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
When there is no room for individualism in ballparks, then there will be no room for individualism in life.
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.
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 game left for people. To play basketball, you have to be 7 feet 6 inches. To play football, you have to be the same width.
Suffering is overated.
I believe in God, but I'm not too clear on the other details.
Baseball is a boy's game that makes grown men cry.
Though it is a team game by definition, it is actually a series of loosely connected individual efforts.
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.
I was in the game for love. After all, where else can an old-timer with one leg, who can't hear or see, live like a king while doing the only thing I wanted to do?
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.
Hating the Yankees isn't part of my act. It is one of those exquisite times when life and art are in perfect conjunction.
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.
I'm for the dreamers. The only really important things in history have been started by the dreamers. They never know what can't be done.