'I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.'

"Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution."

- Baseball star Hank Aaron (1934-2021)

'A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.'

- Jackie Robinson, the first Black MLB player (1919-1972)

'Practice, which some regard as a chore, should be approached as just about the most pleasant recreation ever devised.'

- Legendary athlete Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

'When you come to a fork in the road, take it.'

- Baseball great Yogi Berra (1925-2015)

The top 100 players in baseball history

More than 20,000 players have played in Major League Baseball since the 1870s, many passing in and out of the memory of even die-hard fans. While necessarily subjective, these rankings based on votes from baseball writers ranks those whose greatness left a lasting impression. From Barry Larkin (No. 100) to Babe Ruth (No. 1), explore the top 100 baseball players over more than a century.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

'Sometimes the biggest problem is in your head. You’ve got to believe you can play a shot instead of wondering where your next bad shot is coming from.'

- Golf great Jack Nicklaus (1940-present)

A quote from sports journalist Stuart Scott

"In football, as in life, the hits you don’t see coming are the ones that do the most damage."

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

'You only go around once, but if you play your cards right, once is enough.'

- Frank Sinatra (1915–1998)

Some say baseball's drug problem goes back to the late 1800s

At age 32, pitcher James “Pud” Galvin was feeling tired and decided to take "the Brown-Séquard elixir," which contained a testicular fluid from dogs and guinea pigs, believed to invigorate tired bodies. It might've worked: Galvin pitched a two-hit shutout the next day.

'Live a life so when I die, there's standing room only.'

- Tim McGraw (1967-present)

The evolution of the baseball bat

Torpedo bats may be the latest, most powerful kind of baseball bat, but the instrument's history is long. This Smithsonian resource traces the bat's evolution from handmade objects forged by the players to mass-produced marvels of physics designed by companies like Louisville Slugger. Along the way, you'll see some interesting takes on the form, including bats referred to as "mushrooms" and "bananas."

The story behind the greatest outburst in sports history

It's a line that's still perplexing all these years later: "Who do you think you are? I am!" Those words were uttered by Pete Weber, an iconic bowler who was somewhere between John McEnroe and Happy Gilmore. This oral history from the Ringer provides some context for the bizarre insult and a backstory that turns what appears to be a non sequitur into a triumphant celebration.

A guide to sabermetrics, the empirical analysis of baseball statistics

The science of baseball overturned a century of assumptions about which metrics matter most. The approach originated key categories like WAR (wins above replacement, which tries to summarize a player's total contribution by estimating how many more wins this player generated compared to a replacement-level player) and wOBA (or weight on-base average, which measures not only hits but also walks and their outcomes in the score).

'Hearts are the strongest when they beat in response to noble ideals.'

- American diplomat Ralph Bunche (1904–1971)

Fenway Park is the oldest professional baseball stadium in use

The legendary park was built in 1912 and is considered hallowed ground for baseball fans, along with iconic venues like Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Wrigley Field in Chicago.

An eephus pitch catches batters by surprise

The specialty pitch—rarely used by starters—is unexpectedly slow and thrown with an abnormally high arc, often catching batters off-guard. Below is one famous example from 1981: Yankees pitcher Dave LaRoche striking out the Brewers' Gorman Thomas with an eephus that fans called the "La Lob."

'The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.'

- Boxing champion Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to a health condition

Gehrig's diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that now bears his name, forced him to retire early. Weeks later, he spoke with gratitude and stated, "For the past two weeks, you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Gehrig died at the age of 37, about two years later.

Talese’s story on Joe DiMaggio examined the sports star’s life post-retirement

The profile, written in the aftermath of his popular “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” similarly offered a close look at an American icon after their prime. In DiMaggio’s story, however, the Yankees player seeks to vanish into obscurity and live a quiet life, golfing and mourning his ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

'Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.'

- "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)

'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

Music was a profound inspiration for Basquiat

The prolific artist loved music, obsessing over David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, and numerous jazz figures. Many of his favorites appeared in his paintings, creating a body of work that also acts as a glossary of influences. Below is a 1984 portrait of Max Roach, the jazz drummer. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

'Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.'

-Author Arthur Miller (1915-2005) in "Death of a Salesman"

Warren Buffett’s investing advice includes never paying too high a price for any investment

Buffett is perhaps the greatest investor of all time, and his investing philosophies are highly regarded and practiced around the world. His advice also includes investing in productive assets (like stocks, bonds, and real estate) and imagining what could go wrong before thinking about how much money you could make.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born