Pete rose quotes

Baseball is an individual game, but it should never be a personal game.

I don't like to be compared to Joe Jackson. because Joe Jackson, I think, took money to throw World Series games. Well, I know I bet on my own team to win. There's pretty much a big difference there, but both of us were wrong.

It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square.

I always say, the only time you gotta worry about getting booed is when you're wearing a white uniform. And I've never been booed wearing a white uniform.

I've got a 15-year old son and a 10-year old daughter, and if they were going to do one of the following things: be an alcoholic; be a drug offender; beat their wife or husband; or gamble. I hope they would gamble.

The team that wins two-thirds of its one run games usually wins the pennant.

Singles hitters drive Fords. Home-run hitters drive Cadillacs.

I should have shut up when I went up there and talked to Carlton Fisk.

I think that the most important thing to me is fans. Without the viewers, without the fans, we have nothing. So I think the fans are awfully important.

Brooks Robinson belongs in a higher league.

Playing baseball for a living is like having a license to steal.

A hitter's impatience is the pitcher's biggest advantage.

I owe baseball. Baseball don't owe me a damn thing.

The only way I can't hit .300 is if there's something physically wrong with me.

If you have someone equal in ability to me I will beat him every time because I will try harder.

The manager of a team is like a stagecoach, he can't move unless he has the horses.

There is an old saying that money can't buy happiness. If it could, I would buy myself four hits every game.

It's easy to practice something that you are good at, and that is what most people do. Wat's tough is to go ot and to work hard on the things that you don't do very well.

I played with 11 Hall of Famers and played against 52 Hall of Famers, and I don't know any of them linked to steroids.

I admitted I bet on baseball, but I wasn't suspended from baseball for betting on baseball.

I'd be willing to bet you, if I was a betting man, that I have never bet on baseball.

When people ask me, "Who was the toughest pitcher you ever faced?", I have to say that there has never been a pitcher who over-impressed me. That's not meant to be a bragging statement. It's just that I get up for good pitchers.

Some players you pat their butts, some players you kick their butts, some players you leave alone.

I would think if someone connected to steroids made the Hall of Fame, that would enhance my chances of making the Hall of Fame.

You know what God told the Cubs? Don't do anything until I come back.

It doesn't take much to get me up for baseball. Once the National Anthem plays, I get chills. I even know the words to it now.

Baseball is a universal language. Catch the ball, throw the ball, hit the ball.

Somebody's gotta win and somebody's gotta lose and I believe in letting the other guy lose.

The greatest competitor was Bob Gibson. He worked so fast out there and he always had the hood up. He always wanted to close his own deal. He never talked to you because he was battling so hard. I sure as hell don't miss batting against him, but I miss him in the game.

I'm not bad (his speed). I'm no Joe Morgan, but I'm pretty good for a white guy.

Day after day there are lots of fans here and it helps a lot with them out there rooting for us.

I haven't missed a game in two-and-a-half years. I go to the park as sick as a dog and, when I see my uniform hanging there, I get well right now. Then I see some of you guys (media) and I get sick again.

I bet on the game of baseball and I bet on my team, even the mistakes I made, I have to take a different look at someone betting against their own team... that's throwing the game.

Doctors tell me I have the body of a thirty year old. I know I have the brain of a fifteen year old. If you've got both, you can play baseball.

When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You've gone zero for seven-thousand.

Pressure? Well it ain't hitting in forty-four straight games, because I done that and it was fun. The playoffs are pressure.

Among many U. S. wine consumers, California holds a strong position.

When you step into the batter's box, have nothing on your mind except baseball.

I never gave up as a player, and I won't give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it's the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.

Whoever said "It's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game" is full of it! Winning makes all the difference in the world. Winning is fun. Losing is not. Losing sucks.

I'd be willing to bet you, if I were a betting man, that I have never bet on baseball.

See the ball; hit the ball.

If I had been busted for drugs instead of gambling, I'd still be managing the Reds and baseball would be paying for my rehab.

The thing I would like most to leave behind is to be remembered for trying hard.

I'm no different from anybody else with two arms, two legs, and forty-two hundred hits.

I told him (Pete Rose, Jr.) who to watch. I said if you want to be a catcher, watch Johnny Bench. If you want to be a right-handed power hitter, watch Mike Schmidt. If you just want to be a hitter, watch me.

I've never looked forward to a birthday like I'm looking forward to my new daughter's birthday, because two days after that is when I can apply for reinstatement.

Once you accept defeat, it becomes ease to lose. If defeat comes, face it and take it, but don't accept it.

If you screw up and do something, don't lie about it; come clean.

What's the game coming to? Evidently the guys making all these rules never played the game of baseball.

I made mistakes. I can’t whine about it. I’m the one that messed up and I’m paying the consequences. However, if I am given a second chance, I won’t need a third chance. And to be honest with you, I picked the wrong vice. I should have picked alcohol. I should have picked drugs or I should have picked up beating up my wife or girlfriend because if you do those three, you get a second chance. They haven’t given too many gamblers second chances in the world of baseball.

You know, baseball's not stupid. Baseball does what the fans want, usually.

You'd be surprised how many shortcomings can be overcome by hustle.

Unfortunately, gambling and winning don't often go hand-in-hand.

I'm just like everybody else. I have two arms, two legs and four-thousand hits.

I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.

You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possibly be - in baseball and in life.

I don't go to bed every night worried about getting back into baseball.

If you're not active - and I'm not active - and you don't watch what you eat, you can get big as a horse.

When I get the record, all it will make me is the player with the most hits. I'm also the player with the most at bats and the most outs. I never said I was a greater player than (Ty) Cobb.

Don Gullett's the only guy who can throw a baseball through a car wash and not get the ball wet.

He (Eric Davis) gets power from his bat speed.....it's like he has cork in his arms.

If I had admitted my guilt, it would have been the same as putting my head on the chopping block - lifetime ban. Death penalty. I spent my entire life on the baseball fields of America, and I was not going to give up my profession without first seeing some hard evidence ... right or wrong, the punishment didn't fit the crime, so I denied the crime.

I don't smoke. Smoking will hurt you when you try to run out a triple.

No one ever asked what was my relationship with Bart Giamatti. We used to talk about baseball a lot as a player and a commissioner, just talk about the game, what could we do to help the game, where's the game going, he was pretty good.

If baseball wants to get you, they've got enough resources and enough investigators that they'll find a way to get you.

People say I don't have great tools. They say that I can't throw like Ellis Valentine or run like Tim Raines or hit with power like Mike Schmidt. Who can? I make up for it in other ways, by putting out a little bit more. That's my theory, to go through life hustling. In the big leagues, hustle usually means being in the right place at the right time. It means backing up a base. It means backing up your teammate. It means taking that headfirst slide. It means doing everything you can do to win a baseball game.

I can't remember, I wish I could remember the first time I bet on baseball.

With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions.

Sure I do, and if someone paid you six-thousand dollars a game, you'd have fun as well.

I came to Vegas because I work 20 days a month here; I couldn't live anywhere else.

Practice the game the way you're going to play the game. Practice hard and play hard. Run hard and above all else, hustle every moment you're on the field where you are practicing or playing in a game.

Concentration is that ability to not think about anything.

Jay Z got Cano a big raise, but he got him an extra 30-day vacation - and it's called October.

Every time I step up to the plate, I expect to get a hit. If I don't expect to get a hit, I have no right to step into the batter's box in the first place.

If somebody is gracious enough to give me a second chance, I won't need a third.

My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.

Am I still in uniform? Then I ain't retired.

Creating success is tough. But keeping it is tougher. You have to keep producing, you can't ever stop.

The only book I ever read cover to cover was The Pete Rose Story. I read half of The Lou Gehrig Story and then made a book report on it for four straight years.

Hitting. That's what I enjoy most. Realistically, it's probably the hardest thing to do in all of sport. Think about it. You've got a round ball, a round bat, and the object is to hit it square.

Sliding headfirst is the safest way to get to the next base, I think, and the fastest. You don't lose your momentum, and there's one more important reason I slide headfirst, it gets my picture in the paper.

I was born on the day Lincoln was shot and the Titanic sank.