One of the most storied teams in baseball history, the New York Yankees have an impressive record, with the most titles of any club (27). This baseball dominance was helped by an outstanding roster of players that graced the field of Yankee Stadium (both the old and new). But it was the team of the late 1920s, quite possibly the best team in history and dubbed "Murderers' Row" for their dominance at the plate, that gave the world legends like Babe Ruth.
Babe Ruth began his career as a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox before a trade landed him with the New York Yankees. Many consider Ruth the greatest baseball player of all time and his impressive stats – most home runs in a season, most career home runs – support this. He had a reputation as an outstanding pitcher, a rarity in the sport. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its "first five" members during the official museum opening in 1939.
To create this list, we looked at large compendiums of quotes, and selected those most prevalent across multiple sources, using that as evidence of the notoriety of the quotes. We tried to pick quotes that were particularly motivational, insightful, or funny. Editorial discretion was used to select quotes from a larger compendium. We checked sources as thoroughly as possible to avoid misattributing quotes.
It should be noted that it is possible that some quotes attributed to Ruth were quotes of others that he, himself, had quoted in interviews. In some cases, there are several versions of a quote attributed to Ruth. We included all versions where applicable. (Check out these quotes from another baseball icon, Lou Gehrig.)
"All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill."
"Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder."
"Don't ever forget two things I'm going to tell you. One, don't believe everything that's written about you. Two, don't pick up too many checks."
"All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except it looked good."
"Aw, everybody knows that game, the day I hit the homer off ole Charlie Root there in Wrigley Field, the day October first, the third game of that thirty–two World Series. But right now I want to settle all arguments. I didn't exactly point to any spot, like the flagpole. Anyway, I didn't mean to, I just sorta waved at the whole fence, but that was foolish enough. All I wanted to do was give that thing a ride… outta the park… anywhere."
"(Ty) Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit."
"Gee, it's lonesome in the outfield. It's hard to keep awake with nothing to do."
"How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball…The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can."
"I'd play for half my salary if I could hit in this dump (Wrigley Field) all the time."
"If it wasn't for baseball, I'd be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery."
"As soon as I got out there I felt a strange relationship with the pitcher's mound. It was as if I'd been born out there. Pitching just felt like the most natural thing in the world. Striking out batters was easy."
"Baseball was, is, and always will be to me the best game in the world."
"Hot as hell, ain't it, Prez?"(to Calvin Coolidge)
"I didn't mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands."
"I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun."
"Just one (superstition). Whenever I hit a home run, I make certain I touch all four bases."
"The termites (cancer, the day before he died, to Connie Mack) have got me."
"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime."
"Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad. You know, this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth. That means the boys. And after you're a boy and grow up to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing clubs today in your national pastime. The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball. As a rule, people think that if you give boys a football or a baseball or something like that, they naturally become athletes right away. But you can't do that in baseball. You got to start from way down, at the bottom, when the boys are six or seven years of age. You can't wait until they're 14 or 15. You got to let it grow up with you, if you're the boy. And if you try hard enough, you're bound to come out on top, just as these boys here have come to the top now. There have been so many lovely things said about me today that I'm glad to have had the opportunity to thank everybody."
"Reading isn't good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit, I couldn't hit home runs. So I gave up reading."
"Paris ain't much of a town."
"I won't be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of six and sixteen wearing a glove and swinging a bat."
"I never heard a crowd boo a homer, but I've heard plenty of boos after a strikeout."
"I don't give a damn about any actors. What good will John Barrymore do you with the bases loaded and two down in a tight ball game. Either I get the money (more than Barrymore), or I don't play!"
"If I'd just tried for them dinky singles I could've batted around .600."
"You just can't beat the person who never gives up."/"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up."
"Yesterday's home runs don't win today's games."
"I learned early to drink beer, wine, and whiskey. And I think I was about five when I first chewed tobacco."
"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."/ "Every strikeout brings me closer to the next home run."
"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game."/ "Never let the fear of striking out hold you back."
"Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?"
"How about a little noise? How do you expect a man to putt?"
"Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."
"Sometimes when I reflect on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. I think, 'It is better to drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.'"
"You should always go to other people's funerals, or they won't go to yours."
"What I am, what I have, what I am going to leave behind me – all this I owe to the game of baseball."
"Wealth is always attracted, never pursued."
"Love the game of baseball and baseball will love you."
"A part of control is learning to correct your own weaknesses. The person doesn't live who was born with everything. Sometimes he has one weak point, generally he has several. The first thing is to know your faults. And then take on a systematic plan of correcting them. You know the old saying about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link. The same can be said in the chain of skills a man forges."
"Life is a game like any other; we just don't take it as seriously."
"I'm only going one way."
"If you want to hit home runs, you've got to swing a lot."
"The only game, I think, in the world is baseball."
"There are 52 weeks in a year. I always wanted to make a grand a week."
"Why not? I had a better year than he did." (When asked why he should be paid more than the president after signing an $80,000 contract in 1930)
"I've heard people say that the trouble with the world is that we haven't enough great leaders. I think we haven't enough great followers. I have stood side by side with great thinkers – surgeons, engineers, economists, people who deserve a great following – and have heard the crowd cheer me instead."
"Don't be afraid to take advice. There's always something new to learn."
"Well, the good Lord and good luck must have been with me because I did exactly what I said I was going to do."
"I'd give a year of my life if I could hit a home run on opening day of this great new park."
