Ron Shelton

I am the Georgia Peach. I have 4,191 base hits in 11,429 at bats, 920 stolen bases, 2,244 runs scored, and 93 batting records; and I want you to take off every stitch of your clothes.

The desire for glory is not a sin.

Baseball is a red blooded sport for red blooded men. It's no pink tea, and molly-coddles had better stay out... It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.

Know ye that a prince and a great man has fallen this day.

Shit! Will you stop explaining yourself, and stand by your damn convictions? You beat the great Ty Cobb - I respect that, but if you're gonna print it, print it all. My second son weighed 300 pounds. Died in the arms of a whore in Paso Robles, California. My other son, lost all track of him. My two ex-wives won't speak to me, and my daughter, you know goddamn well won't speak to me, and Ty Cobb can't get it up anymore. Print it all!

I want everything back I took out of Bethlehem Steel, and I want it all now.

It is not confusing. It's simple - you won. You go ahead and tell the whole wide world that the greatest ballplayer who ever lived is also the greatest bastard. Eureka! Who fucking cares?

I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me, but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch.

'Cobb, a prince among men, misunderstood in his genius, as genius always is'...

This is the second line from what will be the greatest biography of a great man ever written - type it!

A ball bat is a wondrous weapon, but you should never grip it at the end if you want balance and control. Learn the fundamentals. The game is a science. Batting is a mental activity, a study in psychology, an observation of little details. Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher. The batter owns the plate. The pitcher must come to you. If John McGraw were a young man, I would've killed him. I regret I didn't go to college. I feel I should have been a doctor.

The South may not rise again young man, but my dick will.

You have never been this close to greatness in your short life son. And you love it.

I started playing baseball when I was a kid like everybody else but better than everybody else.

Roy, Roy… why are you here?

You've come for therapy? Okay, look, Roy, you know, you really need to make an appointment. Because I have a client in a half an hour.

Roy, we're talking about you, and what you like to call your inner demons - that human frailty you like to blather about - not some mythopoetic metaphor you come up with in a... feeble and transparent effort to do yourself credit.

Roy, Roy, Roy, you don't have any inner demons. What you have is inner crapola, inner debris... garbage... loose wires, a few...

horseshit in staggering amounts.

Why do men always insist on measuring their dicks?

I'm a, like, terrible shrink, probably. I should have never gotten out of real estate, shit, actually, I should have never left Ohio for that cowboy in Amarillo, but… Have you ever been to Amarillo?

Yeah. It's not as romantic when you're actually with one, trust me.

Oh, you amuse me, Roy, but I'm the only woman in America born after World War II that thinks astrology's a crock of shit.

This is without a doubt the stupidest, silliest, most idiotic grotesquery masquerading as a game that has ever been invented.

All you have to do is walk up to this, this woman, wherever she is, look her in the eye - look at me, Roy - just look her in the eyes, that's right, let down your guard, and don't try to be cool or smooth or whatever; just be honest and take a risk. And you know what, whatever happens, if you act from the heart, you can't make a mistake.

Well, I'm with you, Roy. I'm with you.

Sex and golf are the two things you don't have to be good at to enjoy

Well, I tend to think of the golf swing as a poem.

The critical opening phrase of this poem will always be the grip. Which the hands unite to form a single unit by the simple overlap of the little finger. Lowly and slowly the clubhead is led back. Pulled into position not by the hands, but by the body which turns away from the target shifting weight to the right side without shifting balance. Tempo is everything; perfection unobtainable as the body coils down at the top of the swing. Theres a slight hesitation. A little nod to the gods.

Yeah, to the gods. That he is fallible. That perfection is unobtainable. And now the weight begins shifting back to the left pulled by the powers inside the earth. It's alive, this swing! A living sculpture and down through contact, always down, striking the ball crisply, with character. A tuning fork goes off in your heart and your balls. Such a pure feeling is the well-struck golf shot. Now the follow through to finish. Always on line. The reverse C of the Golden Bear! The steel workers' power and brawn of Carl Sandburg's. Arnold Palmer!

End the unfinished symphony of Roy McAvoy.

I hit it again because that shot was a defining moment, and when a defining moment comes along, you define the moment… or the moment defines you.

That's because you think of it as transportation, Boone. Think of it as bragging rights. Think of yourself sitting around the bar, crowing to your cronies about the Cadillac you won from me. They'll forget all about the Winnebago you lost to me.

Okay, so how do I do it? Therapy, I mean, I mean, wh - how do I start doing it?

Suppose there's this guy, and he's standing on the shore of a big wide river, and the... river's full of all manner of disaster, you know, piranhas, alligators, eddies, currents, shit like that... nobody'll even go down there to dip a toe. And on the other side of the river's a million bucks, and on this side of the river... is a rowboat.

You don't think I can knock it on from there?

Well, so am I! I mean, look at me, all right, what I'm wearing. I mean, I'm playing for Rio Grande Short-Haul Trucking, Briggs and Brown Sanitation, First State Bank of Salome, Woody's Smokehouse... You think a... you think a guy like me bothers to worry about the percentages?

I'm gonna qualify for the U.S. Open and I'm gonna kick your boyfriend's ass!

And whatever you think of me, you should know that your boyfriend hates old people, children and dogs. And that broad is still out here crying in the exit room.

You're still in the exit room.

Dr. Griswold...

I think I'm in love with you.

From the moment I first saw you, I knew I was through with bar girls and… strippers and motorcycle chicks, and… when we first started talking I was smitten with you, and I'm smitten with you more every day I think about you, and the fact that you know I'm full of crapola only makes you more attractive to me. Usually I can bullshit people, but I can't bullshit you, and in addition you got, you got great legs, and… most women I'm thinking about how to get in their pants from day one, but with you I'm just… I'm just thinking about how to get in your heart, and…

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring,

which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250, not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake? It's a long season and you gotta trust it. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

Walt Whitman once said, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us." You could look it up.