“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.”

I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn… If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year’s time.

Sympathy is something that shouldn’t be bestowed on the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.

Though there is growing division among the Ukrainian military ranks as to loyalty in this revolution, the possibility of violence looms over the entire situation.

If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.

Where the ball went was up to heaven. Sometimes I threw the ball clean up into the stands.

Life is full of painful events, and people who have lost their way and hurt others. Our pain is not lessened when we respond with hatred. In fact, the opposite occurs:

The soldiers that didn’t come back were the heroes. It’s a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you’re a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you’re a survivor.

I would rather beat the Yankees regularly than pitch a no hit game.

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.

Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.

My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don’t think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.

Trying to sneak a fastball by Ted Williams was like trying to sneak a sunbeam by a rooster in the morning.

As much as we disliked the Yankees, fans and players alike, they were good for baseball. They consistently unsuccessful teams like the Browns, Senators, and A’s paid a lot of their bills with those big crowds that poured through the gates when the Yankees came to town.

Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant.

You figure they cheat at the ballpark, they’ll cheat on the golf course, they’ll cheat in business, and anything else in life. Players may laugh about it and say it’s funny, but right down in their heart, they don’t think it’s funny at all, and they have no respect for a person who cheats.

It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball

I never took the game home with me. I always left it in some bar.

Every baseball crowd, like every theatre audience, has its own distinctive attitude and atmosphere.

The two most important things in life are good friends and a strong bullpen.

I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.

I always wanted to do a baseball book; I love baseball. The problem is that a very large part of my following is in non-baseball playing countries.

Writing is like anything – baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.

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.