Quotes about Baseball

If the family were a container, it would be a nest, an enduring nest, loosely woven, expansive, and open. If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable—each segment distinct. If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles. If the family were a sport, it would be baseball: a long, slow, nonviolent game that is never over until the last out. If the family were a building, it would be an old but solid structure that contains human history, and appeals to those who see the carved moldings under all the plaster, the wide plank floors under the linoleum, the possibilities.

It's not enough to swing at the ball. You've got to loosen your girdle and really let the ball have it!

Bernard Loomer's father was a sea captain. He was acquainted with his small place in an uncontrollable nature. In a talk in 1974 Loomer described his father's instructions about the uses of a baseball glove. The father had just overheard his son's sandlot complaints about the thinness of a glove inherited from his older brothers. When his father asked him what a baseball glove was for, young Loomer had said that it was to protect the hand. In the words of Bernard Loomer in his sixties, his father replied: Son, I never have played baseball, but it seems to me you ought to be able to catch the ball bare-handed. The way I look at it, you use a glove not to protect your hand, but to give you a bigger hand to help catch balls that are more difficult to reach. I assume that in this as in all walks of life there are tricks to the trade. I suggest you learn how to catch with that glove for two reasons. First, because you are not going to get another one, and second, because you don't need protection from life. You need a glove to give you a bigger hand to catch baseballs you might otherwise miss. As the decade of the 1970s progressed, Loomer reflected increasingly on the fact that what you might otherwise miss [in theology] was irrational, even evil, but [that it] must be caught anyway. Loomer grew increasingly dissatisfied with those who seemed to restrict their reach-even Whitehead was faulted. And increasingly it appeared that Christian theology was the theology Loomer had-that he was not going to get another one-and so, although it was thin in places, he attempted to use the one theology he had, to catch all he could. [This] suggests the meaning of Loomer's special term, "size." Size signifies "the volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity."

Sure, it's nice to win. But there's only one thing that's important to me and that's the money we're going to get, win or lose. . . . I don't love baseball, I like it. And to me, baseball means money, and that's all I care about.

Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really appreciated.

Baseball breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the 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 fall alone.

In the great department store of life, baseball is the toy department.

In baseball we keep an accurate record of the hits, runs, and errors of each individual player. Life is also a great game, and in life the statistics are much more important than they are in a ball game. One of our human weaknesses in life is that when we are losing the game, we don't always like to keep track of the score. Certainly we are not very enthusiastic about putting the errors down on the paper, and most people don't even know what their individual batting average is. This makes our success much more difficult both to figure out and to attain . . . we cannot separate our success from our statistics. If each day we could see what God writes in his book about our works for that day, it would certainly motivate us to make better scores.

Baseball is a simple game. If you have good players, and you keep them in the right frame of mind, the manager is a success. The players make the manager. It's never the other way. Managing is not running, hitting, or stealing. Managing is getting your players to put out one hundred percent year after year. A player does not have to like a manager and he does not have to respect a manager. All he has to do is obey the rules. Talent is one thing. Being able to go from spring to October is another. You just got caught in a position where you have no position. [Explaining why he was forced to cut a utility player]

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party.

The difference between politics and baseball is that in baseball, when you get caught stealing, you're out.

If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like.

Philadelphia Phillies baseball star Mike Schmidt grew up in a sleepy, tree-lined, middle-class neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio. At the age of five he climbed a tree in his backyard and grabbed a 4000-volt power line. Knocked unconscious by the shock, he fell limp to the ground. The impact restarted his heart. "I've never thought that I was given a second chance because I was supposed to do something great in my life, " Schmidt says. "But I've looked back and wondered why that stupid little kid didn't die. Maybe that's the reason I've always worked to hard, because I don't want to think that I wasted that chance."

People think [baseball players] make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don't realize that most of us only make $500,000.

If you're a singer, you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Consider the many special delights a lawn affords: soft mattress for a creeping baby; worm hatchery for a robin; croquet or badminton court; baseball diamond; restful green perspectives leading the eye to a background of flower beds, shrubs, or hedge; green shadows - "This lawn, a carpet all alive/With shadows flung from leaves' - as changing and as spellbinding as the waves of the sea, whether flecked with sunlight under trees of light foliage, like elm and locust, or deep, dark, solid shade, moving slowly as the tide, under maple and oak. This carpet!

All the courage and competitiveness of Jackie Robinson affects me to this day. If I patterned my life after anyone it was him, not because he was the first black baseball player in the majors but because he was a hero.

A gentleman walking along the street passed a vacant lot where some boys were playing baseball. He asked what the score was and was told,"We're behind eighteen to nothing." "Well," said the gentleman, "I must say you don't look very discouraged." "Discouraged?" the boy said, puzzled, "We're not discouraged. We haven't come to bat yet!"

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game.

If you are worshipping false gods-such as football, baseball, gold, tennis, or money or technology or automobiles or houses or gold or silver-and you can tell what a man worships by what he does on Sunday-repent and start worshipping the true and living God, the maker of heaven and earth and all things that in them are.

I spent twenty-two seasons playing professional baseball. Naturally, success in that field is measured by batting averages, number of home runs and RBIs, fielding averages, ERAs and other statistics. Fame, notoriety and the bright lights fade quickly. To me, true success in life would be to develop both physically and spiritually to our fullest and to endure to the end!

I'm old, old enough to play baseball or football. I'm not eight yet. My Mom told me when you start baseball, you aren't going to be able to run that fast because you had an operation. I told Mom I wouldn't need to run fast. When I play baseball, I'll just hit them out of the park. Then I'll be able to walk.

For the parents of a Little Leaguer, a baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown into innings.

I have seen boys on my baseball team go into slumps and never come out of them, and I have seen others snap right out and come back better than ever. I guess more players lick themselves than are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself. Training counts. You can't win any game unless you are ready to win.

. . . whether your name is Gehrig, or Ripken, DiMaggio, or Robinson, or that of some youngster who picks up his bat or puts on his glove, you are challenged by the game of baseball to do your very best, day in and day out, and that's all I've ever tried to do