Baseball quotes

On February 23rd, 1960, a brass band played Auld Lang Syne and 200 diehard fans watched, as a two-ton wrecking ball, painted to resemble a baseball, began to demolish Ebbets Field in Brooklyn: the home of the Dodgers, from 1913 to 1957. Roy Campanella was given an urn filled with dirt from behind home plate; his home for 10 years, before a car accident ended his career. For 44 years, since Charles Hercules Ebbets had built his park on a garbage dump called Pigtown, Ebbets Field had united the hopes of the borough of Brooklyn and had been home to Wilbert Robinson and Dazzy Vance; Red Barber, and Hilda Chester, and the Dodgers Sym-phony; Leo Durocher, and Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider; Larry MacPhail, and Branch Rickey, and Jackie Robinson.

But now the pressure on Maris intensified. "Would he break Ruth's record," reporters asked again and again. "How the hell do I know," he answered, "I don't want to be Babe Ruth." He wasn't Babe Ruth, and Yankee fans never let him forget it. Even the front office tried to change the lineup to favor the more-popular Mantle. Under the relentless strain, Maris' hair began to fall out in clumps. Always taciturn, he now kept silent: refusing most interviews, keeping to himself.

Through it all, Maris kept hitting. And in mid-September, Mantle's injuries finally forced him out the race with 54 home runs. In the locker room before the 154th game of the season, with the Yankees 1 win away from the pennant and Maris 2 home runs short of Babe Ruth's record, he broke down. His manager, Ralph Houk, consoled him in his office. "If I can help win the game with a bunt, would you mind if I bunted? It wouldn't make me look bad, would it?" Houk replied: "No; it would make you a bigger man than ever."

The institution of the asterisk, the most important typographical symbol in American sport, terribly unfair. To take away Ruth's record, his single season record, was to take away something that was held so close to the hearts of the baseball establishment. They couldn't see doing it. Nonetheless, Roger Maris did it. He did hit 61 home runs. And the fact that it took 162 games, well, he also did it having to play at night, having to bat against the screwball, having to travel to the West Coast for games. And to do it all with a parade, a mob of reporters following him around, I think it’s unfair.

An amazing thing happened, which was that New York took this losing team to its bosom. Everybody thinks New York only cares about champions, but we cared about the Mets. I remember going to some games in June that year, and they were getting walloped; they were getting horribly beaten. But the crowds came out to the Polo Grounds in great numbers, and people brought horns and blew these horns. And after a while, I realized this was probably anti-matter to the Yankees, who were across the river and had won so long. Winning is not a whole lot of fun if it goes on. But the Mets were human, and that horn, I began to realize, was blowing for me. There’s more Met than Yankee in all of us. What we experience in our lives, there’s much more losing than winning, which is why we love the Mets.

On December 9, 1965, the day Branch Rickey died, the Cincinnati Reds let outfielder Frank Robinson go. He had played magnificently for them since 1956, when he hit 38 home runs to tie the rookie record. He charged into outfield walls to make spectacular catches, hurled himself into opposing infielders to break up double plays. And in 1961, won the National League's Most Valuable Player award. In casting him off, the Cincinnati owner explained that Robinson was too old at 30. He wasn't. Robinson moved to Baltimore, where in his first season he won the American League Triple Crown and became that league's Most Valuable Player. No other player has ever won the award in both leagues. Once, early in Robinson's career, when Branch Rickey had desperately wanted him for the Pirates, the Reds general manager said, "I wouldn't give you Frank Robinson for your whole team."

In 1966, the Boston Red Sox wound up as they so often had before: at the bottom of the standings. Then, in 1967, they got a new manager, Dick Williams, and a new lease on life. Right-hander Jim Lonborg won 22 games, all the while serving in the Army Reserves as the Vietnam War continued to escalate. But it was the play of one man who made the difference. Carl Yastrzemski, the son of a Polish potato farmer from Long Island and Ted Williams’ replacement in left field, almost singlehandedly carried the Red Sox that year. He led the league in nearly every batting category: a .326 average; 44 home runs; 121 runs driven in; and was named Most Valuable Player. "We went from losers to winners," he remembered. "Suddenly it was a joy to go to the ballpark."

I often wondered what I would do if I were ever traded because it happened many, many times, and it was "part of the game." And then suddenly it happened to me. I was leaving probably one of the greatest organizations in the world to at that time what was probably the least liked and, by God, this is America, and I'm a human being. I'm not a piece of property. I'm not a consignment of goods.

Flood did not report to the Phillies' training camp. "I am a man," he told baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

Dear Mr. Kuhn: After twelve years in the Major Leagues, I do not feel that 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. It is my desire to play baseball in 1970, and I am capable of playing. I have received a contract from the Philadelphia club, but I believe I have the right to consider offers from other clubs before making any decisions. I therefore request that you make known to all Major League clubs my feelings in this matter, and advise them of my availability for the 1970 season. Sincerely, Curt Flood.

The Commissioner refused to exempt him from the reserve clause. Flood refused to play, and vowed to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The century-old struggle between the owners and the players was approaching a climax.

My best pitch is a strike. A sinking fastball which you grip like this so you only get two seams into it, and if you turn your hand a little bit like this, it comes out, the wind pushes here, forces it down and away from a right-handed hitter. Thereby, he thinks it's a good pitch; at the last minute, it sinks, he hits the top half of the ball, and he hits a groundball to Burleson, Burleson picks it up, throws it to Yastrzemski, one away. And you do that twenty-seven times in a ball game, make perfect sinkers, then you get twenty-seven outs. Unless the hitters are smart, and then what they do is they know it's a sinker, they get up and drive the ball to right-center field between Lynn and Evans, and that's called a double, and then the pitcher has to run behind third base and back him up, and hopefully, they get the guy out at third, or it's a triple. And then, you get a runner at third and less than two outs, so they bring the infield in, and you don't want them to hit a sinker now, you gotta strike them out, so then you go to a cross-seam fastball, which I don't have.

"Brooks Robinson," Cincinnati's Pete Rose said, "belongs in a higher league."

What was incredible about Clemente was not only how skilled he was at each part of the game, but this kind of ferocity that he played with on each play of the game — even in years when they were pitiful, and they had no chance to get into the pennant or anything like that. He would throw it in, he would pick guys off who got a single who took too much of a turn going around first; there was just something intense about this guy that was not necessarily what was going on in Baseball at that moment.

When things look dark, void, and altogether hopeless to the colored youth of America..., when they need an inspiring thought that should urge them onward to the road of achievement despite forbidding obstacles, they will only need to read of and reflect upon the remarkable career of Jackie Robinson.