Diamond Quotes

"Sing a song of dollar marks reaching to the skies;When they talk of millions now it causes no surprise.Magnates on the inside, counting up their tin;Hustlers on the outside, honing to get in;Stories of the big wads backing other leagues;Darkly hinting treachery, treason and intrigues;Guesses that are crazy, statements that mislead;Just an ounce of sportsmanship to twenty tons of greed.Money! Money! Money! till you cannot rest;Reaching for the kale seed; tell with all the rest."

HUGH EDMUND KEOUGH, "The Baseball Situation"

"Baseball owners are the toughest set of ignoramuses anyone could ever come up against. Refreshingly dumb fellows. Greedy, short-sighted, and stupid."

Happy Chandler

"It's a business. If I could make more money down in the zinc mines, I'd be mining zinc."

Roger Maris

"You argue with an umpire because there's nothing else you can do about it."

Leo Durocher

"No baseball fan has to explain his mania to any other baseball fan. They are a fraternity. It is less easy, often it is hopeless, to try to explain it to anyone else. You grow technical, and you do not make sense. You grow sentimental, and you are deemed soft in the head. How, the benighted outsider asks you with no little condescension, can you grow sentimental about a cold-blooded professional sport?"

John K. Hutchens

"Baseball is the greatest single force working for Americanization. No other game appeals so much to the foreign-born youngsters, and nothing, not even the schools, teaches the American spirit so quickly, or inculcates the idea of sportsmanship or fair play as thoroughly."

Hugh S. Fullerton

"Baseball has done more to move America in the right direction than all the professional patriots with their billions of cheap words."

Monte Irvin

"Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. That is the nature of man and the name of the game."

Ted Williams

"There is a special sensation in getting good wood on the ball and driving a double down the left-field line as the crowd in the big ball park rises to its feet and cheers. But I also remember how much fun I had as a skinny barefoot kid hitting a tennis ball with a broomstick on a quiet, dusty street in Gomboa."

Rod Carew

"I never saw a game without taking sides and never want to see one. There is the soul of the game."

Warren G. Harding

"There's no excuse for happy losers."

Billy Martin

"It's better to be involved with a loser. A winning team doesn't need you as much."

Bill James