I used to soak my mitts in a bucket of water for about two days. Then I’d put a couple of baseballs in the pocket and wrap it up with a rubber band. Today you don’t have to do that, because catchers‘ mitts are more like first baseman’s gloves.

Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.

People have asked me a lot of times, because I didn’t hit a lot, how long a dozen bats would last me. Depending on the weight and model I was using at that time – I would say eight to 10 cookouts.

The bat is not a toy, it’s a weapon. It gives me everything in life, which helps me to do everything on the field.

Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

The black press, some liberal sportswriters, and even a few politicians were banging away at those Jim Crow barriers in baseball. I never expected the walls to come tumbling down in my lifetime.

You throw batting practice, you warm up pitchers, you sit and cheer. You do whatever you have to do to stay on the team.

How do you catch a knuckleball? You wait until it stops rolling, then go pick it up.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the bigs.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

I won’t be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat.

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.

As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher’s mound. It was as if I’d been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy.

Pop flies, in a sense, are just a diversion for a second baseman. Grounders are his stock trade.

All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

I had no future with the Dodgers, because I was too closely identified with Branch Rickey. After the club was taken over by Walter O’Malley, you couldn’t even mention Mr. Rickey’s name in front of him. I considered Mr. Rickey the greatest human being I had ever known.

Any teammate of mine that had a kid and a boy that was capable of playing baseball, I think I set a terrific example of ‚Don’t do this‘ and ‚Don’t do that.‘ And that’s one of the things that I’m most proud of.

I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.

Career highlights? I had two – I got an intentional walk from Sandy Koufax and I got out of a rundown against the Mets.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit.

If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.

I still enjoy watching a batter successfully cross home plate, but nothing thrills me more than seeing the Holy Spirit at work in hearts as the Gospel is carried into stadiums, across the airwaves, and around the world.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned.

Hey, I think it’s easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it’s a much greater accomplishment. That’s hard.

These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don’t have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks.

The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.

I hope the fans have enjoyed listening as much as I’ve enjoyed doing the games. I don’t ever go to the park where I don’t have a good day. I don’t like losing. But I don’t think I ever go to the park where I have a bad day. I don’t think once.

Baseball hasn’t forgotten me. I go to a lot of old-timers games and I haven’t lost a thing. I sit in the bullpen and let people throw things at me. Just like old times.

When I came up to bat with three men on and two outs in the ninth, I looked in the other team’s dugout and they were already in street clothes.

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.

I signed a very modest $3,000 bonus with the Braves in Milwaukee. And my old man didn’t have that kinda money to put out.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

Baseball was, is and always will be to me the best game in the world.

In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

You know, I was once named Minor League Player of the Year… unfortunately, I had been in the majors for two years at the time.

There’s different kinds of laughs. It’s like a baseball lineup: this guy’s your power hitter, this guy gets on base, this guy works out walks. If everybody does their job, we’re gonna win.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

If I’d just tried for them dinky singles I could’ve batted around .600.

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.

I hit a grand slam off Ron Herbel and when his manager Herman Franks came out to get him, he was bringing Herbel’s suitcase.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

If a guy hits .300 every year, what does he have to look forward to? I always tried to stay around .190, with three or four RBI. And I tried to get them all in September. That way I always had something to talk about during the winter.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at home.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.

In my opinion, baseball is as big a business as anything there is. It has to be a business, the way it is conducted.

At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.

The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.