Cyclists, I work with a number of cyclists. They are great athletes; they are great aerobic athletes. If you ask them to hit a baseball or golf ball, they can't do that.
My kid was a great baseball player. I thought I had it made. Front-row seats at Yankee Stadium. Then he turned sixteen and wanted to be a rapper.
I do have a family, and obviously I spend as much time as I can with them. Though even when I'm with my family, my mind tends to drift toward baseball.
Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it's about love, integrity, and respect.
If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.
Say this for big league baseball - it is beyond any question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America.
This is a great thing that's happening in baseball. We don't know if it will ever happen again.
I'm going through a divorce now. This is the second one, and like baseball, I'm not gonna get three strikes. I've been living by myself for five years and I'm very comfortable. I can play my guitar when I want to.
Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate.
Baseball was the darling of all sports back then.
Every day I went to the ballpark in Yankee Stadium as well as on the road people were on my back. The last six years in the American League were mental hell for me. I was drained of all my desire to play baseball.
Upsetting the dope is a favorite pastime in baseball. Past performances count for but little in the national pastime. Reputations don't get you anywhere. A club is judged solely on results, and to get results, you must win ball games.
The worst drivers are women in people carriers, men in white vans and anyone in a baseball cap. That's just about everyone.
And I found out, the other part of it is that I found out and in my desire to life successfully, that baseball fit very well into my life. It's been a great teacher, trainer, mentor and you'll see what I mean in the next few minutes that I have to speak.
I'm a very lucky guy. I had so many people help me over the years that I never had many problems. If I had a problem, I could sit down with someone and they would explain the problem to me, and the problem become like a baseball game.
Looking back on those days and little leaguer, the Hall of Fame is not even a blinking star, but through baseball travels and moving up the ladder, that star begins to flicker.
Nowadays, they have more trouble packing hair dryers than baseball equipment.
In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.
You kind of took it for granted around the Yankees that there was always going to be baseball in October.
I don't care what you do - baseball or politics - George W. Bush is always going to be compared to his father. I just want it to be an easy answer in 50 years - Who was the better player, me, or my kids? I want it to be my kids.
Baseball for me was instinctive, born within me, given to me as a gift from God.
People also think Christians are very passive people, and that drives me crazy as an athlete because if you watch me play and compete, I'm the furthest thing from passive that you'll see on the baseball field. I love to compete, and I love to win.
Baseball is one of the most beautiful games. It is. It is a very Zen-like game.
I started out real young as a tight end, but I was never getting the football. I knew when I played basketball, I loved to have control of the ball. When I played baseball, I was a pitcher. I always wanted to be the guy throwing the passes and making a difference, I guess.
Growing up, I looked up to major league baseball players, and now these young women have amazing, incredible women all across the board, from swimming to gymnastics to softball to basketball.
You have to go understand that life and baseball is littered with all kinds of obstacles and problems along the way. You have to learn how to overcome them to be successful in life.
Awards mean a lot, but they don't say it all. The people in baseball mean more to me than statistics.
Baseball has all the money.
These days baseball is different. You come to spring training, you get your legs ready, you arms loose, your agents ready, your lawyer lined up.
When McGwire started the home run mania, attendance came back. The owners understood that the sudden spike in homers wasn't accidental. All baseball knew it. But baseball is run on money, and home runs meant money. Baseball turned a blind eye.
For my books of nonfiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. I've been a Yankees and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades, so I wrote 'Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man.' It's more the story of his great courage than of his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges, and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig.
One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.
You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just this magnificent human being. And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. But he was also a really good guy.
I could have played another year, but I would have been playing for the money, and baseball deserves better than that.
You have to have a lot of little boy in you to play baseball for a living.
There are three types of baseball players: Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens.
