"Chuck him (Honus Wagner) the ball as hard as you can and pray." Source: George Plimpton in Out of My League (1966)

"(Ty) Cobb would have to play center field on my all time team. But where would that put (Tris) Speaker? In left. If I had them both, I would certainly play them that way." Source: Lee Allen in Kings of the Diamond (1965)

"Get in front of those balls, you won't get hurt. That's what you've (Heinie Groh) got a chest for young man."

"He (Honus Wagner) was the nearest thing to a perfect player no matter where his manager chose to play him."

"I name (Honus) Wagner first on my list, not only because he was a great batting champion and base-runner, and also baseball's foremost shortstop, but because Honus (Wagner) could have been first at any other position, with the possible exception of pitcher. In all my career, I never saw such a versatile player." Source: The Sporting News (12/06/1995)

"I think we can win it if my brain holds out." Source: Widely Attributed

"In playing or managing, the game of ball is only fun for me when I'm out in front and winning. I don't give a hill of beans for the rest of the game." Source: Noel Hynd in The Giants of the Polo Grounds (1988)

"Learn to know every man under you, get under his skin, know his faults. Then cater to him — with kindness or roughness as his case may demand." Source: Literary Digest (1914)

"My boy, one small breeze doesn't make a wind storm."

"No club that wins a pennant once is an outstanding club. One which bunches two pennants is a good club. But a team which can win three in a row really achieves greatness." Source: Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story (1948)

"One percent of ballplayers are leaders of men. The other ninety-nine percent are followers of women."

"Sportsmanship and easygoing methods are all right, but it is the prospect of a hot fight that brings out the crowds." Source: The Baseball Card Engagement Book (1989)

"(Bill) Terry, you can ask for more money in the winter and do less in the summer than any ballplayer I know."

"The boy's (Hack Wilson) got talent and desire, but he ain't got no neck."

"The main idea is to win." Source: Widely Attributed

"There is but one game and that game is baseball." Source: Widely Attributed

"The team that gets off to a good start wins pennants." Source: Widely Attributed

"The way to get a ball past (Honus) Wagner is to hit it eight feet over his head."

"Why shouldn't we pitch to Babe Ruth? We pitch to better hitters in the National League." Source: AP Wire (1921 World Series)

"With my team I am an absolute czar. My men know it. I order plays and they obey. If the don't, I fine them." Source: Douglass Wallop in Baseball: An Informal History (1970)

"You think the greatest thing in the whole world would be to become a baseball player — if best things already happened, what's next?" Source: AP Wire / Retirement Speech

"His (John McGraw) very walk across the field in a hostile town was a challenge to the multitude." - Sportswriter Grantland Rice in The Giants of the Polo Grounds (Noel Hynd, 1988)

"II got along with him (John McGraw) fine. He only suspeneded me once for two weeks. It was on account that I socked him." - Al Bridwell in Baseball's Greatest Quotations (Paul Dickson, 1999)

"I have seen McGraw go onto ball fields where he is as welcome as a man with the black smallpox. I have seen him take all sorts of personal changes. He doesn't know what fear is." - Christy Mathewson in The Giants of the Polo Grounds (Noel Hynd, 1988)

"In 1921 McGraw was a sophisticated, experienced baseball man, and I was a dumb, innocent kid. Yet he was willing to let me throw away a scholarship as though it was a bundle of trash." - Lou Gehrig in Baseball As I Have Known It (Fred Lieb, 1996)

"I suppose it was an important part of McGraw's great capacity for leadership that he would take kids out of the coal mines and out of the wheat fields and make them walk and talk and chatter and play ball with the look of eagles." - Sportswriter Heywood Broun in the New York World Telegram (1923)

"The Giants were dressed in their baggy white uniforms with black pinstripes. The manager, McGraw, wore a heavy black cardigan over his barrel trunk with the letters NY emblazoned on the left sleeve. He was short and pugnacious. Like his team, he wore socks with thick horizontal stripes and the small flat cap with a peak and a button on the crown." - Sportswriter E.L. Doctorow in The Giants of the Polo Grounds (Noel Hynd, 1988)

"There has been only one manager, and his name is John McGraw." - Connie Mack in The Giants of the Polo Grounds (Noel Hynd, 1988)

Quotes From & About John McGraw