“Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal” – Journalist & Author, George Will

“Baseball is an American icon. It is the Statue of Liberty, the bald eagle, ‘In God We Trust,’ Mount Rushmore, ice cream, apple pie, hot dogs, and rally monkeys. Baseball is America.” – Victor Baltov, Jr. in Baseball Is America

“Baseball is a drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.” – Joe Garagiola in Baseball Is A Funny Game

“Baseball isn’t just a game. It’s life being played out on a field – a field of dreams – on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all – where men become boys and boys become men, all speaking one universal language without uttering a single word.” – Tom Tatum

“Sandor Boatly had never guessed that, properly played, baseball consisted of mathematics, geometry, art, philosophy, ballet, and carnival, all intertwined like the mystical ribbons of color in a rainbow.” – W.P. Kinsella

“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.” – David James Duncan

“[Baseball] is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action” – John Irving

“For all its gentility, it’s almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.” – Willie Mays

“No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference.” – Tommy Lasorda

“A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” – Jim Bouton

“You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.” – Cal Ripken, Jr.

“Baseball is a team sport played by individuals for themselves.” – Joe Torre

“There may be people who have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you.” – Derek Jeter

“Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” – Babe Ruth

“A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.” – Earl Wilson

“Baseball is a lot like life. It’s a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life.” – American Sportscaster Ernie Harwell

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.” – Bullet Bob Feller

“More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.” – Thomas Boswell

“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” – Yogi Berra

“That’s one of the great gifts of this, the greatest of all games, baseball: it allows you, still, to lose yourself in a dream, to feel and remember a season of life when summer never seemed to die and the assault of cynicism hadn’t begun to batter optimism.” – Mike Barnicle

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• “There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens.” – Tommy Lasorda
• “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” – Babe Ruth
•  “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” – Babe Ruth
•  “Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!” – Babe Ruth
•  “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth
• “Baseball was, is, and always will be the best game in the world to me.” – Babe Ruth
•  “Athletes are born winners, there not born losers, and the sooner you understand this, the faster you can take on a winning attitude and become successful in life.” – Charles R. Sledge Jr.
• “Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it’s about love, integrity, and respect.” – Pat Gillick
•  “A man has to have goals – for a day, for a lifetime – and that was mine, to have people say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.” – Ted Willams
• “Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.” – Ted Williams
•  “With baseball, it’s simple. There’s no mystery to what happens on the field because everything has a label – full count, earned run, perfect game – and there’s a certain amount of comfort in this terminology. There’s no room for confusion.” – Jennifer E. Smith
• “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again.” – James Earl Jones
• “If there was magic in this world, it happened within sight of the three bases and home plate. […] Wrigley [stadium]was a field of dreams. Dreams of eternal glory for the men who ran to the outfield, who took their respective bases, and prepared for battle against those who would dare enter their hallowed realm. Dreams for the kids in the stands, all wanting to don a uniform, kiss their mom’s goodbye, and wield their bats as enchanted weapons destined to knock the cover off the ball.” – Tee Morris
•  “It is dangerous to spring to obvious conclusions about baseball or, for that matter, ball players. Baseball is not an obvious game.” – Roger Kahn
• “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.” – Leo Durocher
• “Remember kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart kid and you can never go wrong.” – The Babe, The Sandlot
• “Baseball is a man maker.” – Al Spalding
• “Baseball gives a growing boy self-pose and self-reliance.” – Al Spalding
•  “They say some of my stars drink whiskey. But I have found that the ones who drink milkshakes don’t win many ball games.” – Fred McMane
•  “Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.” – Jackie Robinson
• “Watching other teams in the World Series is like watching somebody else eat a Hot Fudge Sundae.” – Joe Torre
• “The greatest feeling in the world is to win a major league game. The second greatest feeling is to lose a major league game.” – Chuck Tanner
• “More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.” – Thomas Boswell
• “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.”- Mickey Mantle

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• “People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” – Rogers Hornsby
• “They give you a round bat, and they throw you a round ball, and then they tell you to hit it square.” – Willie Stargell
• “Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.” – Pete Rose
• “I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.” – Pete Rose
• “You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.” – Cal Ripken, Jr.
• “If my uniform doesn’t get dirty, I haven’t done anything in the baseball game.” – Rickey Henderson
• “I never smile when I have a bat in my hands. That’s when you’ve got to be serious.” – Hank Aaron
• “When I was up there at the plate, my purpose was to get on base any way I could, whether by hitting or getting hit.” – Shoeless Joe Jackson
• “Catching a fly ball is a pleasure, but knowing what to do with it after you catch it is a business.” – Tommy Henrich
• “Baseball is like driving, it’s the one who gets home safely that counts.” – Tommy Lasorda
• “I’ve come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life are good friends and a good bullpen.” – Bob Lemon
• “Never save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain.” – Leo Durocher
• “You can’t steal second base and keep one foot on first.” – Reggie Jackson
• “Fans don’t boo nobodies.” – Reggie Jackson
• “I really love the togetherness in baseball. That’s real true love.” – Billy Martin
• “A baseball manager is a necessary evil.” – George ‘Sparky’ Anderson
• “I’m a guy who just wanted to see his name in the lineup everyday. To me, baseball was a passion to the point of obsession.” – Brooks Robinson
• “Close doesn’t count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.” – Frank Robinson
• “Baseball was 100% of my life.” – Ty Cobb
• “I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw.” – Willie Mays
• “I could have played baseball another year, but I would have been playing for the money, and baseball deserves better than that.” – George Brett
• “Remember these two things: play hard and have fun.” – Tony Gwynn

Chris George provides reliable PR & GR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? Call 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

The Yankee great on baseball, Yogi-isms and, well, the moniker “Yogi.”

• If I didn’t make it in baseball, I won’t have made it workin’. I didn’t like to work.
• For Christmas, I asked dad, “I want a baseball bat, a glove, and a ball.” He said, “Which one of the three do ya want?”
• I told my dad, “Dad, you realize if your other two sons had played ball, you’da been a millionaire.” He said, “Blame your mother.”
• You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it’ll go.
• It don’t have to be a perfect pitch. If you see it good, swing at it. But if you can’t hit it, lay off it.
• New York is always the place to play.
• When I caught, I’d look at the hitter, the way he strides. He strides in, then ya get the ball inside to him. I watched ‘em pretty good.
• Joe was the best player I ever saw. He didn’t do anything wrong. DiMaggio I never saw slide. He just was there. It’s funny – I never seen him slide for a ball. He run the bases good. Every damn thing…
• I was playin’ American Legion Baseball. Bobby Hoffman, used to play with the Giants, we were on the same team. We never had dugouts. We’re sittin’ on the ground. I always had my legs crossed and my arms folded. Bobby said, “You look like a yogi.” And it stuck.
• My wife, she calls me Yogi. If she calls me Lawrence, I know she’s mad at me.
• A lot of guys go, “Hey Yogi, say a Yogi-ism.” I tell ‘em, “I don’t know any.” They want me to make one up. I don’t make ‘em up. I don’t even know when I say it. They’re the truth. And it is the truth. I don’t know.
• I get a kick out of some guys. They look at ya and say, “You look like Yogi Berra.” I say, “Yeah, a lotta people tell me that.”

From a 2001 Esquire magazine column “What I’ve learned”

Chris George, providing reliable PR & GR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a go-to writer and experienced communicator? 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.