#baseball

People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball. ↗

— Sandy Koufax

#baseball #being #necessary #never #people

Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on. ↗

— Peter Ueberroth

#baseball #certain #commissioners #goes #over

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

— Bill Veeck

#attitude #audience #baseball #crowd #distinctive

I played baseball, and that's pretty much it. Basketball came late, this was, basketball was the sport that I tried to master, I kind of mastered baseball, so basketball was one of those things where I wanted to master this game, so that's why I probably play it the way I do. ↗

— Eric Williams

#basketball #came #game #i #i do

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

#all day #baseball #day #dream #i

I was lucky enough to have the talent to play baseball. That's how I treated my career. I didn't think I was anybody special, anybody different. ↗

— Carl Yastrzemski

#baseball #career #different #enough #how

There are a lot of people who influenced me, nurtured me, helped me along the way. But I can just recall looking back, the first time I got my baseball glove. Put it on the wrong hand, all those kind of things. ↗

— Dave Winfield

#back #baseball #first #first time #glove

The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New England's pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball ↗

— Martin F. Nolan

#red-sox #age

Sometimes a strikeout means that the slugger’s girlfriend just ran off with the UPS driver. Sometimes a muffed ground ball means that the shortstop’s baby daughter has a pain in her head that won’t go away. And handicapping is for amateur golfers, not ballplayers. Pitchers don’t ease off on the cleanup hitter because of the lumps just discovered in his wife’s breast. 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. Perhaps they are. I cherish a theory I once heard propounded by G.Q. Durham that professional baseball is inherently antiwar. The most overlooked cause of war, his theory runs, is that it’s so damned interesting. It takes hard effort, skill, love and a little luck to make times of peace consistently interesting. About all it takes to make war interesting is a life. The appeal of trying to kill others without being killed yourself, according to Gale, is that it brings suspense, terror, honor, disgrace, rage, tragedy, treachery and occasionally even heroism within range of guys who, in times of peace, might lead lives of unmitigated blandness. But baseball, he says, is one activity that is able to generate suspense and excitement on a national scale, just like war. And baseball can only be played in peace. Hence G.Q.’s thesis that pro ball-players—little as some of them may want to hear it—are basically just a bunch of unusually well-coordinated guys working hard and artfully to prevent wars, by making peace more interesting. ↗

— David James Duncan

#peace #art

Owen," Henry said excitedly, "I think Coach wants you to hit for Meccini." Owen closed The Voyage of the Beagle, on which he had recently embarked. "Really?" "Runners on first and second," Rick said. "I bet he wants you to bunt." "What's the bunt sign?" "Two tugs on the left earlobe," Henry told him. "But first he has to give the indicator, which is squeeze the belt. But if he goes to his cap with either hand or says your first name, that's the wipe-off, and then you have to wait and see whether--" "Forget it," Owen said. "I'll just bunt. ↗

— Chad Harbach

#humor #art