Not Today

Since yesterday was the first day of exhibition baseball, a few quotes fer ya...

Don't tell me about the world. Not today. It's springtime and they're knocking baseball around fields where the grass is damp and green in the morning and the kids are trying to hit the curve ball. - Pete Hamill

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring - Rogers Hornsby

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. - A. Bartlett Giamatti

What are we at the park for except to win? I'd trip my mother. I'd help her up, brusher her off, tell her I'm sorry. But mother don't make it to third. - Leo Durocher

England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example. - Robert Benchley

There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them work. - Charlie Lau

Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection. - Red Smith

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. - Annie Savoy via Ron Shelton

The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love. - Bryant Gumbel

That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball. - Bill Veeck

The pitcher has to find out if the hitter is timid. And if the hitter is timid, he has to remind the hitter he's timid. - Don Drysdale

I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. - Rogers Hornsby

And finally...

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us. - Walt Whitman

PS - A couple of new beers reviewed over at my beer blog. Check it out, y'all. - Earl

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Ernie Banks would want you to place twice...if you could.