You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. – Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. – George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, 1990

Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa. – Bob Veale, 1966

They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be acute Republicans. – George F. Will, 1990