Baseball Evolution Quotes

Baseball has changed dramatically since I began my tenure with the Yankees.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

If I walked back into the booth in the year 2025, I don't think it would have changed much. I think baseball would be played and managed pretty much the same as it is today. It's a great survivor.

I wonder why there is a designated hitter in baseball after all these years? As an experiment, it seemed like a swell enough idea, but you would think the novelty would have worn off by now and everyone would get back to playing baseball.

One reason outfielders don't have stronger arms might be they don't practice as much as we did. Most teams today don't take outfield practice. Another reason is baseball has to compete with other sports now - basketball, football, soccer - for the better athletes that might have more skills and stronger arms.

Ball parks are smaller and baseballs are livelier. They've practically got pitchers wearing straitjackets. Bah! They still allow the knuckleball, and that is three times as hard to control.

I came up in 1941 and I played against men who played in the 1930s. I stayed until 1963 playing against men who will be playing in the 1970s. So I think I can feel qualified to say that baseball really was a great game, and baseball is really a great game, and baseball will always be a great game.

You had to pitch in and out. The zone didn't belong to the hitters; it belonged to the pitchers. Today, if you pitch too far inside, the umpire would stop you right there. I don't think it's fair.

I believe in the Rip Van Winkle theory—that a man from 1910 must be able to wake up after being asleep for seventy years, walk into a ballpark, and understand baseball perfectly.

I don't like to compare clubs or players from way back. It's different today. Your ballparks are better. In the days when I played, we had eight teams in each league. Now you have more.

If the Cincinnati Reds were really the first major league baseball team, who did they play?

Every day and in every way, baseball gets fancier. A few more years and they'll be playing on oriental rugs.

My career spanned the era when relievers started to become more important.

Day baseball is now dead for all practical purposes. Sooner or later, the game will be played in its entirety at night, and as I've said before, then baseball will be squarely in the amusement, the entertainment business along with wrestling, midget auto racing and the trotting tracks.

You used to be taught to let the ball go as far as possible and then drop it on the runner, whereas now it might be even more advantageous to direct the ball in front of the bag and get the guy on the leg.

I had some great pitchers while in St. Louis. At first, they only 'pitched' the ball fifty feet. They had an allowance of six bases on balls, which was neutralized to some extent by four strikes. Later on, the 'throw' became a free-for-all, overhand, or any style the pitcher chose.

Baseball gets better for whatever reason.

What's the game coming to? Evidently the guys making all these rules never played the game of baseball.