Talk:Sports

I've removed the following:

• "We want a pitcher not a little bitcher" - Anonymous

Sports cheers sometimes get very popular. Would we want to open a page (or a section in this one) regarding cheers? ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 06:44, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced

Golf

Ben Hogan

"As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round."

"The only thing a golfer needs is more daylight."

Bobby Jones

"Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots - but you have to play the ball where it lies."

"No one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you are playing a game. You are playing old man par."

Arnold Palmer

"It's a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get."

"Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening - and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented."

Jack Nicklaus

"Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20 percent of the time, you're the best."

"It takes hundreds of good golf shots to gain confidence, but only one bad one to lose it."

Sam Snead

"Forget your opponents; always play against par."

"Never let up. The more you can win by, the more doubts you put in the other players' minds the next time out."

Baseball

MANAGERS

Walt Alston

• "Look at misfortune the same way you look at success - Don't Panic! Do your best and forget the consequences."

Sparky Anderson

• "Baseball is a simple game. If you have good players and if you keep them in the right frame of mind then the manager is a success."

• "He's (Jose Canseco[1]) built like a Greek goddess."

• "I can't believe they pay us to play baseball - something we did for free as kids."

• "I don't know why the players make such a big fuss about sitting in the first class section of the plane. Does that mean they'll get there faster?"

• "If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win—unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?"

• "If I ever find a pitcher who has heat, a good curve, and a slider, I might seriously consider marrying him, or at least proposing."

• "If I hear Bowie Kuhn[2] say just once more he's doing something for the betterment of baseball, I'm going to throw-up."

• "I only had a high school education and believe me, I had to cheat to get that."

• "Me carrying a briefcase is like a hotdog wearing earrings."

• "People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I've got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There's no future in it."

• "Players have two things to do. Play and keep their mouths shut."

• "Problem with (John) Wockenfuss[3] getting on base is that it takes three doubles to score him."

• "The only reason I'm coming out here tomorrow is the schedule says I have to."

• "You give us the pitching some of these clubs have and no one could touch us, but God has a way of not arranging that, because it's not as much fun."

Alvin Dark[4]

• "Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a communist."

• "Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season with the Chicago Cubs[5]. That's basebahl as it should be played - in God's own sunshine. And that's really living."

• "Friendships are forgotten when the game begins."

• "The Lord taught me to love everybody, but the last ones I learned to love were the sportswriters."

• "There are surprisingly few real students of the game in baseball; partly because everybody, my eighty-three year old grandmother included, thinks they learned all there was to know about it at puberty. Baseball is very beguiling that way."

Leo Durocher[6]

• "As long as I've got a chance to beat you I'm going to take it."

• "God watches over drunks and third baseman."

• "I don't care if the guy (Jackie Robinson[7]) is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a god-damn zebra. I'm the manager of this team and I say he plays."

• "If I were playing third base and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I'd trip her. Oh, I'd pick her up and brush her off and say, 'Sorry, Mom,' but nobody beats me."

• "If you don't win, you're going to be fired. If you do win, you've only put off the day you're going to be fired."

• "I made a game effort to argue but two things were against me: the umpires and the rules."

• "I never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes."

• "In the olden days, the umpire didn't have to take any courses in mind reading. The pitcher told you he was going to throw at you."

• "Luck? If the roof fell in and Diz (Dean)[8] was sitting in the middle of the room, everybody else would be buried and a gumdrop would fall in his mouth."

• "Show me a good loser in professional sports, and I'll show you an idiot."

• "What are we out at the park for, except to win?"

• "Win any way you can as long as you can get away with it."

• "You argue with the umpire because there is nothing else you can do about it."

• "You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain."

Whitey Herzog[9]

• "Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it."

• "If you don't have outstanding relief pitching, you might as well piss on the fire and call the dogs."

• "I'm not buddy-buddy with the players. If they need a buddy, let them buy a dog."

• "The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I'd rather go fishing for three days."

• "The only way to make money as a manager is to win in one place, get fired and hired somewhere else."

• "We need just two players to be a contender. Just Babe Ruth[10] and Sandy Koufax[11]."

• "We need three kinds of pitching: left handed, right handed, and relief."

Miller Huggins[12]

• "A good catcher is the quarterback, the carburetor, the lead dog, the pulse taker, the traffic cop and sometimes a lot of unprintable things, but no team gets very far without one."

• "A manager has his cards dealt to him and he must play them."

Tommy Lasorda[13]

• "About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure."

• "All last year we tried to teach him (Fernando Valenzuela[14]) English, and the only word he learned was million."

• "Baseball is like driving, it's the one who gets home safely that counts."

• "Guys ask me, don't I get burned out? How can you get burned out doing something you love? I ask you, have you ever got tired of kissing a pretty girl?"

• "He (Darryl Strawberry[15]) is not a dog; a dog is loyal and runs after balls."

• "I love doubleheaders. That way I get to keep my uniform on longer."

• "I walk into the clubhouse and it's like walking into the Mayo Clinic. We have four doctors, three therapists and five trainers. Back when I broke in, we had one trainer who carried a bottle of rubbing alcohol and by the seventh inning he had drunk it all."

• "No, we don't cheat. And even if we did, I'd never tell you."

• "When we win, I'm so happy I eat a lot. When we lose, I'm so depressed, I eat a lot. When we're rained out, I'm so disappointed I eat a lot."

Connie Mack[16]

• "Any minute, any day, some players may break a long standing record. That's one of the fascinations about the game, the unexpected surprises."

• "Humanity is the keystone that holds nations and men together. When that collapses, the whole structure crumbles. This is as true of baseball teams as any other pursuit in life."

• "I guess more players lick themselves that are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself."

• "No matter what I talk about, I always get back to baseball."

• "You can't win them all."

• "You're born with two strikes against you, so don't take a third one on your own."

PLAYERS

• "I know everything there is to know about hitting. I don't know anything there is to know about living." ~ Darryl Strawberry

Cycling

• Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.
  • H. G. Wells

• It never gets easier; you just go faster.
  • Greg Lemond

• Strange people, bike riders. They imagine a racing bike is made for going quickly. They're wrong. A racing bike is made solely for winning races.
  • Jacques Anquetil

Football (American)

• "Playoffs? You want to talk about playoffs? Don't talk about playoffs. Are you kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game...another game."
  • Jim Mora
• "You play to win the game!"
  • Herm Edwards
• "Where else would you rather be than right here right now?"
  • Marv Levy

Women

Mia Hamm, soccer

• "True champions aren't always the ones that win, but those with the most guts."

Jackie Joyner Kersee, track & field

• "It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret"

Billie Jean King, tennis

• "A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning."

• "No one changes the world who isn't obsessed."
  • San Francisco Chronicle (8 Aug 1978)

Martina Navratilova, tennis

• " Oh no E.M.P. I can't camp, I mean rush."
  • Torren Erut

• "Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people."

• "Just go out there and do what you have to do."

• "It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't."

Sheryl Swoopes, basketball

• "No matter how far life pushes you down, no matter how much you hurt, you can always bounce back."

Babe Didrikson Zaharias, golf

• "Study the rules so that you won't beat yourself by not knowing something."

• "You can't win them all -- but you can try."

Miscellaneous

• "Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world." ~ Dave Barry

• "Minimum effort, maximum efficiency" ~ Carlos Gracie Jr., referring to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

• "Win together today, and we walk together forever" ~ Fred Shero before the Philadelphia Flyers won their first cup - written on a board

• You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
  • Wayne Gretzky, Canadian Ice Hockey player?