Top 90 Mickey Mantle Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.”

— Mickey Mantle

Featured in: Baseball Quotes

2. “A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.”

— Mickey Mantle

3. “During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.”

— Mickey Mantle

4. “Hey man! Get away from me!”

— Mickey Mantle

5. “My biggest regret was letting my lifetime average drop below .300. I always felt I was a .300 hitter, and if I could change one thing that would be it.”

— Mickey Mantle

6. “I don’t care who you are, you hear those boos.”

— Mickey Mantle

7. “When I’m hitting, I’d play for nothing. When I’m not, any kind of money I receive makes me feel as if I’m stealing.”

— Mickey Mantle

8. “To get a better piece of chicken, you’d have to be a rooster.”

— Mickey Mantle

9. “Stay away from drugs and alcohol. Listen to your moms and dads. In this great country of ours you do whatever you set your mind to. Make us proud of you.”

— Mickey Mantle

10. “Thank God for baseball.”

— Mickey Mantle

11. “After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.”

— Mickey Mantle

12. “I’ve often wondered how a man who knew he was going to die could stand here and say he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth, but now I guess I know how he felt.”

— Mickey Mantle

13. “You don’t realize how easy this game is until you get up in that broadcasting booth.”

— Mickey Mantle

14. “Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing’s ever been as fun as baseball.”

— Mickey Mantle

15. “My views are just about the same as Casey’s.”

— Mickey Mantle

16. “It looked like Roy Rogers rode through on Trigger, and Trigger kicked the guy in the face.”

— Mickey Mantle

17. “It was all I lived for, to play baseball.”

— Mickey Mantle

18. “Watch the old man. Watch how the old man keeps the guys who aren’t playing happy.”

— Mickey Mantle

19. “It’s what you’re worth.”

— Mickey Mantle

20. “There are two kinds of people. There are leaders and there are followers. And I’m a follower.”

— Mickey Mantle

21. “He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.”

— Mickey Mantle

22. “If you want to know who was better, me or Willie Mays, you have to look at our career stats. And Willie’s bottom line was better.”

— Mickey Mantle

23. “You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.”

— Mickey Mantle

24. “If I were playing today I’d do what Joe DiMaggio said. I’d go knock on the door at Yankee Stadium and when George Steinbrenner answered I’d say, ‘Howdy, pardner.’”

— Mickey Mantle

25. “My dad taught me to switch-hit. He and my grandfather, who was left-handed, pitched to me every day after school in the back yard. I batted lefty against my dad and righty against my granddad.”

— Mickey Mantle

26. “I thought I raised a ballplayer. You’re nothing but a coward and a quitter.”

— Mickey Mantle

27. “The greatest thing I ever saw was Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth’s record.”

— Mickey Mantle

28. “I think the best all-round baseball player ever was Joe DiMaggio.”

— Mickey Mantle

29. “When I first came to Yankee Stadium I used to feel like the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were walking around in there.”

— Mickey Mantle

30. “Bravery is a complicated thing to describe. You can’t say it’s three feet long and two feet wide and that it weighs four hundred pounds or that it’s colored bright blue or that it sounds like a piano or that it smells like roses. It’s a quality, not a thing.”

— Mickey Mantle

31. “I had it all and blew it.”

— Mickey Mantle

32. “He said to play louder. He can’t hear you.”

— Mickey Mantle

33. “I can’t play any more. I can’t hit the ball when I need to. I can’t steal second when I need to. I can’t go from first to third when I need to. I can’t score from second when I need to. I have to quit.”

— Mickey Mantle

34. “I hated to bat against Drysdale. After he hit you he’d come around, look at the bruise on your arm and say, ‘Do you want me to sign it?’”

— Mickey Mantle

35. “The hardest thing to do in sports, I think, is to hit a home run.”

— Mickey Mantle

36. “I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.”

— Mickey Mantle

37. “In 1960 when Pittsburgh beat us in the World Series, we outscored them 55-27. It was the only time I think the better team lost. I was so disappointed I cried on the plane ride home.”

— Mickey Mantle

38. “Somebody once asked me if I ever went up to the plate trying to hit a home run. I said, ‘Sure, every time.’”

— Mickey Mantle

39. “Don’t do as I did. I’m living proof of how not to live.”

— Mickey Mantle

40. “Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That’s the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century.”

— Mickey Mantle

41. “Butcher boy, damn it, butcher boy.”

— Mickey Mantle

42. “Roger Maris was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was.”

— Mickey Mantle

43. “This year I’d rather lead the league in home runs, runs batted in and hitting.”

— Mickey Mantle

44. “If the World Series was on the line and I could pick one pitcher to pitch the game, I’d choose Whitey Ford every time.”

— Mickey Mantle

45. “We know you can bunt, Mick. You’re not down here to bunt. You’re here to get some hits and get your swing back.”

— Mickey Mantle

46. “It gave me a second chance. I’d like everybody to have a second chance if they need it, so I’m trying to let people know how important it is to become an organ donor.”

— Mickey Mantle

47. “What did you say, Joe?”

— Mickey Mantle

48. “Hitting the ball was easy. Running around the bases was the tough part.”

— Mickey Mantle

49. “I’ll play baseball for the Army or fight for it, whatever they want me to do.”

— Mickey Mantle

50. “The biggest thrill I ever had was in 1969, when they held day at Yankee Stadium.”

— Mickey Mantle