I played baseball my entire life, up through college and everything, so working out and being physically active was always a huge part of my life. I'll spend at least a couple of hours in the gym a day.
Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.
I could've played basketball, but my mind was on baseball. I didn't know what I was in for. In high school it was a matter of talent. No one told you what to do.
I don't wish I did anything differently. The most important thing to me was to play baseball.
Any teammate of mine that had a kid and a boy that was capable of playing baseball, I think I set a terrific example of 'Don't do this' and 'Don't do that.' And that's one of the things that I'm most proud of.
I went to school every day, like everyone else, and I played baseball for my high school team. I was a part of a lot of different activities outside of school.
There will never be another Mariano Rivera. He was a friend and a champion of a teammate. He really cared about the game of baseball, the way it was played, and whatever it took to win that night.
Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.
I was lucky enough to have the talent to play baseball. That's how I treated my career. I didn't think I was anybody special, anybody different.
As a youngster, I played in Little League, Pony League, and all sorts of amateur baseball programs growing up.
I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond.
I went to a Christian all-boys' college one time to pick up my buddies so we could go play baseball, and I just remember walking through the halls, and there's all these crucified Jesuses. It's scary.
I grew up in New York City, where we played highly unorganized sports: stick ball, stoop ball, and the occasional game of baseball with no adult supervision.
When I was coming up, I just wanted to play baseball and I'm doing what I love to do most. How can I feel pressure doing what I love to do?
I think about baseball when I wake up in the morning. I think about it all day and I dream about it at night. The only time I don't think about it is when I'm playing it.
Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.
In a tradition second in wonderful absurdity only to 60-year-old baseball managers wearing uniforms and spikes in the dugout, golf spectators come dressed ready to play 18.
When I started to sing, my mother would have me engaged to perform at the Women's Christian Temperance Union national or annual meetings. I would hate doing this because I wanted to play baseball or go off skiing.
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.
I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player.
Ray Kinsella: By the time I was ten, playing baseball got to be like eating vegetables or taking out the garbage. So when I was 14, I started to refuse. Could you believe that? An American boy refusing to play catch with his father. Terence Mann: Why...
