Caen, Herb

San Francisco Chronicle columnist

 Football is the power game that the power elite can relate to. . . But baseball is in another category. Baseball is folk art, and the people who love it most are not, with a few exceptions, close to the seats of power.

Top of Page

Cameron, Mark

Weightlifter

 If somebody told weightlifters they could lift an extra five pounds by munching Brillo Pads, there wouldn't be a clean pot within three miles of any gym in this country.

Top of Page

Camilli, Lou

Cleveland Indian Shortstop

 They ought to change our name to the Cleveland Light Company. We don't have anything but utility men.

Top of Page

Camp, Walter

Father of American football

 A gentleman never competes for money, directly or indirectly. Make no mistake about this. No matter how winding the road may be that eventually brings the sovereign into the pocket, it is the price of what should be dearer to you than anything else, your honor.

 A gentleman is courteous. It is not courtesy upon a ball-field to cheer an error of the opponents. If it is upon your grounds, it is the worst kind of boorishness. Moreover, if there are remarkable plays by your rivals you yourselves should cheer; conceal any chagrin you may feel at the loss it may be to your side, but be courteous to appreciate and applaud an exceptional play by the opponents.

Top of Page

Campanella, Roy

Hall of Fame catcher

 Truthfully, it didn't matter to me or Jackie [Robinson] if the other players accepted us. We were out there to work. If we let it get to us, we wouldn't be successful. We were out there to do a job. That was to play baseball and be gentlemen off the field. When we signed, we understood we were in for a lot of prejudice. We just wanted people to know we could play major league baseball. And my God, in later years, all of that stopped. So we did gain something.

 You have to be a man, but you have to have a lot of little boy in you, too.
[On being a professional baseball player]

Top of Page

Campanis, Al

Los Angeles Dodgers executive

 Blending a team is like mixing a drink. You have to find just the right mix of youthful spirits and aged whiskey.

Top of Page

Campbell, Clarence

NHL President

 There is only one way to ensure a steady demand for tickets to all games: the quality of entertainment provided. This is dependent entirely upon balanced competition - another expression meaning parity.

 If violence ceases to exist, it [hockey] will not be the same game. Insofar as fighting is part of the show, certainly we sell it. We do not promote it.

Top of Page

Canseco, Jose

Major league outfielder

 Tell me how a first baseman can be the best player in baseball. He doesn't have to run and he doesn't have to throw.

Top of Page

Canterbury, Tommy

College basketball coach

 The trouble with officials is, they just don't care who wins.

Top of Page

Caracciola, Rudolf

Race driver

 When speed gets in the blood, one must drive to live.

Top of Page

Carlos, John

Olympic sprinter

 The Olympics could be beautiful if they just let the athletes get together and run it together, instead of having us all stand up on some podium so the world can count how many medals each country wins.

Top of Page

Carnesecca, Lou

College basketball coach

 Life is good, but basketball is better.

Top of Page

Carril, Pete

College basketball coach

 It's courage and character that make the difference between players and great players, between great surgeons and the ones who bury their mistakes.

Top of Page

Carty, Rico

Major league outfielder

 They say you have to be good to be lucky, but I think you have to be lucky to be good.

Top of Page

Casals, Rosie

Tennis player

 We expend the same amount of energy as the men. We practice as much. We play just as hard. We contribute our share to the success of a tournament.

Top of Page

Casey, Jon

NHL goalie

 We appreciate all the fans that are here, but we really respect the five or six who stayed with us all year.
[After his Minnesota North Stars reached the Stanley Cup finals]

Top of Page

Cash, Norm

Major league player

 I'm not going to quit a $60,000 to $70,000 job to go to work.

 I owe my success to expansion pitching, a short right field fence, and my hollow bats.

 Pro-rated at 500 at-bats per year, my 1,081 strikeouts would mean that for 2 years out of the 14 I played, I never touched the ball.

Top of Page

Cash, Pat

Tennis player

 The sad fact is that tennis players don't develop as all-round human beings. They might be very good at catching aeroplanes and booking hotels, but that's it.

Top of Page

Casper, Dave

NFL tight end

 You have to have an attitude that allows you to chuckle while a guy is pounding you in the face. Not that it's funny, but if you start worrying about that stuff, it will get to you.

Top of Page

Cerutty, Percy

Australian track coach

 If the coach cannot do it, he cannot teach it--only talk about it.

 I'm not interested in athletics, I'm only interested in achievement. Fix your goal and work for it.

 The mastery of the true self, and the refusal to permit others to dominate us is the ultimate in living, and self-expression in athletics.

 While a man is racing he must hate himself and his competitors.

 If it hurts, make it hurt more.

Top of Page

Chadwick, Frank

NHL referee

 I never knew the rules. I used common sense. It's really the only way to run a game. If officials called every penalty they saw, there would be no players on the ice and no one in the rink.

Top of Page

Chamberlain, Wilt

Basketball Hall of Fame center

 You don't handle basketball players. You handle horses and animals.
[Asked how he would handle his players after becoming a coach]

 I have a great deal more respect for someone who keeps coming back after losing heartbreaker after heartbreaker than I do for the winner who has everything going for him.

 If you took a secret poll of NBA players and asked them, "Are you having fun?", boy, I think the answers would be very sad.

 Basketball, as you know, is a game of variables.

 The world is made up of Davids. I am a Goliath, and nobody roots for Goliath.

Top of Page

Chandler, Happy

Commissioner of baseball

 We Americans are a peculiar people. We are for the underdog, no matter how much of a dog he is.

Top of Page

Chandler, Otis

Shot putter

 Old shot putters never die, they just get weak.

Top of Page

Charles, Bob

Professional golfer

 I have no strategy. I just swing and hope for the best.

Top of Page

Cheevers, Gerry

NHL goalie and coach

 Two people fighting is not violence in hockey. It might be in tennis or bowling, but it's not in hockey.

Top of Page

Cherry, Don

NHL coach and commentator

 The people who yell and scream about hockey violence are a handful of intellectuals and newspapermen who never pay to get in to see a game. The fans, who shell out the money, have always liked good, rough hockey.

Top of Page

Chinn, Phil

Thoroughbred breeder

 After one of them has won the Derby, any breeding expert can sit down and show you just why he won, from his pedigree. The only trouble is, the expert can't do it before the race.

Top of Page

Clancy, Gil

Boxing manager, trainer, and commentator

 In any championship fight, the guy only holds the title until the bell rings.

Top of Page

Clark, Dutch

Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback

 You know, I think it's a bad thing nowadays that they start these kids in Little League football when they're ten years old, and people are screaming at 'em, hollering at 'em, and they get no fun out of it. They get into junior high school and people are at 'em, so before they get into high school, it's already a matter of life and death with these kids. If they're ever going to have any fun, they got to have it when they're young, you know. But people are digging at them. At least I got into college, about the third year of college, before I got to worrying about whether I was going to die if we didn't win.

Top of Page

Clark, Jim

Race driver

 When you are racing, there isn't time to worry about the dangers.

Top of Page

Clark, Will

Major league first baseman

 The game doesn't change. The pressure stays the same from the Little League to the majors. What does change is the outside elements, all the things that can make you lose focus - the money, the press, the fans. So I tell myself, "Don't try to impress the people in the stands. Do it for the self-satisfaction." It sounds greedy, but it relaxes you.

Top of Page

Clarke, Bobby

NHL player and executive

 We take the shortest route to the puck and arrive in ill humor.

 I'm convinced the head goes before the body. You end up not wanting to pay the price. It happens to every athlete eventually. In a physical contact sport, it shows up quicker. A guy gets tired of hitting or being hit. You can't hide that once it happens.

Top of Page

Clemens, Roger

Major league pitcher

 He hit the ball so hard, I couldn't even turn around in time to see it go over the fence.
[on a home run by Bo Jackson]

 Everybody kind of perceives me as being angry. It's not anger, it's motivation.

Top of Page

Clemente, Roberto

Hall of Fame outfielder

 I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give.

 I would be lost without baseball. I don't think I could stand being away from it as long as I was alive.

Top of Page

Cobb, Irwin S.

Kentucky-born humorist

 Until you go to Kentucky and with your own eyes behold a Derby, you ain't been nowhere and you ain't seen nothing.

Top of Page

Cobb, Ty

Hall of Fame outfielder

 The great American game should be an unrelenting war of nerves.

 I'll kill anybody who gets in my way.

 When I played ball, I didn't play for fun. . . . It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.

 Every great hitter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher.

 A ball bat is a wondrous weapon.

 Somebody will hit .400 again. Somebody will get smart and swing naturally.

Top of Page

Coffin, Harold

Sportswriter

 Most of us hate to see a poor loser, or a rich winner.

Top of Page

Cohn, Lowell

Author

 I think a baseball field must be the most beatiful thing in the world. It's so honest and precise. And we play on it. Every star gets humbled. Every mediocre player has a great moment.

Top of Page

Colavito, Rocky

Major league outfielder

 You can't tell how much spirit a team has until it starts losing.

Top of Page

Colbert, Jim

Profesional golfer

 My reaction to anything that happens on the golf course is no reaction. There are no birdies or bogeys, no eagles or double bogeys. There are only numbers. If you can get that way, you can play this game.

Top of Page

Coleman, Gerry

Broadcaster known for malapropisms

 I've made a couple of mistakes I'd like to do over.

 If Pete Rose brings the Reds in first, they ought to bronze him and put him in cement.

 Grubb goes back, back... He's under the warning track and makes the play.

 They throw Winfield out at second, but he's safe.

 Turner pulls into second with a sun-blown double.

 All the Padres need is a flyball in the air.

 Davis fouls out to third in fair territory.

 Houston has its largest crowd of the night here this evening.

 Mike Caldwell, the Padres' right-handed southpaw, will pitch tonight.

 Rich Folkers is throwing up in the bullpen.

 The Phillies beat the Cubs today in a doubleheader. That puts another keg in the Cubs' coffin.

 There's two heads to every coin.

 Billy Almon has all of his inlaws and outlaws here this afternoon.

Top of Page

Coleman, Langston

Wide receiver

 Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.

Top of Page

Comiskey, Charles

Chicago Cubs owner

 Fifty per cent of this game is mechanics. But the big League teams don't average so different mechanically, just a few points apart in batting and fielding and base running, and half the time the averages are a bunk. When you get a Ty Cobb or a [Christy] Mathewson, that's different; but lots of teams have won championships without Cobbs or Mathewsons or anybody like 'em. Condition counts a little. Most of the other fifty per cent is spirit and brains. And I'm not so sure that spirit is more important.

 So [Ed] Walsh has a lawyer now, has he? He didn't need a lawyer during the three years I was paying him to sit on the bench and learn something about pitching. He doesn't need one now.

Top of Page

Connors, Jimmy

Tennis player

 I hate losing more than I love winning.

 People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there. Maybe my methods aren't socially acceptable to some, but it's what I have to do to survive. I don't go out there to love my enemy. I go out there to squash him.

Top of Page

Conover, Al

College football coach

 We've already got sudden death, but only for the coaches who lose.

Top of Page

Cook, Beano

College sports analyst

 The three toughest jobs in the world are: President of the United States, mayor of New York, and head football coach at Notre Dame.

 It's crazy. We spend more money on the Heisman than the Pentagon spends on toilets.

 Virginia has already spent more on plugging Shawn Moore for the Heisman Trophy than Thomas Jefferson spent getting elected president.

Top of Page

Cook, Greg

NFL quarterback

 Financial gain is not the most important thing for an athlete. When he loses the ovation of the crowd, the athlete dies.

Top of Page

Cooke, Alistair

English writer and television host

 I find baseball fascinating. It strikes me as a native American ballet, a totally different dance form. Nearly every move in baseball - the windup, the pitch, the motion of the infielders - is different from other games.

Top of Page

Corso, Lee

College football coach

 We demean the profession when we cheat. Coaching's not a job, it's a privilege.

Top of Page

Coryell, Don

Football coach

 The thing that means the most in football is winning the close games. . . The teams with the most impressive records in football aren't really all that dominant. They just win the close games. It's that kind of sport, and it's that way every year.

 The country is full of good coaches. What it takes to win is a bunch of interested players.

Top of Page

Cosell, Howard

Sportscaster

 There are two professions that one can be hired at with little experience. One is prostitution. The other is sportscasting. Too frequently, they become the same.

Top of Page

Counsilman, James

College swimming coach

 It only hurt once, from beginning to end.
[After swimming the English Channel at the age of 58]

Top of Page

Cousy, Bob

Basketball Hall of Famer

 Give the players all the money they deserve, but don't guarantee it. Don't tell them they don't have to work for it. When you eliminate motivation, you eliminate competition, you eliminate accomplishment.

Top of Page

Cowens, Dave

NBA player and coach

 I don't look for excuses when we lose and I don't buy excuses when we win.

Top of Page

Coy, Ted

Yale fullback

 To hell with signals, just give me the ball.

Top of Page

Coveleski, Stanley

Major league pitcher

 The pressure never lets up. Doesn't matter what you did yesterday. That's history. It's tomorrow that counts. So you worry all the time. It never ends. Lord, baseball is a worrying thing.

Top of Page

Craig, Roger

Major league pitcher and manager

 His heart is as big as stomach.
[On an overweight player]

Top of Page

Crampton, Bruce

Professional golfer

 We have the cleanest professional sport of all. In baseball, if a guy traps the ball, he doesn't call it on himself, he tries to fool the umpire. We police ourselves. I've seen people call two-stroke penalties on themselves when it meant a $150,000 tournament.

Top of Page

Crawford, Sam

Hall of Fame outfielder and later an umpire

 Umpiring is a lonesome life. Thankless job. Thankless. You haven't got a friend in the place. Only your partner, that's all. He's the only man in the whole place who is for you. Everybody else is just waiting for you to make a mistake. There's a bench over here, and a bench over there, and thousands of people in the stands, and every eye in the whole damn place is watching like a hawk trying to get something on you.

 Ed Walsh, seemed like I was batting against that guy every other day. Great big, strong, good-looking fellow. He threw a spitball - I think that ball disintegrated on the way to the plate and the catcher put it back together again. I swear, when it went past the plate it was just the spit went by.

 They always talk about [Ty] 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.

Top of Page

Crenshaw, Ben

Professional golfer

 If you can't putt, you're in a hell of a lot of trouble out there. A lot of guys hit it super but can't stick it in the hole. . . Maybe that seems unfair, but that's the way it is.

Top of Page

Cross, George

University of Oklahoma president

 I want a school my football team can be proud of.

Top of Page

Crump, Diane

Jockey

 A horse doesn't know whether the rider on his back wears a dress or pants away from the track.

Top of Page

Crutchfield, Jimmy

Negro League outfielder

 I have no ill feeling whatever about never having had the opportunity to play in the big leagues. There have been times, you know, they used to call me the Black Lloyd Waner. I used to think about that a lot. He was on the other side of town in Pittsburgh making $12,000 a year and I didn't have enough money to go home on. I had to borrow bus fare to come home.

 It seemed like there was something wrong there. But that was yesterday. There's no use in me having bitterness in my heart this late in life about what's gone by. That's just the way I feel about it. Once in a while I get a kick out of thinking that my name was mentioned as one of the stars of the East-West game and little things like that. I don't know whether I'd feel better if I had a million dollars. I can say I contributed something.

Top of Page

Csonka, Larry

Hall of Fame fullback

 Running into the line, you go into a different world. All around you, guys are scratching, clawing, beating on each other, feeling pain. There are noises from the crowd and from the linemen but, during that one moment, I never seem to hear them. Then, going back to the huddle, the sound of pads slamming together will still be in my ears, and I'll listen for the first time. The sensation gives a real insight into the game. It's too bad more people haven't been in there, where football is really played.

Top of Page