Quotes about major-league (14 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Baseball people are generally allergic to new ideas; it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms, and it is the hardest thing in the world to get Major League Baseball to change anything—even spikes on a new pair of shoes—but they will eventually…they are bound to.”

Branch Rickey (1881–1965) American baseball player and coach

In 1954.
Source: http://www.northsidebaseball.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=45283&start=25&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

People , World , Shoe , Idea

“There is one hit of mine which will not stay in the official records, but which I believe to be the longest clout ever made off a major league pitcher. At least some of the veteran sport writers told me they never saw such a wallop. The Yanks were playing an exhibition game with the Brooklyn Nationals at Jacksonville, Fla., in April, 1920. Al Mamaux was pitching for Brooklyn. In the first inning, the first ball he sent me was a nice, fast one, a little lower than my waist, straight across the heart of the plate. It was the kind I murder, and I swung to kill it. The last time we saw the ball it was swinging its way over the 10-foot outfield fence of Southside Park and going like a shot. The ball cleared the fence by at least 75 feet. Let's say the total distance traveled was 500 feet: the fence was 423 feet from the plate. If such a hit had been made at the Polo Grounds, I guess the ball would have come pretty close to the top of the screen in the centerfield bleachers.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

In "Wherein Babe Tells of Some Longish Swats" http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1920/08/15/page/18/article/wherein-babe-tells-of-some-longish-swats by Ruth (as told to Pegler), in The Chicago Tribune (August 15, 1920); reprinted as "The Longest Hit in Baseball" https://books.google.com/books?id=SAAlxi-0EZYC&pg=PA39&dq=%22There+is+one+hit+of+mine%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjngMzRjbnQAhXDYyYKHe-JCCMQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q=%22There%20is%20one%20hit%20of%20mine%22&f=false2 in Playing the Game: My Early Years in Baseball, p. 39

Way , Travel , Game , Sport

“Major League Baseball is a national institution and we take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to how the game affects the lives of American youth.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

Youth , Game

“When the wind blew from the south and the French doors had been opened, the sound of cheering carried from Ebbets Field into the apartment. It was astonishing, to hear cheers from a major league crowd while sitting at home.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 1, The Trolley Car That Ran By Ebbets Field, p. 36

Home

“It is well to recall that in 112 years of major league baseball, there has been only one bankruptcy filing.”

Andrew Zimbalist (1947) American economist

Source: Baseball And Billions - Updated edition - (1992), Chapter 3, Franchise Finances, p. 72.

“Major League Baseball has always recognized the influence that our stars can have on the youth of America. As such, we are concerned that recent revelations and allegations of steroid use have been sending a terrible message to young people.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

People , Youth , Star

“It's a passing of a great American tradition. It is sad. I really and truly feel that. It will leave a vast window, to use a Washington word, where people will not get Major League Baseball and I think that's a tragedy.”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

At the end of the last NBC Game of the Week, October 9, 1989

People , Sadness , Feeling , Thinking

“On behalf of Major League Baseball, I am terribly saddened by the sudden passing of Kirby Puckett. He was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term. He was revered throughout the country and will be remembered wherever the game is played. Kirby was taken from us much too soon — and too quickly.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

Game , Sense , Country

“I have often stated that baseball's proudest moment and its most powerful social statement came on April 15, 1947 when Jackie Robinson first set foot on a Major League Baseball field. On that day, Jackie put an end to segregation in baseball and ushered in the era in which baseball became the true national pastime. By celebrating Jackie Robinson Day every April 15, we have ensured that the incredible contributions and sacrifices he made — for baseball and society — will not be forgotten.”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

“When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

As quoted in Baseball's Greatest Quotes (1992) by Paul Dickson; cited in "Game Day in the Majors" at the Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/robinson/jrgmday.html

Boy , Fish , Summer

“After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States.”

Curt Flood (1938–1997) baseball player

Letter to Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, December 24, 1969
Cited in, Richard D. Carter, Curt Flood (1971). The Way It Is, Trident Press, ISBN 0-671-27076-1.

Law , Feeling

“Major League Baseball has not forgotten and will never forget the great contribution and sacrifice that Jackie made to baseball and to all of society”

Bud Selig (1934) American baseball executive

Forgetting

“In many if not most cases, Cuban players haven’t been busts so much as they’ve been systematically over-hyped during the signing process, which led to unrealistic expectations around Major League Baseball and in the media. The vast majority of Cuba’s truly elite players have either stayed in Cuba for their entire careers or left Cuba too late to have a meaningful MLB career.”

Joe Kehoskie (1973) American baseball agent

On the success rate and perception of Cuban baseball defectors in MLB, from the Miami Herald article "Yoenis Cespedes may be the great unknown for Miami Marlins" http://web.archive.org/web/20120218180037/http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/12/v-fullstory/2636817/yoenis-cespedes-may-be-the-great.html by Clark Spencer (12 February 2012)

“Unlike most, a ball player must confront two deaths. First, between the ages of thirty and forty he perishes as an athlete. Although he looks trim and feels vigorous and retains unusual coordination, the superlative reflexes, the major league reflexes, pass on. At a point when many of his classmates are newly confident and rising in other fields, he finds that he can no longer hit a very good fast ball or reach a grounder four strides to his right. At thirty-five he is is experiencing the truth of finality. As his major league career is ending, all things will end. However he sprang, he was always earthbound. Mortality embraces him. The golden age has passed in a moment. So will all things. So will all moments.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Lines On The Transpontine Madness, p. xx

Death , Truth , Age , Feeling