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.
I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn't play ball too good - I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn't preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing.
The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia.
People like us are afraid to leave ball. What else is there to do? When baseball has been your whole life, you can't think about a future without it, so you hang on as long as you can.
Baseball players practice, runners practice, so how can you practice being funny? You get up onstage. You train as an improviser, playing make-believe, using the vernacular of improvisation, saying 'yes and' to other people's ideas, making statements...
But I'll tell you this, it started with my mother. I have to give her. God bless her and rest her soul. I had a good foundation at home, so when I was able to go off and do these things in baseball there was always support.
Sitting at a candidate rally is similar to sitting in a ballyard. Both give you the opportunity to assess the technical metrics and reflect on the intangibles - what baseball calls 'make up' and politics calls 'character' - the leadership, talent and...
The beautiful thing about baseball is that anything can happen. It's like life in that way. As soon as you think you have it all figured out, something happens that makes you realize - you know nothing. The only thing that's guaranteed is that it wil...
Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is.
I don't think there's any player that's more talented than Alex Rodriguez. He cares very deeply about doing well. Baseball is his life. He puts a lot of pressure on himself.
You know that a given in life in human nature, is that at a sporting event, a baseball game, a football game, you never introduce a politician, is because he'll be booed. I don't care if he's the most beloved person in the world, its part of the game...
Just because you're down to your last strike, you're not out yet. You can always do more. You'll always have more at-bats to take. That's true in baseball, in rescuing animals, and in life, generally.
If you're an American reader, you can love short stories the way other Americans love baseball; this is our game, people! We have more than two hundred years of know-how and knack, of creativity.
I do something that I don't think anyone else does. I warm up before a game. Baseball and basketball players warm up, so why shouldn't the announcer warm up?
President Bush left for Canada today to attend a trade summit. Reportedly, the trade summit got off to an awkward start when the president pulled out his baseball cards.
Baseball fans are collectively the '10th man' and needed most when team performance is shaky. When mistakes are made, there's no need to heckle your team - that's what the other side is for!
The more that Japanese players go to the big leagues to play and succeed, the more that will serve to inspire young kids in Japan to want to become baseball players when they grow up.
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game and do it by watching first some high-school or small-town teams
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another's.
Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed. And then becomes a statistic.
