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Who really said it

Baseball always has been and always will be a game demanding team play. You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don't play together the club won't be worth a dime

Written by Babe Ruth 1895–1948 · American baseball player
Verified Free to reuse

From Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball, published by the A. L. Burt Company in 1928. We read it in the full text on Project Gutenberg ↗: the sentence opens Chapter X, on team play and signals, and appears nowhere else in the book. The 1928 publication puts it in the public domain in the United States.

Last verified 25 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Baseball always has been and always will be a game demanding team play. You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don't play together the club won't be worth a dime” — Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (A. L. Burt Company, 1928), ch. 10. Public domain in the US.

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Provenance

Chapter X, on team play

Book
Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball
Published
A. L. Burt Company, United States, 1928
Location
Chapter X — confirmed in the full text; Wikiquote gives p. 135
Rights
Public domain in the US (published 1928)

Baseball always has been and always will be a game demanding team play. You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don’t play together the club won’t be worth a dime. Two things make for real team play. The first is players’ knowledge of each other that comes from constant playing together. It’s this knowledge which is lacking on all young teams.

The opening of Chapter X, quoted from the Project Gutenberg transcription of the 1928 edition. The chapter goes on to be almost entirely about signs — the mechanics by which nine men stop being nine men.

Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928) on Project Gutenberg

How we verified this

  • The primary is online in full. Project Gutenberg’s transcription ↗ of Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball records the original publication as A. L. Burt Company, 1928.
  • We searched that text rather than trusting a citation: the sentence occurs exactly once, and the nearest preceding chapter heading is Chapter X. That matches Wikiquote’s sourced entry ↗, which also gives a page number, p. 135. Gutenberg’s transcription carries no pagination, so the page is Wikiquote’s figure and not one we could confirm.
  • Two other Babe Ruth lines in this wave are sourced elsewhere, and we checked: neither “hit or miss big” nor “never gives up” occurs anywhere in this book. This one is genuinely the book’s.
Public domain

Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball was first published in 1928 by the A. L. Burt Company ↗. Works published in the United States before 1931 are in the public domain, which is why Project Gutenberg is able to carry the whole book.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Context

The individualist arguing against individuals

By 1928 Ruth was the most conspicuously individual athlete alive — he had hit sixty home runs the previous season, more than most entire teams. So there is something bracing about him opening a chapter by insisting that individual greatness is worth nothing on its own, and then spending the rest of it on signs: the small, unglamorous signals by which nine players stop behaving like nine players.

It is also a reminder of what these books were. Ghostwritten or not, they were instructional, aimed at boys and amateur clubs, and the advice is practical rather than inspirational. The line reads today like a motivational poster; in place it is the premise of a lesson about hand signals.

You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don’t play together the club won’t be worth a dime.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Leadership Work Humility

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928)gutenberg.org

The complete primary source, free to read — the quote opens Chapter X.
Babe Ruthen.wikiquote.org

The sourced entry citing this to Chapter X, p. 135 of the 1928 book.
Babe Ruthen.wikipedia.org

Biography: the 1927 sixty-home-run season, the Yankees years, and the 1928 context of the book.
A. L. Burten.wikipedia.org

The New York publisher that issued the book in 1928.

The author

About Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth

1895–1948 · American baseball player

George Herman “Babe” Ruth began as a left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and became, with the New York Yankees, the player who reorganised baseball around the home run. His sixty home runs in 1927 stood as a single-season record for thirty-four years. He put his name to several instructional books in the 1920s, of which the 1928 Own Book of Baseball is the fullest.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball (United States: A. L. Burt Company, 1928), ch. 10. Full text at Project Gutenberg, ebook no. 75586.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Baseball always has been and always will be a game demanding team play. You can have the nine greatest individual ball players in the world, but if they don't play together the club won't be worth a dime’?” Last verified 25 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/baseball-always-has-been-and-always-will-be-a-game/

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