“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.”

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate.

I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.

I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

I always tried to stay around .190, with three or four RBI. And I tried to get them all in September. That way I always had something to talk about during the winter.

Depending on the weight and model I was using at that time – I would say eight to 10 cookouts.

I was acting when I was playing baseball.

You know, I was once named Minor League Player of the Year… unfortunately, I had been in the majors for two years at the time.

He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

I spent three of the best years of my life in 10th grade.

I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.

I just grew the hair on my back. Facial hair just wasn’t appealing to me. I liked it on my back, though.

I grew up in the ’60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn’t that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.

There’s nothing bad that accrues from baseball.

For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience.

The people of America care about baseball, not about your squalid little squabbles. Reassume your dignity and remember that you (players during the 1981 strike) are the temporary custodians of an enduring public trust.

Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America’s most privileged version of the level field.

Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods.

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.

You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.