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My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging.
-Hank Aaron
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I never smile when I have a bat in my hands. That's when you've got to be serious. When I get out on the field, nothing's a joke to me. I don't feel like I should walk around with a smile on my face.
-Hank Aaron
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I don't see pitches down the middle anymore - not even in batting practice.
-Hank Aaron
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I don't want them to forget Babe Ruth. I just want them to remember me!
-Hank Aaron
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Slump? I ain't in no slump... I just ain't hitting.
-Yogi Berra
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Congratulations. I knew the record would stand until it was broken.
-Yogi Berra
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It ain't over 'till it's over.
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-Yogi Berra
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If the people don't want to come out to the park, nobody's gonna stop them.
-Yogi Berra
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Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many players on the field?
-Jim Boulton
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Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time.
-Lou Brock
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Jim Crow was king . . . and I heard a game in which Jackie Robinson was playing, and I felt pride in being alive. The baseball held was my fantasy of what life offered.
-Lou Brock, "International Herald Tribune", January 30, 1985
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You can't be afraid to make errors! You can't be afraid to be naked before the crowd, because no one can ever master the game of baseball, or conquer it. You can only challenge it.
-Lou Brock, In "Late Innings," by Roger Angell, 1977
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When I played ball, I didn't play for fun. . . . It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.
-Ty Cobb
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"The guy with the biggest stomach will be the first to take off his shirt at a baseball game."
-Glenn Dickey
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Buy a steak for a player on another club after the game, but don't even speak to him on the field. Get out there and beat them to death.
-Leo Durocher
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If you don't win, you're going to be fired. If you do win, you've only put off the day you're going to be fired.
-Leo Durocher
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I never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes.
-Leo Durocher
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It was Brooklyn against the world. They were not only complete fanatics, but they knew baseball like the fans of no other city. It was exciting to play there. It was a treat. I walked into that crummy, flyblown park as Brooklyn manager for nine years, and every time I entered, my pulse quickened and my spirits soared.
-Leo Durocher
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There are only five things you can do in baseball - run, throw, catch, hit, and hit with power.
-Leo Durocher
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I never did say that you can't be a nice guy and win. I said that if I was playing third base and my mother rounded third with the winning run, I'd trip her up.
-Leo Durocher
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"I think there are only three things America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball."
-Gerald Early
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When I was a small boy growing up in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of a summer afternoon on a riverbank we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major-league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.
-Dwight D Eisenhower
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Sweat plus sacrifice equals success.
-Charlie Finley
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If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out.
-George Brett
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It's designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything is new again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains comes, it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone.
-A Bartlett Giamatti
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I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it.
-Rogers Hornsby
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We were good and we were confident. We really never had any doubt that we were going to win it all.
-Reggie Jackson
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"Fans don't boo nobodies."
-Reggie Jackson
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Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbles go for base hits. It's an unfair game.
-Rod Kanehl
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"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 a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."
-W. P. Kinsella, James Earl Jones as Terence Mann, in the movie "Field of Dreams"
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Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary.
-Ray Knight
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When you're in a slump, it's almost as if you look out at the field and it's one big glove.
-Vance Law
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"All the fat guys watch me and say to their wives, 'See, there's a fat guy doing okay. Bring me another beer.'"
-Mickey Lolich
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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.
-Connie Mack
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"It is more profitable for me to have a team that is in contention for most of the season but finishes about fourth. A team like that will draw well enough during the first part of the season to show a profit for the year, and you don't have to give the players raises when they don't win."
http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/Mack_Connie.stm
-Connie Mack
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"You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat."
-Christy Mathewson
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"Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes.
Home plate don't move."
-Satchel Paige
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"Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you."
-Satchel Paige
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Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie.
-Harry Reasoner, "60 Minutes"
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Close don't count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.
-Frank Robinson, [attributed]
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Listen, I was the first black manager in baseball and there was incredible pressure. I don't blame anyone else. I was too tough . . . I lack patience. I probably got on guys a little too hard, with the wrong tone of voice.
-Frank Robinson, In "Sports" magazine, August, 1981
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The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.
-Jackie Robinson, "I Never Had It Made", 1972
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I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.
-Babe Ruth
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All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except it looked good.
-Babe Ruth
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Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.
-Babe Ruth
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Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
-Babe Ruth
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Yesterday's home runs don't win today's games.
-Babe Ruth
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Baseball is green and safe. It has neither the street intimidation of basketball nor the controlled Armageddon of football.... Baseball is a green dream that happens on summer nights in safe places in unsafe cities.
-Luke Salisbury
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When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball." They say, "Play ball."
-Willie Stargell
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"Two hundred million Americans, and there ain't two good catchers among 'em."
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
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The trouble is not that players have sex the night before a game. It's that they stay out all night looking for it.
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
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Ability is the art of getting credit for all the home runs somebody else hits.
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
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They say some of my stars drink whiskey. But I have found that the ones who drink milkshakes don't win many ballgames.
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
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It's high time something was done for the pitchers. They put up the stands and take down fences to make more home runs and plague the pitchers. Let them revive the spitter and help the pitchers make a living.
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
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No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel
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Sure I played, did you think I was born at the age of 70 sitting in a dugout trying to manage guys like you?
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel, [At age 72 when asked by Mickey Mantle if he had ever played ball, recalled on his death 29 Sep 1975]
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The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven't made up their minds.
-Casey (Charles Dillon) Stengel, "The Gospel According to Casey"
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Books about Baseball
