Quotes About Babe Ruth

“In 1922 everything changed again. The Eskimo pie was invented; James Joyce's Ulysses was printed in Paris; snow fell on Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the New York Yankees; Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Frederick Douglass's home was dedicated as a national shrine; former heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson invented the wrench ...”

— Bernice L. McFadden

“Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness. The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off.”

— Thomas Boswell

“The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New England's pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball”

— Martin F. Nolan

“I have only one superstition. I touch all the bases when I hit a home run. -Babe Ruth”

— Babe Ruth

“On September 7th, after the Cubs dropped Game Three, the two teams boarded the Michigan Central together to embark on the twenty-seven hour trip, and Babe Ruth got drunk and started stealing hats.”

— Dennis Lehane

“Baseball is known for superstitious players and cursed teams-and at the root of every curse there's a story. Boston's curse was to trade Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Cubs fans claim a billy goat is responsible for their futility. And Cleveland's curse? The club struggled after its Pennant-winning 1954 season, but it was rich with optimism just two years later as an onslaught of new talent promised to lift the club once more to the ranks of baseball's elite-and by 1959 the club was contending for the Pennant again. And then GM Frank Lane traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers and cursed everything.”

— Tucker Elliot

“We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels - Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges - is in our own self-interest. That's where the pool of talent is - and also of fans.”

— A. Bartlett Giamatti

“Even with the benefit of steroids most modern players still couldn't hit as many home runs as Babe Ruth hit on hotdogs.”

— Bill Bryson

“Babe Ruth was great. I'm just lucky.”

— Reggie Jackson

“I don't want to be Babe Ruth. He was a great ballplayer. I'm not trying to replace him. The record is there and damn right I want to break it, but that isn't replacing Babe Ruth.”

— Roger Maris

“People think of the greatest home run hitters of all time and think of Babe Ruth; they don't think about that Warren Spahn hit more than anybody.”

— Rollie Fingers

“You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just this magnificent human being. And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. But he was also a really good guy.”

— Bill Bryson

“Don't compare me to Babe Ruth. God gave me the opportunity and the ability to be here at the right time, at the right moment, just like he gave Babe Ruth when he was playing. I just hope I can keep doing what I've been doing - keep taking care of business.”

— Sammy Sosa

“Now I've had everything except for the thrill of watching Babe Ruth play.”

— Joe DiMaggio

“Hey, manager ... Some kid must have left his glove here ... It has his name on it ... See? Right here ... Willie Mays ... He wrote his name on his glove, see? Poor kid ... He's probably been looking all over for it ... We should have a lost and found. I don't know any kid around here named Willie Mays, do you? How are we gonna get it back to him? He was pretty smart putting his name on his glove this way, though ... It's funny, I just don't remember any kid by that name ... "
"Look at your own glove."
"What?"
"Look at your own glove ... There's a name on it ... "
"Babe Ruth ... Well, I'll be! How in the world do you suppose I got her glove?!”

— Charles M. Schulz

“Don't try to tell Namath's people on First Avenue about Babe Ruth, because they don't even know the name. In fact, with the young, you can forget all of baseball. The sport is gone. But if you ever have seen Ruth, and then you see Namath, you know there is very little difference.”

— Jimmy Breslin

“Babe Ruth didn't become her father until 18 months after he married her mother, Claire, on April 17, 1929, Opening Day of the baseball season. Julia was 12 years old.”

— Jane Leavy

“Babe Ruth rose like a rocket. Through discipline. He also loved to practice.”

— Carol S. Dweck

“Out popped Paul Duffy, in plain clothes except for a state police windbreaker and a badge clipped to his belt. He looked at me - I think by now I had dropped the bat to my side, at least, though I must have looked ridiculous anyway - and he raised his eyebrows. 'Get back in the house, Babe Ruth.”

— William Landay

“It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course." -George Herman "Babe" Ruth”

— Anonymous.

“Mr. Rickey, I'll put more people in the park than anybody since Babe Ruth.”

— Dizzy Dean

“Don't worry about it. Babe Ruth struck out on occasion, too.”

— Walter Annenberg

“I did not choose necessarily on the basis of significance. If you have a vote for the most significant athlete, then you have Ali, then you have Babe Ruth, then you have Michael Jordan.”

— Dick Schaap

“We need just two players to be a contender. Just Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax.”

— Whitey Herzog

“The first time that I ever saw Babe Ruth was in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse.”

— Waite Hoyt

“Honestly, at one time I though Babe Ruth was a cartoon character. I really did, I mean I wasn't born until 1961 and I grew up in Indiana.”

— Don Mattingly

“Whether or not anybody had invented the category in his lifetime, Babe Ruth was surely the Greatest Living Yankee almost immediately upon lofting home runs at the Polo Grounds, allowing the Yankees to build their own palace across the Harlem River.”

— George Vecsey

“Whenever I think of baseball, the first name that comes to mind is Babe Ruth. What the Babe was to baseball, Shula is to football coaching. There are certain figures in sports who are larger than the games they play or coach, and Don Shula is one of those.”

— Marv Levy

“Hopefully I can become the Babe Ruth of the World Wrestling Federation and be the champion at the same time.”

— Hulk Hogan

“For a long time, I'd been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer.”

— Bill Bryson

“The current Babe Ruth of improv? Sacha Baron Cohen. He's pretty amazing.”

— Seth Rogen

“I've had heroes in my life - Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth.”

— Tommy Lasorda

“Trade and wealth creation is not all upside. It is failure, too.
Failure is a necessary component to growth and success. Babe Ruth
struck out 1,330 times but also hit 714 home runs. We need to let
failing entities fail. Only then will successful people turn these enterprises
back into wealth-creating vehicles again. "Too big to fail" is a
concept that perpetuates failure and saps vitality from the rest of the
wealth creators to do so.”

— Ziad K. Abdelnour

“I hope he (Babe Ruth) lives to hit one-hundred homers in a season. I wish him all the luck in the world. He has everybody else, including myself, hopelessly outclassed.”

— Home Run Baker

“Now they talk on the radio about the record set by (Babe) Ruth, and (Joe) DiMaggio and Henry Aaron. But they rarely mention mine. Do you know what I have to show for the sixty-one home runs? Nothing, exactly nothing.”

— Roger Maris

“The press still considers me one of the most laid-back athletes since Babe Ruth. That's supposed to be a criticism, but I consider it a compliment because I think being carefree on the course is one of the secrets to scoring well consistently”

— Fred Couples

“Babe Ruth, what can you say? You are almost speechless when people put your name alongside his name. I wish I can go back in time in meet him. Obviously, he was probably the most important sports figure in the world at that time. Hopefully, someday when I pass away, I get to meet him, and then I can really find out what he was really like.”

— Mark McGwire

“A-Rod wants to be like Babe Ruth. And people don't realize this, he's a lot like Babe Ruth. Before the playoffs a couple of years ago, A-Rod went to the hospital and promised a dying kid he'd ground out to second for him.”

— Artie Lange

“He (Babe Ruth) hits a ball harder and further than any man I ever saw.”

— Bill Dickey

“Babe Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching.”

— Tris Speaker

“Wives of ballplayers, when they teach their children their prayers, should instruct them to say: God bless mommy, God bless daddy, and God bless Babe Ruth! He's upped daddy's paycheck by 15 to 40 percent!”

— Waite Hoyt

“Every big leaguer and his wife should teach their children to pray, God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, and God bless Babe Ruth.”

— Waite Hoyt

“In the 1920s, everyone wanted to be a celebrity. Everyone wanted to be like Babe Ruth or Charles Lindbergh ... Businessmen, in particular, in the '20s really believed that to be a success, an entrepreneur needed to have a personality, a sense that you were a success. That's why I think Capone dressed the way he did. And that's why he entertained the press - because he wanted to be perceived as a successful American. Dale Carnegie ... would later cite Capone as a model for creating the public image. Obviously, it went bad in many ways for Capone, but that's the image he was going for.”

— Jonathan Eig

“If I'm compared to Babe Ruth or Willie Mays, that's great. But I'm just going to go out there and be myself.”

— Ken Griffey, Jr.

“When I first came to Yankee Stadium I used to feel like the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were walking around in there.”

— Mickey Mantle

“You can't judge a man by watching him live ... I personally watched Babe Ruth at bat three times, and he struck out every time. But at the very time that I was watching him strike out, the record said that he was the greatest home-run king who ever lived.”

— Sterling W. Sill

“This guy from L.A. sits down next to me, and he says "you like baseball?" I said, "Oh, man, I love baseball." So he goes "Did you know that if Jesus had played ball, he'd have been the greatest ball player ever?" Like I'm gonna argue with that logic. So I sat there for a second, and then I said "did you know that if Babe Ruth had been the Messiah, the Catholics would have beer and hot dogs at Communion?" He left.”

— Bill Engvall

“I don't want people to forget Babe Ruth. I just want them to remember Henry Aaron.”

— Hank Aaron

“Don't let failure get you down. Babe Ruth struck out over 1,300 times.”

— Lou Holtz

“Babe Ruth was the home-run king of his time, but also the strikeout king.”

— Dan Millman