George Steinbrenner trashes Derek Jeter. Joe Torre strokes George Steinbrenner. Bernie Williams rationalizes George Steinbrenner's take and talk about Jeter.
"It's part of growing up. You can't expect a whole career to be smooth all the time. If this is the only thing he {Derek Jeter} has to worry about in his career, he's lucky." -- Bernie Williams
Yankee talk is as much a part of the program as the pinstripes on their uniforms. Now, forever and through the decades past - there has always been someone, friend or foe at the ready, with a one liner, a quick quip or (hyper) extended verbiage on the team from the Bronx. What follows is a sampler.
"I would rather beat the Yankees regularly than pitch a no-hit game." - Bob Feller
"It was a death struggle every day being a Yankee - you either won or you lost. There was no second place. Half of us were nuts by the end of a season." - Jerry Coleman
"When I was a player and we would play the Yankees in spring training, even though the game didn't mean anything, it was a special day." - Joe Torre
"I wish I'd never see them again. I wish they'd disappear from the league." Pedro Martinez, Boston Red Sox
"Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie and cheating on your income tax." - Columnist Mike Royko
"Going north from spring training, we'd pass through small towns and people would be out there early in the morning as the train went by, waving to us. I don't know how they got the word - but we'd be having our breakfast in the diner and they'd be there." - Jerry Coleman
"You kind of took it for granted around the Yankees that there was always going to be baseball in October." - Whitey Ford
"This isn't just a ball club! This is Murderers Row!" - sportswriter Arthur Robinson, 1927
"There has never been anything like it. Even as these lines are batted out on the office typewriter, youths dash out of the AP and UP ticker room every two or three minutes shouting, 'Ruth hit one! Gehrig hit another one!' " - sportswriter Paul Gallico
"I was known as a Yankee killer. My best year against them was 1953. I beat them five times and shut them out four times. You just played a little harder against them." - Mel Parnell
"Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel." - Joe E. Lewis
"Rooting for the Yankees is like owning a yacht." - Jimmy Cannon
"The majority of American males put themselves to sleep by striking out the batting order of the New York Yankees." - James Thurber
"They have, what, 26 World Series titles? But that doesn't mean they are going to beat us. We deserve to be here as much as they do. I'm not trying to get Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig or Mickey Mantle out. I'm trying to get the Yankees' lineup out today." - Curt Schilling of Arizona, before Game One, 2001 World Series
"When my Yankee career is over I'll play anywhere, but I'm positive that I'll never find a team quite like the Yankees." -Bernie Williams
"All literary men are Red Sox fans. To be a Yankee fan in literary society is to endanger your life." - John Cheever
» Harvey Frommer is the author of 33 sports books, including "The New York Yankee Encyclopedia, "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," and "Growing Up Baseball" with Frederic J. Frommer. His "Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Line" (Taylor) and "A Yankee Century: A Celebration of the First Hundred Years of Baseball's Greatest Team" (Berkley Putnam) will be published in paperback in 2003.
Also by Harvey Frommer
» "Spring Training" is Here: Sports Book Review
» The Men who Broke Baseball's Color Line: Excerpt from Harvey Frommer's "Rickey and Robinson"
» Books on Ballparks and other Baseball Matters: Sports Book Review
» The Golden Voices of Baseball: Sports Book Review
» By The Numbers: A New York Yankees Sampler
» Super Hot Stove League Reading: Sports Book Review
» The First Yankee Home Game: April 30, 1903
» The Most Memorable Moments in Major League Baseball History: Sports Book Review
» Bravo, Nolan Ryan!
» Johnny Vander Meer's Back-to-Back No-Hitters
» October's Baseball Books: Sports Book Review
» New York City Baseball: Once Upon A Time
» The Big Train: Walter Johnson, Baseball Immortal
» Baseball's Best Shots: Sports Book Review
» Wee Willie Keeler: Good Things Come in Small Packages
» Let's Play Two
» The First World Series
» Sandy Koufax, Out of Brooklyn: Sports Book Review
» The 1919 Black Sox (Part II)
» The 1919 Black Sox (Part I)
» Baseball Books On Parade: Sports Book Review
» Yankee Doodle Dandies: Yankee Books: Sports Book Review
» The Harmonica Incident: August 20, 1964
» "Fenway: A Biography in Words and Pictures": Sports Book Review
» Baseball's Mecca: The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown
» Trade a Player a Year Too Early, Not a Year Too Late
» The Yankee Mystique
» Satchel Paige: World's Greatest Pitcher
» "Red Smith on Baseball": Sports Book Review
» The Barry Halper Collection of Baseball Memorabilia: Sports Book Review
» Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson
» Remembering Irving Rudd
» Subway Series
» Midsummer Classic: Midsummer Mockery
» Yankee Stadium's First Opening Day
» The Birth of Baseball's First Professional Team
» Yankee Stadium's First Opening Day
» Gehrig's Streak
» Willie Mays and the Month of May
» Reese was no Pee Wee
» Yankees vs. Red Sox: Baseball's Greatest Rivalry
» Celebrating Hank Greenberg
» Bobby Thomson's Famous Homer Lives On
» Remembering the Yankee Clipper: Joe DiMaggio
» Shoeless Joe Remains a Scapegoat
» The Mets Have Always Been Amazing
» More submissions
Copyright © 2003 by Harvey Frommer. Posted March 2, 2003.
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