Nobody likes to hear it, because it's dull, but the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same - pitching.
Ball parks are smaller and baseballs are livelier. They've practically got pitchers wearing straitjackets. Bah! They still allow the knuckleball, and that is three times as hard to control.
You fool around with different pitches playing catch, but it's not the same when you've got to face some guy with a bat in his hand.
I've been on teams that lost a hundred games in a season. I've been on teams that had a shot to make the playoffs and fizzled out at the end.
It all comes down to when spring training comes. Do you want to go or don't you? If you want to go, you go.
Every Autumn now my thoughts return to snow. Snow is something I identify myself with. Like my father, I am a snow person.
But I want you to know that what I'm doing here I'm doing as a ballplayer, a major league ballplayer.
Customary though it may be to write about that institutionalized pastime as though it existed apart from the general environment, my story does not lend itself to such treatment.
Whatever I contributed to the unique morale of the Cardinals was part of this growth, and so, of course, was my decision to have it out in public with the owners of organized baseball.
I am pleased God made my skin black. I only wish He had to made it thicker.
I worked on a farm. Played ball and loafed along the fishing and swimming holes of the White River, and my boyhood was not a lot different from that of other youngsters.
I guess more players lick themselves that are ever licked by an opposing team. The first thing any man has to know is how to handle himself.
I've always been big. I'm never going to be an underwear model. But I am who I am, and that has its advantages and disadvantages.
There are many kids in and out of baseball who think that just because they have some natural talent, they have the world by the tail.
I heard that in the United States the level of baseball was the highest in the world. So it was only natural that I would want to go there, as a baseball player.
Gossip is when you have a malice of intent or mindless, third-party conversation to someone about someone, something you haven't said to that someone.
If you're not willing to let your partner see your cellulite or know your biggest fears, then you aren't really ready to share yourself.
Talk about your negative experiences with the father, with your girlfriends. Not with your children. And bite your tongue when it comes to diminishing, denying, dismissing, name-calling.
If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don't do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you make.
I think in a sense this is a house that was built on a bad foundation. And the foundation was the Americans coming here and allowing the sacking, burning and plunder of Baghdad, for whatever reason.
'W.' is not necessarily a political film, but it was sort of a contrasting reality for me to get into George W. Bush as a character because of how I felt about his administration before I started making the film.
