Quotes By Mickey Mantle

The only thing I can do is play baseball. I have to play ball. It's the only thing I know.

To play 18 years in Yankee Stadium is the best thing that could ever happen to a ballplayer.

My views are just about the same as Casey's.

Roger Maris was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was.

He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.

I'll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.

Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part.

It was all I lived for, to play baseball.

Today's Little Leaguers, and there are millions of them each year, pick up how to hit and throw and field just by watching games on TV. By the time they're out of high school, the good ones are almost ready to play professional ball.

When I hit a home run I usually didn't care where it went. So long as it was a home run was all that mattered.

Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century.

I could never be a manager. All I have is natural ability.

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.

Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been.

I guess you could say I'm what this country is all about.

After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.

Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, 'Sure, every time.'

If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball.

You don't realize how easy this game is until you get up in that broadcasting booth.

The biggest game I ever played in was probably Don Larsen's perfect game.

I don't care who you are, you hear those boos.

I always loved the game, but when my legs weren't hurting it was a lot easier to love.

As far as I'm concerned, Aaron is the best ball player of my era. He is to baseball of the last fifteen years what Joe DiMaggio was before him. He's never received the credit he's due.