- “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.”
- “The soldiers that didn’t come back were the heroes. It’s a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you’re a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you’re a survivor.”
- “The difference between relief pitching when I did it today is simple, there is too much of it. It’s one of those cases where more is not necessarily better.”
- “You can talk about teamwork on a baseball team, but I’ll tell you, it takes teamwork when you have 2,900 men stationed on the U.S.S. Alabama in the South Pacific.”
- “My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn’t pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn… If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year’s time.”
- “My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn’t pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn… If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year’s time.”
- “Baseball is only a game, a game of inches and a lot of luck. During a time of all-out war, sports are very insignificant. “
- “I would rather beat the Yankees regularly than pitch a no hit game.
- “My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don’t think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.”
- “I don’t think baseball owes colored people anything. I don’t think colored people owe baseball anything, either. “
- “If you ask the people in Europe who won World War II, they don’t say the Allies; they say the United States won the war and saved the world.”
- “I went on inactive duty in August 1945, and since I had stayed in such good shape and had played ball on military teams, I was ready to start for the Indians just two days later, against the Tigers.”
- “I was only a gun captain on the battleship Alabama for 34 months. People have called me a hero for that, but I’ll tell you this – heroes don’t come home. Survivors come home.”
- “Sympathy is something that shouldn’t be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.”
- “If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.”