League of Their Own
“Anybody who uses computers doesn’t know a damn thing about this game.” – Trouble with the Curve
“We’re not athletes, we’re baseball players!” – Mr. Baseball
“You know what we get to do today, Brooks? We get to play baseball.” – The Rookie
“I’ve tried ’em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.” – Bull Durham
“All the arguing in the world can’t change the decision of the umpire.” – The Pride of the Yankees
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.” – A League of Their Own
“I’d wake up at night with the smell of the ball park in my nose, the cool of the grass on my feet… The thrill of the grass.” – Field of Dreams
“I used to believe, I still do, that if you give something your all it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, as long as you’ve risked everything put everything out there. And I’ve done that. I did it my entire life.” – For Love of the Game
“Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” – The Pride of the Yankees
“You just got lesson number one: don’t think; it can only hurt the ball club.” – Bull Durham
“If you build it, he will come.” – Field of Dreams
“This quitting thing, it’s a hard habit to break once you start.” – The Bad News Bears
“You’re the best thing to happen to baseball since Cracker Jack!” – Rookie of the Year
“How can you not get romantic about baseball?” – Moneyball
“I’d sell my soul for one long ball hitter.” – Damn Yankees!
“God, I love baseball.” – The Natural
“You’re killing me, Smalls!” – The Sandlot
“Man, this is baseball, you gotta stop thinking! Just have fun.” – The Sandlot
“You get out there, and the stands are full and everybody’s cheerin’. It’s like everybody in the world come to see you. And inside of that there’s the players, they’re yakkin’ it up. The pitcher throws and you look for that pill… suddenly there’s nothing else in the ballpark but you and it. Sometimes, when you feel right, there’s a groove there, and the bat just eases into it and meets that ball. When the bat meets that ball and you feel that ball just give, you know it’s going to go a long way. Damn, if you don’t feel like you’re going to live forever.” – Eight Men Out
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.” – Field of Dreams
“You think losing is fun?” – Moneyball
“We’re both going to have to pray much harder!” – Long Gone
Baseball Quotes For Kids
“Playing baseball for pay – a home run. Teaching kids to play the game – priceless.” – Jack Perconte
“I love baseball. The game allowed me the influence to impact kids positively. This gives me a chance to talk to some social issues.” – Cal Ripken, Jr.
“Normal people have an incredible lack of empathy. They have good emotional empathy, but they don’t have much empathy for the autistic kid who is screaming at the baseball game because he can’t stand the sensory overload. Or the autistic kid having a meltdown in the school cafeteria because there’s too much stimulation.” – Temple Grandin
“Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.” – Bob Lemon
“You know it’s summertime at Candlestick when the fog rolls in, the wind kicks up, and you see the center fielder slicing open a caribou to survive the ninth inning.” – Bob Scarlette
“You have to have a lot of little boy in you to play baseball for a living.” – Roy Campanella
“Wives of ballplayers, when they teach their children their prayers, should instruct them how to say: ‘God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, God bless Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth has upped Daddy’s paycheck by fifteen to forty percent..’” – Waite Hoyt
“What does a mama bear on the pill have in common with the World Series? No cubs.” – Harry Caray
“I don’t love baseball. I don’t love most of today’s players. I don’t love the owners. I do love, however, the baseball that is in the heads of baseball fans. I love the dreams of glory of 10-year-olds, the reminiscences of 70-year-olds. The greatest baseball arena is in our heads, what we bring to the games, to the telecasts, to reading newspaper reports.” – Stan Isaacs
Baseball Quotes About Life
“A man has to have goals – for a day, for a lifetime – and that was mine: to have people say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.’” – Ted Williams
“To me, baseball has always been a reflection of life. Like life, it adjusts. It survives everything.” – Willie Stargell
“Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.” – Paul Auster
“A man has to have goals – for a day, for a lifetime – and that was mine, to have people say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.” – Ted Willams
“Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” – Barry Switzer
“Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is appreciated.”
“I’ve come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life are good friends and a good bullpen.” – Bob Lemon
“Worrying about things you can’t control is a waste both on the baseball field and in life.” – Tom Swyers
“A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” – Jim Bouton
“Baseball is more than a game. It’s like life played out on a field.” – Juliana Hatfield
“It is the life-affirming genius of baseball that the short can pummel the tall, the rotund can make fools of the sleek, and no matter how far down you find yourself in the bottom of the ninth you can always pull out a miracle.” – Bill Vaughn
“Baseball is not life. It is a fiction, a metaphor. And a ballplayer is a man who agrees to uphold that metaphor as though lives were at stake.” – David James Duncan
“Baseball life is a tough life for the family.” – Nolan Ryan
In Conclusion
At its core, baseball is a simple game – the objective is to hit the ball with a bat and score runs by running around a series of bases. But the nuances of the game are what make it truly fascinating. From the intricacies of pitching to the art of fielding and base-running, there are endless facets to explore and appreciate.
One of the unique aspects of baseball is its connection to history. From the legends of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to the recent exploits of players like Derek Jeter and Mike Trout, baseball has a rich and storied past that inspires new generations of fans.
Despite its enduring popularity, baseball faces its fair share of challenges in the modern era. From concerns over player safety and performance-enhancing drugs to debates over the pace of play and the role of analytics, many questions face the future of the sport.
But regardless of the challenges ahead, one thing is clear – baseball will always hold a special place in the hearts of its fans. Whether you’re a die-hard fan or a casual observer, there’s something about the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, and the thrill of the game that captures the imagination and leaves a lasting impression.
We hope you enjoyed this list of inspirational baseball quotes. Did you get some of your own that isn’t featured? Let us know in the comments below, and we’ll add them to our list!