I was only a gun captain on the battleship Alabama for 34 months. People have called me a hero for that, but I'll tell you this - heroes don't come home. Survivors come home.
Stealing bases is just something I like to do. I figure if I can hit home runs and steal bases, I'd be different than everybody else.
It was very much like Norman Rockwell: small town America. We walked to school or rode our bikes, stopped at the penny candy store on the way home from school, skated on the pond.
As a supporter of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and their Home Run Challenge program, I am extremely grateful for the valuable partnerships and relationships built with Major League Baseball and our affiliates.
Even professional, paid carers aren't always models of saintly behaviour - and they know they can knock off at the end of their shift to go home, take an uninterrupted shower, and have a normal conversation with someone.
My dad and all my family were into baseball. His brothers, my mom's brothers, my mom's father. Baseball was just always a part of our family.
My message to a lot of guys is, if you like school and you like education, baseball is gonna be there, and you can get some of the same great competition in college that you do in the low minor leagues.
I talk to student-athletes. I try to get them to remember that they're not just athletes, but student-athletes. You need to get an education, keep your hands clean and try to represent the university.
You give us the pitching some of these clubs have and no one could touch us, but God has a way of not arranging that, because it's not as much fun.
NFL cheerleading is harder than most people think. They train up to six hours every day with games on Sundays. They gave me a great work ethic.
Reading isn't good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn't hit home runs. So I gave up reading.
It's good to know you're working for someone you're familiar with, who's a friend and he has your back and you have his back also.
Professionalism is not sportsmanship. If you don't succeed, you won't be in your profession for long. In our society, it's not about good or bad. It's about who's on top.
I'm the kind of a player who, if you give me something good to hit, I'm going to swing at it. Otherwise, there's nothing else you can do.
It takes a lot of dedication to quit smoking, and whether you give up for good on your first try or have to give it a couple of tries - just keep swinging at it and you will succeed.
No club that wins a pennant once is an outstanding club. One which bunches two pennants is a good club. But a team which can win three in a row really achieves greatness.
When you've been in the game as long as I have, you know the managers you've played for, the good ones and the bad ones. Even the good ones get fired.
Everyone has someone they looked up to. Mine was Mickey Mantle. For Alex Rodriguez to idolize me coming up, that makes me feel very good.
I understand I'm a sinner. I'm not perfect, and I need a Savior, and that I'm not going to make it to Heaven on merits and doing good things.
Heroes are people who are all good with no bad in them. That's the way I always saw Joe DiMaggio. He was beyond question one of the greatest players of the century.
Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been.
