Hard Baseball Quotes

#1. I've always been taught to play the game hard. Baseball is such a tough game, it really humbles you at times, you just have to try not to get too high or too low.

Chase Utley

#2. Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose; it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance - thrown hard and with precision.

Roger Angell

#3. Well excuse me! How was I supposed to know that a pink baseball cap with a dildo glued on top isn't a "hard hat"?

Jarod Kintz

#4. I think I throw the ball as hard as anyone. The ball just doesn't get there as fast.

Eddie Bane

#5. I play for the poor man. I try to give a thrill to the lunch bucket fan. I know their plight. I worked in a factory in high school. The poor folk who lay out the hard bread to see a game. That's where my heart lies. The rich don't need heroes.

Leon Wagner

#6. Tarring a highway in 90-degree heat is hard work. This is baseball. Something I love.

Todd Helton

#7. Don't forget to swing hard, in case you hit the ball.

Woodie Held

#8. I could always throw the ball pretty well and I worked pretty hard at learning how to play the game. But I didn't consider it work as a kid, since I just loved playing baseball.

Jim Abbott

#9. The Red Sox are the local scapegoats. It's hard enough to play baseball without being the local scapegoat too.

Michael Lewis

#10. I've always played hard. If that's rough and tough, I can't help it. I don't believe there's any such thing as a good loser. I wouldn't sit down and play a game of cards with you right now withing wanting to win. If I hadn't felt that way I wouldn't have got very far in baseball.

Rogers Hornsby

#11. What cracks me up is people who think I don't take baseball seriously. It's the most important thing in my life. They don't know how hard it is for me to get a bad game out of my mind. I still can't, but I'm getting better.

Brady Anderson

#12. I had a lot of fear that would motivate me to try to work hard, because I didn't know what I would do if I wasn't a baseball player.

R.A. Dickey

#13. Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.

Kenneth R. Miller

#14. I threw the baseball I held after all. Not hard and it didn't even hit him but it almost did.
His eyes went wide with surprise.
"So you weren't really offering me a target?"
He gave a small laugh. "I didn't think you'd take me up on it.

Kasie West

#15. Baseball players have such a bad rap of, like, 'We don't work out or we're not strong or this or that.' Guys work so hard in baseball, it's incredible. But people don't know that.

Bryce Harper

#16. It is hard to ignore that is reality. But, at the same time, it still comes down to sound baseball decisions, farm systems and then execution on the field by the players. There are a lot of components to that (other) than just saying it is the highest salary.

Alex Rodriguez

#17. DIE!" Gleeson Hedge dropped directly behind Orion, smacking his baseball bat over the giant's head so hard the Louisville Slugger cracked in half.

Rick Riordan

#18. The reporter asked, "why did you play so hard."
"Because there might have been somebody in the stands today who'd never seen my play before, and might never see me again"
-Joe DiMaggio

Joe DiMaggio

#19. I just wouldn't have believed a ball could be hit that hard. I've never seen anything like it.

Bucky Harris

#20. When you say you're a padre, people ask when did you become a parent. When you say you're a cardinal, they tell you to work hard because the next step is pope. But when you say you're a Dodger, everybody knows you're in the Major Leagues.

Tommy Lasorda

#21. I'm playing baseball because I love it, not because I need the money or attention. That is why I've been so dedicated. I've accomplished a lot of things no one ever thought I could, and I've done it from hard work.

Mike Piazza

#22. I'm not perfect. Nobody's perfect. But I love baseball and I love to play hard.

Adrian Beltre

#23. The game was played hard in those days, Mr.King, with plenty of fuck-you.

Stephen King

#24. Baseball's rich in wonderful statistics, but it's hard to find one more beautiful than Stan Musial's hitting record. He didn't care where he was, he just hit.

George Will

#25. Listen, I was the first black manager in baseball and there was incredible pressure. I don't blame anyone else. I was too tough ... I lack patience. I probably got on guys a little too hard, with the wrong tone of voice.

Frank Robinson

#26. I got cast playing the best baseball player anybody's ever seen. I don't know how to play any sport, including baseball, but I trained really hard. They had these great coaches, and they started saying, "Wow, you have some like really untapped athletic ability."

Geena Davis

#27. A narrative voice with conviction is often hard to find. But not in baseball. The minors teach two lost American arts: how to chew tobacco and how to tell a story.

Thomas Boswell

#28. He hit the ball so hard, I couldn't even turn around in time to see it go over the fence.

Roger Clemens

#29. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.

Yann Martel

#30. It's hard not to be romantic about baseball

Billy Beane

#31. It's hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going.

Jim Jarmusch

#32. I think the worst one [indian mascot] is the Cleveland Indians' Big Chief Wahoo. It's just a red face on a baseball with a big, toothy grin. It's the Sambo of all other offensive mascots. I have never seen a Native American smile that hard before, not even at a casino opening.

Wanda Sykes

#33. You have to have a lot of motivation, a lot of heart and be able to work hard. You can never be down on yourself because baseball is a sport that will bring you down [at times].

Bengie Molina

#34. In business, as in baseball, the prizes go most often to the organizations that pursue their objective hard and relentlessly every day of the year.

William Feather

#35. My dad's a bodybuilder. My whole life I've been taught to train the hard way. I believe in earning strength, not buying it. My grandfather raised me old school: In baseball, you work for whatever you get.

Gary Sheffield

#36. Swing hard in case you hit it.

Dan Marino

#37. Free agency screws everybody's allegiances up. Whether it be football, baseball, hockey, basketball, whatever it may be. It's really hard.

Bill Goldberg

#38. Playing football, I'm getting chills just thinking about it. That first knock of the game, you are going on kickoff, and you are just trying to smack somebody just as hard as you can. That's how I play baseball. I want to hit you.

Bryce Harper

#39. There's a hard shot to LeMaster, he throws Madlock into the dugout.

Jerry Coleman

#40. It's not even a lesson. It's just what it is. Damon holds the baseball up between them. It is hard and white and alive in the sun.

Robert Coover

#41. You're not going to win by automatically going out there. It's hard to know what people really expect of you, and I've never tried to live up to expectations anyway. That's no way to play baseball.

Greg Maddux

#42. There were things that would irritate Casey, but trying too hard or getting mad at sitting on the bench weren't among them.

Mickey Mantle

#43. It's hard to dismiss the obvious symmetry between Longo [Evan Longoria] and the franchise for which he's now the poster-child: for the player, Hondo Junior College to MLB All-Star ... for the team, worst to first.

Tucker Elliot

#44. I loved throwing a baseball. It is so important to find something in life you feel crazy about. Because you are so passionate you naturally practice. The hard work that it takes to do something well will come easily.

Jim Abbott

#45. The Indians franchise is more than a century old. It's been called the Blues, the Bronchos, and the Naps. It's also been called a lot worse during hard times when the team wasn't winning.

Tucker Elliot

#46. My dad was the force behind me early on. He was just infatuated with baseball. He was the one that basically taught me how to play the game. He gave a lot of his time working out with me, practicing and taking me to a lot of different games. It was hard work between both of us.

Rafael Palmeiro

#47. One thing I know in baseball is you should never be comfortable where you are. It doesn't matter who you are. It's a business. If I got traded tomorrow, no hard feelings; it's a business.

Jon Lester

#48. When I was a kid, I played sports a lot. My mom and dad were divorced, but I hung out in the neighborhood a lot, and it was all about sports. I would be out all day on the sand lot or on the hockey rink. My dad would take me to baseball games, but he worked so hard, and he would always fall asleep.

Alex Gibney

#49. I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the batter; that the only thing I knew about pitching was that it was hard to hit!

Tim McCarver

#50. Again, like I said, I went out to play the game of baseball because I love to play it. I did it right. I did it the right way. I worked hard doing it.

Roger Clemens

#51. I've found in life the more you practice, the better you get. If you want something enough and work hard to get it, your chances of success are greater.

Ted Williams

#52. Sleep is huge. That's your biggest way of recovering. In baseball, it's such a hard sleep schedule during the season, but you try to do the best you can. Because you can take all the protein drinks, you can do all these things, but your recovery is your sleep.

Bryce Harper

#53. It's hard to get guys out when you have nothing to get them out with.

Tim Wakefield

#54. It is hard to imagine the World Series being held in the sweet hazy sunshine of late September rather than the sour night air of late October, but that is precisely what has transpired in baseball over the past 50 years, a deterioration from light to darkness.

George Vecsey

#55. I love baseball, I really do. I always told my Dad, I'm not gonna make it working ... I like to play ball too much. Which I did. I played hard. You gotta work at this game. You really do. And its fun doing it if you do it the right way.

Yogi Berra

#56. I'm flattered that so many baseball people think I'm a Hall of Famer. But what's hard to believe is how one-hundred and fifty plus people have changed their minds about me since I became eligible, because I haven't had a base hit since then.

Richie Ashburn

#57. What really makes baseball so hard is it's retributive capacity for disaster if the smallest thing is done wrong, and the invisible presence of defeat that attends every game.

Roger Angell

#58. Rose worked and played so hard that kids all across the country - not just in Cincinnati - were emulating him on sandlots everywhere, proud to dirty their jerseys doing a headfirst "Pete Rose" dive into cardboard boxes used for bases ... whether they needed to slide or not.

Tucker Elliot

#59. It was hard to know which of Billy's qualities was most important to his team's success: his energy, his resourcefulness, his intelligence, or his ability to scare the living shit out of even very large professional baseball players.

Michael Lewis

#60. Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it's about love, integrity, and respect.

Pat Gillick

#61. My suits that I wore on Baseball Tonight were in a heap, caked with drywall, which wouldn't be a big deal except it's hard to find 36-short suits other than at Nordstrom for Kids.

Tim Kurkjian