“Ray Chapman was a splendid man, well regarded in Cleveland, a fine ball player.”

“In 1931, Ruth was on the downgrade. His bat wasn’t cracking homers as before. He was to wind up the ‘31 season with 46 homers.”

“There was no clowning, goofing off, no eccentric dress or behavior on Joe McCarthy’s teams. On the bench, his players paid strict attention to the game.”

​​”There is no substitute for the lessons learned from victory and defeat, and much more by defeat than success, as John McGraw tried to tell me early on in my career.”

“When Miller Huggins stopped by the batting cage with Lou Gehrig for the first time, Wally Pipp was taking a few practice cuts. Huggins chirped, “Hey, Wall, let the kid hit a few, will ya?” Little did Wally know it wouldn’t be the last time he stepped aside for the young Mr. Gehrig.”

“John McGraw’s cadence was a strut, as measured as a military step. Fully decked out in his neat uniform and cap, his chest was out, head high, and countenance beaming with pride.”

“The ‘27 Yankees were an exceptional team because they met every demand. There wasn’t any requirement that was necessary at any particular moment that they weren’t up to.”

“In 1915, I had been the ‘schoolboy’ wonder.” - Schoolboy Waite Hoyt (pictured Schoolboy Lynwood Rowe)

“George Burns could hit me as if I had tossed the ball underhand. He clobbered me.”

“If Babe Ruth was afraid of the Big Town, he gave no evidence of it. Like a cat snooping around strange surroundings, Babe gingerly extended a paw here and a paw there. He liked what he found, and his horizons broadened.”

“Art Fletcher cursed grimly if I managed to skip out of the way of a hot ground ball, promising I would get it in the head next time. If I threw a high pitch at Benny Kauff, he would threaten to break my legs.”

“I brought my own uniform because I didn’t know that the Dodgers would loan me a uniform. For years ever after, Casey Stengel would say, ‘He appeared in a uniform his mother made for him!’ That wasn’t true, but it did look a little bit cheap alongside the Dodgers uniform.”

“Hurt Is Hoyt; Dodgers Scrambles for Pitchers” In Brooklyn, where “oil” can sound like “earl” in the local vernacular, newspaper headlines sometimes declared “Hurt is Hoyt” after hometown favorite Waite Hoyt was injured during a game.

“The almost square block on which Ebbets Field stood had at one time sheltered squads of squatters who had existed there like ground moles for years. Eviction notices were served, the hole filled in, and I watched Ebbets Field as it was built. Brick by brick.”

“The mighty Josh Gibson, who drew comparisons to Babe Ruth, came to Dexter Park two or three times, and I saw him rocket some record-breaking home runs into the beyond.”

“There were one or two occasions in spring training when I thought, erroneously or otherwise, Bob Shawkey was pulling rank unnecessarily. Our relations became short of cordial.”

“There was hardly a great name I could think of that did not somehow recall a moment in my career. Alexander Joy Cartwright, the man who invented the game? I visited his grave in Honolulu.” - Schoolboy Waite Hoyt (before Cartwright’s role was debunked)

“Babe Ruth may have failed as a team manager, but baseball would have been able to say at least, well, we did give the fellow his chance, and Ruth would have been satisfied to have had that chance.”

“Rogers Hornsby was unquestionably one of the game’s greatest batters, but seemed a cold man, and I often wondered if he had a single friend except himself.”

“I’ll never forget watching the first Red Sox batter, Harry Hooper, drape the bat over his left shoulder. I thought, ‘What a peculiar batting style. Nobody in the National League would hit like that’.”

“One morning, I picked up a newspaper with the big, blaring headline: 'Babe Ruth Sold to the New York Yankees for $125,000.' The fans in Boston went nuts.”

“I threw a curveball that didn’t break. Zensuke Shimada took a swing, and he hit it over the left-field fence. The Japanese team scored five runs against the Herb Hunter All-Stars in one inning because we made three or four errors. We just played bad baseball that day.”

“Tragically, Pete Alexander’s last days were spent as more of a Ward of Baseball — with the Commissioner’s Office paying for his board and room, and with Pete, whenever he could get his hands on a dollar, disappearing from his room, eluding his caretaker and winding up coupled next to a bottle.”

“My grandmother gave me a two-toned bat for Christmas. I couldn’t wait to use that bat. Finally, springtime came around, and some kid, the first batter up in the game, borrowed it, took a swing, and snapped it right in half.”

“Baseball is a game of inches, but those inches are often between a man’s ears.” - Connie Mack

“I’d go out to the ballpark mornings and have somebody hit the ball again and again out to the wall.” - Duffy Lewis on mastering Duffy’s Cliff, the steep incline that once ran up against the left-field wall at Fenway Park from the time the ballpark opened in 1912 until it was graded flat in 1934.

“I just tried not to be the one who lost.” - George Pipgras

“Paul Krichell, or ‘Krich,’ as they called the bow-legged, roly-poly Yankee talent expert, had been watching Gehrig since Lou played first for the High School of Commerce years before, and had, as a high school slugger, knocked one out of Wrigley Field in an intersectional championship battle.”

“Hank Greenberg worked in pepper games at every opportunity, never ceasing or satisfied, until finally he became a truly graceful performer in the field, one of the best first basemen I ever watched.”

“I wasn’t going to win any batting titles, but I wasn’t going to make the pitcher look like Walter Johnson either.” - Schoolboy Waite Hoyt (.198 , 255 hits in 1287 at-bats, 96 runs, 100 RBIs, and 40 walks)

“In came Tony Lazzeri, Mark Koenig, and Urban Shocker. Little by little, in 1925, the Yanks took the shape of the club it was later to become.”

“The morning of December 15th at 7:30 am -- I’m quite sure that was the date and time -- I felt somebody shaking me on the shoulder, roughly. It was my father, wildly waving around the New York Tribune. The headline: Yanks in Big Trade. I damn near collapsed. I had become a New York Yankee.”

“The first day I joined the Red Sox, I was introduced around. Here were fellows whom I had come to know through reports, like the great Wally Schang.” - Schoolboy Waite Hoyt

“Jack Robinson could have hung on a good deal longer had he wanted to, but he wisely decided to lay the groundwork for his lifetime security while he still had his fame to bargain with. I could only admire him for making his decision and sticking with it.”

“The year 1922 was one of dissension and cordial dislike within the Yankees because the two club owners, Colonel Ruppert and Colonel Huston, were fighting. Ruppert liked Miller Huggins as manager, but Huston did not.”

“I faced George Sisler, and remembered when, with the game all but won, George turned an easy third out into a base hit … while the ball was stuck in the webbing of my brand-new glove. I said a long string of bad words to myself.”

“A ball that had been roughed up on one side with a serrated fingernail (prepared for the purpose) and shined on the other sides, would sail as much as six inches.”

“Two of baseball's great men: Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby; the time, 1928. Both are members of every all-time great team compilation, and the odds are they will remain forever.”

“When we wanted to get Eddie Collins riled up, we would simply shout “Gobble! Gobble!” to remind him that his red neck with its extremely prominent Adam's apple gave him a little the look of a turkey.”

"Broadcast nabobs did not throw their doors open to baseball players. A ballplayer to a radio man was a vulgarian who could not pronounce a three-syllable word and would probably call the Army Corps the army corpse."

"That he earned not only the affection but even the worship of many a hard-boiled baseball player is an indication that Lou Gehrig had something basically fine about him."

"I met Mae West on a night train going out of Cleveland. She asked me to tell her all the dirty stories I knew, and then she’d clean them up and use them. I had a good time with her."

"Bob Shawkey lived in a world that ran counter to my beliefs and philosophies. We just didn’t mix. It was difficult for me to take him seriously as manager because he simply lacked the necessary temperament and knowledge.” - Schoolboy Waite Hoyt (pictured: Babe Ruth, Bob Shawkey, Lou Gehrig)

“Ty Cobb played with concentrated fury. To Babe, baseball was fun, like visiting the St. Louis zoo.”

“Ruth’s boisterous habits frequently brought him trouble. Here he was snapped when leaving court just after being cleared of an assault charge.”

“Babe’s notion of training rules might have been flimsy, but there never was a minute in which he forgot his responsibilities to baseball and the folks who paid admission.”

“Despite their arguments, Miller Huggins and his Yankee problem child grew to be close friends.”

“The Giants were playing in Pittsburgh, and Bill Terry told me to go see Horace Stoneham, the owner of the Giants, and ask him for the contract. I went to see Horace Stoneham … and he let me go.”

Rare footage of 1927 Yankees ace pitcher Waite Hoyt warming up, with a cameo from Babe Ruth. An excerpt from "King of Diamonds," a Lou Gehrig bio. (h/t Curt Sochocki)

“Colonel Ruppert always called me ‘Hoyts.’ He always put an ‘s’ on the end of my name. He used to call Babe, ‘Baby Ruths.’ He once said to me, ‘Dat lousy pitching you do, Hoyts. Dat 2 to 1 pitching. Why de hell don’t you vin ’em 12–2, like Joe Bush?’”