“The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of the bat on the ball.”

When you have somebody that’s smart and you’re not so smart, to me that’s modern day slavery because you’re being dictated to.

If there is any justice in this world, to be a White Sox fan frees a man from any other form of penance.

I think we have the worst name in rock, I really do. It’s the worst name in the world

There are only two seasons – winter and Baseball.

Suffering is overrated. It doesn’t teach you anything.

Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off.

It never ceases to amaze me how many of baseball’s wounds are self-inflicted.

I don’t mind the high price of stardom. I just don’t like the high price of mediocrity.

Though it is a team game by definition, it is actually a series of loosely connected individual efforts.

The most beautiful thing in the world is a ballpark filled with people.

People identify with the swashbuckling individuals, not polite little men who field their position well. Sir Galahad had a big following – but I’ll bet Lancelot had more.

Hating the Yankees isn’t part of my act. It is one of those exquisite times when life and art are in perfect conjunction.

Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober.

I don’t break the rules. I merely test their elasticity.

I try not to break the rules, but merely to test their elasticity.

This is a game to be savored, not gulped. There’s time to discuss everything between pitches or between innings.

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get–and never would get.

Actually I’d always thought he sat in the library with a slim volume of metaphysical poetry until the commissioner called him on the bat phone and summoned him into action. Holy paranormal activity, Nightingale – to the Jag mobile.

I think of myself as ‘catching’ the ball with my bat and letting the pitcher supply the power.