Bill Lee Quotes

“You have two hemispheres in your brain - a left and a right side. The left side controls the right side of your body and right controls the left half. It's a fact. Therefore, left-handers are the only people in their right minds.”

— Bill Lee

“You should enter a ballpark the way you enter a church.”

— Bill Lee

“People are too hung up on winning. I can get off on a really good helmet throw.”

— Bill Lee

“The more self-centered and egotistical a guy is, the better ballplayer he's going to be.”

— Bill Lee

“I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won't matter if I get this guy out.”

— Bill Lee

“The other day they asked me about mandatory drug testing. I said I believed in drug testing a long time ago. All through the sixties I tested everything.”

— Bill Lee

“The only rule I got is if you slide, get up.”

— Bill Lee

“When cerebral processes enter into sports, you start screwing up. It's like the Constitution, which says separate church and state. You have to separate mind and body.”

— Bill Lee

“I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.”

— Bill Lee

“Kids don't learn the fundamentals of baseball at the games anymore.”

— Bill Lee

That was real baseball. We weren't playing for money. They gave us Mickey Mouse watches that ran backwards.

— Bill Lee

“I'm mad at Hank Aaron for deciding to play one more season. I threw him his last home run and thought I'd be remembered forever. Now, I'll have to throw him another.”

— Bill Lee

Most of the managers are lifetime .220 hitters. For years pitchers have been getting these managers out 75% of the time and that's why they don't like us.

— Bill Lee

“You take a team with twenty-five assholes and I'll show you a pennant. I'll show you the New York Yankees.”

— Bill Lee

“I told [reporters] that I sprinkled marijuana on my organic buckwheat pancakes, and then when I ran my five miles to the ballpark, it made me impervious to the bus fumes. That's when [Baseball Commissioner] Bowie Kuhn took me off his Christmas list.”

— Bill Lee

Baseball is a lot like the Army, there aren't many individuals. About the only difference is that baseball players get to stay in nice hotels instead of barracks.

— Bill Lee

I was always matching wits with authority. Pondering over my past and present hassles, I began to wonder why my life had taken the direction it had. What cosmic forces had led me to this precise moment that saw me, once again, dancing on the rim of the volcano? The answers started to come to me as my life flashed before my eyes. I think it all started when I was arrested as a pyromaniac.

— Bill Lee

“Alcohol is like anything else. It's only as bad as the person it's being poured into. If it's used to heighten an occasion, or to take an edge off stress, I don't see a problem. Trouble starts when you either lose control and let the bottle run you, or when you believe its promises of immortality. You realize that no matter how much you punish yourself, you always seem to wake up the next day. Pretty soon you're convinced that you will never die. When that happens I guess it is time to look for help before your life becomes one long, lost weekend.”

— Bill Lee

“The most important question regarding Big Data at almost any company is: How much are your customers really worth?”

— Bill Lee

“Smoking's a way to let you down slowly from a ballgame. It also makes you use less of the resources around. It makes people better in the way they act towards society. Everybody's nicer. It's hard to be mean when you're stoned.”

— Bill Lee