Bill Veeck Quotes

United States, Baseball Manager
February 9, 1914 – January, 2, 1986.

William Louis Veeck Jr. (February 9, 1914 – January 2, 1986), also known as "Sport Shirt", was an American Major League Baseball franchise owner and promoter. 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, and the following year won a World Series title as Cleveland's owner/president.

Also known as Baseball Player

There are only two seasons - winter and Baseball.

Bill Veeck
- Baseball
- Winter
Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off.

Bill Veeck
- World
- Baseball
- Lawyer

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.

Bill Veeck
- Up
I do not think that winning is the most important thing. I think winning is the only thing.

Bill Veeck
- Important
- Winning
Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too?

Bill Veeck
- Game
- Star
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?

Bill Veeck
- Live
- Game
- King
I have discovered in 20 years of moving around a ballpark, that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats.

Bill Veeck
- Game
- Knowledge
- Moving
The most beautiful thing in the world is a ballpark filled with people.

Bill Veeck
- People
- World
- Beautiful

After a month or so in St. Louis, we were looking around desperately for a way to draw a few people into the ball park, it being perfectly clear by that time that the ball club wasn't going to do it unaided.

Bill Veeck
- People
- Time
Every baseball crowd, like every theatre audience, has its own distinctive attitude and atmosphere.

Bill Veeck
I try not to kid myself. You know, I don't mind romancing someone else, but to fool yourself is pretty devastating and dangerous.

Bill Veeck
- Mind
- Pretty
- Fool
The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of the bat on the ball.

Bill Veeck
- True
- Spring
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.

Bill Veeck
- People
I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.

Bill Veeck