Im a finesse pitcher without the finesse.
At nighttime, you just try to keep him out of jail.
I have far too many skeletons in my closet to think about any sort of serious mention of public office.
I love being out there on the mound with the ball in my hand. I can control the game. I'm out there. No clock - nothing happens until I throw that thing. Nothing happens. I love that feeling.
I have a future and I have a mind and I have things to look forward to,' but to me it's just about..I love to pitch so much.
It really gets into your system. All baseball players have this internal clock around February when it starts to kick in and the juices start to flow. I think underestimated how much I was going to miss it.
I like to think of the world's greatest athlete coming up to bat against me - Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, I don't care who it is - and I'm looking at him thinking, you have no chance.
I can't remember a major league game where I could make eye contact with my dad. I kept wondering if he was going to yell at me for hanging a pitch or something.
Today baseball is currently enjoying a run of more than 14 years without interruption, a record that would have been inconceivable in the 1990s.
I've always noticed how the Fenway fans get behind the pitcher, especially late in the game if you're having a good game, or if you have two strikes on a hitter, they really start to chant and anticipate a strikeout. And that's the best part about playing in Boston and at Fenway. There are knowledgeable fans who anticipate the flow of the game and they can really help out the pitcher.
This is the place to be. Baseball town. The intimacy of Fenway, the toughness of it. I like that. I'm used to it. I need it. If I went somewhere else, it might have been a bit of a letdown. I like the edge.
My buddy David Wells is a big motorcycle guy, so when I go visit him in San Diego, he takes me out on his bike. He's got some antique Indians. I never really rode during my career, because I was afraid I'd fall off and ruin my career.
We charted individual pitches by hand, so I had that data from game to game, but from year to year, I didn't really have that data, because a lot of times it was discarded.
We just kind of relied on written scouting reports through the eighties and even the early nineties. I've really been amazed by some of the data that's out there, especially with regards to tendencies of hitters, and certainly tendencies of pitchers as well. I would have loved to have gotten that data when I played.
We played hard and we partied hard. I'm not ashamed of that. I was no angel - I did some things I shouldn't have done, lived a lifestyle I shouldn't have lived. I had a blast at times; other times, I probably compromised my job, my duty to do my job, to be ready as a professional.
I was a professional baseball player from the time I was drafted out of high school in 1981 until the time I retired in 2003.
I think the changeup has become more popular recently by pitchers like Pedro Martinez and the success he had with it.
I think I rushed and I needed more time with my comeback. I needed more time to get my legs stronger to be able to handle the workload. You can only train for that by pitching innings. You can't simulate pitching off a mound in a game inside a weight room.
A major league pitching coach is a really difficult job. It takes a big commitment in terms of time, travel and workload.
Part of what makes you great as a young player can hurt you at the end of your career, in terms of you need a certain amount of ego, a certain amount of arrogance to be able to play well and to push yourself and trick yourself into thinking you're better than you really are.
