Ernie Harwell Quotes

I guess what really made me a Dodgers fan from the beginning was that the team had Jackie Robinson, the first 'Negro' in the major leagues.

I would love to see as many of the black players as possible in today's Major League Baseball make every effort to go to the Negro Leagues Museum and get a first-hand view of how it all started.

I'm not sure Mark McGwire was a Hall of Famer to begin with.

Mr. Rickey, I'll put more people in the park than anybody since Babe Ruth.

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

What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league.

To play 18 years in Yankee Stadium is the best thing that could ever happen to a ballplayer.

After Jackie Robinson the most important black in baseball history is Reggie Jackson, I really mean that.

They invented the All-Star game for Willie Mays.

George Steinbrenner forever changed baseball and hopefully someday we will see him honored in baseball's Hall of Fame as one of the great figures in the history of sports.

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

For years, I have been harboring memories of my first major league game at a place named Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

Major league baseball is about the history of the game. Baseball history is so important. It's so much more than money.

In 1957, I was a 16-year-old office boy for the Dodgers.

The first time that I ever saw Babe Ruth was in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse.

The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal.

You look at all the great players that they've had and the potential of playing in Yankee Stadium.

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

Many of the greatest black athletes of all time played baseball for no money and no recognition. I'm just sorry many major league fans never got to see them play, because many of them were awesome.

I was glad to play in the Negro Leagues. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

I rooted for the Dodgers when they were in Brooklyn.

I played with the Birmingham Black Barons. I was making 500 at 14. That was a lot of money in those days.

In 1949, I saw a World War II veteran named Lou Brissie, who had nearly lost a lower leg in combat, pitch in the All-Star Game in Brooklyn.

Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation.

As I look out there and see the culture of baseball, a lot of blacks and Latins, it's given me a lot of joy to know that Jackie started that. If Jackie hadn't come in '47, me and Ron Santo wouldn't have played in Double-A and all those years in the big leagues.