John Thorn Quotes

I believe that the racial injustice which existed such a short time ago probably would have persisted longer if the color barrier had not been broken in baseball.

Change is inevitable, and you can't stop that change. You say, 'Wait, stop,' and it just drives right over you.

We accept the world in order to change it. If you do not accept, then what are you going to change?

The people who run the game, they are the ones who want to change it and make people believe that it's different somehow. It's not different, the only difference is that some ballplayers today have a chance for a four- or five-year contract and they can make big money.

By the 1880s, baseball was entrenched in the Cape's sandy soil. Semipro teams, commonplace before World War I, were organized into the first Cape Cod League in 1923 - Orleans joined the four original teams five years later. By 1940, the league had foundered on financial shoals and disbanded.

Someday perhaps change will occur when times are ready for it instead of always when it is too late. Someday change will be accepted as life itself.

In the Negro Leagues, I played every day.

I love being a Yankee, and it's hard not to. It's a special place to play.

No former player has owned a team in baseball.

American history and the history of baseball are bound up together: our racial politics can be described and traced through it.

Gay marriage will be universally accepted in time. But if I may be so bold as to say to gays and lesbians, don't wait for that time to arrive. Just as my father and his generation did not 'wait' for their civil rights, nor should you. The toothpaste ain't going back in the tube. The tide has turned.

Baseball has undergone and absorbed a whole set of dislocations.

I can't wait until we get to the stage where we don't have to explain anymore.

The game has basically not changed since I ended my career.

In '83, we went over to Amsterdam. I just remember people saying, 'Baseball's just starting over here. They're learning how to play the game of baseball.'

It was not long before I was struck with the idea that base ball was just the game for a national sport for Americans.

Since 1869, baseball has been doing pretty well.

Baseball cannot be learned as a trade. It begins with the sport of the schoolboy, and though it may end in the professional, I am sure there is not a single one of these who learned the game with the expectation of making it a business. There have been years in the life of each during which he must have ate and drank and dreamed baseball.

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on the American people than any other institution.

In approaching this problem [school desegregation], we cannot turn the clock back...

I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be... That being said, there's more work to be done... I still want to change the world, absolutely.

In baseball 30 days is an eternity.

All America is familiar with the Yankee-Dodger-Giant trivia, but so many other teams had great moments.

Each generation gets more accepting which is great.

Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.