67 Famous Inspirational Baseball Quotes & Sayings

Baseball is a traditional game in America that uses a bat and a ball. It is one of America’s favorite past-times. Every season, there are as many as 162 games in a year. It is easily one of the most watched sports in the world alongside basketball and soccer.

Two teams compete against each other in the field. Each team has nine players, one pitcher, one catcher, four infielders, and three outfielders. It is played in a diamond-shaped field with four bases. It’s not that complicated to understand how this sport is played.

Reaching the bases continuously in one play without error is a home run. This is probably the most exciting part for the fans: the thrill and excitement that they get when the player is running through each base.

67 Best and Most Inspirational Baseball Quotes

If baseball is something that interests you, these quotes may be something you will want to read. These may inspire you to pursue a career in baseball or just simply encourage you to play more. Check them out below.

1. “Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!” – Babe Ruth

2. “Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every day, like those of a baseball player.” – Anonymous

3. “Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting.” – Yogi Berra

4. “There are three types of baseball players: Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens.” – Tommy Lasorda

5. “He hits my changeup. He hits my curveball. He hits my slider. I’ve run out of pitches to throw him. I just try to pick the spots where he’s going to hit his home runs.” – Brian Bohannon

6. “It ain’t over till it’s over.” – Yogi Berra

7. “Baseball is the only place in life where a sacrifice is really appreciated.” – Anonymous

8. “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.” – Leo Durocher

9. “You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.” – Babe Ruth

10. “Baseball is ninety percent mental, and the other half is physical.” – Yogi Berra

11. “My job is to give my team a chance to win.” – Nolan Ryan

12. “I have observed that baseball is not unlike a war, and when you come right down to it, we batters are the heavy artillery.” – Ty Cobb

13. “Baseball is an island of activity amidst a sea of statistics.” – Anonymous

14. “You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of a man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.” – Roger Kahn

15. “The only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.” – Pete Rose

16. “Baseball is a man maker.” – Al Spalding

17. “Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa.” – Bob Veale

18. “I don’t want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want somebody else to go chase it.”- Rogers Hornsby

19. “No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are, you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference.” – Tommy Lasorda

20. “If my uniform doesn’t get dirty, I haven’t done anything in the baseball game.” – Rickey Henderson

21. “Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it’s about love, integrity, and respect.” – Pat Gillick

22. “A catcher must want to catch. He must make up his mind that it isn’t the terrible job it is painted, and that he isn’t going to say every day, ‘Why, oh why with so many other positions in baseball did I take up this one.'” – Bill Dickey

23. “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.” – Rogers Hornsby

24. “It’s crazy how things happen for a reason — I love when players have meetings; I hate when I do. So, they had their meeting, and the big part of it was, we don’t quit. We don’t quit.” – Joe Maddon

25. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth

26. “There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.” – Derek Jeter

27. “There are only five things you can do in baseball – run, throw, catch, hit and hit with power.” – Leo Durocher

28. “Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move.” – Satchel Paige

29. “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

30. “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

31. “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” – Yogi Berra

32. “I take positives out of negatives all the time.” – David Wright

33. “There are three things you can do in a baseball game. You can win, or you can lose, or it can rain.” – Casey Stengel

34. “The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers.” – Earl Weaver

35. “It’s a pretty sure thing that the player’s bat is what speaks loudest when it’s contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word.” – Brooks Robinson

36. “Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal 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.” – Roger Angell

37. “It’s the mathematical potential for a single game to last forever, in a suspended world where no clock rules the day, that aligns baseball as much with the dead as the living.” – Bill Vaughn

38. “When you’re in the day-to-day grind, it just seems like it’s another step along the way. But I find joy in the actual process, the journey, the work. It’s not the end event.” – Cal Ripken Jr.

39. “Baseball is more than a game to me, it’s a religion.” – Bill Klem

40. “When they knock you down, you not only have to get up, but you have to make it clear that you won’t be knocked down a second time.” – Carl Yastrzemski

41. “A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.” – Humphrey Bogart

42. “I said before the Series that a sweep wouldn’t do it…It would have to be something epic. And that was epic, wasn’t it?” – Tom Ricketts

43. “The next time someone whines that baseball doesn’t have enough action, you can do two things: first, explain the planning, strategizing, calculating, and deception that place before every pitch. Then quote Hall-of-Fame announcer Red Barber: Baseball is dull only to dull minds.'” – Zack Hample

44. “I just try to take away what I can from every situation, to always keep learning. Life is hard. Life is humbling. I do all I can to keep it simple.” Mariano Rivera

45. “Baseball is a game of inches.” – Branch Rickey

46. “Baseball goals are attained not by strength but by perseverance.” – Felicity Luckey

47. “One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while, you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something.” – Nolan Ryan

48. “More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.” – Thomas Boswell

49. “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” – Babe Ruth

50. “Talent may get you on the field, but it’s effort and attitude that will keep you there.” – Ken Griffey Jr.

51. “This is a great thing that’s happening in baseball. We don’t know if it will ever happen again.” – Mark McGwire

52. “Baseball can be slow in many ways. The action starts with when the pitcher delivers the ball. But the action really starts when the crack of the bat happens.” – Cal Ripken Jr.

53. “In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” – Tom Seaver

54. “You see, 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.” – Jim Bouton

55. “I do what I’ve trained my whole life to do. I watch the ball. I keep my eye on the ball. I never stop watching. I watch it as it sails past me and lands in the catcher’s mitt, a perfect and glorious strike three.” – Barry Lyga

56. “I’m not going to play because I can, I’m going to play because I deserve it.” – Gregg Maddux

57. “The great thing about baseball is there’s a crisis every day.” – Gabe Paul

58. “How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.” – Lou Holtz

59. “Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.” – Bob Feller

60. “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

61. “You never know what’s going to happen… And that’s the fun of it!! That’s what baseball’s all about!!” – Keiichi Arawi

62. “You’ve got to love training and practice. It’s the only way to reach your potential.” – Bryce Harper

63. “Baseball is more than a game. It’s like life played out on a field.” – Juliana Hatfield

64. “When I played ball, I didn’t play for fun. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It’s a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.” – Ty Cobb

65. “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

66. “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

67. “Baseball is a lot like life. It’s a day to day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life.” – Ernie Harwell

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, these quotes have managed to inspire you in some way. Baseball is a sport that teaches you teamwork, hard work, and perseverance. Most of these quotes come from people who have a great understanding of baseball. They are players, coaches, and even die-hard fans.

Take it from these people with great passion for baseball. Be inspired and motivated, even if it’s not about baseball. Many of the things you learn from baseball can be applied in real life, too. Regardless of how much you favor the sport, there’s no denying the lessons that each of us can garner from simply watching and appreciating it.

So, which of these quotes inspired you most?