Dizzy Dean

It don't make no difference
how you say it, just so you say it
in a way that makes sense.
Did you ever meet anyone in your life
that didn't know what ain't means?

Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean (January 16, 1910 – July 17, 1974), also known as Jerome Herman Dean (both the 1910 and 1920 Censuses show his name as "Jay"), was an American professional baseball pitcher.

Quotes

Josh, I wish you and Satchel
played with me on the Cardinals.

Hell, the pennant would be won by July 4th, and we could go fishing until World Series time.

• Josh, I wish you and Satchel played with me on the Cardinals. Hell, the pennant would be won by July 4th and we could go fishing until World Series time.
  • Circa October 1934 (following a post-season exhibition game between the Pittsburgh Crawfords and an MLB all-star team composed primarily of members of the 1934 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals), as quoted in "Brown Bambino of Baseball: For Lack of an Offer" by Haskell Cohen, in The Baltimore Afro-American (July 18, 1942), p. 23

• I ain't done nothin' about my language yet, but I want to say one thing. It don't make no difference how you say it, just so you say it in a way that makes sense. Did you ever meet anyone in your life that didn't know what ain't means?
  • Quoted, circa fall 1942, by the Christian Science Monitor; reproduced in "Ain't It the Truth," Des Moines Tribune (October 10, 1942), and in America's Dizzy Dean (1978) by Curt Smith, pp. 121–122

• Well, this 'headwork' on my part comes in good because the ball hits me smack dab in the middle of the forehead and knocks me colder than a mackerel, but I busts up the double play. I don't come to for a half-hour, and they rush me to the hospital to take a lot of X-rays and see how bad off I am. [...] The next day the papers come out with big headlines, "Dizzy Dean's Head Shows Nothing." I think they could have worded it different.
  • Recalling his ill-fated pinch-running appearance in Game 4 of the 1934 World Series, in The Dizzy Dean Dictionary and What's What in Baseball (1943); reproduced in "Sports of the Times: Dizzy Dean, Author Extraordinary" by Arthur Daley, The New York Times (September 13, 1943), p. 24

• You learn 'em English, and I'll learn 'em baseball.
  • As quoted in America's Dizzy Dean (1978) by Curt Smith, p. 120

Quotes about Dean

• Diz never announced. He just sort of talked the game. That's the way he was on television, on radio before. You felt you were around a potbellied stove and he was speaking to you. He was funny, warm. He didn't let you listen or watch; he made you.
  • Bill MacPhail, as quoted in America's Dizzy Dean (1978) by Curt Smith, p. 118

• 'Dizzy' ain't dizzy and 'Daffy' ain't daffy. They're plenty smart and fine boys.
  • Will Rogers, reporting on his visit to each team's locker room, following Dean's Game 7 victory over Detroit in the 1934 World Series, in "Will Rogers Says," Imperial Valley Press (October 10, 1934), p. 20

• I predicted at the last World Series (and that was early in the Series, not after he had carried it away in his pocket), I said he would replace the Babe. He is sho chuck full of personality and he is boastful, but it's not in a fresh way. It's in a kidding way, and he is always laughing, and he is what they call a natural ball player. He can do anything. Frankie Frisch put him in there to run bases, because he can run bases, and he will get a hit off anybody's pitching, and he loves to play ball. Will pitch every day if they let him.
  • Will Rogers, "Don't Call Dizzy Dean's Brother 'Daffy'," Boston Globe (February 17, 1935), p. B5; reproduced in Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Roosevelt Years (1982), p. 198