Quotes - A

"I never thought home runs were all that exciting. I still think the triple is the most exciting thing in baseball. To me, a triple is like a guy taking the ball on his 1-yard line and running 99 yards for a touchdown." - Hank Aaron, Milwaukee Braves OF

"I used to love to come to the ballpark. Now I hate it. Every day becomes a little tougher because of all this. Writers, tape recorders, microphones, cameras, questions and more questions. Roger Maris lost his hair the season he hit sixty-one. I still have all my hair, but when it's over, I'm going home to Mobile and fish for a long time." - Hank Aaron, as he closed in on Babe Ruth's career home run record

"Mickey meant an awful lot to me. He was a tremendous athlete. People didn't understand him the way they should have. He played 10 years on one leg. But more than that, he was a tremendous person." - Hank Aaron on Mickey Mantle

"Looking at the ball going over the fence isn't going to help." - Hank Aaron

"I had just turned 20, and Jackie told me the only way to be successful at anything was to go out and do it. He said baseball was a game you played every day, not once a week." - Hank Aaron, on Jackie Robinson

"The pitcher has got only a ball. I've got a bat. So the percentage of weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting." - Hank Aaron

"He's been very talkative. But it is usually under oath." - Sandy Alderson, Oakland A's GM, on Albert Belle

"Some plays just come out of me, just on instincts. I'll make a play and wonder, How did I do that?" - Baltimore's Roberto Alomar

"It can be life or death in the fire service and it definitely felt like life and death on the ballfield." - Allen Anderson, on training to become a firefighter

"I was only halfway to the record and it seemed like it took me a long time. I feel like that one will never be broken. That record will never be touched." - Garret Anderson (Anaheim Angels, OF), on Joe Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak, after Anderson's streak ended at 28 games.

"You're only young once, but you can be immature forever" - Larry Andersen, relief pitcher

"How come we drive on parkways and park on driveways?" - Larry Anderson

"If Americans throw rice at weddings, do Chinese throw hot dogs?" - Larry Anderson

"Why does sour cream have an expiration date?" - Larry Anderson

"How do you know if you run out of invisible ink?" - Larry Anderson

"I sent Kruk one of those fruit and nut baskets at the hospital. I don't know if he likes fruit, but I know he'll appreciate the nuts." - Larry Anderson, on John Kruk, after John Kruk had surgery

"Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal in 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. Its feel and heft are the beginning of the sport’s critical dimensions; if it were a fraction of an inch larger or smaller, a few centigrams heavier or lighter, the game of baseball would be utterly different.

Hold a baseball in your hand ... Feel the ball, turn it over in your hand; hold it across the seam or the other way, with the seam just to the side of your middle finger. Speculation stirs. You want to get outdoors and throw this spare and sensual object to somebody or, at the very least, watch somebody else throw it. The game has begun." — Roger Angell, in Five Seasons

"The press box at Wrigley Field in Chicago is an extended narrow shed, two rows deep, that is precariously bolted to the iron rafters just underneath the park’s second deck. To gain access, one must climb a steeply angled ramp and clamber down a little starboard companionway, guarded at its foot by a uniformed minion and then proceed giddily along a catwalk that hangs directly above the tiered, circling rows of seats and spectators behind home plate.

Seen from this vantage point, the preoccupied fans below sometimes suggest a huddled, uncomplaining horde of immigrants stuffed into steerage on some endless voyage toward better luck—not an inappropriate image if we remind ourselves that this famous rustbucket, the good ship Cubbie, last dropped anchor in the shining harbor of the World Series in 1945 ..." - Roger Angell, in Fortuity

"This is a linear sport. Something happens and then something else happens, and then the next man comes up and digs in at the plate. Here’s the pitch, and here, after a pause, is the next. There’s time to write it down in your scorecard or notebook, and then perhaps to look about and reflect on what’s starting to happen out there now. It’s not much like the swirl and blur of hockey and basketball, or the highway crashes of the NFL.

Baseball is the writer’s game, and its train of thought, we come to sense, is a shuttle, carrying us constantly forward to the next pitch or inning, or the sudden double into the left-field corner, but we keep hold of the other half of our ticket, for the return trip on the same line. We anticipate happily, and, coming home, reenter an old landscape brightened with fresh colors. Baseball games and plays and mannerisms—the angle of a cap—fade stubbornly and come to mind unbidden, putting us back in some particular park on that special October afternoon or June evening. The players are as young as ever, and we, perhaps not entirely old." - Roger Angell, in Once More Around the Park

"Cub fans, by consensus, are the best in baseball. Year after year, in good times and (mostly) bad, they turn out in vociferous numbers, sustaining themselves with a heavenly ichor that combines loyalty, criticism, cheerfulness, durability, rage, beer and hope, in exquisite proportions." — Roger Angell in Season Ticket

"Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young." - Roger Angell

"Trying to sneak a fastball past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster." - Joe Adcock

"When we played softball, I'd steal 2nd base, feel guilty and go back." - Woody Allen

"I hope the car they give him has an extra large glove box." - Sparky Anderson, on Brooks Robinson receiving a car for being the MVP of the 1970 World Series.

"I'm beginning to see Brooks [Robinson] in my sleep. If I dropped a paper plate, he'd pick it up on one hop and throw me out at first." - Sparky Anderson

"He's such a big, strong guy he should love that porch. He's got power enough to hit home runs in any park, including Yellowstone." - Sparky Anderson, on Willie Stargell batting in Tiger Stadium in the 1971 All Star game.

"The great thing about baseball is when you are done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989 I'll tell them I had amnesia." - Sparky Anderson

"That's why I don't talk. Because I talk too much." - Joquin Andujar

"There's one word that describes baseball -- 'You never know.'" - Joquin Andujar

"You can't let any team awe you. If you do, you'll wind up a horseshit player." - Luke Appling

"Grantland Rice, the great sportswriter once said, 'It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.' Well Grantland Rice can go to hell as far as I'm concerned." - Gene Autry, owner of the Anaheim Angels

"He's like an amusement-park ride - Even for guys who play." - Ruben Amaro, on Mark McGwire