Top 70 Pete Rose Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Whoever said “It’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game” is full of it! Winning makes all the difference in the world. Winning is fun. Losing is not. Losing sucks.”

— Pete Rose

2. “Practice the game the way you’re going to play the game. Practice hard and play hard. Run hard and above all else, hustle every moment you’re on the field where you are practicing or playing in a game.”

— Pete Rose

3. “Every time I step up to the plate, I expect to get a hit. If I don’t expect to get a hit, I have no right to step into the batter’s box in the first place.”

— Pete Rose

4. “If somebody is gracious enough to give me a second chance, I won’t need a third.”

— Pete Rose

5. “See the ball; hit the ball.”

— Pete Rose

6. “You owe it to yourself to be the best you can possibly be – in baseball and in life.”

— Pete Rose

7. “You’d be surprised how many shortcomings can be overcome by hustle.”

— Pete Rose

8. “Once you accept defeat, it becomes ease to lose. If defeat comes, face it and take it, but don’t accept it.”

— Pete Rose

9. “It’s easy to practice something that you are good at, and that is what most people do. Wat’s tough is to go ot and to work hard on the things that you don’t do very well.”

— Pete Rose

10. “Somebody’s gotta win and somebody’s gotta lose and I believe in letting the other guy lose.”

— Pete Rose

11. “My father taught me that the only way you can make good at anything is to practice, and then practice some more.”

— Pete Rose

12. “The manager of a team is like a stagecoach, he can’t move unless he has the horses.”

— Pete Rose

13. “Baseball is a universal language. Catch the ball, throw the ball, hit the ball.”

— Pete Rose

14. “I’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.”

— Pete Rose

15. “Creating success is tough. But keeping it is tougher. You have to keep producing, you can’t ever stop.”

— Pete Rose

16. “Don Gullett’s the only guy who can throw a baseball through a car wash and not get the ball wet.”

— Pete Rose

17. “Singles hitters drive Fords. Home-run hitters drive Cadillacs.”

— Pete Rose

18. “Brooks Robinson belongs in a higher league.”

— Pete Rose

19. “If you screw up and do something, don’t lie about it; come clean.”

— Pete Rose

20. “What’s the game coming to? Evidently the guys making all these rules never played the game of baseball.”

— Pete Rose

21. “I’d be willing to bet you, if I was a betting man, that I have never bet on baseball.”

— Pete Rose

22. “I’m just like everybody else. I have two arms, two legs and four-thousand hits.”

— Pete Rose

23. “When you step into the batter’s box, have nothing on your mind except baseball.”

— Pete Rose

24. “I was born on the day Lincoln was shot and the Titanic sank.”

— Pete Rose

25. “Some players you pat their butts, some players you kick their butts, some players you leave alone.”

— Pete Rose

26. “If I had been busted for drugs instead of gambling, I’d still be managing the Reds and baseball would be paying for my rehab.”

— Pete Rose

27. “I don’t smoke. Smoking will hurt you when you try to run out a triple.”

— Pete Rose

28. “Unfortunately, gambling and winning don’t often go hand-in-hand.”

— Pete Rose

29. “No one ever asked what was my relationship with Bart Giamatti. We used to talk about baseball a lot as a player and a commissioner, just talk about the game, what could we do to help the game, where’s the game going, he was pretty good.”

— Pete Rose

30. “It’s a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square.”

— Pete Rose

31. “Sliding headfirst is the safest way to get to the next base, I think, and the fastest. You don’t lose your momentum, and there’s one more important reason I slide headfirst, it gets my picture in the paper.”

— Pete Rose

32. “You know, baseball’s not stupid. Baseball does what the fans want, usually.”

— Pete Rose

33. “I can’t remember, I wish I could remember the first time I bet on baseball.”

— Pete Rose

34. “Hitting. That’s what I enjoy most. Realistically, it’s probably the hardest thing to do in all of sport. Think about it. You’ve got a round ball, a round bat, and the object is to hit it square.”

— Pete Rose

35. “If you have someone equal in ability to me I will beat him every time because I will try harder.”

— Pete Rose

36. “There is an old saying that money can’t buy happiness. If it could, I would buy myself four hits every game.”

— Pete Rose

37. “I owe baseball. Baseball don’t owe me a damn thing.”

— Pete Rose

38. “I’ve got a 15-year old son and a 10-year old daughter, and if they were going to do one of the following things: be an alcoholic; be a drug offender; beat their wife or husband; or gamble. I hope they would gamble.”

— Pete Rose

39. “I came to Vegas because I work 20 days a month here; I couldn’t live anywhere else.”

— Pete Rose

40. “I should have shut up when I went up there and talked to Carlton Fisk.”

— Pete Rose

41. “It doesn’t take much to get me up for baseball. Once the National Anthem plays, I get chills. I even know the words to it now.”

— Pete Rose

42. “I’ve never looked forward to a birthday like I’m looking forward to my new daughter’s birthday, because two days after that is when I can apply for reinstatement.”

— Pete Rose

43. “I never gave up as a player, and I won’t give up as someone who wants to go to the Hall of Fame, because it’s the ultimate goal for a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player.”

— Pete Rose

44. “I admitted I bet on baseball, but I wasn’t suspended from baseball for betting on baseball.”

— Pete Rose

45. “If you’re not active – and I’m not active – and you don’t watch what you eat, you can get big as a horse.”

— Pete Rose

46. “The greatest competitor was Bob Gibson. He worked so fast out there and he always had the hood up. He always wanted to close his own deal. He never talked to you because he was battling so hard. I sure as hell don’t miss batting against him, but I miss him in the game.”

— Pete Rose

47. “The only book I ever read cover to cover was The Pete Rose Story. I read half of The Lou Gehrig Story and then made a book report on it for four straight years.”

— Pete Rose

48. “When you play this game twenty years, go to bat ten-thousand times, and get three-thousand hits, do you know what that means? You’ve gone zero for seven-thousand.”

— Pete Rose

49. “You know what God told the Cubs? Don’t do anything until I come back.”

— Pete Rose

50. “I don’t like to be compared to Joe Jackson. because Joe Jackson, I think, took money to throw World Series games. Well, I know I bet on my own team to win. There’s pretty much a big difference there, but both of us were wrong.”

— Pete Rose