Interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974)
Variant: The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don't have to swing at everything — you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you're a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, "Swing, you bum!"
1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, as quoted in The Tao of Warren Buffett by Mary Buffett and David Clark p. 145
Context: I call investing the greatest business in the world … because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U. S. Steel at 39! and nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.
“If you pitch me inside, I'll hit the ball to McKeesport.”
Circa 1970, '71 or '72, as quoted by Blass in "Through Good and Bad, Blass' heart is with Pirates” https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/141557288/ by Rick Hummel, in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Sunday, July 27, 2003), p. 22
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>
Variant: You pitch me the fuck inside and I hit the fucking ball to McKeesport.
Circa 1970, '71 or '72; as quoted by Blass in A Pirate for Life https://books.google.com/books?id=NfLFdUrYpH8C&pg=PT146&dq=%22I+will+hit+the+freaking+ball+to+Harrisburg%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiC8tLNxIrVAhVGWz4KHY_XBWUQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20will%20hit%20the%20freaking%20ball%20to%20Harrisburg%22&f=false (2012) by Blass and Erik Sherman
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>
Variant: Blass, I'm going to tell you something: You pitch me inside, I hit the ball to Harrisburg.
"Painkillr"
Song lyrics, Other songs
Source: Until I Find You
Circa 1970, '71 or '72, responding to the novel approach facetiously suggested by teammate Steve Blass, were he ever to be traded from the Pirates; as quoted in "A Teammate Remembers Roberto Clemente” by Steve Blass, as told to Phil Musick, in Sport (April 1973); reproduced in Clemente! https://books.google.com/books?id=n-4qAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT60 (1973) by Kal Wagenheim, p. 158
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>
“You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?”
Source: The Elephant Vanishes
From A Balance Beam
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)
