Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball quotes

Truck-drivers were our enemies: so were the coppers patrolling their beats, and so too were the shopkeepers who took bruising payment from our skins for the apples and the fruit we “snitched” from their stands and counters.

A rough, tough neighborhood, but I liked it.

There in those crooked winding streets I staged my first fight, and lost it, I think. There too I played my first baseball. There I learned to fear and to hate the coppers. Perhaps it was there, too, that I learned to control my pitches.

I guess I must have come near falling over in my excitement. Did I want to play baseball?

Does a fish like to swim or a squirrel climb trees?

I didn’t even pause to ask questions.

I’m left-handed in everything else I do, but when it comes to writing I’m just as right-handed as any right-hander you ever saw.

It just goes to show that people take a lot of things for granted. They don’t observe things closely, particularly things about which they feel confident.

Most of the rest of my story everyone knows.

Every time I drive in a run, every time I hit a ball over the fence or hear the cheers of the bleacher fans ringing in my ears I get a great kick. I suppose I always will.

The first year I broke into baseball I got one fan letter—and that one was from Brother Gilbert.

Last year there were 20,000 letters in my mail, from every part of the globe and every state in the Union. I had a letter from a Brahman priest in India, and I had a letter from a condemned man in a Cuban jail.

We’ve got just nine men to play the nine positions. Good or bad, they’re the ones who have to do the job and all the worry about the other fellow don’t help a bit.

Our job is to make the most of what we have and the Pirates be durned.

”

The first thing any pitcher has got to develop—the biggest single item in his whole stock of trade—is control! Don’t let anyone kid you about it.

The curve and the fast one are important; the change of pace and the other trick deliveries are great—but they’re not worth a plugged nickle unless you have control to go with them.

And by control I don’t mean the ability to put the ball over the plate somewhere between the shoulders and the knees, either. I mean the ability to hit a three inch target nine throws out of ten.

The greatest curve ball in the world isn’t worth a thin dime if you don’t know what to do with it. The “swift” of Walter Johnson would be worthless to a chap who couldn’t get the ball over the plate.

And control isn’t a gift that is born to a man. It’s the result of hard, hard work and long hours of practice.

And in striving for control there are these things to remember. First of all you’ve got to develop a smooth, easy, pitching motion. Overhand, side arm or underhand it doesn’t make any difference. The best one is the one that is easiest and most natural.

The point of course is that to become a good pitcher a man must make a close study of opposing batsmen—and Shocker is one of the closest students you’ll find in the game today.

Pitching after all, is about one-third arm work and two-thirds head work and the fellows who stick around longest are the pitchers who let their head take over the burden as much as possible.

Year after year you see pitchers like Alex and Jess Haines and George Uhle and Dutch Ruether and Shocker out there winning ball games.

“That’s the way to pitch,” he agreed. “

Better four balls for one base than one ball for four bases anytime!

”

Of course, Waite has to use the fast one every now and then to keep them guessing, but it’s the other stuff that really does the business.

After all, successful pitching is pretty much a matter of keeping the hitter off balance.

As long as the man at the plate can’t get set, he’ll never tear the cover off a ball or break any fences in the outfield. That’s the reason a slow ball is so effective. There’s nothing about a slow ball to fool any one.

It’s just as Joe Wood used to say when he was in his prime, “

The best curve ball in the world isn’t worth a plugged nickle until you learn what to do with it—and most fellows never do learn.

That’s why there aren’t very many good pitchers around loose these days.”

And in all his career I don’t believe he misjudged a half dozen balls. Few outfielders can do that. Following a fly ball in flight and catching it is one thing.

But turning your back at the crack of the bat and running at top speed, then turning in time to grab the ball out of the air is something else again.

Harry could come in on a ball too, with the best of them. Coming in to take a ball at the shoe strings, of course, was Tris Speaker’s best stunt. There was no one quite in his class, but Harry came pretty close.

Team play—What it is—What it means—Signs and how they operate—The pitch-out—Backing up the throw—The cut-off play—How it was invented—The coaches, and their duties—Miller Huggins puts one over—The McGraw coaching system—A world series episode—The old practice of signal stealing—How it operated—Out-of-date now—Dangers of signal stealing.

Baseball always has been and always will be a game demanding team play. You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don’t play together the club won’t be worth a dime.

Two things make for real team play. The first is players’ knowledge of each other that comes from constant playing together. It’s this knowledge which is lacking on all young teams.

To make a long story short I came to bat with runners on second and third, one out, and a run needed to tie or two to win.

What a spot to be a hero. But it wasn’t my hero day.

Ryan was curving every ball and after “whittling,” he carried the count down to three and two. I thought he was going to walk me sure, and I was rarin’ to sock it.

“

Hit ’em where they ain’t

,” Willie replied.

Personally I’m not a place hitter. No “swing hitters” are. I’m big and strong and get a lot of drive back of the ball. Everyone knows that nine times out of ten I’ll hit to right field.

But if I really get hold of one it doesn’t make any difference whether the fielders know where it’s coming or not. It just goes out of the park.

Just the same, I like to try a bit of place hitting once in a while and in the past two or three seasons I’ve got so I can hit to left pretty well by choking my bat and taking an extra step forward with …

Another thing that used to bother me was over-anxiety to hit. Most fellows suffer from that at one time or another. You’re so anxious to hit that you swing at bad balls.

The toughest thing anybody has to learn is to keep that old bat on the shoulder on the “close ones.”

The smart pitcher is always working the comers, keeping the ball just an inch or two outside or inside, a mite too high or a bit too low. The over-anxious hitter is duck-soup for that sort of pitching.

“

You don’t have to swing!

”

And I’m not holding Al’s hitting form up as an example. I’m just illustrating the point that there’s no rule governing the good hitters. There’s no one more off form, than Al, and mighty few better hitters. It all goes back to the same thing.

The most important thing about hitting is to be natural, and be easy.

George Burns, the Cleveland first baseman, is another hitter whose stance at the plate is entirely off form. George stands perfectly straight, with his feet right together. There’s no other man in either league who stands that way.

Earl had a pet stick that he had been using all season long. He protected it like a child, and he wouldn’t even use it in hitting practice. “

That bat is full of basehits

,” he would say, “and there’s no need wasting them on hitting practice.”

… pitches two hit game and loses—Real test of hitting is ability to smack ball when hits mean runs—The danger of “tightening up”—Hitting slumps and how to overcome them—Bunting, its value and use—Great bunters and how they operated—The bunt attack and how it is put over.

Base hits look fine in the batting averages, but they pay off on runs scored.

All the base hits in the world are wasted if the hitter doesn’t complete his journey and check in at the home plate with a run. Funny things happen in baseball, proving that hits are just as valuable as you make them.

Some fellows claim that a slump doesn’t bother them. That they take it as a matter of course, knowing that they will work out of it sooner or later. That’s bunk.

There never was a ball player lived who could go through a batting slump without worrying.

It’s simply a question of how much you worry, and whether or not your worry is about the slump or over methods of overcoming it.

The worst part of a hitting slump is that a fellow will hit the ball all right—but always at somebody.

When you’re in a hitting streak it seems that everything you hit falls safe. When you’re in a slump nothing goes right.

You hit ’em on the nose and the ball goes right into some outfielder’s hands. You lay down a grounder that nine times out of ten would be a basehit, and some infielder does a Houdini and comes up with the ball for a putout.

“Yet,” he said, “I’m conservative. I believe in saving distance. Those thirty-two hits, laid end to end, would just about equal one of Babe’s shortest home runs. Yet he got only four bases on the distance and I got thirty-two.

Science pays, my boy, science pays!

”

The answer is: “

Pick out a good one and sock it!

”

Many times I’ve cracked out a homer, and when I got back to the bench I’ve had some of the boys ask me what it was I hit. And I couldn’t tell them.

All I knew was it was over—I liked it—and I swung just right.

That day in 1927 that I got my sixtieth home run off Tom Zachary, the left hander with the Washington Senators. Naturally there was a lot of interest in it, and the newspapers next day carried stories as to the sort of ball I hit.

There wasn’t anything very scientific in that scheme, but it had its advantages. It was easy to know who was up and didn’t offer much chance for argument.

As a kid I saw more fights started over whose turn it was to hit, than for any other single reason I can remember.

The other method of arranging the batting order consisted in starting with a good hitter, then a weak one, and alternating right through. The idea of that was that there would be a good hitter coming up in every inning to start something.

Of course arranging a batting order in a kid game is a matter that requires plenty of strategy.

Just as the boy who owns a glove and ball is generally pitcher, so is the kid who owns a bat, pretty apt to be first hitter—baseball strategy be durned.

At least that was true when I was a youngster, and from what I’ve seen boys haven’t changed much since.

But those thrills are all personal.

There’s another sort of thrill that ball players know—the thrill of seeing a perfect play, perfectly executed.

And now, after a lot of years of big league competition, I’ve about decided that the two most beautiful plays the game holds are the perfect steal and the perfectly executed “squeeze” play that brings the runner sliding home in a cloud of dust with …

With the proper sort of a bunt the play can’t fail to score a run. Since the runner gets such a long start there’s no player in the world can handle the ball quickly enough to retire him.

But the bunt must be perfect and there’s the catch of it.

Bunting today is pretty much a lost art. The hitter might miss the ball; he might pop it into the air; he might drop it dead in front of the plate. And any of these things are fatal.

But they have other good ones in Tavener and Gehringer, and Moriarity even went as far with the “steal” game that he had Bob Fothergill and Harry Heilmann stepping them off. And those fellows never would break any speed records anywhere.

Base stealing isn’t so much a matter of speed as it is a question of catching the opponents off guard, getting a good lead, and then being able to start fast.

Players like Eddie Collins and Johnny Neun are fast but not sprinters. Yet they’re good base runners simply because they know how to take a long lead, and how to start.

As Bob Shawkey used to say

“The only things Ty Cobb never stole were first base and the umpire’s whisk broom, and he would have had those in another two years.”

I’ve heard a lot of explanation of Cobb’s success as a base runner. The best I ever heard was from Cobb himself. And it was short and sweet.

I’ve heard a lot of explanation of Cobb’s success as a base runner. The best I ever heard was from Cobb himself. And it was short and sweet.

“I’ve made a success as a base runner because I keep my head up,” he said.

What he meant of course, was that he was always watching for opportunities. The slightest fumble, the slightest hesitation on the part of an opposing player in handling the ball—these were invitations to Cobb, and he never refused them.

May be so. But present day ball players have more good sense. They realize that such tactics, with the injuries that follow shorten careers. And the professional baseball career is short enough anyhow.

Play hard, play fast, but play fair is today’s motto.

Intentional spiking has gone out, along with the emery ball and the ball park saloon.

And if you ask me, the chief objection managers have to golf isn’t the actual playing at all. It’s the conversation.

Golf is one of the “talkingest” games in the world.

If fellows would go out in the morning and shoot their eighteen holes, then come in and keep quiet it would be alright. But they don’t do it.

And from the time we get on the train until we leave, that phonograph is working overtime.

The boys frequently organize quartets and many a bit of close harmony has been carved out in a Pullman smoker.

What do we do while traveling?

Fun? Sure, it’s fun. And the reason is that we’re all one big gang together. We know each other, trust each other, like each other.

Baseball has had its share of wonderful friendships and most of them have started aboard rattling, old Pullman cars when the boys get a few hours to themselves and have a chance to act natural.

But, and here’s the rub. Ours is a short lived business. At the age when most men are just reaching their prime we’re through and out.

Grown old at thirty-five sounds strange to most men, but the statement is all too true to the ball player.

Men sometimes envy us for the publicity we get and the fame. It is pleasant to see one’s name played up in the papers day after day: there is a satisfaction in being recognized in the crowd and cheered perhaps.

Sand lot baseball is a lot of fun—simply because it’s a game which you can take up or drop as you please.

But professional baseball is a real job, the same as any other life work—a job that takes the best there is in you, and when you’re finished, leaves you to carry on as best you can.

Once a ball player has made the grade, once he has broken down the competition and made a place for himself, his future is pretty much in his own hands.

Exercise regularly but use good sense.

And remember always that it’s easy to keep in condition but it’s a tough job getting back physical fitness that has once gone.

Right now, well past thirty years old and supposedly on the down grade of my baseball career, I’m in the best physical condition I ever knew.

Keep physically fit always. It isn’t hard if you do it, but if you let yourself slip it’s doubly hard to come back.

Most important of all—and this goes not alone for baseball but for every other profession—save your money!

Perhaps you say I’m a queer one to preach that gospel. Personally I’m fitted, I believe, above most everyone else. For I’ve played both sides. For several years I spent my money as I earned it.

Here’s one thing that’s certain.

I’ll play just as long as I can. It’s my profession, my life, and I love it.

And when I’m through I will be able to retire and live the way I want to live—knowing that I have plenty to support myself and family for the rest of my days.

We like the cheers when they come: we take the jeers as they echo. We try to give the best we can, and once we’re too old to carry on we all hope to step down gracefully to bow to the youngsters who succeed us.

Youth, you know, is the life of baseball—and we can’t keep our youth forever.

And that, as the boys say, when they hit into a double play, is that!

Then Dugan made a megaphone of his hands, and turning toward Scotty shouted out a line that I’ll never forget:

“Hey, Scotty,” he said, “pull in your ears. You look like a loving cup!”

And Joe got his base hit too!

Whitey was on him in a minute.

“That’s right, Barney,” Whitey howled, “better four balls for one base than one ball for four bases anytime.”

That’s one line that has gone around the league and back again. You still hear it dozens of times a season—a sort of unconscious tribute to Whitey Witt who finished his baseball career some seasons ago.