Player Quotes - Page 119

What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league.

Ovechkin does not play like a Russian. He plays like an NHL player.

I was very lucky that while I was a chess player in a country where chess was not a big deal, I happened to be in the one city where there was a sprouting chess team: Chennai.

In 1996, the players at the VSB tournament in Amsterdam sent me a card for my wedding with this dedication, 'Anand congrats on your wedding. You were a great player, now be ready to lose 50 points'.

In the real world of competition, the players want to compete and they want to compete at the very highest level.

I take a lot of favorite moves from great players and add them to my repertoire.

To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

It's important to me to be a complete player.

My courses do not intimidate. Instead, they encourage the player to play well and become more open to the enjoyable aspects of the game.

I think my broadcast partner Mike Gorman said it best. He said there's a generation of fans who know me as a player and there's a generation of fans who know me as a coach and now there's a generation of fans who think I'm Shrek!

You always study the players you go against. You try and stay ahead of it. Those guys are just too good to just show up on Sunday and think you're going to do well. Every week it seems like there's an all-star out there - to me, anyway. Every week is a rodeo. You just hope for the best.

I was a baseball player. I played in high school and a little bit in college. I was a catcher. I don't know if I could have played any other position. As a catcher, you're always on the ball.

When you look at all of the great players who ever played the game, they all had that other gear that they could go to, and it makes a world of difference.

They didn't change positions, they just moved the players around.

When I was in the NFL, whenever I got cut from a team I would do paintings of the players, they would pay me $4,000 to $5,000 to do their painting of their family, and that's how I survived until another team picked me up.

As a player, I like playing as much cricket as possible, irrelevant of the format.

I want them to be fully committed to the work place and fully committed to the people they work for. (on Manchester City players)

I never thought of what I was doing as a way to sell the NFL. I was making movies about a sport that I loved, about players and coaches that I respected. I wanted to convey my love of the game through film. And most artists convey their love through art. And my art and my love was expressed through film.

Through a lot of conversations with the Minister [Louis Farrakhan] you've got to know when to say something. But if you are forever going to be afraid to say anything, then you become irrelevant - as a force. I mean, so the God-given gift that you got, you're not a relevant player in the game - you're just a dude whose got money, got a big house and some cars.

Always wanted to be a Major League player. Loved baseball. Followed it. Loved to play. Plus, I could always hit.

He[Ted Danson] was clearly not a football player, and not only physically. He didn't bring that attitude, that mentality. At the time, there was a [Red Sox] relief pitcher named Bill Lee, the "Spaceman." He was kind of nuts, as we found out a lot of relievers are.

I'm a star player when it comes to being sociable. It's because I'm inquisitive. When I meet someone for the first time, I want to start up a conversation with them.

Greed is an integral quality of a strong player.

Drew is a player that comes along once every 20 years. Not even Barry Bonds can be compared to J.D. Drew.