I came across a great quote not long ago.

“You can’t steal second with your foot on first base.”

It reminded me of other great baseball quotes, like this one from Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back; someone might be gaining on you.”

Or this one from humorist Dave Barry: “If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.”

Or this from Humphrey Bogart: “A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.”

As someone who loves both baseball and quotations, I thought I’d try to add to the collection by coming up with some of my own.

So today, here’s my humble attempt at original sayings about the greatest game:

• A Little League home run will bring a child more self-esteem than a year of the finest parenting.

• The world’s most effective video surveillance system against would-be thieves is not the remote camera, it is the baseball pitcher.

• Always run out a pop-up. They might drop it.

• If there is a more uplifting sound than the crack of maple against rawhide, I don’t know it.

• Your batting average will reflect no statistical difference between a strike-out and a 419-foot fly ball caught at the top of the centerfield wall. There is no “almost”; there is only succeed or fail.

• Baseball fans worship as piously in the bleachers as congregants do in pews, the difference being they don’t serve hot dogs in church.

• The real test isn’t whether you can deliver at the plate on your home field with your mother cheering you on, it’s whether you can do it away while 20,000 voices are calling you a bum.

• No one in their right mind would turn down $10 million to play shortstop, but it’ll never again be as fun as when you played it for free.

• Can there be a more beautiful phrase in the language than, “You’re safe”?

• The smallest relevant measure of time in man’s experience is the moment between when a fastball artist releases the ball, and when it hits the catcher’s mitt.

• Blessed be he who sprints to back up the throw. And whatever our game, may we all do so.

• You can’t hit what you don’t swing at.

• The heart of the duel between batter and pitcher comes down to who can fill the other with the most fear.

• Few manufactured items on earth feel more perfect than a new hardball.

• How could you not love a game in which, if you play it just right, you will be told by your superior to run home.

• A batter of integrity will wish more for an infield bloop that scores a run than a triple that doesn’t.

• Even if your foe is more skilled, desire is the great equalizer. More often than not, the winner is the one who most wants the ball.

• Only fathers and sons know how many important words are spoken during a silent game of catch.

• Sometimes, the most efficient, effective way to get from Point A to Point B is a curve.

• Given the game’s pace, subtlety and beauty, had the dads of young ballplayers given them pens instead of mitts, they’d have become poets.

• In baseball and life, there is no running out the clock.

• Failing at two-thirds of what you attempt in this world would give you an impressive .333 average

• One of the greatest tests of character in sport is whether you can boldly attack a white, lethal cannonball barreling at 95 miles per hour within inches of your vital organs, instead of doing the logical thing and running for your life.

• In the great, perilous journey around the bases, there are no shortcuts.

• Ah, the high, thundering drama of a powerful batter standing mute and motionless as a third strike silently sails past.

• Even more than in modern religion, the sacrifice remains a holy rite in baseball.

• No ball in any sport hangs in the air as long, and as mournfully, as a final pop-up when you are losing by one with two outs and men on in the ninth inning.

And finally:

• I don’t care how pretty you are, how much money you have, or whom you know — all that matters is whether you can you hit.

mpatinkin@projo.com