“I think I’d trust Amy Winehouse to guard my bag of coke before I’d trust Sabes [Brian Sabean, Giants GM] to build my offense.” – Dan Szymborski, Baseball Think Factory

75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75

“HELLLLLO!”

What Bonds’ fist said to Jeff Kent’s face.

the first one I admit is a bit sappy, but what can I say…

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 alone.
- A. Bartlett Giamatti

And this is one of my favorite lines from the best damn baseball movie ever, period, end of story…

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. And the only church that truly feeds the soul, day-in day-out, is the
Church of Baseball.
-Annie Savoy, in Bull Durham

“Chemistry is a class you take.”
-Jim Leyland

Zito and his obsession with the word “agressive”
Bochy and his “ballgames” and “bad breaks”
haha

about benito santiago and someone going after someone else? that one was key.

“Ninety percent I’ll spend on good times, women and Irish Whiskey. The other ten percent I’ll probably waste.” – Tug McGraw, discussing his salary.

also

When asked in 1974 whether McGraw preferred natural grass or artificial turf, he replied “I don’t know, I never smoked AstroTurf.”

I don’t have the time to go back through all my comments to pick my favorite, dammit.

“Ray, people will come Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won’t mind if you look around, you’ll say. It’s only $20 per person. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they’ll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. 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 of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”

“Fuck it, put it all on the Reds tonight..we can’t lose!”

-Pete Rose

Baseball is democracy in action: in it all men are “free and equal,” regardless of race, nationality, or creed. Every man is given the rightful opportunity to rise to the top on his own merits…It is the fullest expression of freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of assembly in our national life.
~ Francis Trevelyan Miller

We got some forms to fill out from the Pilots’ publicity department. One of the questions was: “What’s the most difficult thing about playing major league baseball?” And Mike Hegan said, “Explaining to your wife why she needs a penicillin shot for your kidney infection.”

You know it’s summertime at Candlestick when the fog rolls in, the wind kicks up, and you see the center fielder slicing open a caribou to survive the ninth inning. ~Bob Sarlette

“You’re in big trouble, pal. I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!”
“You eat pieces of shit for breakfast???”
”...Noooo.”

Also…

“There’s a lot of pressure out there, you gotta rise above it. You gotta harness in the good energy… Block out the bad. Harness energy, block bad. Feel the flow, Happy, feel it. It’s circular. It’s like a carousel, you pay the quarter, get on the horse. It goes up and down, and arouuuund. Circular, circle, with music, the flow… All good things.”

“Half the stuff I say, I don’t believe.” – Barry Bonds

“People are getting the message. The right people are getting it, but the people we want to further attract, or make sure we hold onto, are being affected by what we consider the lunatic fringe. That’s my frustration, that they don’t have a bigger view of the world.” – Some Dude with the Giants Front Office

“That’s why I don’t talk. Because I talk too much.”

“There is one word in America that says it all, and that one word is, ‘You never know.’”

At a practice, Billy was yelling at third baseman Graig Nettles for flubbing some grounders. Tired of being ridden, Nettles said, “If you think you can do it better, you come out here and do it.” Billy being Billy, he ran out there, took Nettles’s glove and called for some grounders . . . which, of course, he booted. After a few errors, he threw down the glove and said:
“Goddammit, you f@#ked it up so bad, now NOBODY can play it.”

“A nickel isn’t worth a dime today.”

“Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.”

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

“I didn’t really say everything I said.”

—Chris Lincecum, literal godfather.

http://100percentinjuryrate.blogspot.com/2007/06/existential-angst-of-ichiro-suzuki.html

"To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to," Ichiro said through an interpreter. "If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying."

“Yesterday when I played, inside my head I said ‘I want to go home quickly,’ and I swung and I was able to get a hit because I wanted to go home. Today I thought, ‘I want to hurry up and get something to eat,’ and I swung and got a hit today.”

“The ball became the same color as the sky. So, I wasn’t able to see it … I was sending mental signals for the ball not to come my way, because during that time of day it’s impossible for me to see the ball so I lacked mental signals. I lacked in that area. Usually, I don’t send mental signals. So, because this is the first time, I thought, please don’t come my way.”

“Once I turn 40 I can become a pitcher. I’m kind of serious about it. But I’ll have to learn to throw a knuckleball. Right now, I could be a ‘normal’ pitcher,” who can top out at 95 mph with a fastball.”

as much as I am not a fan of Curt Schlling, I have always loved his response when asked about how the Diamondback will handle playing in Yankee Stadium in the 2001 World Series given that there was so much aura and mystique associated with the Yankees and the park.

“Mystique and Aura? Those are dancers at a nightclub.”

—Ted Williams

—Bob Stevens of the San Francisco Chronicle, describing Willie Mays’ game winning triple in the 1959 All Star Game.

“Who was that?”

Kevin Mitchell, referring to the old guy leaving the field who had wandered out to give the outfielders some unsolicited fielding advice after he left. (It was Willie Mays.)

””Glenn Dickey,” says Mays , lifting a magnificent drive onto the fairway, “is an ——.” Mays is especially upset about a passage in the column in which he reportedly said to another player, “——the fans.”

“I never said that,” Mays is saying to the shoe givers. “And anyway, that was 40 years ago.” The shoe givers agree that even if he had said that, it was probably with reason.

Wee Willie Keeler: * “Keep your eye on the ball and hit ‘em where they ain’t.”

Good ole Satchel Paige had some of the best quotes:

• “Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

• “I ain’t ever had a job, I just always played baseball.”

• “I never rush myself. See, they can’t start the game without me.”

• If a man can beat you, walk him.”

• “It’s funny what a few no-hitters do for a body.”

• “One time I snuck a ball on with me and when I went to winding up, I threw one of them balls to first and one to second. I was so smooth I picked off both runners and fanned the batter without that ump or the other team even knowing it.”

• “When a batter swings and I see his knees move, I can tell just what his weaknesses are then I just put the ball where I know he can’t hit it.”

• “Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move.”

• “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

• “Money and women. They’re two of the strongest things in the world. The things you do for a woman you wouldn’t do for anything else. Same with money.”

• “You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.”

• “My pitching philosophy is simple; you gotta keep the ball off the fat part of the bat.”

• “I never had a job. I always played baseball.”

“Lady, I’m not an athlete. I’m a professional baseball player.” – John Kruk

“I’m not that bad-looking, I’m an average person, an average-looking person. I know some girls send me flowers, so I must be somehow cute to somebody. I’m a cute little-bodied man. I’ve got an OK body. My uniform fits pretty well – 33 (waist), 32 length. It’s a normal body, 180 pounds.
It’s nice, man – Dominican, Latino.”
– Answering the question “Are you intimidating?”

“The questions are so stupid. I don’t believe in rivalries. I don’t believe in curses. Wake up the damn Bambino, maybe I’ll drill him in the ass.”

“My butt smells funny”
—Goofus

“So I wish I could play little league now, I’d kick some fuckin’ ass.”
-Mitch Hedberg

Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don’t think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base – in both senses – greed. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of the brontosaurus. ~John Fowles

to paraphrase:

“hands off the talent”
“3rd starter, at best”
“magellan in the outfield”
“The ugly: Randy Johnson.”