Every year . . .
 

“[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 the fall all alone. You count on it, 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.”

― A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time For Paradise: Americans And Their Games

I always think of the quote by Rogers Hornsby

"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."

Our lives are all collectively a little bit better when the sport is being played, even if we don't watch it as often as we used to!

Snapolit keeps his baseball offseason occupied by rooting for the Bills! I know it to be true.

Great quote isn't it. Pete Rose put that sentiment a little more forcefully: "I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball."

I much prefer Yogi ism’s

Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.

To me, his best is, you can observe a lot just by watching. Followed closely by, nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded.

Jim Bouton quote …
 

“You spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball, and it turns out it was the other way around all the time.”

I watch reruns of Home Run Derby off season. They just make me feel good.

Actually try You tube for historical baseball games . Many great ones to watch. If they are really old you might just wind up listening to the radio broadcast of the games.

But either way pretty fun and interesting

Rooting for the Bills? Delusional.

Waiting till the dead to winter to watch the ESPN doc on the 86 Mets. Have heard it’s really good.

Sure there are plenty things for my Mets to address (read fuck up) in the off-season to keep the next few months interesting.

I have never hated, and will never hate, a team more than the 86 Mets.:D

I concur.

When you come to the fork in the road, take it.

Now there's a pursuit designed to break your heart.
-- fifty-year season-ticket holders

I never said half the things I said.

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice."

"The future ain't what it used to be."

I'm sure Rose along with handful other vets still feel the same way. You can always tell the guys obsessed with their craft, would kill to have one more day in the sun. You hear it when they talk about their sport, the passion but also a hint of pain that they can no longer do what they once loved.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up some place else.”

"Baseball is a game of failure". but....

By far the Yogi isms

Bring back the best memories and the best quotes in baseball IMO

And not a bad catcher either. Lol

Some of you may have heard this before, but to get to the former Berra home in Montclair, NJ you literally came to a fork in the road. . . .and had to take it.

I know plenty of people who trick o' treated there as kids. For many years Yogi and Carmen handed out baseball cards on Halloween. Great people.

So Yogi and Carmen handed out baseball cards on Halloween, huh?

Hmmmmm.......

I can't resist this one. Imagine, it's Halloween, 1959. The Berras are graciously giving out these baseball cards Yogi got at his Yoo-Hoo Chocolate Drink factory in Carlstadt, NJ. The trick-or-treating kids smile broadly, but when they see the black 'n white cards, they react with a slight wince of disappointment. Even this card of Mickey Mantle with a blank white strip at the bottom leaves them unimpressed. One kid laments, "Oh, that's that card the Yoo-Hoo people were giving out in late spring - early summer when Mickey was supposed to show up to meet kids and sign autographs. They had these black ' n white cards made of Mantle, and whatda'ya know, he don't show. What a rip! I don't want this card!" And the kid unceremoniously throws it on the wet pavement.

Flash forward 62 years, and now any of the desperately few decent Yoo-Hoo Mickey Mantles will bring about $35,000 in scratch----EASILY.:D

Montclair, New Jersey dreamin', on nice autumn day!

--- Brian Powell

One of my favorites:

"Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium."
-- Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) in Bull Durham

Sometimes the line between good and great is very fine.

And thanks for the reminder Steve, my heart is broken until 'Pitchers and Catchers report.'