I remember the last season I played. I went home after a ballgame one day, lay down on my bed, and tears came to my eyes. How can you explain that? It's like crying for your mother after she's gone. You cry because you love her. I cried, I guess, because I loved baseball, and I knew I had to leave it.
When I was a little boy, my dream was to play baseball and leave Cuba.
The game of baseball is a clean, straight game, and it summons to its presence everybody who enjoys clean, straight athletics. It furnishes amusement to the thousands and thousands.
I can't remember the last time I went to a game and there was a fight. I think they fight more in baseball now than they do in hockey.
I have never discussed a player contract with an agent and I like to think I never will.
Perhaps the truest axiom in baseball is that the toughest thing to do is repeat.
There was buried in Ruth humanitarianism beyond belief, an intelligence he was never given credit for, a childish desire to be over-virile, living up to credits given his home-run power - and yet a need for intimate affection and respect, and a feverish desire to play baseball, perform, act and live a life he didn't and couldn't take time to understand.
It's great to be young and a Yankee!
I dedicate all my time to baseball, because when you come from where I come from, you don't want to risk anything.
I don't think about how many people are watching me. I'm just happy to play baseball for myself.
I've discovered there is another life besides baseball. You have to be balanced to be a happy person.
It's still the best game in town because you don't have to be big to play, and everybody plays. Even your grandmother probably played baseball.
Are you crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in baseball.
I liked baseball and sports and Garbage Pail Kids and comic books. I know what its like to really adore something.
I really enjoyed high-school football, but I didn't really enjoy college football. I liked to play the games, but I didn't like the practice. In baseball, I enjoy the practice almost as much as the games.
Tarring a highway in 90-degree heat is hard work. This is baseball. Something I love.
All I can do is do my best work, try to create the best kind of moment to moment reality that I can do. That's what I do. I'm an actor. And all the rest of it is like baseball. You hit the ball. Sometimes it goes in the hole. Sometimes it goes to the player.
Football is played best full of adrenaline and anger. Moderation seldom finds a place. Almost every act of baseball is a blending of effort and control; too much of either is fatal.
Analytics only goes so far. Basketball, more than baseball, for example, is really a team sport.
The pressure never lets up. Doesn't matter what you did yesterday. . . Lord, baseball is a worrying thing.
But wherever I was I played baseball. That's all I lived for. When I sat up on the front seat of that covered wagon next to my father, I was wearing a baseball glove. That showed anybody who was interested where I wanted to go.
I am very excited to be included in the very first college baseball Hall of Fame class. For me to be honored with these coaches and players that I have grown to admire and respect is very special. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in Lubbock.
To me, personally, it doesn't matter what color I am. Black or white, Asian or Hispanic, it doesn't matter to me as long as the message I'm portraying to people that watch me on TV is positive and it shows that they can do things that are different besides catching a football, hitting a baseball or shooting a basketball. I'm just showing them that stepping outside the bubble is OK and they can be successful at it.
I keep a lot of my old baseball hats, and if you look in the hats I've had since I started pitching, you'll see 'Philippians 4:13′ written on the brim. That's the Scripture that gets me through the day because sometimes you can't do it all by yourself. You can't do it on your own, so you lean on Him.
My dream was to play Major League baseball. I've lived that dream.
