See Sports and Team Sports for coaches, fans and sports in general.

Page Toppers

• Angels in the Outfield
• Backyard Baseball
• Basses Loaded
• Batter Up
• Better at the Ballpark
• Casey at the Bat
• Character, Courage, Loyalty
  (Little League Motto)
• Double Play
• Field of Dreams
• Fly Ball
• Foul Ball
• Game Day
• Going...Going...Gone
• Grand Slam
• Havin' a Ball
• Hey Batter Batter
• Homerun!
• In a League All Your Own
• The Last Hit
• Little Big League
• Little Slugger
• Major League Fun
• Minor League Fun
• MVP
• Nobody Loves the Ump
• Pitching In
• Play Ball
• The Rookie
• Rookie of the Year
• Root Root Root for the Home Team
• Seventh-inning Stretch
• Stealing Second
• Steeeerike!
• Step Up to the Plate
• Take Me Out to the Ball Game
• Take State
• Three Strikes, You're Out
• Triple Play
• World Series Here We Come
• You're Out

Quotes and Info

• All the fat guys watch me and say to their wives, 'See, there's a fat guy doing okay. Bring me another beer.' (Mickey Lolich, Detroit Tigers Pitcher)
• Baseball, almost alone among our sports, traffics unashamedly and gloriously in nostalgia, for only baseball understands time and treats it with respect. The history of other sports seems to begin anew with each generation, but baseball, that wondrous myth of twentieth century America, gets passed on like an inheritance. (Stanley Cohen)
• Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended. (George Bernard Shaw)
• Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off. (Bill Veeck)
• Baseball is made up of very few big and dramatic moments, but rather it's a beautifully put together pattern of countless little subtleties that finally add up to the big moment, and you have to be well-versed in the game to truly appreciate them. (Paul Richards, Orioles manager)
• Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer. (Ted Williams)
• Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really appreciated.
• Baseball is where boys practice being boys and men practice being boys, and they get real good at it. (Mary Cecile Leary)
• Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal. (George F. Will)
• 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)
• Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up. (Bob Lemon)
• Blind people come to the park just to hear him pitch. (Reggie Jackson, on Tom Seaver)
• The charm of baseball is that, dull as it may be on the field, it is endlessly fascinating as a rehash. (Jim Murray)
• A critic once characterized baseball as six minutes of action crammed into two-and-one-half hours. (Ray Fitzgerald)
• The difference between this guy and the rest of us is that when we get hot we go up to .300. When he gets hot he goes up to .500. (Doug De Cinces on Rod Carew)
• Don't forget to swing hard, in case you hit the ball. (Woodie Held)
• Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you. (Satchel Paige)
• Gibson pitches as though he's double-parked. (broadcaster, Vin Scully on Bob Gibson)
• He hit the ball so hard, I couldn't even turn around in time to see it go over the fence. (Roger Clemens after Bo Jackson hit a 93 MPH ball over the right center field fence in 1989)
• He's got power enough to hit home runs in any park, including Yellowstone. (Sparky Anderson, on Willie Stargell)
• Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing. (Warren Spahn)
• A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz. (Humphrey Bogart)
• I ain't ever had a job I just always played baseball. (Leroy 'Satchel' Paige)
• I can't very well tell my batters don't hit it to him. Wherever they hit it, he's there anyway. (Gil Hodges, about Willie Mays)
• I didn't teach you that. Catch the ball with your glove. (Willie Mays to Kevin Mitchell after his famous bare-handed catch.)
• The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back. (Steve Garvey)
• First triple I ever had. (Lefty Gomez on his heart bypass surgery)
• For the parent of a Little Leaguer, a baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into innings. (columnist, Earl Wilson)
• The great trouble with baseball today is that most of the players are in the game for the money and that's it, not for the love of it, the excitement of it, the thrill of it. (Ty Cobb)
• I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want somebody else to go chase it. (Rogers Hornsby)
• I had a better year than he did. (Babe Ruth, when told that President Hoover made less than the $80,000 he was demanding in 1930.)
• I had all my own teeth and I wanted to keep it that way. (Tom Glavine on why he played baseball instead of hockey.)
• I keep my eyes clear and I hit 'em where they ain't. (Willie Keeler's explanation for his .432 average in 1897.)
• I was playing it like Willie Wilson, but I forgot that I'm in Clint Hurdle's body. (Clint Hurdle, on misplaying a fly ball)
• I would like people not to think in terms of the 755 home runs I hit but think in terms of what I've accomplished off the field and some of the things I stood for. (Hank Aaron)
• If God wanted football played in the spring, he would not have invented baseball. (Sam Rutigliano, about the USFL)
• If I had my career to play over, one thing I'd do differently is swing more. Those 1,200 walks I got...nobody remembers them. (Pee Wee Reese)
• If I were playing third base and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I'd trip her. Oh, I'd pick her up and brush her off and say, "Sorry Mom", but nobody beats me. (Leo Durocher)
• If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like. (Phyllis Diller)
• I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile. (Tom Clark)
• It was an announced test, so you not only failed the steroid test, you failed the IQ test. (Bob Costas, commenting on players who tested positive for steroids)
• Just give me twenty-five guys on the last year of their contracts; I'll win a pennant every year. (Sparky Anderson)
• Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don't move. (Leroy 'Satchel' Paige)
• Leo Durocher is a man with an infinite capacity for making a bad thing worse. (Branch Rickey on his manager)
• Man, if I made a million dollars, I would come in at six in the morning, sweep the stands, wash the uniforms, clean out the offices, manage the team, and play the game. (Duke Snider on salary disputes)
• More than any other game, baseball gives its players space--both physical and emotional--in which to define themselves. (John Eskow)
• Most ball games are lost, not won. (Casey Stengel)
• My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging. (Hank Aaron)
• Never win twenty games a year, because then they'll expect you to do it every year. (pitcher Billy Loes)
• Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection. (Red Smith)
• No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined. (Paul Gallico)
• Old baseball players never die, they just go batty.
• The only way to pitch to him is inside, so you force him to pull the ball. That way the line drive won't hit you. (Rudy May about George Brett)
• People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. (Roger Hornsby)
• 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)
• Pro-rated at 500 at-bats per year, my 1,081 strike-outs would mean that for two years out of the fourteen I played, I never touched the ball. (Norm Cash)
• Slumps are like a soft bed. They're easy to get into and hard to get out of. (Johnny Bench)
• That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball. (Bill Veeck)
• There are only two places in the league. First place and no place. (Tom Seaver)
• There are three things in my life which I really love: God, my family, and baseball. The only problem--once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit. (Al Gallagher)
• There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time. I owe him my best. (Joe DiMaggio on always playing hard)
• There's nothing wrong with the Little League World Series that locking out the adults couldn't cure. (Mike Penner, LA Times)
• Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water. The other one-third is covered by Gary Maddox. (broadcaster, Ralph Kiner on outfielder, Gary Maddox)
• Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken Jr. played against each other in Rochester versus Pawtucket Red Sox in the longest game in baseball history. The game went a total of 33 innings.
• The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime. (Babe Ruth)
• When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball." They say, "Play ball." (Willie Stargell)
• When you're ten, you know more about your team than you ever will know again. (Dan Shaughnessy)
• With tears in my eyes. (Frank Sullivan, when asked how he pitched to Mickey Mantle)
• You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat. (Christy Mathewson)
• You can't steal second base and keep one foot on first. (Frederick B. Wilcox)
• You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain. (Leo Durocher)
• You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too. (Roy Campanella)
• You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. (former pitcher, Jim Bouton)

Page Ideas

• Cut a very large shape like a bat, ball or glove and then fill in the space with photos as if you were making a crazy quilt (also you could use the shapes in a smaller size to mat one photo or to journal on).
• Cut a large brown or green square and put it at an angle on the page. Put the photos where the bases would be and journal along thin white strips to make the baselines.
• Cut a small 'diamond' and use it to journal on--try a silver pen.
• After filling in the page mostly with photos and matted journaling make straight marks in the empty spaces using a ruler and the pen so that it looks like the background of the page has stripes.
• Write the words "play ball!" using a felt pen in lower case letters but fairly large. In the open round part of the 'p', 'b' and the dot at the bottom of the '!' draw the curved lines to make them look like a baseball--or use baseball stickers. For the two 'l's' use bat stickers or draw bats freehand.
• Draw a series of small circles in a row down the side of the page. Add the stitch lines to make them look like baseballs.
• Cut a 3 or 4 inch circle in the center of a piece of dark color paper (one of the team colors if possible). Put the paper horizontally at the top of the page. In the 2" strip at the bottom spell out "Play Ball!" or something similar with ABC stickers. In the white circle draw curved stitching marks to make it look like a baseball. Cut photos in circles and mount them around the "baseball". (Natalie N. CMC)
• Using a felt pen in a team color make vertical stripes on the page spaced about 1/2" apart. Mat photos and journaling and adhere to the page. Make the title with ABC stickers. (Colette A. CMC)

Alone at the Plate

He pulls on a helmet, picks up a bat
and walks to plate "gotta hit and that's that".

The crowd starts to yell, the game's on the line
last inning, two outs, and the score's nine to nine.

Dad yells, "go get it,"Mom wrings her hands,
Coach yells "hit it" but alone there he stands.

Heroes are made on seconds such as this,
but he's just a little boy, what if he should miss?

Years after the games ended and he's little no more
will he remember the outcome or even the score?

No he'll have forgotten if he was out, hit or run,
he'll only look back on his friends and the fun.

So cheer this boy on, alone with his fate;
help him remember with fondness, this stand at the plate.

Spend your time wisely and help in his quest
to be a hitter with confidence and always his best.

And when the game's over, this boy can stand tall,
for you've helped him prepare to give it his all!

The Greatest

(Performed by Kenny Rogers)

Little boy, in a baseball hat,
stands in the field, with his ball and bat
Says "I am the greatest player of them all!"
He puts his bat on his shoulder, and he tosses up his ball.

And the ball goes up, and the ball comes down,
and he swings his bat all the way around
The world's so still you can hear the sound,
as the baseball falls, to the ground.

Now the little boy, doesn't say a word . . .
picks up his ball; he is undeterred
Says "I am the greatest there has ever been!"
And he grits his teeth. And he tries it again.

And the ball goes up, and the ball comes down,
and he swings his bat all the way around
And the world's so still you can hear the sound,
as the baseball falls, to the ground.

He makes no excuses; he shows no fear
He just closes his eyes, and listens to the cheers
Now the little boy, he adjusts his hat
Picks up his ball. Stares at his bat.

Says "I am the greatest, and the game is on the line!"
So he gives his all, one last time
And the ball goes up, like the moon so bright,
swings his bat, with all his might.

And the world's as still as still can be,
and the baseball falls; and that's strike 3
Now it's supper time, and his momma calls
Little boy starts home, with his bat and ball.

Says, "I am the greatest, that is a fact . . .
but even I didn't know, I could pitch like that."

(There is alternate ending that says:
I am the greatest--that is understood,
but even I didn't know I could pitch that good.)

Just a Little Person

They stand at the plate with hearts pounding fast;
The bases are loaded, the die has been cast.
Mom and Dad cannot help them, they stand alone
A hit at this moment would send the team home

The ball nears the plate, they swing and they miss
there's a groan from the crowd, with a boo and a hiss
A thoughtless voice cries, "Strike out the bum!"
Tears fill their eyes, the game's no longer fun.

So open your heart and give them a break
For it's moments like this, an adult you can make
Keep this in mind when you hear someone forget,
They're just a little person, not men and women yet.

Where You Won't Find Any Nuns

Sitting behind a couple of nuns at a baseball game with their habits partially blocking the view, three men decided to badger the nuns. In an effort to get them to move, one of the men said in a very loud voice, "I think I'm going to move to Utah, there are only a hundred nuns there."
The second guy spoke up and said, "I want to go to Montana, there are only fifty nuns there."
The third guy spoke up and said, "I want to go to Idaho, there are only twenty-five nuns there."
One of the nuns turned around, looked at the men, and in a very sweet, calm voice said, "Why don't you go to hell? There aren't any nuns there."

Songs about Baseball

• Basses Loaded - Dave Pomeroy (1996)
• Center Field - David Firth (2008)
• Daddy Played First Base - Homer and Jethro (1970)
• Dying Cub Fan's Last Request, A - Steve Goodman (1980)
• Go Cubs Go - Steve Goodman (1984)
• New Baseball Boogie - Brownie McGhee (1949)
• Say Hey, Willie Mays - The Wanderers (1954)
• Take Me Out to the Ball Game - Steve Goodman (1980)
• Talkin' Baseball (Willie, Mickey and the Duke) - T. Cashman (1981)
• Triple Play - The Swing Shift Band (1988)
• Two-Base Hit - Dizzy Gillespie (1947)

Baseball Trivia

The average life of a major league baseball is seven pitches. They don't actually wear out that fast but foul balls are lost to fans and homerun balls are usually not retrieved. Slightly worn balls are not thrown away, they are used for practice.

Something to think about:
Why do we sing "Take me out to the ball game" when we are already there?