Jim Koenigsberger

"Jerry Koosman threw a 90-plus fastball." Roberto Clemente said Koosman was the only guy who threw a fastball "that never moved the same way twice." Tom Seaver & Koosman on Broadway,`69 How does a player with 222 wins, 73rd all-time, ERA of 3.36 & 2,556 strikeouts make it on just 1 HOF ballot??

"Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in. You gotta learn that if you don't get it by midnight, chances are you ain't gonna get it, & if you do, it ain't worth it." Casey Stengel Andrea Lavoie

"There are 499 Major League ballplayers. Then there's Willie Mays." Maury Allen

"Why shouldn't he break Babe Ruth's record? He's got more power than Stalin." Casey Stengel speaking speculatively about Roger Maris after the 1960 season. In my HOF!!!

"My dad taught me to switch-hit. He and my grandfather, who was left-handed, pitched to me everyday after school in the back yard. I batted lefty against my dad and righty against my granddad." Mickey Mantle Remains the only switch-hitter to reach 50 homers in a season. He did it twice!

"It was the first time I’d ever shaken the hand of a black man. But I was the captain of the team. It was my job, I believed, to greet the new players. When I was growing up, we never played ball with blacks, they weren’t allowed in the parks & schools were segregated" Pee Wee Reese

"Auggie Busch traded me to the last-place Phillies over a $5000 salary dispute. I was mentally committed to winning 25 games with the Cardinals & now I had to re-think my goals. I decided to stay with the 25-win goal & won 27 of Phillies' 59 victories" Steve Carlton

"It sounded like somebody firing a pistol in a canyon...pow, pow, pow. That was the sound of the fastball popping Rube's mitt in that empty ballpark. We all came in to watch this kid." Tommy Lasorda, on Koufax's first tryout, as witnessed by Lasorda, who were jogging in the outfield at the time

“Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence. Winners never quit and quitters never win” Vince Lombardi, Fordham, 1933

"Well, you wait for a strike. Then you knock the shit out of it.” Stan Musial’s hitting advice to rookie Curt Flood

Ernie Banks was a Ford dealer from 1967-71. Banks and partner Bob Nelson were the first blacks to obtain a Ford franchise. Cubs owner P. K. Wrigley bought the first car, a station wagon. Dealership sponsored a local LL team, one member of the team was young Michael Wilbon, future ESPN journalist.