Lawrence S. Ritter > Quotes

“They always talk about Cobb playing dirty, trying to spike guys and all. Cobb never tried to spike anybody. The base line belongs to the runner. If the infielders get in the way, that’s their lookout. Infielders are supposed to watch out and take care of themselves. In those days, if they got in the way and got nicked they’d never say anything. They’d just take a chew of tobacco out of their mouth, slap it on the spike wound, wrap a handkerchief around it, and go right on playing. Never thought any more about it. We had a trainer, but all he ever did was give you a rubdown with something we called “Go Fast.” He’d take a jar of Vaseline and a bottle of Tabasco sauce—you know how hot that is—mix them together, and rub you down with that. Boy, it made you feel like you were on fire! That would really start you sweating. Now they have medical doctors and whirlpool baths and who knows what else.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“Yeah, Kid Elberfeld, what a character he was. Kid Gleason was on the Detroit club about then, too. Another rugged little guy. Do you know that those guys actually tried to get hit with the ball when they were up at bat? They didn’t care. They had it down to a fine art, you know. They’d look like they were trying to get out of the way, but they’d manage to let the ball just nick them. Anything to get on base. That was all part of the game then. Kid Gleason used to be on that old Baltimore Oriole team in the 1890’s. You know, with Willie Keeler and McGraw and Dan Brouthers and Hughie Jennings, who later became our manager at Detroit.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“I guess I’m like the venerable old warrior Chief of the Great Six Nations, who announced his retirement by saying, “I am like an old hemlock. My head is still high, but the winds of close to a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I have been witness to many wondrous and many tragic things. My eyes perceive the present, but my roots are imbedded deeply in the grandeur of the past.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“In those days, you know, the Indian was in the position of a minority group. Still is, for that matter. Nowadays, you can’t ridicule an Irishman on the television, you can’t ridicule a Jew, and you can’t ridicule a Negro. But they can kill us all the time—make everything out of us they want. Every night you see them on the television—killing us Indians. That’s all they do. That’s one reason I don’t look at anything but a ball game or the news on the television. I like the ball games and the news, but after the news, then comes the killing. Those things I don’t like to talk about. I see them…I know them…but I don’t like to talk about them.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“I guess I’m like the venerable old warrior Chief of the Great Six Nations, who announced his retirement by saying, “ I am like an old hemlock. My head is still high, but the winds of close to a hundred winters have whistled through my branches, and I have been witness to many wondrous and tragic things. My eyes perceive the present, but my roots are imbedded deeply in the grandeur of the past”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“Actually, I don’t think the greatest man in baseball was Cobb or Ruth or Wagner. I think it was Branch Rickey. I think he’s done more for baseball than any man who ever lived. Fact is, Branch Rickey has been my hero ever since back in the late 1890’s.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“Honus was a wonderful fellow, so good-natured and friendly to everyone. Gee, we loved that guy. And the fans were crazy about him. Yeah, everybody loved that old Dutchman! If anyone told a good joke or a funny story, Honus would slap his knee and let out a loud roar and say, “What about that!” So”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“Did you know that he was the one responsible for the umpire giving hand signals for a ball or a strike? Raising his right hand for a strike, you know, and stuff like that. He’d be up at bat and he couldn’t hear and he couldn’t talk, so he’d look around at the umpire to see what the pitch was, a ball or a strike. That’s where the hand signs for the umpires calling balls and strikes began. That’s a fact. Very few people know that.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “you are now looking at Herman Schaefer, better known as Herman the Great, acknowledged by one and all to be the greatest pinch hitter in the world. I am now going to hit the ball into the left field bleachers. Thank you.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It

“Babe Ruth joined us in the middle of 1914, a nineteen-year-old kid. He was a left-handed pitcher then, and a good one. He had never been anywhere, didn’t know anything about manners or how to behave among people—just a big overgrown green pea. You probably remember him with that big belly he got later on. But that wasn’t there in 1914. George was six foot two and weighed 198 pounds, all of it muscle. He had a slim waist, huge biceps, no self-discipline, and not much education—not so very different from a lot of other nineteen-year-old would-be ballplayers. Except for two things: he could eat more than anyone else, and he could hit a baseball further.”
― Lawrence S. Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It