Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game and do it by watching first some high-school or small-town teams
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's.
Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
When I won the world championship, in 1972, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, a baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.
Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television... I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.
I'm a big baseball fan, and I feel proprietary about the Dodgers. I'm not the owner. I'm not the manager. But I feel passionate about the decisions that they make, and I take it personally when they make decisions I don't like.
You shouldn't have any betting in the locker room at all, whether it's baseball or it's horses. You can't beat the horses. You can't beat any kind of gambling because they have the odds.
In baseball, you pack your uniform in the clubhouse after a ball game, and you see it hanging up in your locker when you get to your next city.
Basketball's eras are defined by teams - Celtics, Lakers, Bulls - and baseball's epochs are defined by players - Ruth, Robinson, Mantle - but with football, it's the sideline strategists, the nutty professors and top coated Lears.
My first year in baseball, there were only one or two reporters. My second year, I got to the Triple-A playoffs, there were four or five. When I came up in 1984, I never saw so many people.
Balls and strikes are the basic tenet to everything in baseball. From the perspective of hitting, pitching, offense and defense, it's all about the strike zone and how the battle is waged there between the pitcher and hitter.
I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into.
I have goals and ambitions, and I see myself as a lifelong baseball student. I have certain philosophies that I'd like to test at some point at the big league level. The job of manager appeals to me, a coach appeals to me, at a different time frame.
There are a lot of people who influenced me, nurtured me, helped me along the way. But I can just recall looking back, the first time I got my baseball glove. Put it on the wrong hand, all those kind of things.
Old Mr.: [referring to Shug] She black as tar, nappy-headed, got legs like baseball bats, and I hear she got that nasty women's disease.
Grace: Jayden, we have to do something about this. Jayden: Should go bash his face in with a baseball bat while he's sleeping?
Benny Rodriguez: [referring to the chewed-up baseball] That's really nice of you, but that ball really is signed by Babe Ruth. Mr. Mertle: So's this one... with the rest of the 1927 Yankees.
Cowboy: [winded, running from the Baseball Furies] I can't make it. Ajax: Are you sure? Cowboy: Yes, I'm sure... Ajax: Well, good! I'm sick of runnin' from these wimps!
There's different kinds of laughs. It's like a baseball lineup: this guy's your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we're gonna win.
I grew up in Westlake Villiage, a suburb of L.A. There was a guy there who was a fighter and was like, 'I'll teach you to box.' I started a little bit of boxing, then it crossed over into jiu-jitsu. I was into it for a little while, but then I starte...
