Gardner, Rulon

Olympic wrestling gold medalist

 In high school, I didn't get the chance to wrestle varsity until my senior year because I had an older brother who was better than me.

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Garner, Phil

Major league player and manager

 With the kind of money some players make today, the time comes when they're not an asset, they're a liability. I don't see anything wrong with trading a $2 million player for a player making $100,000. You can't save on air travel or hotels. There is no other way for an owner to cut down.

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Garvey, Steve

Major league first baseman

 The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back.

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Gautt, Prentice

NFL running back

 It's a sad thing to face, but racial prejudice is almost a tradition in sports. Some people just have to be able to look down on other people, and they give the Negro the feeling that no matter what he does he will never be an equal. The long-range problems will take a long time to solve. But if they can't be solved in sports, where can they be solved? Sports has been following when it's supposed to lead. The change should start today. Not tomorrow. Today.

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Gehrig, Lou

Hall of Fame first baseman

 The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.

 There is no room in baseball for discrimination. It is our national pastime and a game for all.

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Giamatti, Bart

Baseball fan and briefly commissioner

 It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

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Gibbs, Joe

Washington Redskins coach

 Maybe the difference in football is your mistakes come in front of several million people. Most people's mistakes are buried someplace. To be honest about it, losing is hard to take, especially after you've won. . . You've got to have times when you have some peace, a little quiet, some prayer and some good Bible study.

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Gibson, Bob

Major league pitcher

 Everybody who pitches, pitches with some pain. You just learn to live with it. You don't remember pain, you just think about it when it hurts, then you forget it. I would throw a pitch and it would hurt, but then the pain would go away. . . until the next pitch.

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Gifford, Frank

NFL player and sportscaster

 Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors.

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Gipp, George

All-American halfback at Notre Dame

 I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team's up against it; when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they've got and win one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy.
[Deathbed statement attributed to him by Knute Rockne]

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Girardi, Joe

Major league catcher

 You can play for the three-run homer there a lot. Like every inning.
[on Denver's Coors Field]

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Gissing, George

English novelist

 Every one knows that horse racing is carried on mainly for the delight and profit of fools, ruffians, and thieves.

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Glanville, Jerry

NFL coach and TV commentator

 When we came here [to the Houston Oilers], we didn't have many players. We had a bunch of guys who were really good boys with the nicest mommies and daddies you've ever met. But they wouldn't hit anybody if you gave 'em a stick and pissed on their boots.

 Someday they'll have offsetting 15-yard dance penalties.
[After the NFL adopted a rule prohibiting celebrations on the field]

 If you're a coach, NFL stands for "Not For Long."

 He can be a great player in this league for a long time if he learns to say two words: I'm full.
[On a rookie who reported overweight]

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Glavine, Tom

National League pitcher

 There don't seem to be any quote-unquote pitcher's ballparks in the American League. At least in the National League you can catch a break in St. Louis, Houston, Montreal. In the AL, it's like every park is Coors Field.
[on why more home runs are hit in the American League]

 I had all my own teeth and I wanted to keep it that way.
[on why he decided to play professional baseball rather than hockey]

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Goetze, Vicki

Professional golfer

 I've never liked watching golf. It seems like it takes so long for one person to hit a shot, then walk up the fairway and hit it again. It's a lot different when you play, because there's so much to think about.

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Golic, Bob

NFL nose tackle

 The more people that hit you, the more successful you are. I know that almost sounds masochistic, but it's like you derive a lot of satisfaction from being beaten up. Basically, you're there to be used and abused.

 This job is better than I could get if I used my college degree, which, at this point, I can't remember what it was in.
[On signing a two-year, $1.5 million contract]

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Gomez, Lefty

Hall of Fame pitcher

 I'm throwing twice as hard as I ever did. It's just not getting there as fast.

 I'd rather be lucky than good.

 I was never nervous when I had the ball, but when I let go I was scared to death.

 I talked to the ball a lot of times in my career. I yelled, "Go foul. Go foul."

 I was the worst hitter ever. I never even broke a bat until last year when I was backing out of the garage.

 A lot of things run through your head when you're going in to relieve in a tight spot. One of them was, "Should I spike myself?"

 The secret of my success was clean living and fast outfielders.

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Goucher, Adam

Distance runner

 I love controlling a race, chewing up an opponent. Let's get down and dirty. Let's fight it out. It's raw, animalistic, with no one to rely on but yourself. There's no better feeling than that.

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Grace, Mark

Major league first baseman

 The music sounds better, the wine tastes sweeter and the girls look better when we win.

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Grange, Red

Hall of Fame halfback

 I haven't seen a new football play since I was in high school. You have just so many holes in a line and you have eleven men playing, and there's only so many ways you can go through those holes, and those ways have been used for forty, fifty years.

 I don't care how complicated they make the game seem, it's really based on two principles and those are blocking and tackling.

 The college coaches of my day condemned pro football, you know. When I joined the Bears in 1925, I would have been much more popular had I joined the Capone mob. My own coach, Bob Zuppke, got so down on me that for a while he wouldn't speak to me. I said to him, "You're making your living out of football. What's the difference if you make a living coaching it or playing it?"

 The only football players in my time were fellows who really loved to play football. They were not in it for the money. There wasn't much money there. They would have played football for nothing.

 Every football player knows when his time is up. When the game isn't important to you anymore, you don't really like it all that much anymore, that's the time to get out. I got out when it started to be a drudge. I didn't like to practice anymore. It was a much bigger labor than it had been. The things I'd been able to do, I simply couldn't do anymore.

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Grant, Bud

Pro football coach

 A good coach needs a patient wife, a loyal dog, and a great quarterback, but not necessarily in that order.

 He's the kind of player who usually comes along rarely and sometimes never.
[referring to defensive tackle Alan Page]

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Grant, Harry

Captain of the 1874 Harvard football team

 We cannot but recognize in your game much but brute force, weight, and especially "shin" element. Our game depends upon running, dodging, and position playing, i.e., kicking across field into another's hands. We are perfectly aware of our position in regard to other colleges. I assure you we gave the matter a fair discussion last spring. We even went so far as to practice and try the Yale game. We gave it up at once as hopeless.
[Rejecting a challenge to play a football game against Yale under the rules of soccer]

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Grant, Frank K. "Pop"

Rutgers football player

 I'd die for dear old Rutgers.
[After suffering a broken leg in a game]

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Gray, Andy

Soccer writer and broadcaster

 I was saying the other day, how often the most vulnerable area for goalies is between their legs.

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Green, Litterial

College basketball player

 It's not how good you are when you play good. It's how good you are when you play bad. And we played pretty good, even though we played bad. Imagine if we'd played good.
[After his Georgia team narrowly beat Georgia Tech]

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Green, Roy

NFL wide receiver

 Maybe I have lost a step, but I had a few to lose.

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Gretzky, Wayne

Hall of Fame hockey player

 I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.

 You miss 100% of the shots you never take.

 I don't like my hockey sticks touching other sticks, and I don't like them crossing one another, and I kind of have them hidden in the corner. I put baby powder on the ends. I think it's essentially a matter of taking care of what takes care of you.

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Griese, Bob

Hall of Fame quarterback

 There's no great mystery to quarterbacking. You move personnel around in various formations, looking for the defense's particular patsy, and then you eat him alive.

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Griffith, Clark

Major league owner

 Crowds today demand great talent. They want to see a great ball game. They want their pets to win. If the home team loses, however, they go home more or less satisfied, provided they have seen a good game of ball.

 Now many college men look forward to baseball as a profession. They do this for a very good reason. In contrast to the fellow who comes up from the lots, they have two angles on the game. They can either play until they are about thirty years old and make enough money to set them up in business or their chosen profession; or if they fail, they can still go back to their profession without having suffered the loss of much time.

 A man who doesn't observe strict training rules has about as much chance in baseball today as would a blind man.

 There are few big-league magnates who are not aware of the fact that the time is not far off when colored players will take their places beside those of other races in the major leagues. However, I'm not sure that time has arrived yet. . . A lone Negro in the game will face caustic comments. He will be made the target of cruel, filthy epithets. Of course, I know the time will come when the ice will have to be broken. Both by the organized game and by the colored player who is willing to volunteer and thus become a sort of martyr to the cause.

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Grimson, Stu

NHL player

 That's so when I forget how to spell my name, I can still find my f---ing clothes.
[explaining why he hung a photo of himself over his locker]

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Grissom, Marquis

Major league outfielder

 He's hitting .450. Of course, everybody is hitting .450.
[on his 4-year-old, teeball-playing son]

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