Jim Bouton Quotes

#1. Don't ever think $7,000 isn't a lot of money in baseball. I've had huge arguments over a lot less.

Jim Bouton

#2. Religion is like baseball," said Steve. "Great game, bad owners.

Jim Bouton

#3. The day he is out of baseball will be the day he starts to think about what comes next. By then, it may be too late.

Jim Bouton

#4. Forget goals. Value the process.

Jim Bouton

#5. Back then, if you had a sore arm, the only people concerned were you and your wife. Now it's you, your wife, your agent, your investment counselor, your stockbroker, and your publisher.

Jim Bouton

#6. Pete Rose gets banned for life for gambling while the drug addicts are allowed back after a year; and then they get extra chances after that. Baseball is saying, in effect, that gambling is worse than drugs. How do kids make sense out of that?

Jim Bouton

#7. Opening day
or Opening Day. Depending on how you feel about it.

Jim Bouton

#8. Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?

Jim Bouton

#9. Doubleday's First Law, which states that if you throw a fastball with insufficient speed, someone will smack it out of the park with a stick.

Jim Bouton

#10. The older they get, the better they get when they were younger

Jim Bouton

#11. Lots of people look up to Billy Martin. That's because he just knocked them down.

Jim Bouton

#12. You're only as smart as your ERA.

Jim Bouton

#13. How come nobody wants to argue with me? Is it because I'm always so right?

Jim Bouton

#14. When I approached him a second time with the cameras rolling, Munson grabbed the microphone and suggested I perform a physical impossibility.

Jim Bouton

#15. If you had a pill that would guarantee a pitcher 20 wins, but might take five years off his life, he'd take it.

Jim Bouton

#16. Statistics are about as interesting as first base coaches.

Jim Bouton

#17. Before the first workout, Joe Schultz, the manager (he's out of the old school, I think, because he looks like he's out of the old school - short, portly, bald, ruddy-faced, twinkly eyed), stopped by while I was having a catch. "How you feeling, Jim?" he asked. I wonder what he meant by that.

Jim Bouton

#18. It never hurts to apologize, especially if you don't mean it.

Jim Bouton

#19. The author relates that Mickey Mantle did not expect to play one day and showed up extremely hung over. He was nevertheless called on to pitch and smashed a towering home run to an enthusiastic ovation. He related to his teammates, Those people don't know how tough that was.

Jim Bouton

#20. A lot of long relievers are ashamed to tell their parents what they do. The only nice thing about it is that you get to wear a uniform like everbody else.

Jim Bouton

#21. A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

Jim Bouton

#22. The author emphasizes the importance of self-forgetfulness when his statistics were marred by a bad outing. He forgot all of that outing to such an extent that he quipped, What was my name?

Jim Bouton

#23. High school games would just as big a deal to me as any major league game.

Jim Bouton

#24. I think I should be allowed to be only fair, or even mediocre, for a while.

Jim Bouton

#25. The author says his young son, adopted from South Korea, occasionally burps and says thank you but otherwise is doing all right.

Jim Bouton

#26. For a hundred years, the owners screwed the players. For 25 years, the players have screwed the owners-they've got 75 years to go.

Jim Bouton

#27. We were like farm animals compared to today's players who are treated like thoroughbreds.

Jim Bouton

#28. The pitching coach was bugged by the author's technique because he had never seen anyone do it before, and besides, it wasn't the coach's idea.

Jim Bouton

#29. I can still remember Pete Rose, on the top step of the dugout screaming, Fuck you, Shakespeare.

Jim Bouton

#30. Three of the brightest baseball pitchers of their times staged comebacks without much success - David Cone, Jim Bouton and Jim Palmer - but there was room to admire their quixotic gesture.

George Vecsey

#31. The older they get, the better they were when they were younger.

Jim Bouton

#32. Front offices are more interested in players that are far than players that are near.

Jim Bouton

#33. Sheldon Kopp, the author and psychologist, wrote, There are no great men. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.

Jim Bouton