Cal Ripken, Jr. Quotes

Get in the game. Do the best you can. Try to make a contribution. Learn from today. Apply it to tomorrow.

Leadership isn't about simply being in charge and treating your people like soldiers and barking orders. Leadership is sharing your knowledge and your direction so that others grow and reach their potential.

If you do a job, do it right or there is no point.

You could be a kid for as long as you want when you play baseball.

I didn’t just show up for work, as has sometimes been said. I also showed up to work.

As long as I can compete, I won't quit.

I've felt some great feelings on the baseball field... in front of 50,000 people and millions on TV... but the feeling you get when you give a kid a chance, that is a hundred times greater than that feeling.

All I really try and do is live up to my potential and do as well as I possibly could and to bring to the ballpark each and every day a good effort and do the best that I could each and every day.

A lot of people think I had such a rosy career, but I wanted to identify that one of the things that helps you have a long career is learning how to deal with adversity, how to get past it. Once I learned how to get through that, others things didn't seem so hard.

Stubbornness usually is considered a negative; but I think that trait has been a positive for me.

My approach to every game was to try to erase the games that were before and try to focus on the game at hand.

Whether your name is (Lou) Gehrig or (Cal) Ripken, (Joe) DiMaggio or (Jackie) Robinson, or that of some youngster who picks up his bat or puts on his glove, you are challenged by the game of baseball to do your very best day in and day out. That's all I've ever tried to do.

The best thing you can do in the whole world is to play baseball. That's a lucky job... The passion for baseball is always going to be there.

Sometimes I think sportsmanship is a little bit forgotten in place of the individual attention.

When things happen to you in the worst way, you live with it, you go over it, you think, 'What else could I have done?

I always thought being a gamer and someone who had a sense of responsibility to the game and to my teammates was the honorable thing.

What keeps me going? I guess it's just a desire to keep trying to contribute and do things in life.

Each and every day had its challenges.

I'd like to be remembered. I'd like to think that someday two guys will be talking in a bar and one of them will say something like, 'Yeah, he's a good shortstop, but he's not as good as ole Ripken was.'

I was always compared to the Energizer Bunny in my consecutive game streak because every day I showed up and went to work and they said he keeps going and going and going, but a lot of people do that.

As long as I can compete, I won't quit. Reaching three-thousand is not the finish line as long as I can contribute.

We consider ourselves the luckiest fans on the face of the Earth.

So many good things have happened to me in the game of baseball. When I do allow myself a chance to think about it, it's almost like a storybook career. You feel so blessed to have been able to compete this long.

I love baseball. The game allowed me the influence to impact kids in a positive way. This gives me a chance to talk to some social issues.

I haven't given it (achieving 3,000 hits) much thought. I was taught a certain approach, how to come to the ballpark. I try not to do too much thinking about things like that. In this society we measure success in different ways. Three thousand (hits) represents success over a career, not a season. It'll be nice to get to that point.