Some of my academic friends think Ive fallen from a very special grace. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

This is not the first time in my life where you know going into a job that you’re going to hear in stereo what was wrong with what you did. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Baseball has undergone and absorbed a whole set of dislocations. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I’m not going to sit here now and say ‘do this,’ or ‘do that.’ But you must–must–expunge any vestige of racism. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

On a good day, I view the job [of president] as directing an orchestra. On the dark days, it is more like that of a clutch––engaging the engine to effect forward motion, while taking greater friction. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

There’s nothing bad that accrues from baseball. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Winning has a joy and discrete purity to it that cannot be replaced by anything else. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

All I ever wanted to be president of was the American League. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

To go from Yale to the National League is simply to go from one form of management to another. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

People will say I’m an idealist. I hope so. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The professionals must set a good example. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re–tellings of human experience. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

A tremendous social responsibility comes with being a successful public performer. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

My goal has been to encourage jointness, to push people to think of affiliations rather than to operate as solo entrepreneurs. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they’re here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Americans have been remarkably devoted to the capacity for belief, to idealism. That’s why we get into trouble all the time. We’re always viewed as naive. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I think that the young people today feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to their brothers and sisters because of the sacrifices that most families make to send their children to college. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The university is our culture’s assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

There are a lot of people who know me who can’t understand for the life of them why I would got to work on something as unserious as baseball. If they only knew. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I’m the world’s expert on sterotypes held by academics about athletes and held by athletes about academics. To me, both of them are caricatures. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Major sports are major parts of society. It’s not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society. — A. Bartlett Giamatti