Baseball Talk

Baseball Digest, Sept, 2000 by George Vass

From Stengelese to Yogi quotes, history of the game is filled with colorful comments

WORDS ARE SLIPPERY, A WISE MAN once remarked, and reliever John Rocker surely would ruefully echo that sentiment. After all, a deluge of jarringly inflammatory words--as well as a glut of wasteful walks--put Rocker's colorful, eccentric and inconsistent early major league career at risk.

But never mind Rocker and his mouthing other than to note that his much publicized case is just the latest reminder that baseball is and always has been a "talking game" like no other.

To talk a good game is almost as important as to play it. There always haw, been exceptionally gifted people who could do both superbly. Some outstanding players could perform even more eloquently with their mouths than with arms, bats and gloves. A glib tongue could serve a manager almost as well as a gift for strategy.

Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra have been deservedly honored with bronze tablets at Cooperstown for their superlative feats as players and managers. But if there were also a Hall of Fame reserved solely for the most quotable personalities in the history of the game both Stengel and Berra would be elected to it by acclamation.

Here's a sample from Stengel in his managerial mode:

"The secret of managing a club is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the five guys who are undecided."

Here's Berra on his great ability with the bat:

"Ninety percent of hitting is mental, the other half is physical."

More from Stengel and Berra later.

Not far behind that eloquent pair would be another Cooperstown incumbent, Leo Durocher, whose nickname of "The Lip" was a backhanded tribute to his voluble way with words as player, manager and broadcaster from the 1920s into the mid-1970s.

Perhaps the most familiar quotation inspired by the game is one attributed to Durocher when as manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers he summed up the 1947 New York Giants by allegedly saying, "Nice guys finish last." (Whether that's what he actually said is another matter.)

Just about as memorable is the evaluation of minor league catcher Moe Berg made in 1924 by scout Mike Gonzalez, who wired the Dodgers: "Good field, no hit." That's baseball's equivalent of Julius Caesar's "Veni! Vidi! Vici!" (I came, I saw I conquered).

Then there's Wee Willie Keeler's succinct explanation of his ability to place hits between fielders: "I hit 'em where they ain't."

Surely the most notable intellectual quotation about the game is that of Jacques Barzan, author and historian, who wrote, "Whoever would understand the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."

Barzun represents just the knob of the bat when it comes to the literary allusions about baseball to be found in the works of celebrated authors.

Sinclair Lewis sneered at his central character in Babbit, his prize-winning novel about life in 1920s America. by saying of him: "A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party."

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, whose Pygmalion is best known to many in its musical version as My Fair Lady, had a comment that might not sit so well with Rocker, the Los Angeles Dodgers players who invaded the stands at Chicago's Wrigley Field early this season, or for that matter the umpiring fraternity. Upon being exposed to baseball, Shaw rhapsodized: "What is both surprising and delightful is that (baseball) spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game. I do not see why this feature should not be introduced into cricket. There is no reason why the field (fans) should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability."

Cultured commentary aside, what follows is a light-hearted aggregation of baseball words to live by, or to put it another way, noteworthy, quotes, quips, malapros and off-the-cuff memorable comments about the game made by those who played it and those who watched, often bemused by the goings-on.

ON ROOKIES

Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, about demoting outfielder Drunge Hazewood to the minors after he baited .583 in spring training in 1980:

"I've never cut a guy hitting that high before. But he was making the rest of us look bad with that average."

Cleveland sportswriter Gordon Cobbledick, on strikeout-prone slugger Dave Nicholson's fielding technique:

"He is improving in tie outfield. To be sure, he hasn't caught a ball yet, but he's getting closer to them."

Among the highly-touted youngsters of pre-World War II days was outfielder Lou Novikoff of the Chicago Cubs. Novikoff, called the Mad Russian, one day made a great steal of third base. Unfortunately the bases were loaded at the time. Asked why he had taken off, Novikoff explained.

"I couldn't resist. I had such a great jump on the pitcher."

When future Hall of Famer Red Ruffing came up to the Boston Red Sox in the mid-1920s he was put in the bullpen. He was eating a sandwich when called on to relieve against the New York Yankees.