Bill Veeck
Bill Veeck
William Louis "Bill" Veeck, Jr., also known as "Sport Shirt Bill", was a native of Chicago, Illinois, and a franchise owner and promoter in Major League Baseball. Veeck was at various times the owner of the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox. As owner and team president of the Indians in 1947, Veeck signed Larry Doby, thus beginning the integration of the American League. Veeck was the last owner to purchase a baseball franchise without an independent...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth9 February 1914
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
Hating the Yankees isn't part of my act. It is one of those exquisite times when life and art are in perfect conjunction.
I try not to kid myself. You know, I don't mind romancing someone else, but to fool yourself is pretty devastating and dangerous.
What can I do, I asked myself, that is so spectacular that no one will be able to say he had seen it before? The answer was perfectly obvious. I would send a midget up to bat.
The Falstaff people, romantics all, went for it. They were so anxious to find out what I was going to do that they could hardly bear to wait out the two weeks. I was rather anxious to find out what I was going to do, too.
Three strikes, you're out. I don't care if you hire Edward Bennett Williams to defend you; three strikes, you're still out. Baseball is an island of stability in an unstable world.
Suffering is overated.
What we have are good gray ballplayers, playing a good gray game and reading the good gray Wall Street Journal. They have been brainwashed, dry-cleaned and dehydrated!... Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils.... Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober.
Baseball is the only thing beside the paper clip that hasn't changed
When the Supreme Court says baseball isn't run like a business, everybody jumps up and down with joy. When I say the same thing, everybody throws pointy objects at me.
I believe in God, but I'm not too clear on the other details.
People identify with the swashbuckling individuals, not polite little men who field their position well. Sir Galahad had a big following - but I'll bet Lancelot had more.
If U.S. Grant had been leading a team of baseball players, they'd have second guessed him all the way to the doorknob of the Appomattox Courthouse.
Every baseball crowd, like every theatre audience, has its own distinctive attitude and atmosphere.
An island of surety in a changing world.