Top 40 Ernie Harwell Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure.”

— Ernie Harwell

2. “Baseball is a lot like life. It’s a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life.”

— Ernie Harwell

3. “Baseball is a ballet without music. Drama without words.”

— Ernie Harwell

4. “The good Lord has blessed me with a great journey.”

— Ernie Harwell

5. “Anything can happen. That’s the beauty of creating.”

— Ernie Harwell

6. “I praise the Lord here today. I know that all my talent and all my ability comes from him, and without him I’m nothing and I thank him for his great blessing.”

— Ernie Harwell

7. “In radio, they say, nothing happens until the announcer says it happens.”

— Ernie Harwell

8. “God blessed me by putting me here for thirty-one years at Michigan and Trumbull.”

— Ernie Harwell

9. “I love what I do. If I had my time over again, I’d probably do it for nothing.”

— Ernie Harwell

10. “In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another’s.”

— Ernie Harwell

11. “Baseball is a tongue-tied kid from Georgia growing up to be an announcer and praising the Lord for showing him the way to Cooperstown. This is a game for America. Still a game for America, this baseball!”

— Ernie Harwell

12. “I look on life as a joyous adventure.”

— Ernie Harwell

13. “Nicknames are baseball, names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.”

— Ernie Harwell

14. “I have a great faith in God and Jesus.”

— Ernie Harwell

15. “I think God always has the best for us.”

— Ernie Harwell

16. “I’ve found that if you wear a beret, people think you’re either a cabdriver or a producer of dirty movies.”

— Ernie Harwell

17. “Needless to say, I have more no-hitters than Nolan Ryan.”

— Ernie Harwell

18. “It’s been a terrific life.”

— Ernie Harwell

19. “I think I owe thanks to the people who have listened to me over the years, who tuned in on the radio. They have given me a warmth and loyalty that I’ve never been able to repay. The way they have reached out to me has certainly been the highlight of my life.”

— Ernie Harwell

20. “I deeply appreciate the people of Michigan. I love their grit. I love the way they face life. I love the family values they have.”

— Ernie Harwell

21. “I had a job to do, and I did it all these years to the best of my ability. That’s what I’d like to leave behind as I finish my final game in Toronto.”

— Ernie Harwell

22. “Baseball just a came as simple as a ball and bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion.”

— Ernie Harwell

23. “Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.”

— Ernie Harwell

24. “There’s a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That’s baseball.”

— Ernie Harwell

25. “Baseball is a rookie, his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream.”

— Ernie Harwell

26. “If I walked back into the booth in the year 2025, I don’t think it would have changed much. I think baseball would be played and managed pretty much the same as it is today. It’s a great survivor.”

— Ernie Harwell

27. “A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout. That’s baseball.”

— Ernie Harwell

28. “I think if you checked the attendance records of all the announcers, you’d find a lot better record than you would of anybody else in any other business because we love the game and have a passion for it.”

— Ernie Harwell

29. “Also I’m a part of the people that I’ve worked with in baseball that have been so great to me, Mr. Earl Mann of Atlanta, who gave me my first baseball broadcasting job.”

— Ernie Harwell

30. “I’d like to be remembered as someone who showed up for the job. I consider myself a worker.”

— Ernie Harwell

31. “Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch, and then dashing off to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals. That’s baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, ‘I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.’”

— Ernie Harwell

32. “I just have faith. It’s just there. It’s not any big deal.”

— Ernie Harwell

33. “I’ve been lucky to broadcast some great events and to broadcast the exploits of some great players.”

— Ernie Harwell

34. “That other saying, I’m a part of all that I have met, I think that would have to begin with my wonderful parents back in Atlanta when I was a youngster five years old I was tongue tied.”

— Ernie Harwell

35. “I have great faith that Heaven’s there and I’ll see my brothers and my mom and dad when I get there.”

— Ernie Harwell

36. “When I went to Brooklyn in 1948 Jackie Robinson was at the height of his brilliant career.”

— Ernie Harwell

37. “Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.”

— Ernie Harwell

38. “Everybody in the minor leagues – if you’re a player, an announcer, whatever – wants to be in the big leagues.”

— Ernie Harwell

39. “But most of all, I’m a part of you people out there who have listened to me, because especially you people in Michigan, you Tiger fans, you’ve given me so much warmth, so much affection and so much love.”

— Ernie Harwell

40. “With the Giants I broadcast the debut of Hall of Famer Willie Mays.”

— Ernie Harwell

41. “Sparky’s the only guy I know who’s written more books than he’s read.”

— Ernie Harwell

42. “Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Season to season.”

— Ernie Harwell