A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

The silliest and most tendentious of baseball writing tries to wrest profundity from the spectacle of grown men hitting a ball with a stick by suggesting linkages between the sport and deep issues of morality, parenthood, history, lost innocence, gentleness, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum . (The effort reeks of silliness because baseball is profound all by itself and needs no excuses; people who don't know this are not fans and are therefore unreachable anyway.

Stephen Jay Gould

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Ad Anyway Ball Baseball Because Between Deep Effort Excuses Fans Gentleness Grown History Hitting Innocence Issues Itself Know Linkages Lost Men Morality Most Needs No Excuses Parenthood People Profound Profundity Seemingly Silliness Spectacle Sport Stick Suggesting Therefore Tries Unreachable Writing

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Stephen Jay Gould
American - Scientist
September 10, 1941 - May 20, 2002

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.

Jackie Robinson

Hitting a baseball well, as in cricket, is a very rare skill. One of most difficult things to do in the world to do, hitting a ball coming at you at ninety miles an hour with a round bat. Wonderful to watch.

Peter Tork

I think you come to watch baseball, and if you're a true fan, then you enjoy watching baseball. MLB tries to change this and change that, speed up the games, but baseball's baseball. You can't change it. It's America's pastime. It's the greatest game on earth. I don't really want to change it that much.

Bryce Harper

For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight.

Donald Hall

The sport to which I owe so much has undergone profound changes, but it's still baseball. Kids still imitate their heroes on playgrounds. Fans still ruin expensive suits going after foul balls that cost five dollars. Hitting streaks still make the network news and hot dogs still taste better at the ballpark than at home.

Duke Snider

Other than hitting the ball...there's nothing else I have ever done or know how to do. How to live on the outside, how to earn a living, how to take of my family, I'm a stupid idiot who doesn't know how to do any of that. Therefore...Please let me play baseball.

Kim Young-kwang

I think this is a sport where we can really challenge all of ourselves as baseball fans, as baseball players, even the casual viewers. It's just good to think, What can we do that hasn't been done?

Jessica Mendoza

The great thing about baseball is the causality is easy to determine and it always falls on the shoulders of one person. So there is absolute responsibility. That's why baseball is psychologically the cruelest sport and why it really requires psychological resources to play baseball - because you have to learn to live with failure.

Michael Mandelbaum

If I didn't play baseball, I probably wouldn't play a sport because i'm not really that athletic. Baseball was the one sport I could nerd my way to the top.

Trevor Bauer

You know, baseball's not stupid. Baseball does what the fans want, usually.

Pete Rose

Basketball has always been a sport I loved and grew up playing. For me, it was one of those things that... I guess baseball was just in my genes a little bit. I have a lot of cousins that played baseball. Basketball is not an easy sport - you definitely got to be gifted to play that game. I felt like I was pretty good at it, but my ability was better in baseball.

Dellin Betances

(Barry) Bonds' records must remain part of baseball's history. His hits happened. Erase them and there will be discrepancies in baseball's bookkeeping about the records of the pitchers who gave them up. George Orwell said that in totalitarian societies, yesterday's weather could be changed by decree. Baseball, indeed America, is not like that. Besides, the people who care about the record book - serious fans - will know how to read it. That may be Bonds' biggest worry.

George Will

Baseball is the only sport I know that when you're on offense, the other team controls the ball.

Ken Harrelson

Baseball is better with tradition, with history. Baseball is better with fans who care.

Theo Epstein

Before, baseball was something to do to get ready for the hockey season. Now, people look to play baseball, period. It's something you stick with.

Jason Bay

Most people call something profound, not because it is near some important truth but because it is distant from ordinary life. Thus, darkness is profound to the eye, silence to the ear; what-is-not is the profundity of what-is.

W. H. Auden

A Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

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