Top 100 Pete Rose Quotes
#1. I'd be willing to bet you, if I was a betting man, that I have never bet on baseball.
Pete Rose
#2. I never picked up my phone and called a bookmaker and bet on a baseball game from the clubhouse. Never.
Pete Rose
#3. Any time you've got big teams winning, you've got big stars.
Pete Rose
#4. Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.
Pete Rose
#5. I always say, the only time you gotta worry about getting booed is when you're wearing a white uniform. And I've never been booed wearing a white uniform.
Pete Rose
#6. Pressure? Well it ain't hitting in forty-four straight games, because I done that and it was fun. The playoffs are pressure.
Pete Rose
#7. When people think of me, they think about me knocking catchers down and knocking second basemen down and yelling at pitchers. But when I took the spikes off after the game, I was a nice guy when I went home.
Pete Rose
#8. I know about winning batting titles.
Pete Rose
#9. I love the fans, I love the game of baseball, and I love Cincinnati baseball.
Pete Rose
#10. Baseball is a universal language. Catch the ball, throw the ball, hit the ball.
Pete Rose
#11. I'm not sure Mark McGwire was a Hall of Famer to begin with.
Pete Rose
#12. It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square.
Pete Rose
#13. I had an addiction to play baseball.
Pete Rose
#14. I'm not bad (his speed). I'm no Joe Morgan, but I'm pretty good for a white guy.
Pete Rose
#15. Baseball and the players association have rules. If you stay within the rules - which say that you can play while you're appealing - I don't see what anyone would be in arms about.
Pete Rose
#16. I should have shut up when I went up there and talked to Carlton Fisk.
Pete Rose
#17. No matter how many times you say you're sorry, somebody is not going to hear you.
Pete Rose
#18. A team will take on its manager's personality. If it's a laid back manager, you'll have a laid back personality. The players will see that if it's OK for the Manager to be laid back, then you'll have a laid back team.
Pete Rose
#19. There is an old saying that money can't buy happiness. If it could, I would buy myself four hits every game.
Pete Rose
#20. If somebody is gracious enough to give me a second chance, I won't need a third.
Pete Rose
#21. You know what God told the Cubs? Don't do anything until I come back.
Pete Rose
#22. The greatest competitor was Bob Gibson. He worked so fast out there and he always had the hood up. He always wanted to close his own deal. He never talked to you because he was battling so hard. I sure as hell don't miss batting against him, but I miss him in the game.
Pete Rose
#23. Hitting. That's what I enjoy most. Realistically, it's probably the hardest thing to do in all of sport. Think about it. You've got a round ball, a round bat, and the object is to hit it square.
Pete Rose
#24. They haven't given too many gamblers a second chances in the world of baseball.
Pete Rose
#25. No player or manager has greater respect for the umpires than I do, and I have demonstrated that over the years.
Pete Rose
#26. A hitter's impatience is the pitcher's biggest advantage.
Pete Rose
#27. If you have someone equal in ability to me I will beat him every time because I will try harder.
Pete Rose
#28. I met Gerald Ford. I met Richard Nixon. I met Jimmy Carter. I met Dwight Eisenhower when he was a general. George Bush senior. I haven't met Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, although I got a letter from him.
Pete Rose
#29. I've got a 15-year old son and a 10-year old daughter, and if they were going to do one of the following things: be an alcoholic; be a drug offender; beat their wife or husband; or gamble. I hope they would gamble.
Pete Rose
#30. I don't like to be compared to Joe Jackson. because Joe Jackson, I think, took money to throw World Series games. Well, I know I bet on my own team to win. There's pretty much a big difference there, but both of us were wrong.
Pete Rose
#31. If baseball wants to get you, they've got enough resources and enough investigators that they'll find a way to get you.
Pete Rose
#32. When people ask me, "Who was the toughest pitcher you ever faced?", I have to say that there has never been a pitcher who over-impressed me. That's not meant to be a bragging statement. It's just that I get up for good pitchers.
Pete Rose
#33. Hillary Clinton wrote a book. She got paid. I don't understand why I can't.
Pete Rose
#34. I came to Vegas because I work 20 days a month here; I couldn't live anywhere else.
Pete Rose
#35. I know everything about Ty Cobb except the size of his hat.
Pete Rose
#36. You know, baseball's not stupid. Baseball does what the fans want, usually.
Pete Rose
#38. Your obligation as a base runner is to try and be safe within the rules. OK?
Pete Rose
#39. I bet on baseball in 1987 and 1988.
Pete Rose
#40. I don't go to bed every night worried about getting back into baseball.
Pete Rose
#41. Creating success is tough. But keeping it is tougher. You have to keep producing, you can't ever stop.
Pete Rose
#42. Can you be a nicer gentleman, or a better man for your sport or your kids than Joe Paterno?
Pete Rose
#43. No one ever asked what was my relationship with Bart Giamatti. We used to talk about baseball a lot as a player and a commissioner, just talk about the game, what could we do to help the game, where's the game going, he was pretty good.
Pete Rose
#44. I'm built like my dad. Stocky, strong.
Pete Rose
#45. Some players you pat their butts, some players you kick their butts, some players you leave alone.
Pete Rose
#46. I look at the records, and you don't win the Cy Young seven times or the MVP without being a good player.
Pete Rose
#47. Are you tall? Are you strong? How big are your hands? You must be honest with yourself or you will end up using the wrong bat.
Pete Rose
#48. I'm not going to go back to gambling; I mean, it's as simple as that.
Pete Rose
#49. There's other ways to make your head and muscles bigger than just steroids.
Pete Rose
#50. There is no doubt that because I am a switch hitter I have one of the best offensive advantages that a hitter can have.
Pete Rose
#52. When you ask people about guys they didn't like because they were aggressive, there's me, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors; not too many names would come up.
Pete Rose
#53. I'm no different from anybody else with two arms, two legs, and forty-two hundred hits.
Pete Rose
#54. If I had been busted for drugs instead of gambling, I'd still be managing the Reds and baseball would be paying for my rehab.
Pete Rose
#55. The game of baseball is better when the Dodgers are playing well, just like when the Yankees are playing well, or the Cubs, the Phillies, the big-name teams.
Pete Rose
#56. I was born on the day Lincoln was shot and the Titanic sank.
Pete Rose
#57. I would think if someone connected to steroids made the Hall of Fame, that would enhance my chances of making the Hall of Fame.
Pete Rose
#58. I don't smoke. Smoking will hurt you when you try to run out a triple.
Pete Rose
#59. A lot of these catchers don't understand that they are blocking the plate and they don't have the ball. You're not allowed to block the plate without the ball.
Pete Rose
#60. The team that wins two-thirds of its one run games usually wins the pennant.
Pete Rose
#61. You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possibly be - in baseball and in life.
Pete Rose
#62. I owe baseball. Baseball don't owe me a damn thing.
Pete Rose
#63. I told him (Pete Rose, Jr.) who to watch. I said if you want to be a catcher, watch Johnny Bench. If you want to be a right-handed power hitter, watch Mike Schmidt. If you just want to be a hitter, watch me.
Pete Rose
#64. The thing I would like most to leave behind is to be remembered for trying hard.
Pete Rose
#65. It doesn't take much to get me up for baseball. Once the National Anthem plays, I get chills. I even know the words to it now.
Pete Rose
#66. If you're not active - and I'm not active - and you don't watch what you eat, you can get big as a horse.
Pete Rose
#67. When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You've gone zero for seven-thousand.
Pete Rose
#68. I actually went to some Gamblers Anonymous classes, and I sat there for three or four of them, and I'm trying to figure out what I have in similarities with these other people, and I could never find anything. It just seems like it wasn't the right place for me.
Pete Rose
#69. I still gamble, but it's all legal. I own horses, and I go to watch my horse. I don't go daily.
Pete Rose
#70. Sure I do, and if someone paid you six-thousand dollars a game, you'd have fun as well.
Pete Rose
#71. Willie Mays could throw better, and Hank Aaron could hit more home runs. But I've got enthusiasm. I've got desire. I've got hustle. Those are God-given talents, too.
Pete Rose
#72. Once you accept defeat, it becomes ease to lose. If defeat comes, face it and take it, but don't accept it.
Pete Rose
#73. The manager of a team is like a stagecoach, he can't move unless he has the horses.
Pete Rose
#74. When somebody wants to interview me, I've always got something to say.
Pete Rose
#75. Every time I step up to the plate, I expect to get a hit. If I don't expect to get a hit, I have no right to step into the batter's box in the first place.
Pete Rose
#76. I like Barack Obama as a person. He's articulate, he knows sports, his brother-in-law's a coach. He always has the athletes to the White House. But I don't know about some of his policies and some of these people in Congress.
Pete Rose
#77. Somebody's gotta win and somebody's gotta lose and I believe in letting the other guy lose.
Pete Rose
#78. Who cares if you bunt for a base hit?
Pete Rose
#79. I haven't missed a game in two-and-a-half years. I go to the park as sick as a dog and, when I see my uniform hanging there, I get well right now. Then I see some of you guys (media) and I get sick again.
Pete Rose
#80. Unfortunately, gambling and winning don't often go hand-in-hand.
Pete Rose
#81. Since 1869, baseball has been doing pretty well.
Pete Rose
#82. I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team; I believe in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game.
Pete Rose
#83. When guys do books or stories, all I like to see is the truth.
Pete Rose
#85. Sliding headfirst is the safest way to get to the next base, I think, and the fastest. You don't lose your momentum, and there's one more important reason I slide headfirst, it gets my picture in the paper.
Pete Rose
#86. I am grateful that I live in a nation where most believe that one's punishment should fit their wrongdoing and that ours is a nation that judges an individual by both what he has done and how he has changed.
Pete Rose
#87. I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.
Pete Rose
#88. In the old days, you know, they didn't have batting cages. And in most ball parks, they only had one runway to the dugout.
Pete Rose
#89. He (Eric Davis) gets power from his bat speed ... it's like he has cork in his arms.
Pete Rose
#90. My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.
Pete Rose
#91. You'd be surprised how many shortcomings can be overcome by hustle.
Pete Rose
#92. Obama's a great speaker. Because of his speaking ability and his appearance, a lot of guys got on board. Being the first African American, a lot guys got on board.
Pete Rose
#93. Sometimes, when you don't have spark, someone in the dugout has to create something.
Pete Rose
#94. I can't remember, I wish I could remember the first time I bet on baseball.
Pete Rose
#95. I don't think there's any honor bigger than going to your Hall of Fame for your sport.
Pete Rose
#96. I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.
Pete Rose
#97. When I get the record, all it will make me is the player with the most hits. I'm also the player with the most at bats and the most outs. I never said I was a greater player than Cobb.
Pete Rose
#98. With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions.
Pete Rose
#99. Of course, I believe that Mike Piazza is probably the greatest offensive catcher in the history of baseball, only got over 50%. Johnny Bench is the best catcher in the history of baseball, but Piazza has all the record for catchers as far as offensively.
Pete Rose
#100. We were so poor when I was a kid that I had a sister who was stamped, 'Made In Japan.'
Pete Rose
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