I love quotations. And I love baseball. Therefore, of course, I had to generate a pageful of baseball quotations. This is going to be and look 100% random, which is sort of the point. I'm an equal opportunity quoter - if I like it, I'll put it in - but, of course, there will be a certain preponderance of Red Sox lines in here, mostly from current players, 'cause I can see interviews with them on the net.
Most of the original quotes come from one of two sources - the Bosox mailing list (swiped shamelessly from people's .sig files, I fear) and from articles posted on the Haven for the Diehard Sox Fan. Some have also come from random web searches, and from me remembering the odd post-game interview or two. In time, I'll have more of them, picked up from books and other sources, and I'll try to remember to include references for them as I update. (I have also pilfered a good handful from the yesteryear section of the official Bosox site.)
See this page for scads of glorious baseball quotes, all tidily collected and stacked up. I'm in quotation heaven.
Fastball also has quotation heaven. Life is good.
Now broken up into multiple sections so it loads easier and doesn't take up so much space:
Most recent update: 18 May, 2000
| Throw it over the plate. Home plate don't move. | - Satchel Paige |
|---|---|
| I've found that you don't need to wear a necktie if you can hit. | - Ted Williams |
| Ain't I the best damn hitter you ever saw? | - Ted Williams |
| Pick it up when it stops rolling. | - Jason Varitek on catching the knuckleball (presumably quoting Bob Uecker) |
| Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that. | - Nomar Garciaparra |
| He's so lucky, because every time he pitches, the other team doesn't score. | - Tim McCarver as quoted by Joe Torre |
| If the Lord were a pitcher, he would pitch like Pedro. | - David Segui |
| If it is going to happen, it's going to happen. If it doesn't, I just keep throwing the ball. | - Rich Garces |
| Whoop-de-doo-dah-day. My first home run. It won't be the last. | - Derek Lowe, pitcher |
| We didn't lose this. We just didn't play good enough to win. | - Nomar Garciaparra |
| Standing out in the rain, you're probably catching pneumonia. We appreciate your support. Next year, we won't need to say anything. You will have a parade in this town! Keep the faith, we'll see you on the streets running around with the trophy. | - Pedro Martinez |
| So we got fifty percent. Babe Ruth didn't do no better. Did you mean hittin' it. . . or throwin' it? |
- The Three Bats Walt Kelly's Pogo |
| I used to pull rank and wait until the wind was blowing out. | - Joe Cronin |
| Red Sox versus Yankees is the greatest rivalry in sports. | - Carl Yastrzemski |
| Fenway Park is a religious shrine. People go there to worship. | - Bill Lee |
| I wanted to be the greatest hitter who ever lived. A man has to have goals and that was mine, to have people say, "There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived." | - Ted Williams |
| When I came out of the runway and saw The Wall my eyes darn near popped out of my head. I mean, they really popped. I couldn't wait to get a bat and get a piece of it. | - Elston Howard |
| You never know what's going to happen. Anything can happen there... and often does. | - Carl Yastrzemski |
| Baseball is all I ever wanted. I could eat, sleep, and dream baseball. | - Smoky Joe Wood |
| All I can say is, I will put my heart and soul into helping the Red Sox win. | - Pedro Martinez |
| Roger and Pedro were going to put dueling doughnuts on the board for eight or nine innings and maybe settle it by standing behind home plate and seeing which one could throw a ball over the Green Monster. | - Dan Shaughnessy |
| What makes Martinez great is that he shows up when you expect him to. What makes Nomar Garciaparra great is that he plays hurt and drives in runs when his team needs him. | - Michael Holley |
| I don't know what my expectations are. It's like the word 'potential.' Those two words don't mean a whole lot to me. We can't please everybody. Certainly, we have to please ourselves first. | - Jimy Williams |
| Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hittin'. | - Yogi Berra |
| You start playing when it's cold and you want to be playing when it's cold again. | -Jimy WIlliams |
| We have got a lot of fight and a lot of heart. | -Kent Mercker |
| It don't matter how much I hurt. If I can throw the ball over, and get one out to get the team to win a game, I am going to do it. That is what I am here for. | - Pedro Martinez |
| The score tomorrow when we start is nothing to nothing. So we start all over. It is a great game, isn't it? Isn't it great, we get to this do this all again. | - Jimy Williams |
| You can't worry about it. You can't move it, so why worry about it? | - Kent Mercker on the Green Monster |
| The first thing he asked me was, 'Is Pawtucket at home? I'd like to play tonight.' So that tells you something about him. | - Jimy Williams on Daubach |
| Everything we threw up, they hit, and where it came down, we weren't standing. | - Mike Hargrove Manager, Cleveland Indians |
| When I was a kid, I used to play marbles. I know some of you think I've lost mine. | - Jimy Williams |
| So these Red Sox... are they a Communist organization? | - Fidel Castro |
| There's no crying in baseball. | - Pedro Martinez, quoting A League of Their Own |
| It's because I tried to dictate what I was going to do to the ball instead of letting the ball dictate where the ball was going to go. It's balance. I finally learned that. It's the most enlightened thing I've learned in hitting. | - Bill Lee |
| Do they leave it there during games? | - Bill Lee on the Green Monster |
| Young man, when you pitch a strike, Mr. Hornsby will let you know. | - Bill Klem |
| When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and join the circus. With the Yankees, I've accomplished both. | - Graig Nettles |
| Those who live by the wall must die by the wall. | - Roger Angell, "City Lights" (on 1978) |
| Teams pitch to the Sox with him in mind. He scares any sane opposing pitcher. His work ethic is brutal. And that's just his offense. | - Bob George on Nomar |
| The one constant through all the years has been Baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers ... 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 it could be again. | - Mark S. Fitton's .sig line on alt.sports.baseball.bos-redsox (From Field of Dreams) |
| I'm really looking forward to a Boston-Yankees series. It's kind of a Cardinals-Cubs type of series, but with bloodshed. Wrigley and the Cardinals was more of a beer-drinking series. This is war. | - Tom Pagnozzi |
| I don't eat seafood, though. | - Carl Everett on moving to Boston |
| Some guys had to be the Yankees, but we always beat them. | - Carlton Fisk on playing in the backyard |
| One of my superstitions is I'm not allowed to talk about them. | - Nomar Garciaparra |
| But there was also a little of that thing they say about New Englanders: Being from here doesn't prevent me from doing anything, it just prevents me from enjoying it. | - Carlton Fisk |
| The race doesn't always belong to the swift nor the battle to the strong. It belongs rather to those who run the race, who stay the course and who fight the good fight. | - Carl Yastrzemski |
| You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. | - Jim Bouton |
| I've always wanted to beat them. When I was in New York with the Mets, there's nothing more I wanted than to beat them. I've just never been a Yankee fan. I've never liked those guys. | - Carl Everett |
| As long as I'm around playing baseball, it doesn't matter where I am, as long as it's not with the Yankees. | - Carl Everett |