Your job as a baseball player is to come to the park ready to play every day, and the manager, it's his job to make those decisions about who plays.
You learn as a player not to listen to the criticism. Many of the people who put out that criticism might not be as accomplished, might not understand the game as well from the inside-out.
I had aches and pains when I played. No player is ever 100 percent, 80 percent, 85 percent. Guys that play 158 or 162 or 145, we are all in the same boat.
You don't project yourself in the Hall of Fame as a player. It's only during that five-year period where people start asking about it, and it doesn't seem real until it happens.
I have a problem with players who don't take the loss personally. At a professional level you should - it's our job, it's our livelihood, it's who we are at this level. Every loss should be taken that personal.
I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.
You can never guarantee the wins but you can guarantee that you give it 100%. That way you can always look back and feel comfortable, as a player or a coach.
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.
It's hard to get people to overcome the thought that they have to take care of themselves first. It's hard to get players to give in to the group and become selfless as opposed to selfish.
It wasn't about the X's and the O's and the strategy; it was more about keeping 12 guys focused and committed to a task. That group dynamic, and then helping them to grow as people and basketball players.
When you go out on a football field, you are responsible for taking care of yourself. The more rules you get, the less players truly take care of themselves.
I want to be on a successful team, and I know that paying one or two or three players premium hurts your chances of being able to bring in extra talent.
'Authoring tools' are terrible; there is almost no software that can create closed captions for media players. And of course there is no training. TV captioning is bad enough, and this stuff is generally worse.
Am I an Apple bigot? No. I can critique their products and their customer service philosophy. But overall, they do better than any other player.
You can't say that being a fan is more serious, because players are trying to do better in order to get paid better.
The thing a player has to ask himself: 'Do you want to choose winning over standing out?' Dwyane Wade made that choice, and I don't think he gets enough credit.
The point, as I emphasize in the book, is not for players to become professionals, but rather to have innovative and creative ways of thinking about real problems as part of their intellectual toolkit.
Sure, sometimes guys pass you up in salary, and maybe it's a lesser player, but it's all based on what a team has as far as value in that person.
He would catapult you forward, and that was his intention with the Jazz Messengers. He would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.
I really believe the only thing you can control in those situations is what you do as a player but also how you interact with your teammates, which is critical.
I think younger players probably just think they are who they are-they don't think about coming out. Unless you're number one in the world, nobody cares, usually.
