"A baseball fan has the digestive apparatus of a billy goat. He can, and does, devour any set of statistics with insatiable appetite and then nuzzles hungrily for more." - Sportswriter Arthur Daley

"Anybody with a pencil could be a statistician back then (19th Century)." - Statistician Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau

"A passion for statistics is the earmark of a literate people." - Paul Fisher

"Baseball fans are junkies, and their heroin is the statistic." - Robert S. Weider in In Praise of the Second Season (1981)

"Baseball isn't statistics - baseball is (Joe) DiMaggio rounding second." - Jimmy Breslin

"Baseball is probably the world's best documented sport." - Ford C. Frick in Games, Asterisks and People (1973)

"I don't know whether you know it, but baseball's appeal is decimal points. No other sport relies as totally on continuity, statistics, orderliness of these. Baseball fans pay more attention to numbers than CPAs." - Sportswriter Jim Murray

"I don't think baseball could survive without all the statistical appurtenances involved in calculating pitching, hitting and fielding percentages. Some people could do without the games as long as they got the box scores." - John M. Culkin in New York Times (July 13, 1976)

"I don't understand. All of a sudden, it's not just BA and Runs Scored, it's OBA. And what is with O-P-S?" - ESPN Analyst Harold Reynolds (04-2004)

"If you dwell on statistics, you get shortsighted. If you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end." - Pitcher Tom Seaver

"I really don't care much about baseball, or looking at ball games, major or minor. All my interest in baseball is in its statistics." - Ernest J. Lanigan in The Baseball Cyclopedia (1922)

"Lajoie was perhaps the first player to attract nationwide attention because of his batting average. Prior to his time, the fans were only mildly interested in statistics." - Sportswriter Bob French

"Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable." - Manager Bobby Bragan

"Statistics are about as interesting as first base coaches." - Pitcher Jim Bouton

"Statistics are the lifeblood of baseball. In no other sport are so many available and studied so assiduously by participants and fans. Much of the game's appeal, as a conversation piece, lies in the opportunity the fan gets to back up opinions and arguments with convincing figures, and it is entirely possible that more American boys have mastered long division by dealing with batting averages than in any other way." - Leonard Koppett in A Thinking Mans Guide to Baseball (1967)

"They both (statistics & bikinis) show a lot, but not everything." - Infielder Toby Harrah

"When I negotiated Bob Stanley's contract with the Red Sox, we had statistics demonstrating he was the third-best pitcher in the league. They had a chart showing he was the sixtieth-best pitcher on the Red Sox!" - Agent Bob Woolf

"Who says there's an unemployment problem in this country? Just take the five percent unemployed and give them a baseball stat to follow." - Outfielder Andy Van Slyke