Yankees Quotations

I never went through a period were I wanted to be a doctor, a cop or even a rock star. All I wanted to do was play short stop for the Yankees from the time I was about 5. Then I turned 15 and realized how silly that was and just gave up on it.

You know it as soon as you walk in Yankee Stadium. The electricity is there every time, every day.

Owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa.

When I played, Old-Timers Day was my favorite day of the whole season, because I got to share a locker with one of the great Yankees... It was an out-of-body experience.

I wish there was a bar I could send opposing teams to and get them hammered or something - I could tell my buddies in New York to leave their places open or something. Playing for the Yankees, guys come at you extremely hard. I have to be ready or I'll be embarrassed

Everybody says we hated the Yankees. We didn't hate the Yankees. We just hated the way they beat us.

The Yankees have strict rules. You can have a mustache but no other facial hair.

Yankee Stadium, and the Yankees are so famous for Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, all of those guys.

I'm more concerned about members of Congress being drug-free than I am about members of the Yankees or Giants

I just wanted to go play in the big leagues. But possibly playing for the Yankees is very special.

Why do the Yankees always win? The other team can't stop looking at the pinstripes.

Yankees don't understand that the Southern way of talking is a language of nuance. What we can do in the South is we can take a word and change it just a little bit and make it mean something altogether different.

The only difference between me and those other great Yankees is my skin color.

I try to sign for as many kids as possible. Kids come first, and I'll always sign for a kid before an adult.

As I have said many times - my father was a great fan of Bill Dickey's and he certainly loved the Yankees. I hope that he would be pleased.

The south produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors and lawyers and poets, but certainly no engineers and mechanics. Let Yankees adopt such low callings.

You look at all the great players that they've had and the potential of playing in Yankee Stadium.

I've been a Yankees fan since I was six.

So to get to play for the Yankees was really exciting. Really exciting.

For my books of nonfiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. I've been a Yankees and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades, so I wrote 'Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man.' It's more the story of his great courage than of his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges, and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

When she was too young to resist, or even to understand, I turned my daughter into a lifelong, rabid Yankees fan.

We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned.

The Yankees have better starting pitchers than Arizona. Arizona just has two... the Yanks have four.

You kind of took it for granted around the Yankees that there was always going to be baseball in October.

We all used to collect baseball cards that came with bubble gum. You could never get the smell of gum off your cards, but you kept your Yankees cards pristine.

All ballplayers want to wind up their careers with the Cubs, Giants or Yankees. They just can't help it.

I was happy that I was drafted, and then it was the Yankees and that just made it even better.

I know only two tunes: one of them is 'Yankee Doodle,' and the other isn't.

My God... What are the headlines going to be like on Monday if the Yankees don't make the playoffs?

I am dead set against free agency. It can ruin baseball.

When I was 15 years old, I used to actually dream I was pitching in Yankee Stadium. Bill Dickey was my catcher.

In the building I live in on Park Avenue there are ten people who could buy the Yankees, but none of them could hit the ball out of Yankee Stadium.

I would rather beat the Yankees regularly than pitch a no hit game.

It's not good or bad, but closers have changed things. I don't think you are going to win a World Series without one. Where would the Yankees be without Mariano Rivera?

I've been called a lot of things. But never, and I mean never, could anyone ever make the mistake of calling me a Yankee fan.

I was always the shame of the family - the one Yankee who was actually born in the North.

I became a Yankees fan for a few years. But now, I gotta say, I'm really rooting for the Red Sox.

Sympathy is something that shouldn't be bestowed upon the Yankees. Apparently it angers them.

I was born and raised in the Bronx and my grandfather and my brother Garry were huge Yankees fans. One of my first memories is of them listening to a game on the radio and screaming at the radio. My brother would cry when they lost, and when I was really little, I didn't know why he was crying.

The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives.

I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four.

Sure I played, did you think I was born at the age of 70 sitting in a dugout trying to manage guys like you?

Confidence is contagious, but so is failure. Even the Yankees will lose if you persuade them that they will.

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

I've played for teams that were family-oriented organizations. They made you feel like family. The Yankees are strictly a business. Baseball is your life and everything else is secondary.

You can observe a lot by just watching.

Managing is getting paid for home runs that someone else hits.

So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.

Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.

What kind of influence did my parents have on my life? Well, they had the most influence. These are the people who are closest to me. My parents are very positive people. They've been supportive. They're always there.

He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious.

The future ain't what it used to be.

You can't be sensitive, because you're going to get criticized. I don't care who you are, you're going to get criticized.

I'm still a huge Yankees fan. Growing up, Jeter was my guy, but Bernie Williams was my favorite player.

Let me tell you something: I love the Yankees. And let me tell you why: because without the Yankees, there is nobody to hate.

The game of baseball is better when the Dodgers are playing well, just like when the Yankees are playing well, or the Cubs, the Phillies, the big-name teams.

I was Mayor of New York during a great Yankees dynasty. I got to preside over the city during four Yankees championships.

Put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.

The draft is a crapshoot, so I've been very fortunate to be drafted by the Yankees, and to have spent my whole career here.

When you start talking about right-handed hitters for the Yankees who hit 40 home runs, there are only two of them. That's hard to believe, and the other guy is named DiMaggio. You know he's special.

Whether or not anybody had invented the category in his lifetime, Babe Ruth was surely the Greatest Living Yankee almost immediately upon lofting home runs at the Polo Grounds, allowing the Yankees to build their own palace across the Harlem River.

We're going to honor him and welcome him. We're going to give him a New York Yankees welcome.

We're fortunate that the Yankees lost. Everyone is scoreboard watching, the players and the fans.

Canzeroni is the only defensive catcher that can't catch.

Nobody knows this, but one of us has just been traded to Kansas City.

He's a smart-assed kid who's always sassin' people and gettin' away with it.

I'll never make the mistake of being 70 again.

You can get into the greatest business in the world because you can manufacture money by yourself on the field.

We've got to learn how to stay out of triple plays.

There's nobody on my ball club that doesn't go from first to third on a base hit, or from second to home. Every time you steal a base, you're taking a gamble on getting thrown out, and taking the bat out of the hitter's hand.

What's the use of askin' a man to execute if he can't execute?

If anybody needs me, I'm in my room being embalmed.

Well, the fella I got on there is hitting pretty good and I know he can make that throw, and if he don't make it that other fella I got coming has shown me a lot, and if he can't I have my guy and I know what he can do. On the other hand, the guy's not around now. And, well, this guy may be able to do it against left-handers if my guy ain't strong enough. I know one of my guys is gonna do it.

Because there'd be two languages I couldn't speak, French and English.

If you ran a delicatessen store, you would want to be the best delicatessen store, wouldn't you? Well, that's how I feel about the Yankees.

Pardon me, Mr. Craig, but how are we going to defense Mr. McCovey... in the upper deck or the lower deck?

Why shouldn't he break Ruth's record? He's got more power than Stalin.

After a deplorable day afield, when asked by a reporter what he thought of his team's execution

As long as I'm around playing baseball, it doesn't matter where I am, as long as it's not with the Yankees.

Here at NBC there is just one more reason to hate the Yankees.

I love Jane [Krakowski]. Jane's been a dear friend for maybe a dozen years. We've worked together on many shows and concerts and readings. We did Damn Yankees together and then we did Xanadu. Jane did all the workshops of Xanadu before it moved to Broadway. She's hysterical and our voices blended. We had a similar sensibility.

This must be the legendary Yankee rudeness

The Yankees have twenty-five heroes.

The great thing about being a Yankee is that youre always a Yankee.

One of the best things about being a Yankee is that you have guys like Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, Ron Guidry and Reggie Jackson wandering around the locker room offering you advice.

I will never brag about myself, but my family, I can go on forever.

MVP, you could have picked a name out of a hat... we have a group of MVPs. You don't rely on one guy. You have to get contributions from everyone.

Yankee Stadium is my favorite stadium; I'm not going to lie to you. There's a certain feel you get in Yankee Stadium.

In my opinion, I've had the greatest job in the world. I got a chance to be the shortstop for the New York Yankees, and there's only one of those. And I always felt as though it was my job, was to try to provide joy and entertainment for you guys, but it can't compare to what you brought me. So for that, thank you very much.

The British have their own conception of what constitutes the typical American. He must have a flavor of the Wild West about him. He must do spectacular things. He must not be punctilious about dignity, decorum and other refinements characteristic of the real British gentleman. The Yankee pictured by the Briton must be a bustler. If he is occasionally flagrantly indiscreet in speech and action, then he is so much more surely stamped the genuine article. The most typical American the British ever set their eyes on was, in their judgment, Theodore Roosevelt.

We have pretty good players, All-Stars. We need to stay together. This game is not easy. A lot of teams have been through this, good teams -- the Yankees early in the season. But they find a way to get better, to turn everything the other way. With that kind of team, the big thing is concentration.

The NFL has a hard cap, but if you ask 20 NFL experts who is going to win the Super Bowl this year, you might get 20 different answers. If you then asked 20 baseball experts who is going to represent the American League in the World Series, at least 90 percent of them would say the Yankees and the rest would say Seattle.

I quit drinking, and I figure if I go to ten Yankee games this year without drinking I'll save $32,000.

I take a lot of pride in playing for the Yankees, and trying to do things the right way.

Every day that goes by and we don't win a ballgame, that's a missed opportunity for us to battle back.

What the hell difference does it make?

They started something here, and the kids are keeping the ball rolling.

Read about your case of amnesia. Must be a new brand.

The curve and the fast one are important; the change of pace and the other trick deliveries are great but they're not worth a plugged nickel unless you have control to go along with them. And by control I don't mean the ability to put the ball over the plate somewhere between the shoulders and knees. I mean the ability to hit a three-inch target nine times out of ten, the sort of control that lets you put the ball in the exact spot you want it, and to play a corner to the split fraction of an inch.