baseball

See Also: SPORTS

1. The ball … came floating up to the plate like a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream bobbing to the top of a drugstore soda —Howard Frank Mosher
2. A ballpark at night is more like a church than a church —W. P. Kinsella

   Kinsella’s novels are small treasure troves of baseball-related similes.

3. The ball … sailed through the light and up into the dark, like a white star seeking an old constellation —Bernard Malamud
4. The ball was coming in like a Lear jet —T. Glen Coughlin
5. Baseball games are like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two are ever alike —W. P. Kinsella
6. Baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either how it will go —Marianne Moore

   Baseball, like writing, was a Marianne Moore passion.

7. Boston hit Dwight Gooden like they were his wicked stepparents —Vin Scully, commenting on the second game of the 1986 World Series
8. The catcher is padded like an armchair —London Times, 1918
9. Defeat stains a pitcher’s record as cabernet stains a white carpet —Marty Noble, Newsday, August 25, 1986
10. The dirt flew as if some great storm had descended and would have ripped up the entire [baseball] field —Craig Wolff, New York Times, August 3, 1986
11. Dwight Gooden [of New York Mets] pitching without his fastball was like Nureyev dancing on a broken leg or Pavarotti singing with a sore throat —Anon item, Newsday, October 25, 1986
12. The earth around the base is … soft as piecrust. Ground balls will die on the second bounce, as if they’ve been hit into an anthill —W. P. Kinsella
13. [Baseball] field … cool as a mine, soft as moss, lying there like a cashmere blanket —W. P. Kinsella
14. He bats like a lightning rod —W. P. Kinsella
15. He gets power from his bat speed … it’s like he has cork in his arms —Pete Rose about Eric Davis, David Anderson column New York Times, May 7, 1987
16. He ran the bases as if he was hauling William H. Taft in a rickshaw —Heywood Broun
17. [Dwight Gooden] his fastball crackling, his curveball dropping as suddenly as a duck shot in the air, has begun his charge for a third straight award-winning season —Ira Berkow, New York Times/Sports of the Times, August 3, 1986
18. Homers are like orgasms. You run out of them after a time —Norman Keifetz

    See Also: SEX

19. It [the patched-up Shea Stadium field] was dangerous underfoot as the Mets and the Cubs tiptoed their way though a 5-0 Met victory the way soldiers would patrol a mine field —George Vecsey, New York Times/Sports of the Times, September 19, 1986

    The ball players had to navigate their way through the field like soldiers because their fans had behaved so destructively the day before.

20. Knowing all about baseball is just about as profitable as being a good whittler —Frank McKinney
21. Outfielders ran together as if directed by poltergeists —George Vecsey, New York Times/Sports of the Times column on dreadful things that happen to the Mets when they play against the Houston outfielders, October 8, 1986
22. Someone once described the pitching of a no-hit game as like catching lightning in a bottle (How about catching lightning in a bottle on two consecutive starts?) —W. P. Kinsella
23. Sometimes I hit him like I used to hit Koufax, and that’s like drinking coffee with a fork. Did you ever try that? —Willie Stargell on Steve Carlton, Baseball Illustrated, 1975
24. Stepping up to the plate now like the Iron Man himself. The wind-up, the delivery, the ball hanging there like a pinata, like a birthday gift, and then the stick flashes in your hands like an archangel’s sword —T. Coraghessan Boyle
25. To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim —John Cheever
26. Trying to sneak a pitch past him is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster —Amos Otis, baseball outfielder, about Rod Carew, former first baseman
27. Twenty years ago rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for IBM —George F. Will, on the Chicago Cubs, Washington Post, March 20, 1974