Richie Ashburn hit .350 in 1958 to win the batting title over Willie Mays. The Phillies sent him a contract with a $2,500 cut in salary for 1959.The Philies GM John Quinn hemmed and hawed and finally came up with an absurd reason: Ashburn didn't hit the ball 'far enough'.

"Well, if I hit them any farther they'd be outs."
-Richie Ashburn

And Bob Ueker on the "Tonight Show":

Carson asked what it was like when Niekro was pitching.

"I always thought it was a 'Catch-22'."
"How's that?" asked Johnny
"It's what I would do to every 100 pitches."

Yogi Berra "Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical."

Ernie Banks "Let's play two".

I agree, anything Bob Uecker says makes me fall on the floor.

Nobody brought up the Krukker? "I'm not an athlete, Ma'am, I'm a baseball player."

Ken

John Kruk on how to improve baseball:

"No Mascots on the field. Shoot anything that looked like it escaped from Sesame Street."

John Kruk on whether he was in shape after being on the DL:

"To run a marathon? Hell,no. To play baseball? F**k yeah."

And don't forget Rickey:

“If they want to pay me like Mike Gallego, I’ll play like Gallego.” - Ricky Henderson

"During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball." Mickey Mantle, 1970

I like the Hornsby quote after being asked what he does in the winter.

"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

Now a quote about Hornsby:

"He was frank to the point of being cruel and as subtle as a belch."
- Sportswriter Lee Allen

I wonder if that was the unsigned contract that was up for auction in Hunt's last month? There was a signed note with it from Ashburn.

"I'm your new catcher and you just got lesson number one: don't think, it can only hurt the ballclub." Crash Davis

How about- "Lou Brock was a symbol of great base stealing, but today, I am the greatest of all time.. thank you"

.. and with the ever classy Lou Brock in attendence. Rickey was one of a kind!

Ricky Henderson, while playing for the Yankees and living in an upscale condo bragged about the great view he had of the city, saying he could see “The Entire State Building.”

Oil Can Boyd after a game had been called because of fog in Cleveland. "Well, what do you expect when you build the stadium right on the ocean?"

Ball Four
 

I just finished reading Ball Four again...love that book. My favorite quote is from Sibby Sisti after the kids beat the dads in a Father-Son game, 40-0, on an off day. "Forty runs, for crissakes, and nobody gets knocked down."

Geno

One of my favorite baseball moments was Rickey passing Brock (and acting like a jerk) in an afternoon game, then being upstaged that night by Nolan Ryan's 7th no-hitter. Every sports report that I saw led with Ryan and made Rickey a footnote.

Baseball Quotes
 

Tom Seaver on winning: "There are two places in baseball...first place and no place"!

In partial defense of Rickey (though the Brock moment is indefensible), most of what he ever did or said was harmless, and I've heard a lot of great stories about him. One that came out recently was set in the Mets clubhouse while players discussed who would and wouldn't playoff shares. Rickey demanded full shares for everyone, yelling "F--- that, you can change someone's life".

It is a bummer that the classic Olurud moment supposedly never really happened though.

BTW- he and the A's got no hit by Ryan the year prior.. AND Rickey was Ryan's 5000th K.

I'm really sorry to hear that the Olerud incident in Seattle never happened. It's one of my favorite baseball stories. :(

Qoutes by Celebs
 

"There have only been two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare "...Tallulah Bankhead

"That ball got out of here in a hurry. Anything going that fast better have a damn stewardess on it, don't you think "...Kevin Costner, Bull Durham

"If the Cincinnati Reds were really the first major league baseball team, who did they play ?"...George Carlin

"Freddy Patek was so small that when he was born his father passed out cigar butts"...Joey Adams

"My last miracle was the 69 Mets"...George Burns, Oh God

" The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is part of our past. It reminds us of all that was once good, and what could be again"...James Earl Jones, Field Of Dreams

"A hot dog at the ballpark is better than a steak at The Ritz"...Humphrey Bogart

"A few years ago they told me I was to young to be President and you were too old to be playing baseball. But we fooled them, and we are still fooling them"...John Kennedy to Stan Musial at the 1962 All Star Game

"Next to religion, baseball has furnished a greater impact on America than any other institution"...Herbert Hoover

"I'd watch a lot of baseball on the radio"...Gerald Ford

"I don't know a lot about politics, but I know a lot about baseball'...Richard Nixon

"He was built along the lines of a beer keg, and not unfamiliar with it's contents"...Shirley Povich regarding Hack Wilson

"Ninety feet between the bases is perhaps as close as man has ever gotten to perfection" Red Smith

"It's designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring when everything begins again, and 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"...Bart Giamatti

some more....
 

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry


What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game.... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability. ~George Bernard Shaw


I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby


It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one. ~Chuck Tanner



You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all. ~Earl Weaver

... and just a few others....
 

I have discovered in twenty years of moving around a ball park, that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats. ~Bill Veeck

I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it. ~Sandy Koufax


What we have are good gray ballplayers, playing a good gray game and reading the good gray Wall Street Journal. They have been brainwashed, dry-cleaned and dehydrated!... Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils.... Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober. ~Bill Veeck, The Hustler's Handbook


It actually giggles at you as it goes by. ~Rick Monday, on Phil Niekro's knuckleball, quoted in Sports Illustrated, 1 August 1983

What are we at the park for except to win? I'd trip my mother. I'd help her up, brusher her off, tell her I'm sorry. But mother don't make it to third. ~Leo Durocher

Why does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" when they're already there? ~Larry Anderson

"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." - Bob Uecker

Woody Allen (Leonard Zelig): I love baseball. You know, it doesn't have to mean anything. It's just very beautiful to watch.



Angel Mangual's interview after hitting winning RBI in game 4 of 1972 WS (with Bert Campaneris help in translation):

Interviewer (in English): Angel, how many balls did you foul off before you hit the game winner?

Campaneris: * Spanish translation *

Mangual (in English): Oh, about 3 or 4

Campaneris (in English): He said 'about 3 or 4'

But there are tips that you pick up when the Braves were going to release me. It is a tough time for a manager, for your family, for the player to be told that you're never going to play the game again. And I can remember walking in the clubhouse that day, and Luman Harris, who was the Braves' manager, came up to me and said there were no visitors allowed. So again, I knew I might be moving on.-Bob Uecker

More of a story than a quote, but Mike Shannon told this about Uecker yesterday. He said Uecker would sit at the back of the team bus and make everyone laugh so hard that their ribs hurt and they wanted the trip to end. One day Bob was impersonating and mocking the Cardinal GM who was in the front of the bus and could hear every word. Apparently he didn't appreciate it. Not long after the Cards and the Phillies agreed to a blockbuster trade. Dick Groat and Bill White for Dick Allen, Art Mahaffey, and Pat Corrales. All was agreed to and the Cardinal GM said, "I'll throw in Uecker for nothing".
Phils GM, "We don't want Uecker".
Cards GM, "You'll take him or the deals off!"

Mike Shannon during a cardinals game in the eighties at Pittsburgh "folks there is a beautiful full moon in Pittsburgh tonight I wish all you folks back in Saint Louis could see it"

Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand. -- Leo Durocher

A rookie Oakland A's player in spring training boarded the bus to go to the split-squad game and sat down in the second row. After the bus loaded the manager climbed on, saw the rookie sitting there, and said, "Only players with tenure are allowed to sit in the front."

Ricky Henderson yelled from the back, "H___, I got fifteenure, and I'm still sitting back here!"
-------------

Yogi- "You guys better get here quick. There's a fire."

Fire Dept- "How do we get there?"

Yogi- "Don't you guys still have those big red trucks?"

Once Jack Buck and Mike Shannon had a guest in the booth. She was representing some organization and had the official title of "Miss Cheesecake". After giving her spiel she left Jack and Mike a delicious looking cheesecake.
Buck says to Shannon "Well, Mike what do think of Miss Cheesecake?" Only trouble was Shannon heard "THIS Cheesecake".

Mike Shannon,: "Man, I'd like to have a piece of THAT!"

One of my favorites and I even have this up at my desk at work.

"Why certainly I'd like to have that fellow who hits a home run every time at bat, who strikes out every opposing batter when he's pitching, who throws strikes to any base or the plate when he's playing outfield and who's always thinking about two innings ahead just what he'll do to baffle the other team. Any manager would want a guy like that playing for him. The only trouble is to get him to put down his cup of beer and come down out of the stands and do those things."

Danny Murtaugh

During a Game of the Week, after noticing a couple smooching in the bleachers, Ol' Diz says, "Pee Wee, I've finally figured out what's going on out there. He's kissing her on the strikes and she's kissing him on the ..."

"It's a great day for a ball game; let's play two!" Ernie Banks

Torre
 

Another one from Ball Four:

Jim Pagliaroni joined the club tonight and is going to be a welcome addition. He was describing a girl that one of the ballplayers had been out with and said, “It’s hard to say exactly what she looked like. She was kind of Joe Torre with tits.”

Classic...

Geno

I think I forget how funny that book is!

Andrew, that is a classic!

Orator O'Rourke
 

I've come across quite a few quotes from Orator O'Rourke during the course of my research on his career. Here are a few of them.

When Jim O'Rourke was asked to compare the players of the past (1870s and 1880s) to the players of the present (1910) he said:

“Someone asked me yesterday if I didn’t think the players of today were more cunning than the old players and I answered: Indeed they are, especially when getting out of playing the game by claiming they are ill or that they have lame salary wings.”

"There was no paraphernalia in the old days with which one could protect himself. No mitts, not even gloves; and masks, why you would have been laughed off the diamond had you worn one behind the bat. In the early days the pitcher was only 50 feet away from the batsman, and there was no penalizing him if he hit you with the ball."

"The roughness of football in those days was nothing compared to the brutality of baseball during the constructive period. In those days there were few players who were not scarred. It used to be part of the pitcher's duty to try to hit the batter with the ball. I have seen men knocked senseless many times. My head has been so sore from being hit that I could not think and my hands so sore from catching that I could not hold an orange tossed from a distance of six feet."