John McGraw quotes

There is but one game and that game is baseball. (John McGraw)
Learn to know every man under you, get under his skin, know his faults. Then cater to him - with kindness or roughness as his case may demand. View quote
John McGraw
No club that wins a pennant once is an outstanding club. One which bunches two pennants is a good club. But a team which can win three in a row really achieves greatness. View quote
John McGraw
Sportsmanship and easygoing methods are all right, but it is the prospect of a hot fight that brings out the crowds. View quote
John McGraw
My boy, one small breeze doesn't make a wind storm. View quote
John McGraw
With my team I am an absolute czar. My men know it. I order plays and they obey. If the don't, I fine them. View quote
John McGraw
The team that gets off to a good start wins pennants. View quote
John McGraw
I think we can win it if my brain holds out. View quote
John McGraw
He supported himself at odd jobs until he won himself a place on the Olean (New York) professional team at sixteen and never again willingly took orders from any man. Although he was short and weighed barely 155 pounds, he held far bigger base runners back by the belt, blocked them, tripped them, spiked them - and rarely complained when they did the same to him. View quote
John McGraw
In playing or managing, the game of ball is only fun for me when I'm out in front and winning. I don't give a hill of beans for the rest of the game. View quote
John McGraw
McGraw was an improviser, a teacher. He brought much to the game that keeps baseball fresh and suspenseful today-the hit-and-run play, the steal, the squeeze play, the uses of the bunt and the defenses against it. He helped turn the game into a thing of fluid beauty, infielders charging the plate or roaming far from their bases, outfielders moving with each pitch, racing in for base hits before them, backing each other in the outfield, entering the infield itself on rundown plays. Yet when the game changed radically, with the introduction of the livelier baseball, McGraw naturally shifted to a power emphasis, founding his team about such men as George Kelly, Bill Terry, Mel Ott. He knew, too, that the old pitching style of permitting a man to hit a deadened ball because it would then be caught in the big fields had to be changed, and his staffs led the league year after year in strikeouts, in earned-runs. (John McGraw)