Citations:baseball

English citations of baseball

1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faery Queen
So ran they all as they had been at bace

They being chased that did others chace.

1609, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
He with two stripling lads more like to run

The country base, than to omit such slaughter.

1744, John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book
Base-Ball.

THE Ball once struck off,
Away flies the Boy

To the next destin'd Post,
And then Home with Joy,

Moral.

Thus Seamen; for Lucre
Fly over the Main,

But, with Pleasure transported
Return back again.

1755, William Bray, Diary of William Bray
"Easter Monday 31 March 1755

"Went to Stoke Ch. This morning. After Dinner Went to Miss Jeale's to play at Base Ball with her, the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford & H. Parsons & Jelly. Drank Tea and stayed till 8."

1858, Ball Days
Come, base ball players all and listen to the song

About our manly Yankee game, and pardon what is wrong;

If the verses do not suit you, I hope the chorus will,

So join with us, one and all, and sing it with a will.

Then shout, shout for joy, and let the welkin ring,

In praises of our noble game, for health 'tis sure to bring;

Come, my brave Yankee boys, there's room enough for all,

So join in Uncle Samuel's sport—the pastime of base ball.

Spring, 1888, Mike “King” Kelly, Play Ball: Stories of the Ball Field
Many times have I been asked the question, "To what do you ascribe the great popularity of base ball?" This, seems to me, can be answered in just two words, "The excitement."

Put a base ball uniform on a boy, and you can starve him for a week afterwards. But while you are starving him, allow him to keep the clothes in the room with him. The moment he puts that uniform on, he's the proudest bit of humanity in all this world.

June 3, 1888, Ernest Lawrence Thayer, Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in 1888, The San Francisco Examiner
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;

Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.

Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,

Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

1908, Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer, Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Katie Casey was baseball mad

Had the fever and had it bad.

Just to root for the home town crew

Ev'ry sou

Katie blew.

On a Saturday her young beau

Called to see if she'd like to go

To see a show, but Miss Kate said "No,

I'll tell you what you can do:"

Take me out to the ball game

Take me out with the crowd

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack

I don't care if I never get back.

Let me root, root, root for the home team

If they don't win, it's a shame.

For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out

At the old ball game.

April 27, 1947, Babe Ruth, Farewell Address
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've been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.

The only real game — I think — in the world is baseball.

1954, Jacques Barzun, God's Country and Mine
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.

1960, John Updike, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
But of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful intermittences of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled with poised men in white, its dispassionate mathematics, seems to me best suited to accommodate, and be ornamented by, a loner.

George Grella, The Melancholy of Baseball
It creates an immense green field, a gorgeous vista invoking the pastoral, the agricultural, even the peaceable kingdom, but it hints that the lush green garden may also be a vale of tears. Baseball is the saddest game.

Alvin L. Hall
Baseball is regarded as a quintessential American sport. So to understand American culture, you have to understand baseball.

Donald Hall
Baseball, because of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, is a place where memory gathers.

Walt Whitman
Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose-unless it be to have it assumed that I once pitched a baseball with distinction.

Ted Williams
I know how lucky I've been in life, more than anybody will ever know. I've lived a kind of precarious life style, precarious in sports, flying and baseball. And oh boy. I know how lucky I've been.